228 t He tang Dy na s t y
Awareness of the Obscure is not the same as muddled
knowledge—3 玄感非蒙識 (xuán găn fēi méng shí)
8 Who can fathom the deepest dark? 誰能測淪冥 (shéi néng cè lún míng)
Worldly people are bound by what their eyes see, 世人拘目見 (shì rén jū mù jiàn)
10 Heady with drink they laugh at alchemy handbooks. 酣酒笑丹經 (hān jiŭ xiào dān jīng)
On Kunlun Mountain there is a jasper tree, 崑崙有瑤樹 (kūn lún yŏu yáo shù)
12 How can they hope to pluck its blossoms? 安得采其英 (ān dé căi qí yīng)
[QTS 2:83.888]Shot through with the mystical language of the Daoist adept—indeed, reminis-
cent of the xuanyan shi (abstruse poetry) of the Eastern Jin (317–420)—this poem
may not seem (at least to readers today) a prime example of personal, lyric expres-
sion. But it is precisely Chen Zi’ang’s willingness to refer directly to the unfathom-
able spiritual realm of dragons and the “Obscure” that marks this poem as going
against the grain, as the poet’s personal expression of his need to look beyond
the surface colors and textures celebrated in the court poetics of the times. Chen
Zi’ang—insistently speaking in his own voice (wu guan [I behold])—expresses
the anguish of a clear-sighted yet powerless man positioned between the revered
ancients, who have attained transcendence and stand side by side with Creation
itself, and the foolish men of his day, who content themselves with the intoxicating
pleasures of life and mock those who would move beyond.
In this, the sixth poem of the series entitled “Ganyu,” then, Chen Zi’ang draws
a clear distinction between those who have apprehended the sense of the “Ob-
scure” (line 7) and those who have not. It is thus fitting that the poem is built on
the contrast between two types of perception: guan (to behold or observe [ line 1])
and jian (to see [ line 9]). In a general sense, he who beholds actively applies his at-
tention to an object or a scene, observing its appearance in order to understand, to
“fathom” (ce [ line 8]), the essence beneath the surface. But what does guan mean
when applied to a world that is not visible in the strict sense of the word, as we find
here—a world of dragon transformations and impenetrable darkness? Clearly, the
vision to which it refers does not depend on the eyes alone. The closest term in
English might then be “to visualize,” reminiscent of the visualization practiced by
Buddhists in their meditations before images of Buddhist deities. Visualization
involves not just looking at, but also taking in the sculpted or painted image of the
deity, such that the viewer ultimately perceives the Buddha essence within.
In line 1 of this poem, when Chen Zi’ang declares that he is beholding the
“transformations of the dragon,” he alludes to the first hexagram of the Yijing (Book
of Changes), qian, or the “creative”: the hexagram in which all six lines are yang
(hence the expression “the essence of yang at its fullest”).4 This hexagram indi-
cates situations in which the dragon is hidden, suggesting that the superior man,
although present, is still not manifest in the world; one can but watch and wait. As
he beholds the dark forests before him, sensing—or visualizing—the presence of
the dragon, he does not need, as he might in a recent-style poem, to specify what
scene in the world is inspiring this vision. It is visible everywhere to any discern-