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37
Enduring Cold”. In Bao Zhao's poem, the snow and cold attacks the frontier landscape while also
overwhelming those soldiers forced to endure the subzero assault. From Cao Cao to Bao Zhao, the
hibernal havoc wrought by China's north increases in ferocity, intensifying its presence from a near
static picture to one which inhibits martial activities through kinetic force:
箫 鼓 流 汉 思 The memory of the Han prevails with drum and flute
旌 甲 被 胡 霜
While banners and armour are covered by Hu 88 frost.
疾 风 冲 塞 起
A strong gale sweeps up and over the borderland,
沙 砾 自 飘 扬
And blows about in the air gravel and sand.
马 毛 缩 如 猬
Horse hairs stiff as hedgehog spines.
89
角 弓 不 可 张 And horn-tipped bows cannot be drawn. 90
(lines 11-16)
This six line excerpt from Bao Zhao's poem reveals a highly kinetic frontier landscape, a place where
meteorological elements cover (bei 被 ) the soldiers' armour while preventing the completion of bows
from being drawn (bu ke zhang 不 可 张 ) while strong winds actively rush and sweep up the land
(chong...qi 冲 ... 起 ) followed quickly by sands blowing about wildly (piaoyang 飘 扬 ). These snapshots
of ferociously freezing, inclement lands were an alien inversion of China's central and southern
regions; they were also the base from which the poetic frontier landscape began to develop in earnest.
Cen Shen's own frontier landscapes of a cold disposition, poetic places often times
distinguished as sustained aesthetic observations of geological and meteorological phenomenon that
are not necessarily mere background for the expression of a particular emotional condition 91 , can be
88 Meaning “frontier”.
89 YFSJ 61.891.
90 Slightly modified from Robert Shanmu Chen, tr., “A Study of Bao Zhao and His Poetry”, p. 300.
91 This is usually the case with other High Tang period frontier poems, texts whose frontier landscape descriptions are
often the background against which the sacrifices of generals and soldiers in service of their country, longings for home,
and the weariness of frontier life are reflected. However, in Cen Shen's frontier poetry the landscape has a tendency to
act as a foregrounded entity occupying the entirety of creative consciousness without commentary on trans-textual
circumstances. This prominence afforded the frontier landscape was unprecedented by the Tang dynasty. See Tao
Wenpeng 陶 文 鹏 and Lu Ping 陆 平 , “Lun Cen Shen shige chuangzao qixiang qijing de yishu 论 岑 参 诗 歌 创 造 奇 象 奇
境 的 艺 术 ”Qi Li xuekan 齐 鲁 学 刊 2009.2, pp.109-115.