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Until the Tang, frontier poetry tended to typify presentations of the geography and peoples
beyond China's heartland; renderings of the region were often a mix of limited first-hand experience
and conjecture or simply just fantastic speculation adhering to established protocol. 134 The previous
chapter of this thesis suggested how Six Dynasty frontier poetry was foundational in establishing many
core environmental images of the subgenre, especially in how it laid the imagistic foundation that Tang
frontier poetry would both imitate and enhance. 135 Wu Jun's 吴 均 (469-520) “No One in the Land of
Hu” (“Huwuren xing” 胡 无 人 行 ), for example, contains a germane example of the prototypical poetic
frontier season and its thermal reality, one of interminable autumn and pervasive frost, common to the
subgenre:
高 秋 八 九 月
胡 地 早 风 霜
136
Deep autumn in the eighth and ninth months,
Hu lands, early winds and frost.
(lines 5-6)
The frontier landscape of Chen Shubao's “Song of Rain and Snow” (“Yuxue qu” 雨 雪 曲 ) is also
pertinent meteorologically. Chen's borderland is one weighed down by a heavy gloom that imposes a
degree of absolute zero onto a stark and still environment; as the poem's lines progress, this
characteristic disequilibrium, darkness and dissolution of the typical frontier environment 137 is
extreme, foreign places. See Yan Fuling, ““Han-Tang Biansaishi zhuti yanjiu”, pp. 129-130.
134
Li Mei 李 梅 “Shilun Luo Binwang, Cen Shen biansaishi de wenhua guanzhao 试 论 骆 宾 王 , 岑 参 边 塞 诗 的 文 化 观
照 ”Xinjiangshifandaxue xuebao (zhexueshehuikexueban) 新 疆 师 范 大 学 学 报 ( 哲 学 社 会 科 学 版 ) 2006.1, pp.158-162,
especially p. 159.
135
The most salient influence of Six Dynasties frontier poetry lies within High Tang expansion and development of
frontier-themed yuefushiji topic poems written by Southern dynasty writers. Even though a refinement of frontier
landscape imagery, attention to local customs, and frequent proud, confident sentiments reflective of a flourishing and
secure age significantly differentiate pre-An Lushan rebellion Tang frontier poetry from the common, though not
singular, melancholic despair of Southern Dynasty examples of the subgenre, Tang frontier poetry did have many
moments in which the preceding era's atmosphere wafted into these later compositions, especially through the use of
Han dynasty allusions, inclement and foreboding frontier geographic features, and non-Chinese military foes who were
also often found in Southern dynasty frontier poems. See Wang Wenjin 王 文 进 Nanchao biansaishi xinlun 南 朝 边 塞 诗
新 论 (Taipei: Liren shuju 里 仁 书 局 , 2000), pp. 186-187; 196-197.
136
YFSJ 40.597
137
Ronald Miao, “T'ang Frontier Poetry: An Exercise in Archetypal Criticism”, passim. Although Miao is addressing Tang
frontier poetry, Chen's poem is relevant in how it subscribes to the dominant frontier landscape depiction while also
presaging later renditions found in the Tang, portrayals, as will be shown shortly, which had instances of being bent and
reshaped by Cen Shen.