A quirkily quaint poet to Chinese literati, especially to those of the Song Dynasty, a popular figure of Zen Buddhism in Japan, and a mentor from another cultural universe of spiritual liberation to the Beat Generation around the 50’s of America, Han Shan has been, arguably, the one poet in the Chinese literary tradition that could travel so far across time and cultures. Han Shan first appeared as an enigmatic figure in Chinese literary tradition since his poetry had widely been known with a corpus of three hundred odd poems attributed to him in The Complete Poetry of the Tang Dynasty, the official edition of Song dynasty. However, there was no record of him but a problematic biographic preface heading that official anthology, permeated with obvious historical and cultural errors and incongruity. The anthology, mainly of five-character octave regulated verses concerning religious thinking, philosophical observation, biographical narration, and lyricism may be read, by a broad definition and in a loose way, as the life of a Way seeker and the nature of the Way. With this malleability along with historical serendipity, Han Shan, somehow, travelled from China to Japan and then inspired America, offering different cultures different resources for enrichment, emerging each time in different images. This paper aims at how and why the poet can have emerged in different figures, mortal or immortal, in different places and times, based on the amalgamation of extensive and pervasive elements that encompass the literary, religious, and philosophical aspects.

Authors:
Xavier Lin, National Chi Nan University, Taiwan

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Xavier Lin is a University Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer at National Chi Nan University in Taiwan

See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule

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