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81<br />
无 花 只 有 寒<br />
笛 中 闻 折 柳<br />
春 色 未 曾 看<br />
162<br />
No flowers, only cold.<br />
Within the sounds <strong>of</strong> the flute one hears the tune<br />
“Snapping the Willow”, 161<br />
Spring scenes have yet to be seen.<br />
(lines 1-4)<br />
As with Zhang's work, the frontier in Li Bai's poem is also an area <strong>of</strong> antithesis, a Spring aligned with<br />
Winter and refusing to behave as a vernal season ought to act: instead <strong>of</strong> blossoms there is snow and<br />
cold; where copulatory buzzing should be tickling the atmosphere there is only the music <strong>of</strong> separation.<br />
In short, the peculiar is relayed through the ordinary, and a landscape intended to convey a sense <strong>of</strong> the<br />
non-commonplace appears out <strong>of</strong> the absence <strong>of</strong> the everyday.<br />
Cen Shen, while still at times “continu[ing] to define the frontier in formulaic terms”, 163<br />
attempts in many <strong>of</strong> his frontier poems to “integrate...new experience[s] into [the poetic] tradition”, 164<br />
to “take...existing patterns [<strong>of</strong> the frontier subgenre] and stretch...[them] dangerously close to the limits<br />
that the pattern [would] permit without ceasing to be a pattern” 165 . As with the previously cited works,<br />
Cen Shen's poet-narrator also relies on negation in the anatomy <strong>of</strong> his frontier landscape, as in “Seventh<br />
161<br />
“Snapping the Willow” (“Zheyangliu” 折 杨 柳 ) is a yuefu title. The snapping and presentation <strong>of</strong> a willow branch was a<br />
gesture made at parting. There are numerous examples <strong>of</strong> this title from the Six Dynasty period as well as the Tang. The<br />
first line <strong>of</strong> the Six Dynasty poet Wang Cuo's 王 瑳 “Snapping the Willow“ – Beyond the frontier no Spring scenes/the<br />
willows in Shanglin are already yellow” 塞 外 无 春 色 , 上 林 柳 已 黄 (YFSJ 22.330) – harmonizes with the opening <strong>of</strong> Li<br />
Bai's “Below the Frontier” until the latter pounds its way <strong>of</strong>f to battle.<br />
162<br />
QTS 164.1700.<br />
163<br />
Marie Chan, “Frontier Poems <strong>of</strong> Ts'en Shen”, p. 430.<br />
164<br />
Marie Chan, Cen Shen, p. 77. Chan further writes that it would have been impossible for Cen Shen to “completely<br />
repudiate his poetic lineage” by distancing himself from recognized tropes and write entirely <strong>of</strong> the weird and<br />
wonderful; to do so would cause his frontier poems to “fail as an instrument <strong>of</strong> communication”. The natural imagery <strong>of</strong><br />
China's far northwestern regions did not possess the associative power <strong>of</strong> flora and fauna native to central and southern<br />
China, objects which in their poetic environment resonated with certain expectations between writers and readers. Were<br />
Cen Shen to completely indulge in the “unknown Central Asian landscape”, the “social and cultural” aspects <strong>of</strong> his<br />
poems would become vacuous. However, “simply submit[ting]...to the demands <strong>of</strong> tradition would [have] produce[d]<br />
mere... stereotypes” (Marie Chan, ibid., pp. 76-77). Instead, Cen Shen's frontier poetry orbits a binary system <strong>of</strong> the<br />
familiar and unfamiliar in which the known and unknown, both in image and sentiment, fuse together to produce poetic<br />
worlds which are ruled neither by the fantastic nor the prosaic.<br />
165<br />
Marie Chan, “The Frontier Poems <strong>of</strong> Ts'en Shen”, p. 434.