Christian Culture and MU Dan's Poetic Dramas
Author: CONG Xinqiang, Associate Professor, Literature & Journalism College, Shandong University; Postdoctor fellow, Literature Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Abstract:
In MU Dan’s 40 years as a poet, “God” has been a key term in the transcendent world of his poems. The relationship between “God,” “The Devil” and “humanity” forms the subject of much of MU Dan’s life and writing, which is most fully demonstrated in his three poetic dramas. “Shen Mo Zhi Zheng” (Struggles between God and the Devil) shows the absence of God, the powerlessness of humanity, and the emergence of the Devil. In the work “Yin Xian” (Dimly Visible), God becomes again the source of life and the means of support for humanity, while in “Shen de Bian Xing” (Deformation of God) a new power arises beyond “God,” “the Devil” and “Humanity” — a power which reveals the ideology of power that is operative in the world. The discourse of “God” reveals MU Dan’s weighty experience of divine faith, and the dramas are a concentrated expression of the poet’s thinking about discourse with the divine. These three poetic dramas were all based on the Bible and were written over a period of 30 years, with ongoing revisions. Based on a phenomenological research method, this paper attempts to investigate MU Dan’s experiences and speculation about the human and the world, the sacred and the secular, and then restores the interior relationship between MU Dan and Christian culture.
Keywords:
MU Dan, Poetic Drama, Divinity Discourse, Culture Transformation
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