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traditional hermeneutics in which the work was read within a rigid rubric of scathing criticism and
condemnation of failed military policies and practices. 98
The first demarcation, lines one to eight, relays an attitude towards frontier conflict seasoned
with sprigs of patriotism as soldiers set off on a righteous war of pacification in devotion to both
emperor and country. 99 The promise of praise and reward from the emperor strengthens the bond
between servants (military officials and soldiers) and head of state, suggesting that “personal devotion
itself [is the] reason for undertaking the military expedition” 100 while the defence of the country is
secondary, though not at all irrelevant. The mood in these first eight lines is positive and indomitable:
bells and drums boom while flags and pennons extend across the land, framing frontier war within the
jubilant trope running the entire gamut of Gao Shi's “Below the Frontier” (“Saixia qu” 塞 下 曲 ).
Allusions to the Han period also lend a certain grandeur to the martial actions, elevating the ordinary
clash of armies to a struggle of dynastic import. Read independently, these rapid opening lines
cataloguing frontier topography and military manoeuvres acknowledge, whether intentionally or not,
one vein of war-themed frontier poetry: that of an excitement and zeal for military conflict as it pertains
to the security of the nation.
However, “Song of Yan” marches forward and into an intellectually more contentious
atmosphere. Beginning from line nine through to line sixteen (“Mountains and river cold and desolate
to the frontier's very edge...Their strength exhausted, the siege at the mountain pass still unbroken”),
“pageantry shifts to desolation in the external landscape [as] optimism [moves] to despair”. 101 Reality is
now rushing into the poem's earlier enthusiasm. In an atmosphere suddenly made doleful, military
defeat, once inconceivable, is now a possibility. With the first theme in retreat, what has historically
dominated interpretations of the poem emerges: criticism of the arrogant, lascivious lifestyle of military
98
Hu Yong, “Fengci haishi gesong”, p. 70.
99
Marie Chan, Kao Shih, p. 103.
100
Marie Chan, “Kao Shih's 'Yen Ko-Hsing”, p. 210.
101
Marie Chan, Kao Shih, p. 105.