A Study Of Buddhist Allusions In Shen Zengzhi’s Poetry

Shen Zengzhi is a representative of Tongguangti in late Qing Dynasty. He liked quoting allusions in poetry so much that he made the style abstruse and profound. Among those allusions, there’re a lot of ones about Buddhism. So it is important to analyze those allusions for us to understand his poetry. This text uses statistical method to sum up the allusions and to get three most common ones. They are Jie, Weimoshiji, and Ludian. Jie means endless time or disasters. Weimoshiji reflects the attention on weak body from the poet himself. Ludian is the symbol of disillusionment. The negative temper of those three themes make an atmosphere of desolate in Shen Zengzhi’s poetry. All those are the results of the reaction to the catastrophic realities as well as the focusing on his own soul world.Although Shen used a lot of Buddhist allusions, there’s no real spirit of Buddhism in his peotry. That means that he didn’t have the will to save other people while salvation is the trend of that time, neither achieve peace in his own mind. To make a summary, there’s a gap between the spirit of our poet and Buddhism. And also, this kind of gap is always the tradition of our Classical poetry and even the whole Chinese literature.