Landscape Reimagined: The Poetic Reworking of ‘Pacing the Void’ Lyrics in the Song Dynasty (960–1279)

This paper studies two sets of ‘Pacing the Void’ lyrics written by two Song dynasty literati, dedicated to a sacred Daoist landscape known as Grand Cleanse Grotto-heaven. One set, titled “Pacing the Void Lyrics of Nine Locks,” was composed by Cthen Xunzhi (ca. 12th century) to commemorate his visit to the Grand Cleanse mountains and express his gratitude to the local Daoist priests who hosted him. The other set was penned by Chen’s nephew, Zhao Rushi (1208 jinshi), as a matching poem to the original piece. These poems are the lengthiest sets of lyrics collected in Dongxiao Poetry Anthology (Dongxiao shiji), a poetry collection compiled by the local Daoist priest Meng Zongbao (ca. 14th century) to preserve the literary legacies of the landscape spanning up to the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). It is unusual to see works of such length by minor poets to be included, as the compilation and printing processes of an anthology could be financially burdensome. The inclusion of these two sets suggests their perceived literary value in the anthology.

I argue that these two works are significant because they epitomize a new form of ‘Pacing the Void’ lyrics reworked by the Song literati under the influence of multiple Daoist lineages and the Jiangxi Poetry School. The earliest example of standard ‘Pacing the Void’ lyrics can be traced to the Scripture for Pacing the Void to Jade Capitoline Mountain (Yujing shan buxu jing), a ritual text found in the early Lingbao Daoism scriptures, which imagines a cyclical ascent to the Jade Capital. Despite being titled as ‘Pacing the Void’ lyrics, Chen and Zhao’s works may not appear as ritualistic songs at first glance. They would seem little more than a collection of landscape poems that seek to name the peaks: contemporary visitors routinely describe natural scenery and designate names to mountains in an attempt to demonstrate their experiences in the grotto-heavens. Although not strictly adhering to the style of the standard ‘Pacing the Void’ lyrics, their poems adopt some key features. For example, both sets were composed in pentasyllabic form. More importantly, they highlight the importance of the image of the sacred mountains. By likening the Grand Cleanse Mountain to the Jade Capitoline Mountain, the two poets made the imagery of the early Lingbao ritual chanting applicable to portray their wanderings in the actual landscape of Grand Cleanse.

A source that offered Chen and Zhao inspiration to reimagine the original ‘Pacing the Void’ texts from the Lingbao tradition is a scripture from the Shangqing tradition. As Zhao hinted in his matching poems, Chen’s poem alluded to the Scripture of the Yellow Court (Huangting jing), a pivotal scripture from Shangqing Daoism concerning the cultivation of vital essence in bodily organs through meditation. By incorporating the language from the Scripture of the Yellow Court, both poets were able to merge the vision of their corporeal body with their poetic representation of the sacred mountain from the Lingbao tradition. This effort also allowed them to imbue their poems with the vision of inner alchemy, a key Daoist meditative technique that focused on corporeal cultivation and became popular among the Song literati. Amalgamating various Daoist visions, the two poets created a palimpsest that manifests a progressive anthropomorphic vision of the landscape. The increasing affinity between the somatic imagination and the Daoist mountains inspired them to represent the landscape as a Daoist body and the travel within it an inner alchemical practice that has life-prolonging and healing effects. 

Finally, the underlying literary context that drove both poets to compose multifaceted landscape poems was the theory of poetic transformation advocated by the Jiangxi Poetry School, which held significant sway during their era. Huang Tingjian, who was later deemed the founder of the school, once used the allegory of inner alchemy to comment on the greatest writers’ ability to use “the well-worn wording from men of old” to transform their writing. The fascination of inner alchemy’s transformative power not only refreshed the Song poets’ imagination of their travel experiences but also motivated them to employ the ancient Daoist texts to reinvent their representation of landscapes in poetry. In a nutshell, the two sets of ‘Pacing the Void’ lyrics act as prisms that showcase the Song poets’ creative ways to engage the Daoist ritual imagination and language to transform their literary creations.