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Shifts from distance to nearness in the spatial coordinates of focalization in “Song of White
Snow” and “Song of Snow on Tian Mountain”, while not selfsame in order, do share more intertextual
continuities between one another than they do with the relatively infrequent far-near focalization
movements in “Ballad of Running Horse River”. As noted by Marie Chan, the poet-narrator in the first
eight lines of “Song of White Snow” delineates the stages of a snowstorm and its spreading snow and
cold by focalizing the hibernal scene through a slow constriction from distance to nearness that begins
with the wind wracked ground and unseasonably snowy sky, and then ends at the chilled paraphernalia
of war. 79 The effect is one of thickening cold founded on sequences of accumulating imagistic frames:
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
将 军 角 弓 不 得 控
都 护 铁 衣 冷 难 著
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 the 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.
The general's horn bow cannot be pulled,
The protector-general's armour is freezing and difficult to
put on.
(“Song of White Snow”, lines 1-8)
While “Song of Snow on Tian Mountain” exhibits a comparable spatial progression in its focalization
of the hibernal frontier, one in which distance shifts with nearness, accompanying this gradual change
in coordinates is another shifting spatial dichotomy, height to lowness. Whereas in “Song of White
Snow” focalization of the wintry scene remains on a horizontal plane while contracting from distance
to nearness, the poet-narrator of “Song of Snow on Tian Mountain” commits seven lines of far-near
focalization to a vertical axis where he focalizes high altitude clouds and mountain peaks, the snow
itself of Tian mountain and its reflections of lunar light, the wind of a mountain pass, and finally the
79 Marie Chan, Cen Shen, p. 90.