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poet-narrator's gaze (dong wang 东 望 ) itself also emits a longing for home in addition to the poetnarrator's
abode ( 故 园 ) and the road ( 路 ) stretching out into the horizon towards home. Relevant to the
discussion here is how the act of looking east, if understood both transitively (as in ending at an object,
namely the nostalgia activating home and the road) and intransitively (without an object), conjures and
transmits the poet-narrator's inner homesickness, an emotion that is overtly manifested in the second
line's tearful response to being alone on the distant frontier.
The poet-narrator in the opening of the first of two “Tune: Remembering Chang'an, Two Verses,
Sent to Pang Que” (“Yi Chang'an qu er zhang ji Pang Que” 忆 长 安 曲 二 章 寄 庞 榷 ) is even more acute
in his division between the act of perception and the object of perception, thus allowing the spatial
coordinates of the gaze itself to speak of a feeling of nostalgia for home. The following are the opening
two lines:
东 望 望 长 安
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正 直 日 初 出
Eastward gazing, gazing towards Chang'an,
Directly facing where the sun first rises.
(lines 1-2)
By reading both sides of the first line's caesura as separate units, in which “eastward gazing” (dong
wang 东 望 ) meets with “gazing towards Chang'an” (wang chang'an 望 长 安 ), two qualities of the
“gaze” (wang 望 ) can be clearly delineated. The first is that of a gaze modified adverbially by
“eastward” (dong 东 ) and acting intransitively; the second is a gaze fixed in the direction of an object,
Chang'an 长 安 . This bifurcation allows the spatial coordinates of the poet-narrator's initial “eastward
gazing” to imply a longing for home even before home, here represented by Chang'an, even enters the
poem in the second half of the line. Furthermore, the two nodes of the “gazing” binary established by
the poet-narrator's act of perception in the first line echo and amplify his yearning for home, creating a
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CSJJZ, p. 84.