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Several months ago while I was going to the UW I downloaded a bunch of interesting articles on Chinese religion and the Tang dynasty. This weekend Bill and I were able to get to his work to print them out and I bought a nice binder for them. I just read the first of them. While it seems silly to write a bigger essay on articles than I do on most books I'm using this as a way to keep track of what I've been reading and what everything said.
It was written by Suzanne Cahill, (the author who wrote the book on the Queen Mother of the West I just finished recently). The article was entitled Sex and the Supernatural in Medieval China. She looked at a selection of Cantos, (Tz'u poems) with the title "The transcendent who presides over the river". She challenged the previous existing notions that Tz'u poems with the same title simply referred to the type of music that went along with the poems and showed how in the case of these specific poems there was a distinct theme that held 6 basic parts.
These poems looked at the unifying themes of sexual love and religious experience. The meeting of a King and a Goddess, their sexual liaisons and separations. The sense of hopelessness and longing characterized these poems, how the separation of these lovers had doomed them both.
The majority of the article was a translation and discussion of the 31 poems that appear in the Tz'u of the Tang and 5 dynasties collection under the name of "The Transcendent who presides over the river". She identifies many of the allusions in these poems and looks at how many conform to the six parts of the Goddess quest scenario that she has identified.
While giving an excellent interpretation of these poems I had a lot of unanswered questions about the implications of these poems. Cahill did not address the question of why and how these lovers had to separate after she stated that their union was considered mutually beneficial to both. The questions I was left with were: Why are such meetings doomed? What does this show about the religious beliefs held at the time? Is transcendence looked upon as impossible by these poets? If meeting between the two is so good for both why were there always just such negative results of the pairing? What does this tell us about Chinese Goddesses and how they were viewed by the poets? They seemed to be placed on an equal level with mortal women mourning the separation from their husbands. They had no power of their own. As a result of their mortal love they simply whithered and faded and were racked by grief.
I also question the religious connotations that can be drawn from these poems, the meetings seemed to show no benefit to the mortal or to the Goddess involved. There seemed to be no sign of worship or religious practice and no miracles only a description of unfulfilled longing. While no expert on Chinese poetry these seemed to be more of the "lonely beauty" type of poetry than anything religious. In this case the woman was a Goddess but the sentiments were the same.
The poems themselves were beautiful however, even in translation. Cahill also did an excellent job of describing the meanings and illusions in the lines, and how and why she translated as she did. I was just left with many questions after wards, it has been 20 years now since the article was written and I'm hoping that in that time more answers have been given.
It was written by Suzanne Cahill, (the author who wrote the book on the Queen Mother of the West I just finished recently). The article was entitled Sex and the Supernatural in Medieval China. She looked at a selection of Cantos, (Tz'u poems) with the title "The transcendent who presides over the river". She challenged the previous existing notions that Tz'u poems with the same title simply referred to the type of music that went along with the poems and showed how in the case of these specific poems there was a distinct theme that held 6 basic parts.
These poems looked at the unifying themes of sexual love and religious experience. The meeting of a King and a Goddess, their sexual liaisons and separations. The sense of hopelessness and longing characterized these poems, how the separation of these lovers had doomed them both.
The majority of the article was a translation and discussion of the 31 poems that appear in the Tz'u of the Tang and 5 dynasties collection under the name of "The Transcendent who presides over the river". She identifies many of the allusions in these poems and looks at how many conform to the six parts of the Goddess quest scenario that she has identified.
While giving an excellent interpretation of these poems I had a lot of unanswered questions about the implications of these poems. Cahill did not address the question of why and how these lovers had to separate after she stated that their union was considered mutually beneficial to both. The questions I was left with were: Why are such meetings doomed? What does this show about the religious beliefs held at the time? Is transcendence looked upon as impossible by these poets? If meeting between the two is so good for both why were there always just such negative results of the pairing? What does this tell us about Chinese Goddesses and how they were viewed by the poets? They seemed to be placed on an equal level with mortal women mourning the separation from their husbands. They had no power of their own. As a result of their mortal love they simply whithered and faded and were racked by grief.
I also question the religious connotations that can be drawn from these poems, the meetings seemed to show no benefit to the mortal or to the Goddess involved. There seemed to be no sign of worship or religious practice and no miracles only a description of unfulfilled longing. While no expert on Chinese poetry these seemed to be more of the "lonely beauty" type of poetry than anything religious. In this case the woman was a Goddess but the sentiments were the same.
The poems themselves were beautiful however, even in translation. Cahill also did an excellent job of describing the meanings and illusions in the lines, and how and why she translated as she did. I was just left with many questions after wards, it has been 20 years now since the article was written and I'm hoping that in that time more answers have been given.