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