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.
uninterrupted throughout their migration from external to internal space, not only does the coldness <strong>of</strong><br />
the snow itself smoothly cross a ruptured spatial border and infiltrate “beaded curtains” (zhulian 珠 帘 ),<br />
“silk drapes” (luomu 罗 幕 ), “fox fur clothing” (huqiu 狐 裘 ) and “thin resplendent blankets” (jinqiu bao<br />
锦 裘 薄 ), the ubiquitous harshness <strong>of</strong> the northern temperature as well creeps through the delicately<br />
furnished and permeable tent to undermine a potential, if ineffectual, source <strong>of</strong> warmth, and in the<br />
process emphasize the frontier cold. The very delicacy <strong>of</strong> the scene, one in which the poet-narrator<br />
superimposes an imaginary, and quite effete, vernal season onto the very real, and uncompromising,<br />
hibernal, creates a false hope <strong>of</strong> heat; the hollow resistance mounted by furs and fancy furnishings only<br />
exaggerates the chill <strong>of</strong> the“ground rolling northern wind” (beifeng juan di 北 风 卷 地 ) and “flying<br />
snow” (fei xue 飞 雪 ).<br />
The second interior scene, a space <strong>of</strong> fraternizing and musical entertainment, seems<br />
hermetically sealed from the greater landscape <strong>of</strong> wind, snow and ice, a durable beacon <strong>of</strong> resistance<br />
against the meteorological ravages at China's periphery. But the firmly established exterior order <strong>of</strong><br />
winter is never completely absent. Faced with “criss-crossing rails <strong>of</strong> ice a hundred meters thick”<br />
(langan bai zhang bing 阑 干 百 丈 冰 ) and “evening snow falling pell-mell” (fenfen mu xue 纷 纷 暮 雪 ),<br />
the warmth <strong>of</strong> the interior farewell party's music and convivial imbibing is weakened when juxtaposed<br />
against the outdoor boreal blasts and glacial gloom. Regardless <strong>of</strong> the external temperature, the indoor<br />
evening banquet held in honour <strong>of</strong> the capital bound “departing guest” (gui ke 归 客 ) also generates its<br />
own dreadful draft <strong>of</strong> ephemerality in anticipation <strong>of</strong> the eventual separation between the poet-narrator<br />
and Administrative Officer Wu. The poem ends with a final exterior scene <strong>of</strong> blocked vision and<br />
explicit absence that reasserts the feeling <strong>of</strong> oppressive containment created not by perceptual shifts<br />
from exteriority to interiority but by the outdoor snow <strong>of</strong> the frontier environment: 78<br />
156<br />
78 Ronald Miao, “T'ang Frontier Poetry”, p. 125.