View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
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159<br />
Shifts from distance to nearness in the spatial coordinates <strong>of</strong> focalization in “Song <strong>of</strong> White<br />
Snow” and “Song <strong>of</strong> Snow on Tian Mountain”, while not selfsame in order, do share more intertextual<br />
continuities between one another than they do with the relatively infrequent far-near focalization<br />
movements in “Ballad <strong>of</strong> Running Horse River”. As noted by Marie Chan, the poet-narrator in the first<br />
eight lines <strong>of</strong> “Song <strong>of</strong> White Snow” delineates the stages <strong>of</strong> a snowstorm and its spreading snow and<br />
cold by focalizing the hibernal scene through a slow constriction from distance to nearness that begins<br />
with the wind wracked ground and unseasonably snowy sky, and then ends at the chilled paraphernalia<br />
<strong>of</strong> war. 79 The effect is one <strong>of</strong> thickening cold founded on sequences <strong>of</strong> accumulating imagistic frames:<br />
北 风 卷 地 白 草 折<br />
胡 天 八 月 即 飞 雪<br />
忽 如 一 夜 春 风 来<br />
千 树 万 树 梨 花 开<br />
散 入 珠 帘 湿 罗 幕<br />
狐 裘 不 暖 锦 衾 薄<br />
将 军 角 弓 不 得 控<br />
都 护 铁 衣 冷 难 著<br />
The north wind rolls up the ground, white grasses snap,<br />
In the eighth month snow already flies throughout the<br />
Hu sky.<br />
Suddenly as if in the night the Spring wind arrives,<br />
On tens <strong>of</strong> thousands <strong>of</strong> trees pear flowers bloom.<br />
Scattering through beaded curtains and soaking silk drapes,<br />
Fox fur clothing does not keep in the heat, resplendent<br />
blankets are thin.<br />
The general's horn bow cannot be pulled,<br />
The protector-general's armour is freezing and difficult to<br />
put on.<br />
(“Song <strong>of</strong> White Snow”, lines 1-8)<br />
While “Song <strong>of</strong> Snow on Tian Mountain” exhibits a comparable spatial progression in its focalization<br />
<strong>of</strong> the hibernal frontier, one in which distance shifts with nearness, accompanying this gradual change<br />
in coordinates is another shifting spatial dichotomy, height to lowness. Whereas in “Song <strong>of</strong> White<br />
Snow” focalization <strong>of</strong> the wintry scene remains on a horizontal plane while contracting from distance<br />
to nearness, the poet-narrator <strong>of</strong> “Song <strong>of</strong> Snow on Tian Mountain” commits seven lines <strong>of</strong> far-near<br />
focalization to a vertical axis where he focalizes high altitude clouds and mountain peaks, the snow<br />
itself <strong>of</strong> Tian mountain and its reflections <strong>of</strong> lunar light, the wind <strong>of</strong> a mountain pass, and finally the<br />
79 Marie Chan, Cen Shen, p. 90.