buce). This tradition has influenced the tide of Chinese culture from a
high and distant place. The Daoism of the Wei and Jin dynasties and
ink-splash paintings and the self-proclaimed “Great Sage, Equal to
Heaven”—the Monkey King who wreaked havoc in heaven—all bear
the traces of this game. (Gu 1990: xv–xvi; slightly modified according to
Gu 1995: 921)Interestingly, Gu Cheng further includes the Cultural Revolution as
the most recent example of this game of “no inhibition”:
Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution also reveal this tradition of
“no inhibition” as something which suddenly embodied all of society. It
appeared not as the relationship between Man and Nature, nor as that
between Man and History and Culture, but as the relationship between
the absolute individual and the universe. “The perfect man follows no
rules”—“lawless and godless.” (Gu 1990: xvi; slightly modified)We can juxtapose the paragraph above with Gu Cheng’s own
explanation of the genesis of “misty poetry” on a different occasion:
“Misty poetry” was born of the Cultural Revolution, born out of
the void after the catastrophe. It appeared like another explosion of the
chaos, experiencing the age of innocence of the human race within the
blink of an eye. Almost all of the authors of “misty poetry” once told
about such innocent expectations and pains as seen from a child’s
perspective. (Gu 1995: 925)Here we find a most telling contradiction. That is, while Gu Cheng
emphasizes the “innocent expectations and pains as seen from a child’s
perspective,” he reminds his readers that it is the Cultural Revolution
and Mao that embody the attitude of “no inhibition” and thus repre-
sent an ideal state of spontaneity and free will. For Gu Cheng, Mao
and the Cultural Revolution somehow have come full circle and
become the very spiritual source and model of “misty poetry” itself.
In fact, as early as in 1987, right after he left China, Gu Cheng had
begun to expound upon this tradition of “no inhibition,” which he
sees as lying at the very core of the Daoist philosophy, and to attribute
the birth of “misty poetry” to the Cultural Revolution (see Hong and
Zhao 1993: 167; 168–170). This, in turn, testifies to Gu Cheng’s
earnest effort to conjoin the Cultural Revolution, “misty poetry,” and
the “no inhibition” tradition and to articulate a new poetics of his
own. On July 10, 1993, about three months before his death, at a
conference held at Frankfurt University, Germany, Gu Cheng
Gu Cheng’s Metamorphosis 137