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5.2.1. A Landscape of Shifting Focalization
While appealing in their feeling of otherness and enchanting mood of places beyond the
familiar, 67 Cen Shen's niveous landscapes are also attractive in the complexity of their perceptual and
psychological facets of focalization. Commentary on these wintry lands tends to gloss over these
intricacies, preferring instead to summarize the poems as being vigorous, curious and attentive to
miniscule changes of detail; 68 one popular example is the sustained vision of peach blossom snowflakes
and their movements in the opening six lines of “Song of White Snow” (“Baixue ge” 白 雪 歌 ):
北 风 卷 地 白 草 折
胡 天 八 月 即 飞 雪
忽 如 一 夜 春 风 来
千 树 万 树 梨 花 开
散 入 珠 帘 湿 罗 幕
狐 裘 不 暖 锦 衾 薄
The north wind rolls up the ground, white grasses snap
In the eighth month snow already flies throughout the
Hu sky
Suddenly as if in one night the Spring wind arrives,
On tens of thousands of trees pear flowers bloom.
Scattering through beaded curtains and soaking silk drapes,
Fox fur clothing does not keep in the heat, resplendent
blankets are thin.
A landscape where “contortions of turbulent movement [undermine] the lugubrious stillness of the
tradition [in frontier poetry]” 69 is another common feature noted by critics, one whose support often
includes reference “Ballad of Running Horse River” (“Zoumachuan xing” 走 马 川 行 ):
轮 台 九 月 风 夜 吼
一 川 碎 石 大 如 斗
随 风 满 地 石 乱 走
Luntai in the ninth month winds at night howl,
A river of broken rocks big as dippers
Follow the winds covering the ground, rocks
tumble helter-skelter.
(“Ballad of Running Horse River”, lines 3-5))
As for the emotions revealed in these hibernal landscapes, critical attention is drawn disproportionately
67 Stephen Owen, Great Age of Chinese Poetry, p. 176.
68 Stephen Owen, Great Age of Chinese Poetry, p. 177; Li Mei, “Shilun Luo Binwang, Cen Shen biansaishi de wenhua
guanzhao”, p. 160; and Marie Chan, “The Frontier Poems of Ts'en Shen”, p. 430.
69 Marie Chan, “The Frontier Poems of Ts'en Shen”, p. 430.