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