View/Open - University of Victoria
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<strong>of</strong> focalization); the focalization <strong>of</strong> alternations in movement between activity and inactivity on the<br />
hibernal setting (degree <strong>of</strong> kinesis); and the focalization <strong>of</strong> two types <strong>of</strong> coldness exhibited by the<br />
existents <strong>of</strong> the hibernal setting (typology <strong>of</strong> cold). As in Cen Shen's thermal landscape poems, the<br />
perceptual facet in these hibernal poems is linked intertextually across the poems as a system <strong>of</strong><br />
focalization, and it is with attention to these shared manners <strong>of</strong> focalization that the poems will be read<br />
and discussed.<br />
5.2.2. Scale <strong>of</strong> Focalization: Ambient Spatial Coordinates<br />
A major source <strong>of</strong> symmetry among Cen Shen's poet-narrators in their focalization <strong>of</strong> the<br />
hibernal landscape resides in the shifting spatial coordinates <strong>of</strong> their perceptual facets. These spatial<br />
instabilities can be described as “ambient” on the scale <strong>of</strong> focalization, a position indicative <strong>of</strong> a certain<br />
amount <strong>of</strong> fluidity and flexibility. As it pertains to the following poems, these coordinates can be<br />
characterized specifically as overlapping sets <strong>of</strong> exteriority and interiority, and distance and nearness,<br />
binaries which reflect the spatial inconstancy guiding the poet-narrator's “roving eye” across Cen<br />
Shen's hibernal landscapes. 77<br />
The exterior-interior spatial dichotomy is most easily recognized in the poems as a shift<br />
between scenes <strong>of</strong> cold focalized outdoors on the hibernal frontier, by far the most frequent coordinate,<br />
and scenes within army tents, interior moments which actually function to emphasize the strength <strong>of</strong><br />
the cold by contrasting tiny human habitations and gatherings with the all pervasive, dominating freeze<br />
77 The “roving eye” is a term used by Yi-yu Cho Woo to describe the shifting viewpoint in Wang Wei's “Zhongnan<br />
Mountain” (“Zhongnan shan” 终 南 山 ), a poem in which perspective also shifts with great frequency; in the first four<br />
lines alone there are alterations from level ground, to the mountain at a distance, to exiting the mountain and then<br />
looking down from it. See Yi-yu Cho Woo, “Chinese Poetry and Painting: Some Observations on Their<br />
Interrelationship” Monumenta Serica, Vol. 34 (1979-1980), pp. 403-413, especially p. 412. Although the subject is<br />
neither Cen Shen nor focalization, an enjoyable analysis <strong>of</strong> modulations in perceptual coordiates can still be found in<br />
Thomas Yuntong Luk's “A Cinematic Interpretation <strong>of</strong> Wang Wei's Nature Poetry” in William Tay, Ying-hsiung Chou<br />
and Heh-hsiang Yuan, ed., China and the West: Comparative Literature Studies (Hong Kong: China <strong>University</strong> Press,<br />
1980), pp. 151-161. Wai-lim Yip also touches on the topic in the introduction to his translations <strong>of</strong> Wang Wei's poetry in<br />
Hiding the Universe: Poems by Wang Wei (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973).