View/Open - University of Victoria

23
probable setting of the poetic text as being along the Zhou border 27 where the Xianyun 28 ( 猃 狁 ) made
incursions into Zhou territory:
曰 归 曰 归
岁 亦 莫 止
靡 屋 靡 家
猃 狁 之 故
不 遑 启 居
29
猃 狁 之 故
To go back, to go back home,
The year is already ending.
No home, no home.
All because of the Xianyun.
No rest or stable living,
All because of the Xianyun
(lines 3-8)
The laconic misery of “Gathering Ferns”, a sadness produced by a frontier whose soldiers were
forced to accept and endure a callous separation from their families, is given a fuller voice centuries
later in the third of the Early Tang poet Chen Ziang's 陈 子 昂 thirty-eight poem cycle “Stirred By My
30
Experiences” (“Ganyu” 感 遇 ). The sense of being left in a state of perpetual familial isolation in
“Gathering Ferns” is magnified by Chen into a scene of desolation in which the frontier is a place of
27 The concept of a “Zhou border” is fraught with problems given how “in the later centuries central authority had all but
vanished [in the Zhou] and China became a congeries of states of varying number, size and strength” See Kenneth Scott
Latourette, The Chinese: Their History and Culture 4 th . ed. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1962), p. 33. Without
a strong, centralized government uniformly ruling a coherent political entity, a Zhou “border” is instead the “borders” of
several smaller states comprising Zhou China, some of whom did abut northern nomadic tribes while others did not. In
fact, Hu Dajun objects to the existence of frontier poetry prior to the Qin dynasty on these grounds. In his view, “ethnic
conflict” (minzu maodun douzheng 民 族 矛 盾 斗 争 ) is the foundation of frontier poetry; however, without a centralized
government representing a “Chinese” people, there is no Chinese frontier along which clashes can erupt with distinctly
non-Chinese entities. See Hu Dajun 胡 大 浚 , “Biansai shi zhi hanyi yu tangdai biansai shi de fanrong 边 塞 诗 之 含 义 与
唐 代 边 塞 诗 的 繁 荣 ”in Tangdai biansaishi yanjiu lunwen xuancui 唐 代 边 塞 诗 研 究 论 文 选 粹 , p. 48. He Jipeng, on the
other hand, allows for the presence of frontier poetry prior to the Qin dynasty by defining the frontier as a place on the
edge of a defined territory where violent encounters erupt with an alien adversary. Even though said “defined territory”
may not necessarily be a unified China, and instead be one kingdom among many comprising Zhou China, its presence
in a poem may nonetheless permit the text to be regarded as a frontier-themed work. See He Jipeng, Luo Ri Zhao Da Qi,
p.5.
28 Nomadic peoples north of China referred to as Xiongnu 匈 奴 from the Qin dynasty onwards.
29 Shijing, p. 87
30 Chen Ziang 陈 子 昂 (661-702). The majority of the Ganyu group of poems are “rich in cosmic and social themes [and]
haunted by the poet's wonder at the rapid passage of time which threatens to nullify all temporal achievements” See
Richard M.W. Ho, Ch'en Tzu-Ang: Innovator in T'ang Poetry (Hong Kong: China University Press, 1993), p. 83.
Accompanying the majority of poems of the Ganyu, poems in which “the virtuous man contemplates and renounces...the
corruption of the world and its impermanence”, are five frontier poems which portray borderland scenes through a vision
revealing the varied forms of suffering endured by frontier soldiers. See Stephen Owen, The Poetry of the Early T'ang,
pp. 187, 219 and Hong Zan, Tangdai zhanzhengshi yanjiu, p.61.