Hsian.g LectQres on Chinese.Poet: Centre for East Asian Research . McGill University Hsiang Lectures on Chinese Poetry Volume 6, 2012 Grace S. Fong Editor Chris Byrne Editorial Assistant Centre for East Asian Research McGill University Copyright © 2012 by Centre for East Asian Research, McGill University 3434 McTavish Street McGill University Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 1X9 Calligraphy by: Han Zhenhu For additional copies please send request to: Hsiang Lectures on Chinese Poetry Centre for East Asian Research McGill University 3434 McTavish Street Montreal, Quebec Canada H3A 1X9 A contribution of $5 towards postage and handling will be appreciated. This volume is printed on acid-free paper. Endowed by Professor Paul Stanislaus Hsiang (1915-2000) Contents Editor’s Note vii How to View a Mountain in Medieval China 1 David R. Knechtges Poet-Nun of Nanyue: The Mountain Poems of Jizong Xingche (b. 1606) 57 Beata Grant When Dōgen Went to China: Chan Poetry He Did and Did Not Write 75 Steven Heine Editor’s Note The three Hsiang Lectures published in this volume were delivered respectively by Professors David Knechtges (October 23, 2009), Beata Grant (September 17, 2010), and Steven Heine (March 11, 2011). It is a happy coincidence that the three lectures share common themes on mountains as religious sites of spiritual, particularly Buddhist, practice and inspiration, and on classical Chinese verse as the medium for self-reflection, contemplation of nature, and the very embodiment of mystical experience and religious insight. Professor Knechtges provides an erudite close reading of the medieval poet Xie Lingyun’s (385–433) “Fu on Dwelling on the Mountain,” in which Xie records his exploration and experience of the mountain landscape in his estate in Shi’ning, in present-day Zhejiang. Professor Knechtges suggests that this long poem reflects new visual experiences informed by Buddhist meditation practices introduced to China in this period. Professor Grant examines the nature poems written by the seventeenth-century woman Chan Master Jizong Xingche (b. 1606) of the Linji sect. Jizong developed a love for Nanyue (the Hengshan range) in her native Hunan, where she began her religious practice as a Chan nun and where she returned to spend her final years after traveling to other mountain sites and serving as abbess in temples in Jiangsu for much of her life. Co- sponsored by the Centre Zen Enpuku-ji as part of its biennial Zen Poetry Festival, Professor Heine’s lecture provides an illuminating discussion on the Chinese poetry collection of Dōgen, the founder of the Sōtō sect in Japan, who spent four years training in Chan monasteries in Song China. By examining the “types” of classical Chinese verse that Dōgen did write or eschewed in the more than three hundred Chinese poems in his collection, Professor Heine elucidates Chinese poetry’s multifaceted functions and openness to new themes in the context of Dōgen’s Zen practice. I would like to note here that acclaimed translator of classical Chinese poetry David Hinton gave a talk in the Hsiang Lecture Series entitled “The Deep Ecology of Chinese Poetry” on March 6, 2009. Hinton’s talk was also co-sponsored by the Centre Zen Enpuku-ji as part of the biennial Zen Poetry Festival. Montreal, June 2012 vii How to View a Mountain in Medieval China David R. Knechtges ⹟忼䵕 University of Washington In Memoriam: Francis Abeken Westbrook (1942–1991) In Seattle where I have resided for over fifty years mountains are a constant presence. We have not one but two mountain ranges (the Cascades and Olympics) within view. When the clouds liftġĩan occasion that is regrettably all too rare in our rainy climate), I have a clear view of Mount Rainier from our tenth floor condominium. If I go up one flight to the rooftop garden, I can see both the North Cascades and the Olympic mountains. Mountain viewing was not always so simple. Indeed, humans did not always find mountains so inviting. Although the ancient Greeks showed some feeling for the mountain landscape in which they lived, as Walther Kirchner has put it, for the ancient Romans: “Mountains, and particularly the Alps, evoke … no aesthetic response.”1 The changing European perception of mountains has been well researched in a book by Marjorie Hope Nicolson (1894–1981) titled Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory. Professor Nicolson shows that in Europe even as late as the seventeenth century, writers and travelers depicted mountains as warts and blisters and even worse. James Howell (c. 1594–1666) in one of his Familiar Letters on Important Subjects gives the following account of his trip to the Alps in 1621: “[The Pyrenees] are not so high and hideous as the Alps; but for our mountains in Wales… they are but Molehills in comparison of these; they are but Pigmies compared to Giants, but Blisters to Imposthumes, or Pimples to Warts.” 2 Mountains were frequently called rubbish heaps—as Nicolson puts it, they were “waste places of the world with little meaning and less charm for men who crossed the Alps only to reach the plains.”3 The view that mountains were a garbage heap had much to do with the notion that before the Great Flood the earth was level and smooth, but after the fall of Adam and Eve nature began to decay. Mountains in particular were regarded as hideous monstrosities. This notion of the mountain Nicolson calls “Mountain Gloom.” She argues that it was not until the nineteenth century that European writers began to sing the praises of mountain splendor—what she terms “Mountain Glory.” One can of course view a mountain from afar or by physically climbing it. Mountains can also be viewed in the imagination or in the “mind’s eye,” 2 David Knechtges to use a phrase from Saint Augustine. In a famous passage in book ten of his Confessions, Augustine comments, presumably unfavorably, on those who only go out and gaze on the landscape: “Yet men go out and gaze in astonishment at high mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad reaches of rivers, the ocean that encircles the world, or the stars in the courses. But they pay no attention to themselves. They do not marvel at the thought that while I have been mentioning all these things, I have not been looking at them with my eyes, and that I could not even speak of mountains or waves, rivers or stars, which are things that I have seen, or of the ocean, which I know only on the evidence of others, unless I could see them in my mind’s eye, and in my memory, and with the same vast spaces between them that would be there if I were looking at them in the world outside myself.”4 It would seem that Augustine was more interested in his search for God than mountains. Augustine’s lines cited above appear again in a famous European account of climbing a mountain. This is the famous letter of Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) (hereafter referred to as Petrarch) to Francesco Dionigi in his Familiares, IV, in which he relates an account of his ascent of Mount Ventoux, a limestone peak that soars to a height of 6,273 feet in the Provencal Alps. 5 Petrarch made the ascent on 26 April 1336, but apparently did not write the letter until 1352 or 1353. Thus, this is an example of an event recollected many years later, and perhaps is subject to reinterpretation and even fictionalization. 6 Although the letter has many interesting details that would be of interest to a student of Chinese mountain writing, I do not have space to record them all here. I will simply report the basic outline. Petrarch climbs Mount Ventoux with his brother Gherardo. However, they take separate routes. Gherardo ascends by the ridgeline which is more perilous but shorter. Petrarch follows a smoother but longer path that proves to be more exhausting and frustrating. When he and his brother finally reach the summit, Petrarch gazes out and has a panoramic view of the mountains near Lyon to the right, and the ocean near Marseilles to the left. Flowing immediately below him was the Rhône River. At this point, Petrarch takes out of his pocket a miniature edition of Augustine’s Confessions, a book that he always carried with him. He opened it at random and chanced on the following passage: “Yet men go out and gaze in astonishment at high mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad reaches of rivers, the ocean that encircles the world, or the stars in the courses. But they pay no attention to themselves.” Petrarch then says he “was stunned.” Although Gherardo asks him to read on, Petrarch closed the book, angry that he “still admired earthly things.” Satisfied with what he “had seen of the mountain,” he then turns his “inner eye” toward himself. Petrarch says not a word as he descends the mountain. How to View a Mountain in Medieval China 3 In his letter, Petrarch does express some delight at the scenery. For example, just before he takes out his copy of Augustine, he says that he “admired every detail [of the scene].” Nevertheless at the same moment he rebukes himself for “relishing earthly enjoyment.” Toward the end of the letter he remarks that as he descended the mountain “it seemed to me hardly higher than a cubit compared to the height of human contemplation.” As Marjorie Nicolson aptly puts it, “For a moment upon Mount Ventoux, Petrarch had seen the ‘Mountain Glory.’ The moment passed, and his eyes were darkened by the ‘Mountain Gloom’….”7 Indeed, Petrarch’s account has virtually nothing to do with mountain viewing.