View/Open - University of Victoria
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selection <strong>of</strong> High Tang poets must be shackled to the “frontier poet” yoke, particularly the names most<br />
equated with the subgenre, Gao Shi and Cen Shen, when only a small portion <strong>of</strong> their total poetic<br />
output is acknowledged as being “frontier poetry”. 12. One reasonable response, though not explicitly<br />
proposed by Xiao, is the lingering influence <strong>of</strong> poetic commentary following the Tang. One <strong>of</strong> the<br />
earliest candidates for forging Cen Shen's adamantine association with frontier poetry can be found in<br />
the Song dynasty text Yanzhou Shihua 彦 周 诗 话 by Xu Yi 许 顗 :<br />
51<br />
“ 岑 参 诗 , 亦 自 成 一 家 。 盖 尝 从 封 常 清 军 , 其 记 西 域 异 事 甚 多 , 如 《 优 钵 罗 花 歌 》,《 热<br />
海 行 》, 古 今 传 记 所 不 载 者 也<br />
13<br />
。”<br />
Cen Shen's poetry is <strong>of</strong> its own kind. When serving under Genernal Feng Changqing, he<br />
recorded the many strange things <strong>of</strong> the western region; [they can be found in] such [poems] as<br />
“Song <strong>of</strong> the Youbenluo 14 Flower” and “Ballad <strong>of</strong> Hot Lake”, things which since ancient times<br />
had not been passed down and recorded.<br />
Statements such as Xu's can have the deleterious effect <strong>of</strong> guiding readers into prejudiced and<br />
presumptive approaches to certain poets, compartmentalizing expansive literary output into narrow<br />
categories that dismiss the whole spectrum <strong>of</strong> a poet's multifaceted voice by only summarizing and<br />
emphasizing select dimensions. While doing so can certainly be useful for analyzing specific<br />
tendencies <strong>of</strong> a poet's literary efforts, Xiao does still warn readers not to gloss over poets as members <strong>of</strong><br />
mutually exclusive subgenres – such as frontier poetry ( 边 塞 诗 ) and landscape poetry ( 山 水 诗 ) – when<br />
the writers themselves were not necessarily composing texts with such categorical entities in mind, and<br />
in many instances produced works for multiple schools which, postmortem, would be embossed with<br />
generic seals.<br />
12<br />
Less than one-sixth for Gao Shi and Cen Shen according to Xiao.<br />
13<br />
Xu Yi 许 顗 (fl. 1111), Yanzhou shihua 彦 周 诗 话 , cited from Hu Yuanren 胡 元 任 , Tiaoxiyuyin conghua 笤 溪 渔 隐 丛 话<br />
(Taipei: Shijie 世 界 , 1976), 9.75. The term 诗 话 (shihua, talks on poetry) refers to “a form <strong>of</strong> literary criticism that<br />
consists <strong>of</strong> a critic's comments on various aspects <strong>of</strong> poetry”. See Adele Rickett's entry in William H. Nienhauser, Jr.,<br />
ed., The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana <strong>University</strong> Press, 1986), p. 695.<br />
14<br />
“The plant is probably the flower <strong>of</strong> the Persian variety <strong>of</strong> the fig...This blossom [had] never entered Chinese poetry”<br />
until its introduction in Cen Shen's poem. See Marie Chan, Cen Shen, p. 94.