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32
歌 行 )
山 川 萧 条 极 边 土 mountain and river desolation reaches the frontier extremes,
胡 骑 凭 陵 杂 风 雨
65
and threatening Hu cavalry mix with wind and rain.
(lines 9-10)
and infuses the landscape with a feeling of familiarity, turning the environment into an “idyllic setting
for a cheerful and civilized evening gathering” 66 . Such a scene on the frontier, one seemingly
transplanted from southern China, could possibly be regarded as ironically succeeding in creating
strangeness out of the incredibly ordinary where the ordinary is found in extraordinary climes:
江 湖 仍 塞 上
舟 楫 在 军 中
舞 换 临 津 树
River and lake even upon the frontier,
Boat and oars within the encampment.
Dancers twirl beside the trees along the ford.
67
歌 饶 向 晚 风 Songs regale us when the evening breeze blows. 68
(lines 3-6)
Unlike the non-Chinese people of the frontier, the Xianyun, who were portrayed in the
aforementioned war-themed poems of the Book of Songs in a severely curtailed, one-dimensional
fashion as crafty barbarian invaders responsible for causing death and marital breakdown when
husbands were forced to leave home and serve in the army, the non-Chinese northerner of the Yuefu
poem “Song of the Xiongnu” (“Xiongnu ge” 匈 奴 歌 ) is not only given a voice, one notably absent in
the Book of Songs, but is also presented as a victim of non-Xiongnu expansion, a figure towards whom
the reader could likely feel sympathy, a response certainly not encouraged in earlier works featuring
northern nomads. The relevance for later frontier poetry of “Song of the Xiongnu” rests in transferring
one's (Chinese) self onto the plight of non-Chinese who were also forced to endure the misery of loss
65 GSJJZ, p. 80
66 Marie Chan, Kao Shih, p.97
67 GSJJZ, p. 236
68 Marie Chan, tr., Marie Chan, Kao Shih, p. 97