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166
西 行 殊 未 已
东 望 何 时 还
终 日 风 与 雪
91
连 天 沙 复 山
This westward travelling has yet to cease,
Gazing east; when will I return?
All day wind and snow
Sands and mountain stretch into sky.
The snow in the following first four lines of “Staying at the Western Hostel of Metal Pass” (“Su tieguan
xiguan” 宿 铁 关 西 馆 ) is also simply a minor existent of the cold setting within which an event –
travelling to what seems to be the end of the earth – occurs:
马 汗 踏 成 泥
朝 驰 几 万 蹄
雪 中 行 地 角
92
火 处 宿 天 倪
Horse sweat trampled into mud,
At morning galloping tens of thousands of hooves.
In the midst of snow travelling to the corner of the earth,
Staying overnight where it is illuminated at the edge of
the sky.
Aside from states of vagueness or inertia, snow can behave as an active existent on the hibernal
frontier. For example, there is the geographic locale “sea of snow” (xuehai 雪 海 ) in “Song of Luntai”,
“Seventh Month at Luntai” and “Ballad of Running Horse River”, a name which conjures an image of
snow in constant, cold flux. Snow also displays its kinetic qualities by being focalized as flying
throughout the frontier sky and falling over the main gate of a military camp in “Song of White
Snow”, 93 and piling thick throughout the night before later falling on Tian mountain in “Song of Snow
on Tian Mountain”. 94
Typologically opposite to existents that are innately cold, such as snow and the somewhat
common “railings of ice”, 95 are existents which in the hibernal setting both signify and emphasize cold
not through any innate cold qualities but instead through the effects of the surrounding cold
91 CSJJZ, p. 86.
92 CSJJZ, p. 81.
93 “In the eighth month snow already flies throughotu the Hu sky” 胡 天 八 月 即 飞 雪 and “Evening snow falls pell-mell
over the military camp's main gate” 纷 纷 暮 雪 下 辕 门 (“Song of White Snow”).
94 “As night passes, the snow is thicker on Tian Mountain” 一 夜 天 山 雪 更 厚 and “Just when it snows on Tian mountain,/
I send you off as you set forth for the capital” 正 是 天 山 雪 下 时 , 送 君 走 马 归 京 师 (“Song of Snow on Tian Mountain”).
95 See “Song of White Snow” and “Song of Snow on Tian Mountain”.