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万 物 为 铜
28
His copper, all things of creation. 29
This vulcanian workshop of creation opens its refinery doors on the thermal frontier as a type of heat
only visible to the imaginative eye, an allusive-ocular lens which focalizes and visualizes (as in makes
visible, visible as the Jia Yi allusion) a subterranean frontier heat hidden from usual means of
perceiving:
不 知 阴 阳 炭
How do the coals of yin and yang
何 独 燃 此 中
Burn alone in the midst of this place?
... ...
孰 知 造 化 功
Who knows the works of Nature's invention?
(“Passing Fire Mountain, lines 5-6; 10)
何 事 阴 阳 工
不 遣 雨 雪 来
Why is it that the workman of yin and yang
Not allow rain and snow to arrive?
(“Mission to Jiaohe”, lines 7-8)
阴 火 潜 烧 天 地 炉 Hidden fires deeply burn in the furnace of
Heaven and Earth
何 事 偏 烘 西 一 隅 Why do they just happen to roast this western border?
(“Song of Hot Lake”, lines 9-10)
Without the benefit of x-ray vision, the poet-narrators resort to an imaginary mode of
focalization to peer deep beneath the ground surrounding Fire Mountain and Hot Lake to where a
submerged, preternatural heat lies hidden from bodily senses, a sub-theme of the Fire Mountain and
Hot Lakes themes that is only visible when focalized through an imaginary mode of focalization. The
three poems each utilize one component of the original Jia Yi allusion to focalize this heat, in effect
linking three disparate poet-narrators to a single allusive lens focalizing a heat beyond the range of the
28 Wenxuanzhu 文 选 注 13.22-23 in SKQS.
29 Burton Watson, tr., The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, p. 72.