View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
151<br />
The traditionally dolorous domain that was the poetic frontier was also a landscape which in<br />
addition to the visually dim and climatically cold gravitated towards the verbally static. 60 Chapter three<br />
<strong>of</strong> this thesis cited one pre-Tang example <strong>of</strong> this typical stillness in Chen Shubao's “Song <strong>of</strong> Rain and<br />
Snow”, a poem whose setting nearly suffocates under a haze <strong>of</strong> rain and snow spread thickly across the<br />
northern expanse. The opening <strong>of</strong> Li Shimin's 61 李 世 民 (599-649) “Watering Horses at the Long Wall<br />
Spring” (“Yin ma changcheng ku xing” 饮 马 长 城 窟 行 ) likewise illustrates a landscape <strong>of</strong> mounting<br />
inertness whose first four lines open with a movement <strong>of</strong> sharp and sorrowful winds before slowing to<br />
a stationary silence initiated by the act <strong>of</strong> “freezing” (jie 结 ) which then leads to a total vacancy <strong>of</strong><br />
verbs, an absence <strong>of</strong> action that is filled by an impenetrable concentration <strong>of</strong> sand and snow:<br />
塞 外 悲 风 切<br />
交 河 冰 已 结<br />
瀚 海 百 重 波<br />
62<br />
阴 山 千 里 雪<br />
Beyond the frontier mournful winds cut,<br />
Jiaohe river ice already frozen.<br />
The Gobi desert, hundreds <strong>of</strong> layers <strong>of</strong> undulations;<br />
Yin mountains. 63 thousands <strong>of</strong> li deep in snow.<br />
Such frontier environments, realms “continuously generated intertextually out <strong>of</strong> the language <strong>of</strong><br />
aridity and coldness <strong>of</strong> other poems”, 64 <strong>of</strong>ten leave the impression that these peripheral spaces only ever<br />
clump into “campaign roads full <strong>of</strong> dark snow” and “watch towers buried in cold clouds”, 65 a land <strong>of</strong><br />
“ancient towns covered in a pr<strong>of</strong>usion <strong>of</strong> frost” 66 that is forever inactive and unmoving. These<br />
assumptions are certainly reasonable until one enters Cen Shen's hibernal landscape.<br />
旌 旗 屡 徂 迁 . 仰 凭 积 雪 岸 , 俯 涉 坚 冰 川 . 冬 来 秋 未 反 , 去 家 邈 以 绵 . YFSJ 38.557.<br />
60 Marsha Wagner, Wang Wei (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981), p. 42.<br />
61 Tang Taizong 唐 太 宗 , second emperor <strong>of</strong> the Tang dynasty.<br />
62 YFSJ 38.559<br />
63 The Yin mountain range spanning central Inner Mongolia. See Sun Quanmin, ed., Tangdai biansaishi xuanzhu, p. 4.<br />
64 Joseph R. Allen, In the Voice <strong>of</strong> Others, p. 90.<br />
65 暗 雪 迷 征 路 , 寒 云 隐 戍 楼 . See Chu Guangxi's 储 光 羲 (707-763) “Parting at the Waters <strong>of</strong> Longtou” (“Longtoushui<br />
songbie” 陇 头 水 送 别 ), QTS 139.1415.<br />
66 繁 霜 覆 古 城 . See Chu Guangxi's “Moon at the Mountain Pass” (“Guanshan yue” 关 山 月 ), QTS 139.1417.