Frontier And Landscape Poetry Of Cen Shen

In the peak of Tang poetry, frontier and landscape poetry were the most prominent. Cen Shen has been highly commended for his frontier poetry, thus resulting in a large number of research results. However, such research is far from comprehensive. In terms of the process of creation, Cen’s poetry went through the different phases. He was expert in both frontier and landscape poetry regarding the performance of the themes; he even added the landscape in his frontier poetry. His poetic genre was dominated by Seven Chanting, which proved that he specialized in different genres. Therefore, there is room to explore for the research focused on Cen Shen’s frontier poetry. The scope of this research is Cen’s poetry as the main basis. With what I have understood and collated for poetry, and other historical material, the research was done to study the styles of Cen Shen’s poetry, investigate the style features and similarities and differences between his frontier and landscape poetry, and then to discuss its impact on later generations. It can be read from the following four aspects: First, it’s about Cen’s life experience and the stages of his creation. If we put the experience when he stayed at the western regions served as judge of An Xi to be centered on his lifespan, his life can be divided into several stages, which are early, middle and late ones. In the early stage, his landscape poetry focusing on scenery is more prominent; in the middle, the frontier poetry he wrote is highly esteemed by the later generations; in the late stage, he returned to his favourite landscape. Second, it’s the study about the creation of Cen’s frontier poetry, which can be roughly divided into two categories:One is to express one’s feelings while going out to battle and the other one is to describe the wonders of frontier. His frontier poetry is therefore formed to show his distinguishing style, which is magnificent, exquisite and overflowing with emotion. Third, it’s the study about the creation of Cen’s landscape poetry. His early poems concurred with Wang Wei’s and Meng Hao-Ran’s landscape poetry. He described the spectacular scenery in an elegant way to express his feelings living in seclusion. He mingled the landscape poetry with the frontier one while joining the army at the border, describing the spectacular frontier scenery as well as showing his broadmindedness. In his later years living in Sichuan, spurred by the particular appeal of the scenery over there, his poetry presented us with different styles and features to the fullest. Fourth, it’s the study about the fusion and comparison of Cen’s frontier and landscape poetry. The similarities of these two types of poetry are particularly presented in two ways:both are realistic, and the commonality is even shown in his style of "seeking for wonders from the actualities". Even though both his landscape and frontier poetry displayed the beauty of the scenery, he focused on the wonders of the nature in his frontier poetry and as for the landscape, he described the spectacular scenery in an elegant way.