Wang Wei (693, 694, or 701 – 761 AD) is often mentioned alongside China’s two great poets: the exuberant Li Bai (701 – 762) and intellectual Du Fu (712 – 770 AD).
He is often characterised their contemplative contemporary. The poet who favoured simplicity and quiet.
And unlike them, he is also famous for his painting.
The Song dynasty poet and painter Su Shi (1037 – 1101 AD) famously remarked:
味摩诘之诗诗中有画观摩诘之画画中有诗
– Su Shi, colophon, ‘Written on a painting by Wang Wei: Misty Rain over Lantian’
When savouring Wang Wei’s poems, there’s a painting within. When viewing his paintings, there’s a poem within.
But was this simplicity as straightforward as it appears on the surface?
And did his emphasis on quiet a sign of a message he wanted readers (and viewers) to hear?
Contents
- Biography
- Wang Wei’s legacy
Biography
Family and social background
Wang Wei’s (王维) family were aristocrats from the northern part of the Tang Empire (618 – 907 AD).
Their clan originally hailed from Taiyuan (in today’s Shanxi Province).
And Wang’s more immediate ancestors were mid-level officials who lived in Qixian (today a part of Jinzhong, Shanxi Province).
At the time, the semi-martial aristocracy the Wangs belonged to played a leading role in the Tang empire’s governance.
Many elites even carefully maintained records of their lineage to safeguard their position.
However, during Wang Wei’s lifetime, this importance was declining.
The literati and merchant classes had began joining the elite and competing for power. And the martial (武) and civil (文) aspects of the ruling classes would further split, too.
Early life
Wang Wei was born in Puzhou (today’s Yongji, Shanxi province), about 240 miles (387km) south-west of Qixian.
His father had moved the family to Puzhou, where he was sent to work as an official.
Wang Wei is said to have been an intelligent and talented youth.
By 715 AD, he had visited the Tang dynasty capital of Chang’an (today’s Xi’an, Shaanxi Province) and secondary capital Luoyang (in today’s Henan Province).
He began to gain a reputation as a talented poet and musician around this time.
He passed the jinshi imperial examination in 721. If he was born in 701, he was only 20 or 19, a very young age to pass.
(Many candidates did not pass. And of those that did, many didn’t pass until their 30s, 40s, or even older).
The education needed for this exam included poetry, prose and a deep grounding in the Chinese classics.
Not much other information exists about his early life.
Early career
The High Tang period (approx. 712 – 756 AD)
Wang Wei’s career began during a period now often labelled the High Tang (盛唐) period.
It is called this because of its stability and political, economic, and cultural achievements.
Variations of its precise dates vary. But ultimately, they overlap with the reign of the Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (r. 712 – 756 AD).
721 – 726 AD: Beginning his career
By passing the imperial examination, Wang Wei earned himself as an official in government.
About three and a half centuries after his lifetime, the Song dynasty Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings (1120) remarked on Wang’s early career:
止长于画也，若维者妙龄属辞，长而擢第，名盛于开元、天寳间，豪英贵人虚左以迎，宁薛诸王，待之若师友。
Wang’s skill at painting was high that it helped get him selected for an imperial degree. And his fame flourished in the Kaiyuan [713 – 741] and Tianbao [742 – 756] eras. Many heroes and aristocrats kept the left [guest’s] seat of honour open when welcoming to him. The princes Ning and Xue treated him as a Tutorial Companion.
– Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings, Chapter 10
Early on, he was supported in his career by his association with the Princess Yuzhen (691 – 762 AD), the Emperor Xuanzong’s sister.
Side note: Wang Wei and Li Bai
The great Li Bai also received a degree of patronage from the princess.
The two contemporary poets shared many other associates and friends, too (for example, the poet Meng Haoran (ca. 689 – 740)). But they appear not to have associated with one another.
Many have speculated that competition Yuzhen’s patronage was likely a factor in this.
Another point may have been their very different backgrounds.
Wang was from a Chang’an aristocracy that still highly prized its genealogy. Li was from a merchant (and likely mixed race) background in Sichuan.
Furthermore, the two appear to have had very different personalities, which is clear in their poetry.
Wang was calm, reserved, and measured; Li was exuberant, impulsive, and outspoken.
Official in charge of music
Wang’s official position was related to music, an important part of official ceremonies in Tang China.
However, he appears to have offended his superiors very early on.
(It’s difficult to clarify the details of this case. Some sources say it isn’t known.
But at least one source claims it due to Wang Wei allowing a subordinate to perform a dance reserved only for royal performances when the emperor wasn’t present).
His punishment was to be sent to a relatively remote post in Jizhou (today’s Shandong Province) in around 721.
726 – 740 AD: Back in Chang’an
Wang was back in Chang’an by 726.
He was well-liked by the chief minister (effectively prime minister) and fellow poet Zhang Jiuling (678 – 740).
He was also liked by Zhang’s political opponent, Li Linfu (? – 753) (hereafter ‘Li the Schemer’), who would significantly affect the political events of the coming decades.
In 731, Wang Wei’s wife passed away. Unlike many other men of his time (including Li Bai and Du Fu, for example), he did not remarry.
For the rest of his life, he often expressed grief over his wife in his poems.
Wang was made Investigating Censor on the north-western frontier of the Tang empire briefly in 737. He returned to Chang’an once the general he was assisting passed away.
740 – 755 AD: Living between Chang’an and Wangchuan
The 740s fall under the High Tang period. The empire’s economy and culture was still flourishing.
Many great poets, artists, and calligraphers emerged. Wang Wei even discovered the great painter Han Gan (ca. 706 – 783), then working in a wineshop.
Wang sponsored Han, who would go on to become one of the greatest painters in Chinese history.
However, despite the brilliance of this period, the seeds of trouble were sprouting.
The Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712 – 756) (hereafter ‘The Brilliant Emperor’) became besotted with his former daughter-in-law, Yang Guifei (719 – 756) (hereafter ‘Yang the High Concubine’) in the late 730s.
By 745, the Brilliant Emperor had officially taken Yang the High Concubine as his legal concubine. He was more interested her, parties and religion than he was in ruling.
So, Li the Schemer ran things. Often by enthusiastically purging officials who got in his way.
(For purging, read: torturing, executing, exiling, and more.)
Wangchuan: semi-retirement
Meanwhile, since 740, Wang had divided his time between Chang’an and his newly-acquired estate, Wangchuan (today part of Lantian County in Shaanxi Province).
Here, he was able to live in rural semi-retirement amongst the Zhongnan Mountains. He famously wrote many of his greatest poems here.
This included poems he exchanged with his close friend Pei Di (716 – ?) that made up the Wangchuan Collection.
A famous example is ‘Deer Park’:
(Eliot Weinberger’s excellent – and very short – Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei examines different translations of this poem.)
755 – 57 AD: An Lushan Rebellion breaks out
Captured by rebels
The An Lushan Rebellion (755 – 763) disrupted destroyed the lives of millions.
Wang Wei was captured by rebels early on, in 756. He feigned illness (possibly deafness) to avoid being immediately recruited into the rebel’s administration.
However, this ploy only worked temporarily.
He was sent to rebel-held Luoyang as a prisoner. The rebels had declared it the capital of their Yan dynasty.
Likely under threat of death, he accepted his appointment as an official in charge of music.
The same year (756), the rebels also took Chang’an and the emperor fled south.
Captured by imperial forces
In 757, Wang was captured by imperial forces when they retook Chang’an.
Many officials that had collaborated – whether under duress or not – with the rebels were executed.
However, Wang’s life was spared.
This seems largely down to the influence of his younger brother Wang Ji, a prominent official.
Two of Wang’s poems written during his time with the rebels also served as evidence of his loyalty to the imperial side.
An account by a commentator several centuries later, Zhang Biaochen (active. 1131 – 62), remarked:
他日缘此诗得不死，然愧于雷海清多矣。
It was owning to these lines [By Dark Green Pond] that Wang Wei was not executed. However, he was stil inferior to Lei Haiqing.
– Zhang Biaochen
(Lei Haiqing was a musician that Zhang claimed was executed on the spot for refusing to perform for An Lushan’s court.)
757 – 761: Later career and life
The An Lushan Rebellion continued for the rest of Wang Wei’s remaining lifetime.
But with the capital, Chang’an, recovered, Wang was able to resume his career as an official.
(Most of Wang’s life and career were spent in the capital. He enjoyed a stability that many officials did not, as they were often posted across the large empire.)
He rose higher than before, even reaching Assistant Director of the Right in the Department of State Affairs.
Wang passed away in 761.
Wang Wei’s legacy
Wang as a poet
Unlike Li Bai and Du Fu, Wang Wei was widely recognised and successful as a poet during his lifetime.
(This was no doubt helped by his connections and the stability of his official career.)
Shortly after his death, the emperor Daizong (r. 762 – 779 AD) requested Wang’s poems be compiled and submitted to the Imperial library. (Wang’s brother did this.)
Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu
Since the Song dynasty (960 – 1279), a consensus has emerged that Li Bai and Du Fu were the greatest poets in Chinese ever.
But Wang Wei is still often mentioned in the same breath as the other two poets.
In other words, he has never lost his status as a great literary figure. He was simply slightly overshadowed by the two largest giants of the field later on
For example, the famous Qing dynasty collection Three Hundred Tang Poems (1763) features 29 of Wang’s poems. This makes him the third most featured poet after Du Fu (39 poems) and Li Bai (34).
Another distinction between the three poets is their driving ideology:
- Wang Wei is primarily known as a Chan Buddhist poet
- Du Fu is famous for his Confucian virtues
- Li Bai was a devoted (and even ordained) Daoist,
Today, 400 of Wang’s poems survive, which is likely only a fraction of what he wrote.
Wang’s poetry’s features
A master of early Tang period court poetry
Throughout the Early tang, the dominant style of poetry had strict structural and social rules.
Poems were often central to maintaining or advancing positions in the social and political hierarchy of the Tang court. They would be gifted and shared amongst contemporaries.
Mastering them required a deep familiarity with the appropriate rhyme structures and vocabularies.
(You can perhaps think of them like an ancient equivalent of LinkedIn posts!)
Wang mastered this style early on. Poems like ‘On Double Ninth Festival’ (above) demonstrate his skill at this.
However, this style eventually grew stale for most poets. By the mid 720s, during his first exile to Jizhou, Wang began experimenting with the style he is still most associated with.
One interesting point of comparison here is Wang’s friend, the fellow poet Meng Haoran (689/691–740 AD).
Meng wrote many great poems now considered key examples of the High Tang period.
Unlike Wang, he did not have the educational background and training in old court style poetry. So, his poetry was neither consciously rebelling against nor ignoring court poetry styles.
Strict simplicity
Once he had left the court, Wang began to transform his poetic style.
On the surface, he had cultivated a distinctly tranquil and reflective tone. His poems often describe serene, contemplative scenes.
And unlike many other Tang poets, his poems are relatively free from allusion.
They appear to hold the seed of that would later fully flower in Japanese haiku poetry: Elegantly simple yet profound moments captured in time.
His words often manage to hint at something deeper behind what is depicted, set in an atmosphere of contemplation and detachment from human affairs.
However, on closer inspection there are hints that this is a conscious artifice rather than a sincere attempt at simplicity.
A similar principle can be seen in Ernest Hemingway claiming that he took 39 attempts to write a single chapter of a Farewell to Arms.
In both cases, surface simplicity is the result of careful construction rather than simply abandoning structures.
Wang was essentially quietly rebelling against the court by purposely negating its poetry’s rules. Stephen Owen calls this “authenticity of unmediated perception” (The Great Age of Chinese Poetry).
And by focusing so deeply on the scenes of his exile, far away from court, he was ultimately – Tao Qian (365 – 427 AD) – celebrating the life he led in exile, which was tantamount to celebrating exile.
This was almost the exact opposite of court poetry, where formal achievements are praised and departures are bemoaned. And where being in the Emperor’s presence was an honour.
To come back to our modern analogy, think of it as someone formerly high up on the corporate ladder posting on LinkedIn about life on leave.
Their post is written an informal style you’d and there’s no clarity on what they mean.
What’s more, you know the writer knows that you and his contemporaries will see the post.
Ezra Pound’s translation of Wang Wei
Wang continued to inspire Chinese poets across the centuries and up to today.
His influence even spread beyond China. In the early 20th century, the poet Ezra Pound included a translation of Wang Wei in his collection Cathay (1915):
Light rain is on the light dust.
The willows of the inn-yard
Will be going greener and greener,
But you, Sir, had better take wine ere your departure,
For you will have no friends about you.
– Ezra Pound, trans., ‘Sending Off Yuan the Second to Anxi by Wang Wei’
Wang as calligrapher?
The High Tang was a period of great calligraphers as well as poets.
The two arts were – and still are – linked with one another and with painting. Together they are often called the three perfections.
Du Fu and Li Bai both mentioned their own calligraphy at points. A single piece of Li Bai’s distinct calligraphy even survives today.
However, one of Wang’s own calligraphy or mentions of it survive.
It was likely a part of Wang’s life. For example, it was an important part of the imperial examinations and aspect of writing official documents.
Some of his lines demonstrate one of the most elegant links between the meaning and form of Chinese characters ever displayed:
木末芙蓉花
At the end of the branch, the magnolia flowers
Here, each character gets progressively more complex before reaching the final character (flower).
The sequence is a written version of what it depicts – a magnolia flower bud on a branch growing and them blooming.
Wang as a painter
None of Wang’s original paintings survive today. All that we know of them comes from old descriptions of them and surviving copies (or copies of copies).
For a long time, artists seeing these copies believed them to be real. However, in reality it’s believed that by the end of the Song dynasty (960 – 1279), no originals survived.
(The Ming literati Dong Qichuan (1555 – 1636 AD) once mistakenly thought he was viewing an original Wang Wei painting.)
Monochrome landscapes
Wang is perhaps over-credited with creating the famous monochrome landscape style still popular in China today.
He likely developed (some even claim invented) the ‘broken ink’ (破墨) style of painting with quick, layered washes of ink.
This landscape style underwent great development in during the Five dynasties period (907 – 960) and by the early Song dynasty flourished to a degree not seen since.
His status as a both a great literary figure and a scholar-official meant that later scholar-officials were keen to attribute his influence over their works.
However, there is clearly truth in the fact that his landscape painting and poetry thematically overlaps.
The Song dynasty polymath Shen Kuo (1031 – 1095) once wrote of Wang Wei’s powerful use of imagery:
多不问四时,如画花往往以桃、杏、芙蓉、莲花同画一景
– Shen Kuo, ‘Dream Pool Essays’
[Wang Wei] wasn’t concerned with the season, when he painted flowers he frequently mixed peach and apricot blossoms, hibiscus and lotus, different flowers in the same painted scenes.
Elsewhere, Kuo stated that Wang even included a banana tree in a snowy setting.
Colour paintings
Wang also likely painted in colour. This makes sense, as during the Tang, blue and green landscape paintings, as well as colourful figure paintings were popular.
And Tang painters such as Han Gan regularly used colours for their paintings of figures, too.
It was only later that use of colour became associated with ‘professional’ painters and was avoided by many literati.
The distinction between professional and amateur painting
During the Tang dynasty, painting in China did not enjoy the prestige it later developed.
This later prestige was only given to painting as an amateur pursuit of scholars and scholar-officials (i.e., literati).
Professional painters were seen as part of a distinct artisan class rather than true artists like the amateur scholar officials.
Wang Wei embodied the literati ideal because of his skill as a poet (and a musician).
This gave later literati inspiration that they too could create art even without the high level of technical training and techniques of professional painters.
Wang even once remarked that in a former life he had been a painter. A comment like this signalled that he himself distinguished between the ‘lower’ class of artisans and the highly educated literati.
This line was quoted approvingly by literati many times over the centuries.
However, it does not indicate Wang was against professional painting.
In fact, after meeting the great Tang painter Han Gan (706 – 783) working in a Chang’an Wineshop, sponsored him to work in the Tang court.
Later influence as a painter
As a painter, Wang Wei would continue to influence the literati and other painters for centuries.
He is seen by many as a founding figure of Chinese literati painting.
Some even credit him with creating the distinct ink monochrome style (i.e., only tones of black and white) of Chinese landscape painting.
One early advocate for the importance of Wang’s influence on painting was the great Five Dynasties painter, Dong Yuan (d. 962).
Ming dynasty painter Dong Qichuan credited Wang with founding the ‘Southern school of painting’.
(This category is quite misleading and contradictory. However, it was used many times over the centuries, so is useful to be aware of.)
During the Qing dynasty (1644 – 1911), Wang Jian (1598 – 1677) was an admirer of Wang, too.
One day in 1656, he fell asleep and dreamed of visiting Wang Wei’s Wangchuan Villa in Lantian. In the cottage, he saw a Dong Qichuan landscape painting. (Dong was a fan of Wang Wei’s).
This inspired Wang’s painting Dreamland.
