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where perception of the very vastness of the frontier insinuates not merely homesickness but an
overwhelming and helpless feeling of separation and isolation for the poet-narrator, how the landscape
is focalized, and not just what is focalized, affects the emotional content of the text. One example of
such emotionally charged imprecise spatial coordinates of perception can be found in “Written on a
Sentry Building at Iron Gate Pass” (“Ti Tiemen guan lou” 题 铁 门 关 楼 ), quoted here in its entirety:
铁 关 天 西 涯
极 目 少 行 客
关 门 一 小 吏
终 日 对 石 壁
桥 跨 千 仞 危
路 盘 两 崖 窄
试 登 西 楼 望
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一 望 头 欲 白
Iron Gate Pass at the edge of the western sky,
The limits of sight 52 reveal few travellers.
At the gate of the pass there is a sub-official functionary,
All day long he faces a rock wall.
The bridge spans a height of a thousand meters,
The narrow road twists along both sides of the precipice.
Attempting a climb of the west building and gazing out:
One look will turn your hair white.
In the opening two lines, the landscape setting within which the poet-narrator exists and the
manner of his perception are characterized by being at a limit. Geographically, Iron Gate Pass is at the
“edge“ (ya 涯 ) of not just the “sky” but the “western” (xi 西 ) sky, a swathe of the heavens far from the
more familiar climes of central and eastern China. When focalizing this place of extreme distance, the
poet-narrator's visual perceptual facet is also at its utmost range or “limit” (jimu 极 目 ). Yet even with
such intense perceiving, all the poet-narrator can see are the “few travellers” (shao xing ke 少 行 客 ),
existents of the frontier setting whose rarity emphasizes the loneliness and separation already
manifested in spatial coordinates of perception. The lack of an eastward orientation of perception also
means that perceiving in the direction of home, let alone home itself, is denied the poet-narrator, again
intensifying feelings of separation.
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极 目 (ji mu, “as far as the eye can see”; “gazing far into the distance”) has been translated as “the limits of sight” to
stress how the spatial coordinates of the poet-narrator's perceptual facet is at its maximum, how nothing else can be seen,
or focused, beyond what is seen, namely the “few travellers”.
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CSJJZ, pp. 80-81.