Songs of the Immortals : the poetry of the Chen-Kao

Abstract

Among the texts "revealed" to the fourth century hierophant Yang Hsi, a considerable quantity were in the form of verse or rhyme-prose. Much of this material was assembled by the scholar, T'ao Hung-ching, who included it in a compendium of the Mao Shan revelations entitled Chen Kao, or The Revelations of the Perfected. In recent years the Chen Kao and the Mao Shan scriptures in general have received considerable attention from scholars outside of China. Most of this attention has been directed towards describing the nature of Mao Shan religion. Little attempt has been made to deal with the literary qualities of the texts. This thesis is intended to remedy this situation to some extent. The central focus of the study is on the poetry contained in the Chen Kao. The aim has been to uncover certain of the motives and manners of the Perfected immortals supposedly responsible for the composition of the poems. In this endeavour literary theory has been eschewed in favour of a more fundamental examination of the content of the poems. It seemed most important at this stage to seek the reasons behind the con-position of the poems and the significance of the themes and imagery selected by the poet or poets. My first chapter describes the special universe to which the poems refer. The Perfected beings ostensibly responsible for the poems did not live in the world known to mortals and their verse often pertains to an environment and life quite foreign to their audience. The next three chapters select the themes of landscape description, music imagery and romantic drama for special attention. The object of these chapters is to describe the origins and expression of certain of the most important themes found in the Chen Kao poetry. The fifth chapter briefly traces the history of "Wandering Immortals" poetry with a view to finding the roots of the style and conventions used 1n the poems of the Perfected. The final chapter deals with certain formal characteristics of the poems and also describes how a variety of thenes of religious significance found poetic expression. Translations of all of the poems found in the Chen Kao are included in the appendix. These translations are accompanied by extensive annotation.