A Study on the Imagery of the Vast Desert in Qing Dynasty Western Regions Poetry

有清一代，众多文人因各种原因履足西域，留下了大量的诗歌作品。在这些作品中，“瀚海”意象的出现频率颇高。这一意象不仅体现了西域地区壮阔的自然风光和独特的生活环境，隐喻了西域的历史变迁和人生的世事无常，同时也成为寄托诗人各种复杂感情和心境的重要载体。西域诗人或因思念家乡而忧伤，或因自请出塞而昂扬，或因瀚海苍茫而唤起深沉的爱国忧民之情，从而赋予了“瀚海”意象丰富而深刻的象征意蕴。During the Qing Dynasty, numerous literati ventured to the Western Regions for various reasons, leaving behind a vast corpus of poetic works. Among these works, the imagery of the “vast desert” appeared with notable frequency. This imagery not only embodied the magnificent natural landscapes and environment of the Western Regions, serving as a metaphor for its historical vicissitudes and the impermanence of human affairs, but also became a vital vessel for conveying the poets’ complex emotions and states of mind. Poets of the Western Regions, whether melancholy with homesickness, emboldened by their voluntary request for frontier postings, or stirred to profound patriotism and compassion by the boundless expanse of the desert, thereby endowed the imagery of “vast desert” with rich and profound symbolic connotations.