View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
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191<br />
为 报 家 人 数 寄 书<br />
Send word for me and inform those at home to send<br />
more letters.<br />
Here the all too frequent feeling <strong>of</strong> homesickness on the frontier directs the attention <strong>of</strong> the<br />
poet-narrator's perception <strong>of</strong> a parrot (yingwu 鹦 鹉 ) towards the linguistic skills (neng yanyu 能 言 语 )<br />
<strong>of</strong> the animal, presumably hoping that in concert with the bird's volant feature the likelihood <strong>of</strong> fewer<br />
dispatches from home (xiang xin ri ying shu 乡 信 日 应 疏 ) can be forestalled with a message to those<br />
far away to send more letters (wei bao jiaren shu ji shu 为 报 家 人 数 寄 书 ). As with the previous texts,<br />
the poet-narrator is relying on an existent <strong>of</strong> the frontier setting to shrink the chasm between the<br />
borderlands and home in order to relieve the anguish <strong>of</strong> separation, ironically seeking assistance from<br />
an existent <strong>of</strong> the setting to mitigate the misery initially caused by the setting itself.<br />
The immediately preceding pages detailed how homesick emotions were influential in the poetnarrators'<br />
acts <strong>of</strong> perception. While in a state <strong>of</strong> sorrow, a sadness brought on by separation from home,<br />
the poet-narrators' perception in “Passing West Through Weizhou” and “Encountering a Commissioner<br />
on His Way to the Capital” became focused on the eastward moving aspects <strong>of</strong> the Wei river and<br />
commissioner. Aside from such attention exhibiting the desire <strong>of</strong> the poet-narrators to return east, their<br />
perception <strong>of</strong> this aspect <strong>of</strong> the Wei river and commissioner, and the connection made with the river<br />
and commissioner by way <strong>of</strong> tears and a message, was also a vain attempt to bridge the distance<br />
between themselves and their home in the east. The parrot in “When Heading to Beiting and Passing<br />
Long Mountain” was also perceived with this intention. But in this poem it was not the parrot's<br />
(Jun., 1979), pp. 39-54, especially pp. 42, 50. The parrots' language skills and habitat can be found early in Mi Heng's<br />
poem: “This marvellous bird from the Western Region,/Endowed by nature with unusual beauty,/Possesses the bright<br />
flames <strong>of</strong> the fire element./Intelligent and capable <strong>of</strong> speech,/Clever and gifted with foreknowledge...Thus the<br />
emperor,/Attracted by its far-reaching reputation,/Admiring the beauty <strong>of</strong> its form,/Sends his forester to the Long<br />
Mountains,/Dispatches Bo Yi to the Moving Sands,/Deploys archers across Kunlun,/Spreads nets about the clouds and<br />
rainbows...” See William Graham, tr., “Mi Heng's Rhapsody on a Parrot”, pp. 45-46. 唯 西 域 之 灵 鸟 兮 , 挺 自 然 之 奇 姿 .<br />
体 金 精 之 妙 质 兮 , 合 火 德 之 明 辉 . 性 辩 慧 而 能 言 兮 , 才 聪 明 以 识 机 ... 于 是 羡 芳 声 之 远 畅 , 伟 灵 表 之 可 嘉 . 命 虞 人 于 陇<br />
坻 , 诏 伯 益 于 流 沙 . 跨 昆 仑 而 播 弋 , 冠 云 霓 而 张 罗 . See Wenxuan 13.25-26 in SKQS.