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and his enduring memory. When read against the text in its entirety, these concluding lines add an extra
thematic knoll to the modulating ridges of responses to frontier war pervading the entirety of the poem,
further enlarging the attitudinal aggregate of “elation to despair to noble forbearance” 115 with a return to
frontier war cast through a less than laudatory prism where the ignorance and incompetence of those
who initiate and command campaigns is suggested by rhetorical question and allusion.
73
As noted earlier, the exegetical tradition of Gao Shi's “Song of Yan” has been fairly restrictive,
often choosing the least militaristic divisions of the poem where sympathy for those exposed to painful
realities of frontier war is most prominent, as representing the work's totality. Liu Kaiyang, for
example, summarizes the poem as a damning criticism of frontier war's calamitous effects on ordinary
men and women and the disinterest displayed by those too distracted by the benefits of their position to
care for the welfare of others. 116 But by approaching the poem as a relentless shift of short scenes, each
of which sounds a divergent impression of frontier warfare from the panegyric to the pessimistic, the
“well deserved fame” 117 of Gao Shi's “Song of Yan” emerges. Accompanying this realization is a
rationale for regarding the variations of responses to borderland conflict in High Tang poetry as
representing the pinnacle of the subgenre, especially Gao Shi's “Song of Yan” in which optimism and
despair, enthusiasm and disillusionment, coalesce in a single work.
3.2.2. Forays into Frontier Responses: The Landscape
The previous section demonstrated that the frontier of the Tang was the scene of not infrequent
military confrontations, conflict towards which poets of the time, be they working in frontier regions or
dwelling within less extreme climes, expressed a myriad of responses both supportive and critical in
content. As briefly mentioned in chapter one of this thesis, serving on the frontier, even when the
115
Marie Chan, “Kao Shih's 'Yen Ko-Hsing'”, p. 225
116
Originally noted by Marie Chan in “Kao Shih's 'Yen Ko-Hsing'”; for the primary source, see page p. 60 of Liu Kaiyang
刘 开 扬 , “Lun Gao Shi de shi 论 高 适 的 诗 ”in Tangshilunwenji 唐 诗 论 文 集 (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe 古 籍 出 版 社 ,
1979).
117
Stephen Owen, The Great Age of Chinese Poetry, p. 153.