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The Strange Daoism of Pu Songling

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The Strange Daoism of Pu Songling THE STRANGE DAOISM OF PU SONGLING A Thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Master of Arts In Humanities by Christopher David Rubin San Francisco, California Fall 2017 Copyright by Christopher David Rubin 2017 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read The Strange Daoism of Pu Songling by Christopher David Rubin, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in Humanities at San Francisco State University. Cristina Ruotolo, Ph.D. Professor of Humanities THE STRANGE DAOISM OF PU SONGLING Christopher David Rubin San Francisco, California 2017 This thesis explores the ways in which stories from Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio draw from the earlier Daoist work the Book o f Zhuangzi. While Pu Songling’s work contains Daoist moral themes similar to those of Zhuangzi’s earlier collection, this analysis will show that, in both collections, the way in which the stories are conveyed is just as important as their particular moral maxims. In the Book o f Zhuangzi, this emphasis on style is embodied by the characters within the stories themselves, who communicate Daoist principles through their strange appearance. Finding the link between Daoism and the strange, this thesis explores the ways in which Daoism might penetrate Pu Songling’s entire collection, as only a small amount of the stories have clear moral maxims. I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Mary Scott for all of her much needed advice, and, further, for pointing me toward the works that follow. Additionally, I’d like to thank my family for all of their support. 1 Tan Jinxuan, a first degree graduate of my home district of Zichuan, was a great believer in Daoist Yoga. He practiced it assiduously for several months, regardless of the weather, and seemed to be making some progress (Pu Songling, “Homunculus, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio). With this line, John Minford opens his translation of Pu Songling’s eighteenth century story collection Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. The story continues: Tan, the graduate, marks his spiritual progress by the growth of a buzzing sound, a sound which seems almost like a voice: “I think I’m taking shape” it whispers. After a few days of Daoist practice, the voice changes: “Most definitely taking shape”—a change which the excited Tan takes to be the sound of approaching enlightenment, of the “Inner Elixir of Immortality.” However, one day, during a particularly overzealous session of meditation, something climbs out of Tan’s ear: far from being the voice of the famed Elixir, the voice instead belongs to a small “yaksha-demon.” To his downfall, the creature is scared away by the unexpected knocking of a neighbor, leaving Tan in “utter desolation, as if his very soul had gone missing...taken with a violent fit...howling hysterically.” He only recovers after six months of steady treatment (Minford 5). A strange story, but strange as it may be, it would seem as though Pu Songling wants us to believe it, believe that it actually occurred. After all, he tells us in the very first line that the events of the story took place in his home district. Pu Songling might be a waishi shi, an “unofficial historian,” but he is a historian 2 nonetheless, or, as he calls himself, a Historian o f the Strange (Zeitlin 1). And he certainly makes it appear as though he’s trying to write history: almost every story in Strange Tales has some detail, some statement which suggests to us that yes, this event, though strange, happened in our world. For example, the author, or, should I say, the Historian, is always quick to show us his sources. He even witnessed the events of “Stealing a Peach” himself: “When I was a boy, I went up to the prefectural city of Ji’nan to take an examination. It was the time of the Spring Festival and, according to custom, on the day before the festival all the merchants of the place processed with decorated banners and drums to the provincial yamen. This procession was called Bringing in the Spring. I went with a friend to watch the fun.” (Minford 43) The story does go on to depict a boy climbing into the heavens to steal a peach from the “Queen Mother of the West.” The boy gets dismembered, decapitated and revived in a basket before the author’s eyes. But it’s all true: Pu Songling saw it—he tells us so. Other stories, he relates, come from friends or acquaintances: With time And my love of hoarding, The matter sent me by friends From the four corners of the world Has grown into a pile (Minford 455) 3 One tale, as John Minford writes, even has “our author collecting tales at the roadside, offering casual passersby cups of tea and pipes of tobacco for strange or unusual anecdotes” (Minford xv). Wherever the author heard it, he is quick to tell us the source—often in the very first line: “The Troll” comes from Sun Taibo (28). “Biting a Ghost” comes from Shin Linsheng (31). “The Devoted Mouse” comes from Yang Tianyi (180). One might cast doubt on the reliability of these accounts heard at second or third or fourth hand. The Historian, however, is always sure to ease our doubts, telling us exactly when and where the story happened: again, where and when it happened in our world, the world of historical truth. In fact, we might even remember it: “Wailing Ghosts” begins “[a]t the time of the Xie Qian troubles in Shandong— “Thumb and Thimble” comes from “the region of Zhending County” (Minford 104-107). Occasionally, the Historian is ever more specific: the events in “An Earthquake” occurred “[b]etween the hours of seven and nine in the evening of the seventeenth day of the sixth month of the seventh year of the Kangxi reign” (182). However, despite the great lengths to which Pu Songling goes to convince readers of his stories’ truth, commentators, writing even before the book was published in full, knew something else was going on beyond waishi, beyond unofficial history, beyond mere chronicle. As Judith Zeitlin notes in her work Historian of the Strange, Ji Yun, an eighteenth century commentator, was in fact disturbed by the Historian’s extreme attempts to authenticate his stories. Pu 4 Songling’s ability to source each story and describe events and characters in incredible detail, rather than convince readers of the stories’ truth, actually, according to Ji Yun, alert us to their inauthenticity. For example, many of the stories happen in spaces where neither Pu Songling nor one of his sources could have observed the events, for example, in a bedchamber. How could anyone know, especially with so much detail, exactly what went on? Ji Yun writes, “Now... [Pu Songling] gives a vivid picture of the smallest details down to amorous gestures and secrets whispered before lovers. It would be unreasonable to assume the writer experienced these things himself; but if he was describing things that happened to others, how could he have known so much?” (Zeitlin 40) For Ji Yun, this reveals Pu Songling to be nothing more than, as Zeitlin puts it, a “bad historian” whose “narrative techniques too obviously betray authorial fabrication” (40). However, for other early scholars, even attempting to Judge the work as history appeared to be a mistake. As the eighteenth century painter-poet Yu Ji wrote, “Comparing it to Qixie’s book of marvels or saying that it differs little from collections of rare phenomena or strange tales is a very shallow view and one that greatly contradicts the author’s intent” (Zeitlin 26). Under this reading, Pu Songling’s attempts at verification are obviously only half-attempts: the Historian is playing with us. As Zeitlin notes, the tales, to these commentators, 5 “deliberately straddle the border between fictional and historical discourse and are indeed predicated in part on the ensuing ambiguity” (5 [italics my own]). Further, as Zeitlin also notes, once one puts aside the possibility that Pu Songling was simply collecting and reporting strange tales, admitting authorial intention, the question then becomes what is the intention? What is Pu Songling saying? What do the tales mean? As she writes, “as the emphasis shifted from the content of Liaozhai [Strange Tales] to its author’s intention, a general allegorical reading of the tales perhaps became inevitable” (Zeitlin 30). However, this way of reading the work,—as a set of stories which have underlying meanings and morals—far from being a later innovation, appeared even at the time of its earliest commentaries. As Zeitlin notes, Gao Heng, writing the first preface for the book, used the word yuyan to describe the tales, a word which Zeitlin renders as “allegory, metaphor and parable” (Zeitlin 30-31). Even the author himself seems to suggest that the tales should be read for their underlying meaning in his preface to the work—albeit obliquely: Fastidious readers of my book May mock me, Just as the Tale of the Five-Fathers Crossroad May be baseless— But who can tell? The Tale of Three-Lives Rock May contain 6 Food for enlightenment (Minford 455). As John Minford notes in his commentary, “The Tale of Three-Lives Rock” comes from an earlier collection of Buddhist and Daoist tales, which frequently served a didactic function.
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