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peaks. The following excerpt is lines eleven to fourteen:
上 有 六 龙 回 日 之 高 标
下 有 冲 波 逆 折 之 回 川
黄 鹤 之 飞 尚 不 得 过
40
猿 猱 欲 度 愁 攀 援
Above there is the high ensign where the team of six
dragons bend the sun,
And below is the stream that winds around with dashing
waves surging back crashing.
Even in flight the brown crane cannot pass,
Apes and monkeys want to cross and sadly strain,
dragging themselves along. 41
The violence of the thermality of Cen Shen's frontier landscapes is further focalized by the poetnarrators
as a series of active and expansive aggressive acts committed not against the poet-narrator –
Bao Zhao's sand-spitting demons or headache inducing miasma are found neither at Cen Shen's Fire
Mountain nor Hot Lake – but against the larger space encompassing and surrounding the frontier. An
intertextual reading reveals a series of parallel focalizations by the poet-narrators whereby sub-themes
of Fire Mountain and Hot Lake all conduct a blazing, scalding assault on the general environs, an
offensive which expresses the boundlessness of Fire Mountain and Hot Lake's thermal powers:
赤 烟 烧 虏 云
炎 气 蒸 塞 空
Red smoke burns the Lu clouds,
Blistering vapours steam the frontier emptiness.
(“Passing Fire Mountain”, lines 3-4)
蒸 沙 烁 石 燃 虏 云
沸 浪 炎 波 煎 汉 月
势 吞 月 窟 侵 太 白
气 连 赤 坂 通 单 于
Steaming sands and shining 42 rocks burn the Lu clouds,
Boiling billows and scorching waves boil the
Han moon.
...
The force of the steam's heat swallows moon caves
and attacks Venus,
Vapours continue into the Chi Pamirs and through
Xiongnu lands 43 .
40 QTS 162.1681
41 Stephen Owen, tr., An Anthology of Chinese Literature, p. 213.
42 烁 (shuo), translated above as “shining” can also mean “melting” ( Dr. Tsung-Cheng Lin, personal correspondence,
May, 2013).
43 单 于 (chanyu), translated here as “Xiongnu lands”, literally refers to a Xiongnu chieftain.