View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
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169<br />
Conclusion<br />
There is an underlying structure to Cen Shen's hibernal frontier landscapes, one which operates<br />
to intensify the landscape's coldness through a myriad <strong>of</strong> means. This structure is found across the<br />
poems where the cold landscape is prominent, and can be summarized as shifts in the spatial<br />
coordinates <strong>of</strong> focalization between exteriority and interiority and distance and nearness; alternations<br />
between focalization <strong>of</strong> movement and stillness in the frontier landscape; and a typology <strong>of</strong> “cold”<br />
existents where a cold existent is either innately cold or is cold as a result from the influence <strong>of</strong> the<br />
landscape's temperature, a non-natural “cold” quality <strong>of</strong> the existent that is focalized by the poetnarrators<br />
to express the frigidity <strong>of</strong> the hibernal landscape. As with the first section's discussion <strong>of</strong> the<br />
“hot” landscape, this section's analysis <strong>of</strong> Cen Shen's hibernal world rarely strayed into any conjectures<br />
regarding the ideological or emotional significance <strong>of</strong> the poems' geographies. 102 Instead, the analyses<br />
were motivated by an interest in elucidating a model <strong>of</strong> the poems' focalization framework, the<br />
apparatus <strong>of</strong> “seeing” through which the thermal and hibernal landscapes are conveyed to readers. Both<br />
the perceptual and psychological facets <strong>of</strong> focalization, however, will feature in the following chapter's<br />
examination <strong>of</strong> an underlying structure <strong>of</strong> focalization in the frontier landscape <strong>of</strong> great distances. In<br />
this chapter, discussion will focus on how the manner in which the setting itself is focalized is<br />
expressive <strong>of</strong> the poet-narrators' feelings in addition to the setting's existents which also act as an<br />
objective correlative 103 for the poet-narrator's feelings <strong>of</strong> disorientation, separation and homesickness.<br />
102 Such as reading the intense kinetic activity within the landscape <strong>of</strong> “Ballad <strong>of</strong> Running Horse River” not for how it is<br />
focalized but for its reflection <strong>of</strong> the poet-narrator's enthusiasm for war, or reading the heat <strong>of</strong> “Song <strong>of</strong> Hot Lake” not<br />
for its manifestation as multiple acts <strong>of</strong> focalization through different modes and lenses but allegorically as a description<br />
<strong>of</strong> the frontier signifying the frictional heat <strong>of</strong> Chinese civilization clashing with frontier barbarian tribes. For such views<br />
on Cen Shen's landscape imagery see Ronald Miao, “T'ang Frontier Poetry”, especially pp. 125, 129.<br />
103 “[A] set <strong>of</strong> objects, a situation, a chain <strong>of</strong> events which [are] the formula <strong>of</strong> [a] particular emotion...such that when the<br />
external facts, which must terminate in sensory perception, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked”. See T.S.<br />
Eliot, “Hamlet”, in Frank Kermode, ed., Selected Prose <strong>of</strong> T.S. Eliot (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1975), pp.<br />
45-49, especially p. 48.