A poetry debate of the Perfected of Highest Clarity.

• Author: Kroll, Paul W.
• Position: Critical essay

The past thirty years have witnessed the publication of an ever increasing amount of scholarship dealing with the Daoist revelations from the heaven of Highest Clarity (Shangqing), bestowed on and recorded by Yang Xi during the years 364 to 370. The story of the midnight visits by the Shangqing divinities to Yang Xi, their manifold communications to him in both prose and verse, the dispersal of their message at first to a small circle of aristocratic southern families and later to a wider audience, and the collection, editing, and codification of Yang Xi's original manuscripts over a century later by Tao Hongjing (456-536) has fostered its own sub-field of study. There is no need to give again the details of this new celestial dispensation, so momentous in its influence over the following four centuries on medieval Chinese social, literary, political, and religious history. (1) But it is disappointing that the field of Daoist studies has shown a tendency to close around itself, much as the field of Buddhist studies did previously, and that few of its important findings have been integrated into the larger context of studies on medieval China. This has meant that scholars of medieval literature in particular still show scant awareness of Daoist texts that could both deepen and broaden their own work, much as they have for long avoided personal engagement with Buddhist texts, regarding them as the delimited province of Bud-dhologists. In what follows I hope to make a small contribution to bridging this disciplinary gap, by presenting a group of poems from a key Shangqing text, which can and should be seen in the light of literary and intellectual--as well as religious--history.

The group of poems in question comes from the Zhen gao, containing Yang Xi's transcription of the oral communications bestowed on him by the Perfected (or "Realized Persons," zhenren) of Highest Clarity. I have written about various of the Zhen gao poems on other occasions. (2) Here I should like to focus on an unusual set of eleven poems composed by ten different divinities as part of a group activity on the night of 4 October 365. This kind of composition by several individuals on a shared theme is a familiar occurrence in medieval Chinese poetry, the earliest extant such groups of significance being from poets at the Cao family court during the Jian'an reign-period (196-220). It should not surprise us that the zhenren may likewise find this activity enjoyable. They are members of a higher court, if you will, but they too value the creation of refined verse, as the first four chapters of the Zhen gao abundantly witness. And just as Eastern Jin shi-poetry in the 360s was increasingly taking pentametric verse as its dominant form (the preference for tetrametric verse having still been strong in the writings of the first generation of Eastern Jin expatriates), so the zhenren of Highest Clarity also compose primarily in this form, though occasionally showing their skill in other forms as well.

Another factor of the contemporary cultural scene of Eastern Jin literati to keep in mind is the centrality of xuanxue (arcane learning) thought which, enriched with Buddhist elements, had recently reached its literary apex in the xuanyan verse of Sun Chuo (314-371) and Xu Xun (ca. 325--ca. 352). (3) Discourse of this kind, going back to the commentarial writings of He Yan (189?-249) and Wang Bi (226-249) in the first half of the third century, relied heavily on paradoxical language to explore the deeper corners of metaphysics and the perennial difficulty of how (and how far) language can map reality. The arguments and some of the imagery in the poems we are about to examine often remind one of nothing so much as a xuanxue debate, albeit carried on in verse and by beings of spiritual perfection.

Those poems were recited to Yang Xi during the night of 4 October 365 and are preserved in the third chapter of Zhen gao. (4) The instigator and first speaker was Lady Youying or, more formally, the Lady of Right Bloom of the Palace of Cloud Forest, Wang Meilan (byname Shenlin), thirteenth daughter of the great goddess Xiwangmu. She had been promised as the celestial betrothed of Xu Mi (303-373), the chief patron of Yang Xi and a minor court official, if only Xu Mi would turn his ways from mundane concerns and devote himself to purer aspirations. She was the most active and adventurous poet of all the Perfected who visited Yang Xi, bestowing more than two dozen poems on him at different times, including even an intricate palindrome (huiwen) verse arranged in a grid of twelve graphs by twelve. On the night in question Lady Youying sang a six-line song that turned on the phrase youdai. "with reliance" (or "having something to depend on"), alluding to the famous passage in the first chapter of Thuangzi where a certain Liezi is described as riding the wind in blissful disregard for fifteen days; yet, the narrator says, "Though this one was freed from walking, there was still something on which he had to depend." (5) Here is Youying's song:

Harnessing a flaw, I ramble about the Eight Voids, And come back to revel in the chambers of Eastern Florescence. Amah invites me to her high-railed belvedere. 4 Where, whistling serenely, I tread the numinous winds. For my part, contriving my coming "with reliance," Hence, then, I cross over to Watchet Whitecap. The "flaw" in the opening phrase denotes the sudden burst or squall of wind that frequently transports the Realized Persons through the heavens. This happens in the blink of an eye, effectively compressing time and space. After coursing through all directions of cosmic emptiness, the goddess stops at the eastern, paradise realm of the Green Youth, one of the highest of Shangqing divinities. (6) Then, the "Amah" or "Nanny"--a term of affectionate familiarity used to refer to Xiwangmu by her daughters--invites her to her own lofty pavilion on Mount Kunlun if in the west. Lady Youying accomplishes all of this travel by calling up the "numinous winds," on which she relies as did Liezi. She then sweeps on to her own earthly haven of Canglang in the eastern sea, this domain of hers being imaged as a stabilized wave in the grey-blue ocean ("Watchet Whitecap"). (7)

Ziwei furen the Lady of Purple Tenuity, Wang Qing'e (byname Yuyin), twenty-fourth daughter of Xiwangmu and so a younger sister of Lady Youying, and the next most avid poet of the Shangqing denizens, immediately took the bait of this poem, answering with a playfully chiding six-line song that brings the counterphrase wudai, "without reliance," "having nought to depend on," into prominence:

Borne on a tempest. I traverse the Nine Heavens To rest my carriage on the Ridge of Three Cusps. 4 "With reliance"--one looks about, restlessly hesitant; "Without reliance--one shall hence be in repose. (8) As...