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View/Open - University of Victoria
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183<br />
gazes westward, feelings <strong>of</strong> homesickness are more suggestive than direct since home, a major factor in<br />
feelings <strong>of</strong> nostalgia, is not found in the direction <strong>of</strong> the gaze, and thus is not available to implant a<br />
yearning <strong>of</strong> return within the poet-narrator's heart. Since gazing west means facing away from home,<br />
the poet-narrators become even further separated from the familiar and known when they direct their<br />
perception westwards. This feeling <strong>of</strong> separation as expressed through a westward gaze occurs in the<br />
final two lines <strong>of</strong> “At Yu Pass: Sent to Assistant Magistrate Li in Chang'an” (“Yu guan ji Chang'an Li<br />
zhubu” 玉 关 寄 长 安 李 主 簿 ), and is intensified by the poet-narrator's response to gazing itself when his<br />
heart breaks (changduan 肠 断 ) after the line's caesura: 49<br />
玉 关 西 望 堪 肠 断<br />
50<br />
况 复 明 朝 是 岁 除<br />
Gazing west from Yu Pass breaks my heart,<br />
Especially with tomorrow morning being the last day <strong>of</strong><br />
the year.<br />
(lines 3-4)<br />
In “Presented to Prefect Han <strong>of</strong> Jiuquan” (“Zeng Jiuquan Han taishou” 赠 酒 泉 韩 太 守 ), the pains <strong>of</strong><br />
homesickness are also expressed by a westward gaze, and are enhanced by a description <strong>of</strong> the endless<br />
mountains, deserts and white grasses <strong>of</strong> the frontier setting, a setting that manifests its own sense <strong>of</strong><br />
remoteness:<br />
酒 泉 西 望 玉 关 道<br />
51<br />
千 山 万 碛 皆 白 草<br />
At Jiuquan gazing west – the road to Yu Pass,<br />
A thousand mountains, ten thousand deserts – all is<br />
white grass.<br />
(lines 5-6)<br />
The precision <strong>of</strong> east and west is undermined by a third type <strong>of</strong> spatial coordinates in Cen<br />
Shen's frontier poems <strong>of</strong> great distances: a spatial coordinate <strong>of</strong> indeterminacy and extremity. In poems<br />
49<br />
The time <strong>of</strong> the “gazing west” event, the eve <strong>of</strong> the new year (suichu 岁 除 ), a time when families should not be<br />
separated but instead gathered together, also intensifies the homesick emotion.<br />
50<br />
CSJJZ, p. 168.<br />
51<br />
CSJJZ, p. 89.