Kao-Shih

Circa A.D. 700





One of the most fascinating of all the T`ang poets. His life was
one long series of romantic adventure. At first, a poor youth
battling with adversity; then the lover of an actress,
whom he followed through the provinces, play-writing for the strolling troupe
to which she was attached; the next, secretary to a high personage
engaged in a mission to Thibet; then soldier, and finally poet of renown,
acquiring with his latter years the fortune and honours denied him
in his youth.

The chief characteristics of his poetry are intense concentration,
a vivid power of impressionism, and a strong leaning
in the direction of the occult. Indeed, one of his best-known poems,
"The Return to the Mountains", makes mention of the projection
of the astral body through space during sleep. Many of his poems leave us
with a strange sense of horror which is suggested rather than revealed.
It is always some combination of effects which produces this result,