Huang Yao and Shiyitu (The painting of Poetic Ideas)

HUANG YAO: PAINTINGS OF POETIC IDEAS (SHIYI TU)

黄尧：诗意图

By JASON C. KUO

HUANG YAO: PAINTINGS OF POETIC IDEAS (SHIYI TU)

Selections from the Huang Yao Foundation Collection

By Jason C. Kuo

We know that old style paintings are more “realistic,” while modern paintings represent “feelings,” but paintings have another very important function, that is, they can be used to educate people, so artists with an educational bent are transmitters of knowledge as it benefits people. It can be said that paintings transmit knowledge better than do speeches, as a painting speaks a thousand words.

Huang Yao

CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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NOTE ON TRANSCRIPTION

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INTRODUCTION

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WORDS AND IMAGES IN CHINESE ART AND THEIR INTERPRETATION

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HUANG YAO: PAINTINGS OF POETIC IDEAS (SHIYI TU)

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黄尧：诗意图

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PLATES

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NOTE ON THE INFORMATION ACCOMPANYING EACH PAINTING

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LIST OF POETS

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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful to Carolyn Wong and Stuart Andrew Wason of the Huang Yao Foundation for many conversations and much generosity with material and information.

Research for this book has been made possible by generous support from the University of Maryland, College Park, including a semester Research and Support Award from the Graduate School during the 2010–11 academic year and a sabbatical leave during the 2012–13 academic year.

I also wish to thank the following units for their support and contribution: the Art Gallery, the Department of Art History and Archaeology, the Center for East Asian Studies, and the Wang Fangyu Endowment for Calligraphy Education.

I also would like to thank many colleagues at the University of Maryland, especially Meredith Gill, Minglang Zhou, Robert Ramsey, Michele Mason, and Janelle Wong for their support and encouragement. The technical support of Ania Waller, Theresa Moore, and Deborah Down in the Department of Art History and Archaeology, and Quint Gregory of the Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture, part of the Department of Art History and Archaeology, is very much appreciated.

I thank Ruoyu Zhu for her research assistance; her patience, intelligence, and organizational skills are simply remarkable. I would also like to thank Raino Isto, Suzie Kim, Lindsay Dupertuis, Connie Rosemont, and Yi Zhao, students in my graduate seminars, for their stimulating conversations. Rebecca McGinnis has kindly read the manuscripts and made useful suggestions. I am very grateful to her for her insights and suggestions.

I am most grateful to Frances Klapthor, Registrar and Associate Curator of Asian Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, for her support over the years and her enthusiasm for this project.

Once again, Joel Kalvesmaki’s editorial expertise has made my job much easier.

Jason C. Kuo

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jason C. Kuo is Professor of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. He has taught at the National Taiwan University, Williams College, and Yale University. He was a Fellow at the Freer Gallery of Art, a Stoddard Fellow at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he has received grants from the J. D. Rockefeller III Fund, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Henry Luce Foundation.

He is the author of Wang Yuanqi de shanshuihua yishu [Wang Yuanqi’s art of landscape painting] (1981), Long tiandi yu xingnei [Trapping heaven and earth in the cage of form] (1986), The Austere Landscape: The Paintings of Hung-jen (1992), Yishushi yu yishu piping de tanshuo [Rethinking art history and art criticism] (1996), Art and Cultural Politics in Postwar Taiwan (2000), Yishushi yu yishu piping de shijian [Practicing art history and art criticism] (2002), Transforming Traditions in Modern Chinese Painting: Huang Pin-hung’s Late Work (2004), Chinese Ink Painting Now (2010), The Inner Landscape: The Paintings of Gao Xingjian (2013), and The Poet’s Brush: Chinese Ink Paintings by Lo Ch’ing (2016).

Kuo has curated exhibitions such as Innovation within Tradition: The Painting of Huang Pin-hung (1989), Word as Image: The Art of Chinese Seal Engraving (1992), Born of Earth and Fire: Chinese Ceramics from the Scheinman Collection (1992), Heirs to a Great Tradition: Modern Chinese Paintings from the Tsien-hsiang-chai Collection (1993), The Helen D. Ling Collection of Chinese Ceramics (1995), Double Beauty: Qing Dynasty Couplets from the Lechangzai Xuan Collection (with Peter Sturman) (2003), The Inner Landscape: The Films and Paintings of Gao Xingjian (2013), and The Poet’s Brush: Chinese Ink Paintings by Lo Ch’ing (2016).

His edited books include Discovering Chinese Painting: Dialogues with Art Historians (2006), Visual Culture in Shanghai, 1850s–1930s (2007), Perspectives on Connoisseurship of Chinese Painting (2008), Stones from Other Mountains: Chinese Painting Studies in Postwar America (2009), and Contemporary Chinese Art and Film: Theory Applied and Resisted (2013).

His writings have appeared in a broad spectrum of publications, including Art Journal, Asian Culture Quarterly, Chinese Culture Quarterly, Chinese Studies, Ming Studies, National Palace Museum Bulletin, National Palace Museum Research Quarterly, Orientations, China Quarterly, China Review International, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Asian and African Studies, and Ars Orientalis.

His essay “Beauty and Happiness: Chinese Perspectives,” based on a lecture he delivered for the Darwin College Lecture Series at Cambridge University, has just been published by Cambridge University Press (UK). He currently serves on the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and the Editorial Board of the book series Philosophy of Film, published by Brill.

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NOTE ON TRANSCRIPTION In general, the pinyin system of transcribing Chinese names and terms is used in this book. Exceptions include self-chosen names of modern Chinese scholars and artists (such as May-ching Kao and Wen C. Fong), quotations, names, and terms in titles of publications using different systems of transcription (such as the Wade-Giles system), and a few names in Southern Chinese dialects. Japanese names and terms are transcribed according to the modified Hepburn system.

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INTRODUCTION The Chinese artistic tradition carries a key concept called sanjue, “three perfections,” which refers to works of art that synthesize three separate media—poetry, calligraphy, and painting. Sanjue is one of the most fascinating aesthetic expressions in Chinese culture, because when a fine poem is inscribed in beautiful calligraphy onto a painting, the result is a complex work of art. Such artwork is called shiyi tu, “painting of poetic ideas,” which demands viewers (and readers) to traverse between the three elements, thereby enriching their aesthetic experience.

In this essay I explore aspects of shiyi tu. In the first half I begin with some general theoretical and historical issues that characterize the complex relationship between word and image in Chinese art. In the second half, I consider selected shiyi tu of Huang Yao, paying special attention to his self-reflection and his engagement with Chinese culture.

WORDS AND IMAGES IN CHINESE ART AND THEIR INTERPRETATION When first approaching a painting with a calligraphic inscription, the viewer has at least three ways to perceive it. A viewer can begin by contemplating the image and then read the inscription, incorporating the latter into the total significance of the work. Or the viewer may read the inscription first, with an awareness of the visual image, and then ponder the visual image. Or the viewer may oscillate between the two, and so arrive at the significance of the work through the dialectical interplay. There are, of course, other approaches, but in every case the viewer transposes the verbal sequence into visual signs and vice versa. Viewers cannot limit themselves to the visual aspect alone; semantic perception must also be involved.

How does the presence of written words change the significance of the visual image? As James Cahill, a prominent American scholar of Chinese art, has argued, an inscribed colophon, if it does not merely name the object depicted or record the circumstances of its creation, superimposes meanings on the object that are not inherent, eroding its simple status as a useful or beautiful thing.1 That is to say, the whole—words and images in a painting—is a work of art more complex than the sum of its parts.

As Cahill himself has noted, if we are ever to talk about the relationship between word and image, we can’t start out by repeating the cliché that paintings are soundless poems and poems are paintings in silence. In many Chinese paintings “imagistic and psychological enhancements of the picture are expressed in words” and the words “affect the viewer on a subtler level than the purely visual, and deepen his experience of the total work of art,” in the words of Jonathan Chaves.2 Words that appear on a painting may serve as a dedication; they may be a poem or lines of prose describing the painter’s inspiration. But even inscriptions that seem personal were not necessarily authored by the painters. Contemporaneous painters and poets sometimes collaborated on one work, and often a painting from centuries before was revitalized by a later 1. James Cahill, “Types of Text-Object Relationships in Chinese Art,” keynote address for the Thirty-first International Congress of Human Sciences in Asia and North Africa, September 1, 1983, Tokyo.

2. Jonathan Chaves, “Some Relationships between Poetry and Painting in China,” Renditions, no. 6 (Spring 1976): 90.

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Section Three

Section Two

Section One

Gu Kaizhi (ca. 344–ca. 406), Nymph of the Luo River. Ink and color on silk. 24.2 x 310.9 cm. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D. C.: Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1914.53 Section One

Section Two

Section Three

poet’s inscription. In some cases, too, poems would inspire new paintings upon which the poem would then be inscribed. Emperors also engaged in the practice of inscribing upon the work of others. Thus, the possible combinations of inscription types and inscription authors present questions before one has even begun to ask about the meaning of a painting that combines word and image.

Historically, words and images come together in a Chinese painting in at least three ways: 1. The poem antedates the image. An artist selects a poem or an essay written by someone else, and inscribes it wholly or partially on his or her painting.

2. The poem and image are created simultaneously. An artist composes both the painting and the poem or essay.

3. The poem postdates the image. An artist creates a painting. Another artist or writer—a contemporary or someone generations later—then adds a poem or essay to the painting or a copy of it.

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The earliest shiyi tu may be Gu Kaizhi’s (ca. 344–ca. 406) painting Nymph of the Luo River, which exemplifies the first type. It illustrates a poem written in 222 by Cao Zhi (192–232), the third son of Cao Cao (155–220). One of the best versions of the painting is now in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., generally accepted as a Song Dynasty copy (opposite).

The poem is a love story with an unhappy ending. Toward the end of the poem, the poet tells the readers, “I was rapt in thoughts on love and my longings were suffused with sadness.”3 Wen Zhengming’s (1470–1559) Spring Storm,4 now in the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, is another example of a painting intended to illustrate the lyrical beauty of a poem written centuries earlier. The poem “At Chuzhou on the Western Stream” was composed by Wei Yingwu of the Tang Dynasty; only the last two of the four lines appear in Wen’s painting: Where tender grasses rim the stream And deep boughs trill with mango-birds, On the spring flood of last night’s rain The ferryboat moves as though someone were poling.5 Why did the painter quote only the last two lines? Perhaps they held greater pictorial potential than did the first two. Most educated viewers and readers in traditional China would have known the whole poem and would have mentally supplied the first two lines when reading and viewing the work of art.

Delving into such shiyi tu requires an understanding of Chinese history, art, poetry, and even poets’ biographies and personal lives. The use of inscriptions evolved over the course of time, an evolution that corresponded to an increasingly abstract style of painting. Likewise, an individual poet-painter’s use of the word-image relationship goes through distinct stages.

Thus, in approaching the word-image relationship, a viewer who wishes to deeply understand a shiyi tu must consider a complex and intertwined set of contexts. A viewer must decide how much reality to attribute to the painting and the words. More precisely, does the poem, for example, describe an actual experience or an imaginary, possibly symbolic, experience?

Should allusions be interpreted in the context of a shared culture or do they reflect an oftentimes personal message from the inscriber?

The diverse political, philosophical, and biographical contexts of a single inscribed Chinese painting often leave significant room for subjectivity—variables that are frequently exploited by the creator. This subjective nature prompted the scholar Ch’i Kung6 to refer to the word-image relationship as a “hornet’s nest.”7 Like a hornet’s nest, the subject should be approached with care, but even the most careful examination will inevitably lead to a buzz.

Ch’i Kung’s comments refer to scholarship by Chinese, not Western, art historians. The prevalence of the topic even among native Chinese scholars may be a factor in the comparative 3. Thomas Lawton, Chinese Figure Painting (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, 1973), 21.

4. James Cahill, The Lyric Journey (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 83.

5. Witter Bynner, The Works of Witter Bynner: The Chinese Translations, edited by James Kraft (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1978).

6. Although we will use the pinyin system of transcribing Chinese names and terms in this essay, the Wade-Giles system will also be used when it appears in the quoted source in English.

7. Qi Gong, “The Relationships between Poetry, Calligraphy and Painting,” in Words and Images, edited by Alfreda Murck and Wen C. Fong (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013), 11.

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lack of attention paid to the word-image relationship by Western scholars. Another factor, more significant, is that American art historians have generally not been literate in Chinese,8 especially prior to the 1950s, making it impractical for them to include it in their research.

Western scholars could easily ignore the subject because words could not jump out at them as inscriptions in their native languages would have. In addition, given that Western painting has no equivalent tradition,9 the subject of words and images may have been consciously or subconsciously regarded as unimportant.10 However, even before Western or American scholars devoted their attention to this subject, there were many calls to “view Chinese painting as the Chinese view it.”11 This impulse led scholars to examine Chinese paintings in their entirety, including inscriptions.

As mentioned above, the mid-twentieth century saw a turning point in American scholarship on Chinese art, after which American art historians were better equipped for the study of Chinese painting. The word-image relationship was no longer invariably cast aside. At times, scholars came to highlight the word-image relationship, poetic paintings in particular, as being intrinsically worth research, including James Cahill, Jerome Silbergeld, and Wen Fong. In their writings, the word-image relationship is examined from various angles. The discussions focus on a range of periods and a number of different painters, poets, and painter-poets.

Even within this diverse body of scholarship, a number of common themes can be identified, such as how represented, unrepresented, representable, and unrepresentable elements of inscriptions do or do not appear in paintings, and vice versa:12 1. Represented: elements that are found in both the words of an inscription and the visual details of the painting.

2. Unrepresented: elements found in one—the painting or the inscription—but not both.

8. The 1950s marked a defining shift in Western Chinese art historical scholarship. My conversations with American art historians acknowledge this point, and various figures in the field comment on their perception of this pivotal point. James Cahill discusses the state of the field at the time he first entered it. He says, “The field was being dominated by people like Laufer, who was an anthropologist and ethnologist who also wrote about certain aspects of Chinese art, of course, and people like Pelliot himself who would occasionally venture into the field of art. This was considered to be the respectable way to do it. In other words, art history was something that people whose main field was something else did not in their spare time exactly, but sort of moved over into.… I have said recently that in the early phase of our studies we were so pleased at being able to read Chinese, and translate and use Chinese texts and use Chinese reference books, that we tended to write and think as though the ultimate truth was there in the text, if only we could dig it out and somehow apply it to the paintings–as though all the wisdom were somehow there in the ancient Chinese texts. Indeed we learned an enormous amount from them…. This idea of applying Chinese critical ideas to surviving works of art was very attractive and very good. Today…I would argue in the other direction, that maybe the time has come to be a bit more critical of Chinese ideas, to realize that they are limited historically, that they have their own contexts and the people who espouse them or express them have their own reasons for doing so: it’s not something that happens purely in a vacuum. And that we should not take them as the final truth, in other words.” See Jason Kuo, Discovering Chinese Painting (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 2000).

9. In his book The Three Perfections, Michael Sullivan notes, “It is hard to conceive of a Western parallel [to the inscriptions on Chinese painting]—of a note written by Berenson in the corner of a Botticelli tondo being thought to add much to its value.” Michael Sullivan, The Three Perfections: Chinese Painting, Poetry and Calligraphy (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1980), 20.

10. The book Words and Images includes an article by Arthur H. Plaks, who, based on his own background in literature, reinterprets the notion of a word-image relationship. Plaks proposes that Chinese literature and art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were essentially generated by the same group of literati. Moreover, he observes parallels between the phases that art and literature underwent at this time. He concludes that his literature specialization provides him a basis for discussing painting.

11. For example, Chiang Yee’s book title, The Chinese Eye. 12. The themes examined here are four of many that could be mentioned, including, briefly: 1. Personalization, or the scholar’s approach to the relationship between painting, inscription, and the painter’s biographical information.

2, Historicity, or how deeply the work represents actual events or symbols that are significant only within the context of the painter, poet, or painter-poet’s era.

3. Art about art, or the scholar’s discussion of messages about art—how to produce a good painting, what it should convey or include, how it conveys its message—within the painting itself and the inscription.

4. Chronology, or how to interpret the work of art if the poem preceded the painting or vice versa, and whether this shows that one dominates the other or not.

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3. Representable: elements in either the painting or the inscription that have the potential to be represented in the other.

4. Unrepresentable: elements that occur in either the poem or the painting that could not have been represented in the other.

Handling these categories, scholars reveal their personal attitudes toward the representational boundaries and expressive ability of the word-image relationship.13 Some scholars interpret intuitively unrepresentable elements as having been represented. Their observations of the represented elements are not necessarily obvious, and at times are arguably not represented in the painting. Sometimes scholars determine whether the poem and the painting predominantly run parallel to one another or fill out the details not represented in the other. This theme is often associated with the notion of painting as “silent poetry.”

To understand the scholarship in this area, we must first discuss the context of integrated words and images. James Cahill offers a backdrop for this conversation: The idea that poetry and painting can be virtually interchangeable in their content arises in the eleventh century among well-known Northern Song literati, principally Su Shi and his circle, and is projected back onto the Tang, with Du Fu given prominence among poets and Wang Wei among painters of that period. Su Shi writes, “Painters since ancient times have not been common fellows. Their marvellous thoughts really have the same origin as poetry” and of the early Song landscapist Yan Su: “He has taken leave of the standards and measures of painter-craftsmen and attained to the purity and beauty of poets.” Poetry and painting are seen as competing for subtlety of effect…. While his contemporary aristocrat-painter Wang Shen is praised for depicting “the kind of scenery that poets and literary men would find it hard to give form to,” contemporary painters are praised as being like poets. Huang Tingjian writes of his friend Li Gonglin, “Li had verses but would not utter them; with light ink he brought forth a soundless poem,” and Li himself makes the often-quoted statement, “I make paintings as a poet composes poems, simply to recite my feelings and nature.” Most important, certain paintings from the past are appreciated as visual poetry.14 The great art historian Michael Sullivan has similarly observed, “while [scholars’] art became increasingly abstract and conventionalized, a vehicle to express their ideas rather than to record visual experience… the inscription inevitably became an important—even essential— part of the total work of art.”15 Sullivan goes on to quote Shitao (1642–1707), who notes that poetic inscriptions can bring out “the spirit of the life in the pictures.”16 The American scholar Jonathan Chaves argues that Chinese painting, through a combination of word and images, can be expressive not only within the boundaries of the visual but outside it as well; in other words, a painting can potentially depict a scene, because a visual 13. The aesthetic contribution of calligraphy to Chinese painting will not be focused on; the objective is to examine the scholars’ analysis of the poetry in terms of its semantic content and, in some cases, the patterns created by the words themselves.

14. Cahill, The Lyric Journey, 8-9.

15. Sullivan, The Three Perfections, 46.

16. Ibid.

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reality is replaced by a visual representation; however, Chaves brings out the other senses that are accessible to the painter-poet in creating an experience for the viewer-reader. His discussion centers around a lineage of paintings and poems that prompted painters and poets to create “generations” of words and images spawned by one original seed of inspiration—Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers by Fan Yunli—that in turn inspired poems that inspired paintings that inspired poems and so on. Chaves traces this single inspiration that can take on the form of both word and image, while losing and gaining elements with each incarnation, a lineage that is itself a microcosm of the living Chinese painting tradition.

Chaves refers to a poem from the aforementioned series by Fan Yunlin and characterizes the poem as “expanding upon the total experiential world of the work with visual images that the painter does not depict, although he might certainly have chosen to do so….”17 Chaves is referring to the “Silver Toad” and a flock of magpies that are referred to in the poem, but not depicted in the painting.18 He highlights the liberty the poet took in adding visual—depictable—elements to the work. Chaves uses this as evidence for a number of “logical disconnects” in the painting.

He goes on to point out another aspect described in Fan Yunlin’s words but not represented in the painting: color. Fan’s “shimmering blue-green”19 mountains are shades of gray in the painting. However, Chaves describes Fan Yunlin as having “word painted” into the mountains.

Clearly Chaves views paintings as malleable based on the words that accompany them. Here he has suggested that a poet can essentially “reach into” a painting with his words and add color by suggesting it in a poem.

A twelfth-century critic, Deng Chun, is mentioned by Chaves as having disapproved of this work. Deng “ridiculed the title” of the poem “as a theme for painting on the grounds that painting could hardly strive to capture sound, an effort that should be left, by implication, to the art of poetry.”20 Chaves evidently disagrees with this rigid interpretation of a poetic painting’s expressive ability. He proceeds to point out the “unusual bar of mist”21 that spans the center of the painting. This mist, he tells us, “conjures up a deep resonance pervading the evening air.” Here the scholar has suggested that the painting is not only able to represent what the eye can detect but has used a visual element to convey sonic experience.

Chaves elaborates on this expressive ability of words and images to combine or overlap senses to produce synaesthesia. He mentions the poem “Pavilion for Listening to Fragrance” by Zhang Yu (1333–1385) and suggests that this work provides “a kind of sensory overlap between words and pictorial imagery from which arises a unitary experiential world, to the evocation of which both poem and painting contribute.”22 This attests to Chaves’s view that poetic paintings can depict an experience that is not even possible to experience, making it, in a sense, even richer than reality.

In discussing the discrepancies between what is depicted in images and what is inscribed, 17. Chaves, Johnathan. “Reading the Painting: Levels of Poetic Meaning in Chinese Pictorial Art.” Asian Art 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1987): 15.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid, 15.

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Chaves displays his willingness to make controversial observations and to expect unexpected—and even counterintuitive—elements to be produced by words and images.23 In his article “Poems on Paintings: Su Shih and Huang T’ing-chien,” the American sinologist Ronald Egan examines the works of mid-eleventh century contemporaries Su Shi (also known as Su Dongpo, 1036–1101) and Huang Tingjian (1045–1107), comparing their poems to several by the Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu (712–770) “to illustrate… chronological contrast.” Du Fu’s poem “Song of a Horse Painting by General Cao,” Seen in the House of Recorder Wei Feng was written to praise the general content of the title but also explores the theme of horses as the earthly incarnation of divine dragons. Egan describes the poet as not “constrained to limit his attention strictly to the painting itself.”24 Du Fu includes autobiographical information, and even discusses the painting’s owner. Egan says these diverse elements are “bound together by the relevance each has to the painting” and of the “exalted tone” with which the poet approaches them. He points out the word-image discrepancies but then emphasizes how their commonalities create meaning. In Egan’s view, the painting-poem combination has allowed the viewer to explore a complex set of relationships within history (actual people), art (painted horses), and the realia of the art (real horses). In short, Egan’s interpretation of the work invites the viewer to transcend reality and the painting world as one intermingled presentation. He reveals what he views as the potential of painting to associate the dissociated and incorporate the viewer as the pivot point between reality and the painting world.

In another discussion, Egan traces the stages the viewer faces in attempting to understand the Huang Tingjian poem inscribed on a painting by horse-painter Wei Yan. After fully grasping that the poem is not actually about the painting, the viewer then concludes that the work is in fact about the poem-painting relationship. Egan goes on to assert that Huang’s poem “shows that in Huang’s eyes the painting is encrusted with layers of literary and artistic associations.

Huang does not look at the painted horses and think, as Du Fu does, about real horses. Huang looks at the painted horses and thinks about their place in certain artistic traditions.”25 Thus Egan suggests that the poem and painting provide a set of meanings that are highly individual, a window into the poet’s psyche. For Egan, this poem has taken on levels of meaning, at the pinnacle of which is the thought process of the poet himself. In this second example, by examining the differences between what is represented by word and image, Egan identifies how each element relates to the work, both the overt connections and the unexpected roles. In his view each element is at least in part represented through words and images. Egan argues for a multilayered interpretation of the poems to lead a viewer through levels of meaning.

The art historian Wen Fong’s contribution to the book Words and Images provides an interpretation of a poetic painting as revealing not grandeur or morals but rather humour.

Fong describes the Shitao painting In Search of Plum Blossoms (next page), which portrays a figure—meant to be the painter himself—“striding up a mountain path…with a branch of newly opened blossoms held close to his nose.” The painting’s inscription is a five-word poem, which could be translated, “Fragrance comes from plum blossoms.” However, a more literal interpretation would be, “Fragrance located plum blossoms above,”26 which allows the viewer to interpret the figure of the artist himself as the “fragrance.”

23. Ibid, 16.

24. Ronald Egan, “Poems on Paintings: Su-Shih and Huang T’ing-chien,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43, no. 2 (1983): 418.

25. Ibid., 419.

26. Wen Fong, “Words and Images in the Late Ming and Early Ch’ing Painting,” in Words and Images, 510.

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Fong has chosen a plain and direct explanation for a humorous composition, demonstrating more than the art form’s aim and its potential to always “reach outward” as Cahill, for example, emphasizes.

In Fong’s view, the artist has been able to create a light, yet creative, meaning by playing with the elements of the painting to reinterpret the poem, and so cast it in new light—another uniquely expressive power of the word-image combination.

The art historian Jerome Silbergeld, in one of his discussions of the word-image relationship, focuses on the works of a single poet-painter, Gong Xian (Kung Hsien), whose paintings are related to the Mongolian takeover of China.27 As a Han Chinese, Gong Xian was deeply disturbed by the rule of an alien dynasty in his homeland. Silbergeld argues that Gong Xian viewed the visual aspect of Shitao (1642–1707), In Search of Plum Blossoms, the painting as dominant and the poem as an dated 1673. Album Leaf. Collection unknown (from accessory and a tool for clarification of mesXie Zhihliu, ed., Shih-t’ao hua-chi [Shanghai: Jen-min sage. Silbergeld proposes an interpretation mei-shu, 1960], pl. 39) of Gong Xian’s “Uncultivated Willows in Early Winter.” “‘Outwardly bland,’ and perhaps even, ‘ugly,’ are descriptions that might characterize this grove of willows,” says Silbergeld. The corresponding poem, which describes a “world gone corrupt” (a symbol of China under the Mongols), points to the theme of the work, “the recurring hardship of Chinese politics.” Silbergeld elaborates, “the conditions are now as harsh as the soil of this landscape.” This is further indicated by the season, early winter we are told, with the implication that the harshest cold is yet to come.28 As for the word-image relationship, Silbergeld asserts that the inscription and visual content of this painting overlap: the harshness that the poem describes is carried over into the mood of the painting. Silbergeld does not suggest that Gong Xian’s painting transports the viewer. Rather, he points to how it confronts the viewer with a scene that in itself is not naturalistic but still represents the oppressive reality of China’s rule by an alien dynasty.

In his discussion of an album leaf landscape depicting another oppressive landscape, Silbergeld treats recurring symbols as important for the interpretation. He suggests that a small structure in the painting represents the “home of an immortal” or “a frontier pass,” two concepts that Gong Xian often refers to in his paintings and inscriptions.29 Silbergeld sees the structure, however it is interpreted, as a sign that “we have traversed far from the ordinary world, bringing us to the outer frontiers of the society.”30 Silbergeld describes “barren trees, lonely pavilions, and empty boats and houses” as “the recurrent symbols of Gong

27. Jerome Silbergeld, “The Political Landscapes of Kung Hsien in Painting and Poetry,” Journal of the Institute of Chinese Studies 8, no. 2 (December 1976): 561–74.

28. Ibid., 567.

29. Ibid., 570.

30. Ibid.

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Xian’s political landscapes.”31 He proceeds to note, “Their recurrence alone is enough to speak of the artist’s intent; were it not enough, his poems are available to help us explicate his vision.”32 Silbergeld also details the meaningful discrepancy between what is represented in words and images.

He points out that the poem has “envisioned”33 flocks of ducks and gulls flying in the sky, while the painting has left this unrepresented, a symbol of the scholars who are no longer in public view. In a further example, Silbergeld observes, “Where we see a simple frontier pass [Kung Hsien] sees a decaying monument…the image of an unguarded nation, its solemn monuments and rituals no longer preserved.”34 Silbergeld reinforces his argument by saying, “To the uninitiated, these poems act as a guide; to the initiated, the paintings offer their own clear message.”35 Silbergeld interprets the inscriptions in Gong Xian’s paintings as being ambivalent: able to present a clear message to the uninitiated viewer, but revealing to more accomplished viewers aspects that can be appreciated only by thoughtfully synthesizing words and images.

The inscription-image relationship in the work of a recluse Chan (Zen) Buddhist painter-poet of the Qing Dynasty, Kuncan, has been explored by James Cahill.36 In his analysis of the work Wooded Mountains at Dusk (right), Kuncan (1612–1673), Wooded Mountains at Dusk.

Hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, 125.7 x 61 a poetic landscape painting, the scholar has cm. Bequest of John M. Crawford Jr., 1988, accession highlighted the word-image discrepancies as number: 1989.363.129 crucial for establishing the meaning of the work. He draws attention to two inconsistencies between what Kuncan has painted and what he has articulated in the corresponding inscription. First, Cahill observes, Kuncan has referred to a traditional Buddhist saying that recommends reading many books and walking many miles in order to obtain enlightenment. As Cahill points out, though, “the two parts of this formula do not seem equally applied to his own practice.” The artist has not depicted a “bookish”37 scene.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid., 570–571.

33. Ibid., 571.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. James Cahill, “K’un-ts’an and His Inscriptions,” in Words and Images, 516.

37. Ibid.

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Second, “The experience of walking many miles, on the other hand, is the very theme of many of his inscriptions and paintings, signifying a close engagement with the physical world.”38 Cahill goes on to explain that the artist has gone against convention not simply to “free himself”39 of it, but to reinterpret it. The scholar sees the artist as having used this antithesis of sorts to illustrate a “private version of the old theme of ideal involvement with nature as a source of spiritual strength and stability.”40 Thus Cahill interprets this inscribed painting as manipulating convention by drawing the viewer’s attention to the “missing pieces.”

Cahill moves to a discussion of the artist’s work during a later period. He generalizes it as having been inscribed with “quasi-narrative character, with a first person subject understood… [the inscriptions] seem to concentrate on experiences that paintings cannot render—sounds, sensations of warmth and cold, dreams and idle fancies, phenomena of change—as well as on the rich colours that he perceives but chooses not to reproduce in his paintings.”41 Cahill has two areas in common with Chaves. He displays a critical attitude toward words and images, and he focuses on what could and could not be represented by the media (i.e., what can be detected visually is painted, and abstractions that cannot literally be visually detected are considered unrepresentable). Cahill does not suggest, as Chaves does, that words add color without having been literally applied to the painting. He also more easily categorizes some concepts as being impossible to represent visually, while Chaves boldly proposes that nonvisual sensory images, while not easily depicted outright, can be hinted at. Cahill seems to see no such suggestions within Kuncan’s work.

Cahill proceeds to point out, “The imagery of the inscriptions corresponds at only a few points to that of the paintings; the paintings can never be read simply as illustrations to the poems or the poems as simply descriptive of the paintings.”42 Cahill sees Kuncan’s work as having elements that are integrated, not parallel. This is an example of Cahill’s disagreement with the notion of “silent poetry,” a notion that he regards as being unable to account for the complex inscription-painting relationship.

Cahill’s boldest assertion in the article provides a deeper, more personal, and more innovative analysis. He interprets the relationship between word and image more skeptically, focusing not on the meanings of the words themselves but on their poetic pattern. He observes “a constant alternation of lines and couplets describing outer phenomena, as perceived through his senses, with others reporting subjective experience and introspection, an in-and-out shifting of focus that is, of course, common enough in Chinese poetry, but that here suggests a Zenlike fusion of outer and inner” that, Cahill also suggests, Kuncan also attempts to express in his painting. Cahill sums up the passage by concluding that the correspondence between word and image possesses a subtle parallel, observable to the careful viewer-reader: 38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid., 516.

41. Cahill cites examples of the “unrepresentable” that appear in the poetic inscriptions on Kuncan’s paintings. He notes the following: “In a poem inscribed on a landscape dated to the fourth month of 1660, now in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, he writes of living alone by a blue cliff with groves of green pines; of a spring breeze and a calm sea, with no howling of dragons; of dreaming of visiting his friend and walking barefoot on mossy stones; of being awakened by a gusty wind, to return home by moonlight…. The inscription on a landscape from the autumn of the same year, 1660, The Dwelling of the Immortals, speaks of autumn mountains tranquil like the dwellings of immortals and of red-leafed trees in cold weather awaiting the coming of crows. Boats homeward-bound in evening are reflected in the lake; when he rolls up his window blinds, the artist sees the red of sunset in the autumn wind. He refers to a “lofty-minded man,” presumably the recipient of the painting, and expresses his hope to see him again next year, when spring comes.” Cahill, Words and Images, 518.

42. Ibid.

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If successful, [poetry] draws us out of our ordinary lives even when its content is ordinary life, by presenting imagery and events as belonging to the poet’s lyrical experience and charging them with feelings, frequently a kind of nostalgia as they arouse in us flashes of recognition of our own past experiences. And it is exactly when painting in China acquires a corresponding capacity to arouse deep and intense feelings with simple imagery that the idea and the practice of poetic painting appear.43 In his discussion of Kuncan’s Mountain Dwelling Amidst Clouds (right), Cahill once again emphasizes the differences between word and image. Of Kuncan’s paintings, he notes, “[they] convey visual impressions beyond the descriptive and evocative power of words.”44 Cahill explains his own perception of Kuncan’s paintings and poems as “transcending the limits of what can be lucidly stated or even poetically suggested, in an attempt to stretch the limits of communication of thought and feeling…[his paintings]…seem to be straining to incorporate somehow in their imagery what paintings properly cannot depict—change, process, erosion, the interpenetration of matter and atmosphere—to represent, that is, the unrepresentable.”45 These comments reveal that Cahill is not emphasizing boundaries but rather indicating that the goals of the painter are simply to reach the highest degree of artistic expression. Furthermore, any limitations to expression come from the medium, not the artist. Implicitly, though, in Cahill’s understanding, the viewer must mentally connect the loose ends left by the “straining” painter. Thus these expressive limitations do not obfuscate but rather engage the experiencer.

In his book The Three Perfections, Michael Sullivan offers a broad look at, in his words, “what, and why, the Chinese write on their paintings.”46 Within this introductory-style essay, Sullivan discusses the work of Tang Dynasty poet-painter Wang Wei. In discussing Wang Wei’s series of paintings and poems depicting his country estate, Sullivan claims that it is impossible to tell whether the painting inspired the poem, 43. Cahill, The Lyric Journey, 7–8.

44. Cahill, Words and Images, 520.

Kuncan (1612-1673). Mountain Dwelling Amidst Clouds, dated 1660. Hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, 118.5 x 40 cm. Xubaizhai—Lok Chuck–tiew collection, Hong Kong

45. Ibid., 522.

46. Sullivan, The Three Perfections, 5.

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or vice versa—or whether in either case inspiration was drawn directly from the physical place.47 Sullivan observes a balance between the message in the words and that in the images. He describes an integration that in turn allows for a deepened and more complete meaning as words and images harmoniously interlock.

Sullivan goes on to quote eighteenth-century critic Shen Zongqian, who wrote, “Both poetry and painting are scholars’ occupations which help to express human moods and feelings. Therefore what can be a subject of poetry can also be a subject of painting, and what is vulgar in painting is like bad verse.”48 Once again Sullivan emphasizes that the two components of a poem-inscribed painting come together to convey one message. As suggested by the quote, words and images are essentially two languages of expression that are mutually translatable.

Although other scholars have treated poems and paintings as two vehicles for the same destination, Sullivan repeatedly seeks out evidence for their unity, expressions of the same message seen for example in his quotation from a Song poet: The writings of Shao Ling [Du Fu] are paintings without forms; The paintings of Han Gan are poems without words.49 In his discussion of Gong Xian’s Mountains in Mist (right), Sullivan insightfully notes that the painting has already produced precisely the message of the inscription. He explains Gong Xian’s “reiteration” of this idea: “If the inscription is not simply a conventional expression of orthodox ideas, it must be seen Gong Xian (1618–1715). Mountains in Mist, as a means of understanding the subtle relationship dated 1689. Hanging Scroll, ink and slight color on silk, 98.6 x 54.4 cm. Honolulu Museum that exists between the viewer, the painter, and the of Art, Purchase, 1957 (2295.1) models that inspired him—three widely separate moments in time brought together in a work of art that transcends time, and bears eternal witness to the Chinese painter’s duty to uphold the tradition at the same time as he renews and transforms it.”50 Thus, Sullivan has identified another aspect within the reaches of Chinese painting’s expressive power. Words and images allow a painting to make a statement 47. Ibid., 17.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid, 36.

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within the realm of tradition and to expand upon it. This expansion, while contributing fresh elements to the art form, upholds the original purpose of the art. Continuity and evolution are integrated into inscribed paintings, both in the works themselves and in their messages, which at times point back to art rather than, or in addition to, more universal themes.

The six scholarly perspectives discussed above show that the art of Chinese painting, at least in terms of the word-image relationship, cannot be neatly generalized or expressed as a formula. The scholars’ differing interpretations reveal common approaches to the analysis of the art form of shiyi tu, and also reveal each art historian’s personal style and overall perspective on the art of painting. The interpretations focus on individual works to make broad statements about Chinese poetic painting. The juxtaposition of all six voices creates a rich and mosaic-like view of the art form. The word-image relationship provides a narrower lens through which to view and contrast American art historians from their Chinese counterparts.

The former, influenced by Western teachings, sometimes aiming to “think like the Chinese” and sometimes attempting to shed new and foreign light on the subject, have brought fresh criticism to the field of Chinese poetic painting.

HUANG YAO: PAINTINGS OF POETIC IDEAS (SHIYI TU) Huang Yao was very aware of the tradition of integrating words and images in Chinese art.

In many of his published writings, now collected in Moyuan suibi (Kuala Lumpur, 2000), he often wrote about his intentions. He clearly knew what is representable and unrepresentable when one tries to do a painting based on a text. He once wrote about including in a painting things not mentioned in the inscription from Li Bai’s “Preface for the Poetry from a Spring Evening Party for My Cousins in a Peach Blossom Garden” (page 125). On the other hand, he knew it is not always possible, or necessary, to represent in a painting what is included in a text. For instance, in a painting in the Huang Yao Foundation in which he transcribed Li Bai’s poem “Coming down from Zhongnan Mountain” (next page), the whole painting is taken up by the poem; only in a small space do we see a small figure, presumably an imaginative portrait of Li Bai:51 Down the blue mountain in the evening, Moonlight was my homeward escort.

Looking back, I saw my path Lie in levels of deep shadow…

I was passing the farm-house of a friend, When his children called from a gate of thorn And led me twining trough jade bamboos Where green vines caught and held my clothes.

And I was glad of a chance to rest And glad of a chance to drink with my friend…

We sang to the tune of the wind in the pines; And we finished our songs as the stars went down, When, I being drunk and my friend more than happy, Between us we forgot the world.52 51. Moyuan suibi (Kuala Lumpur, 2000), 124–25.

52. Kraft, The Works of Witter Bynner, 111.

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Many elements in the Li Bai poem are clearly unrepresentable and therefore not represented.

Huang Yao chose, it seems, to focus on the last two lines and the speaker, thus emphasizing Li Bai. Such examples lead me to offer several other observations gleaned from a survey of Huang Yao’s shiyi tu: 1. The main figure, almost always an old man, is Huang Yao’s self-portrait, or at least can be interpreted as such; 2. Huang Yao must have selected the poems, by famous, major poets and by less known, minor poets, to express himself, directly or indirectly; 3. Each painting is a re-creation or interpretation of these poems.

We should extend the meaning of “poetry” to include other texts such as essays and philosophical treatises, to broaden our understanding of Huang Yao’s outlook on life. Let us begin with his transcriptions or quotations from Tao Qian (635–427). Huang Yao’s painting based on Tao Qian’s essay “Peach Blossom Spring” (page 211) suggests Huang Yao’s utopian aspiration. This essay is actually a preface to a poem on the same theme and should therefore be viewed with the poem in mind in order to appreciate the richness of the theme.

In his painting based on Tao Qian’s “The Return” (page 213), he expresses the desire to give up the mundane world and return to a truer, more authentic and genuine way of life.

A third poem, quoted in at least two of Huang Yao’s paintings, is “On Reading the Shan Hai Ching (Mountain and Sea Classic)” (page 215). In many ways, these two quotations set the tone for many of Huang Yao’s paintings and his overview of how to live.

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The way Huang Yao quotes Tao Qian resembles how the Song poet-calligrapher-painter Su Shi transforms Tao Qian into his own written poetry. As Zhiyi Yang argued quite convincingly in a recent article: Su understood the aesthetic features of Tao’s poetry as having an ethical dimension. Through emulation of Tao Qian, Su Shi reinterpreted his exile to be a result of his natural inclinations, just like Tao’s reclusion, and even as a felicitous condition for his “return” to an original state of authenticity and spontaneity. By assuming certain agency for his suffering, Su Shi claimed control over his fate and reasserted his freedom of choice. Meanwhile, his poetry betrays a sense of anxiety and dislocation in his natural and cultural habitats, as well as alienation from the political centre. As a result, he reimagined Tao Qian’s “Peach Blossom Spring” to be an inner utopia. His return into this inner realm was further informed by Daoist alchemical practices and contained esoteric features.53 Of the Tang Dynasty poets Huang Yao quotes in his paintings, Bai Juyi is perhaps most central in Huang Yao’s reflections on life. For example, in quoting Bai Juyi’s poem “The Mountain Pheasant” (page 49), Huang Yao must have been thinking, like Bai Juyi, about the bird which lived unfettered and in natural harmony. “Better it is,” he seems to say, “to be poor and free than to be well fed but marked for slaughter in the world of master and mastered.”

Many of Huang Yao’s paintings are based on the poems and a wonderful essay by Li Bai, one of the most flamboyant poets in Chinese literary history. Let us begin with the essay “Preface for the Poetry from a Spring Evening Party for My Cousins in a Peach Blossom Garden” (page 125): “This Heaven and Earth are the hostel for Creation’s ten thousand forms, where light and darkness have passed as guests for a hundred ages. But our floating lives are like a dream; how many moments do we have for joy?” Clearly the fleetingness of life must have been on Huang Yao’s mind.

Several of Li Bai’s poems are quoted more than once. For instance, “Song of Mount Lu: To Censor Lu Xuzhou” is inscribed on at least three paintings by Huang Yao (pages 103, 105, and 107).

The metaphor of the boat as a vehicle for freedom in life in this long and complex poem by Li Bai also appears in a poem quoted by Huang Yao (page 132): If we despair of all human affairs Let us roam in a boat with loosened hairs!

Although both Du Fu and Wang Wei are quoted by Huang Yao less often than are Bai Juyi and Li Bai, Huang Yao’s selection of poems indicates his general taste. For instance, from Du Fu, we have “Gazing on the Great Peak,” in which the poet ends his meditation after a journey to the Tai Mountain in Shandong: “The time will come when I pass up to its very summit, and see in one encompassing vision how tiny all other mountains are” (page 69). This poem was also transcribed on a work in which the calligraphy is the primary focus while the painting is somewhat secondary; at the same time, we see a scholar with a walking staff at the lower left-hand corner, perhaps Huang Yao himself, looking at the mountain landscape.

53. Yang Zhiyi, “Return to an Inner Utopia: Su Shi’s Transformation of Tao Qian in His Exile Poetry,” T’oung Pao 99 (2013): 329–378, at 329.

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But it is in two other Du Fu poems quoted by Huang Yao that we have the closest examples of Huang Yao’s identification with the great Tang Dynasty poet, whose poems give us a picture of not only his personal sufferings, exile, and falls from grace but also the sufferings of the Chinese people in a turbulent time.

The first is “Nocturnal Reflections While Traveling”: Du Fu compares himself to “A gull between heaven and earth hovering!” (page 61).

The second is “River Kiosk”: “Waters rush and eddy—in heart no strife; Clouds drift slowly— thoughts drift with them.” (page 67).

From Wang Wei (701–761), the great poet-painter, Huang Yao quotes several meditative poems, for example “Hut among the Bamboos,” which appears at least twice. In the first example, Huang Yao transcribed the whole poem in a highly graphic script (wenzi hua) (page 221) similar to that of the second painting based on Du Fu’s poem cited above. Then we see a lone seated scholar playing the Chinese zither (qin) in the lower left corner. Again, the figure can be identified as either Wang Wei or Huang Yao himself. In the second example (below left; also see page 223), the figure is much more prominent. The fact that Huang Yao painted repeatedly after the same poem

by Wang Wei or other poets seems to indicate that he liked very much a particular poem and that he may have intended to identify himself with the figure mentioned or implied in the poem. In this way, it is fair to say his paintings of poetic ideas are highly self-expressive.

The second poem by Wang Wei quoted in Huang Yao’s painting is the famous “The Wei-ch’eng Song”; (below right; also see page 225) it contains a celebrated couplet memorized and recited by almost every student in China: Have yet another drink, west of Yang-kuan There will be no more trace of bosom friends.

Perhaps the most meditative poem by Wang Wei cited by Huang Yao is “The Deer Enclosure” (pages 227 and 229): I see no one in mountains deep

But hear a voice in the ravine.

Through the dense wood the sunbeams peep peep

And are reflect'd on the mosses green.

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This poem is the theme of a fascinating book Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger and Octavio Paz, in which nineteen different Western-language translations of the poem are gathered and compared. It is fair to say that Huang Yao’s second painting can be regarded as an interpretation of this profound poem: a lone scholar is seated on a rock, seemingly looking at the poem transcribed at the upper right corner of the pictorial space; many elements in the poem are not depicted.

Another Wang Wei poem appearing in one of Huang Yao’s paintings deals with the theme of farewell (page 231) in this couplet:

Unheeded by the world, home you’ll make your way To lie down at Zhongnan Mountain’s foot, you say.

Perhaps, when Huang Yao was reading and transcribing the poems by these great Tang Dynasty poets (Bai Juyi, Du Fu, Li Bai, and Wang Wei), he was keenly aware of the endless frustration in life encountered and expressed by them.

A partial list of other Tang Dynasty poets quoted in Huang Yao’s paintings reveals his wide range of interests; both well-known poets and obscure poets are represented: Bai Juyi Chang Jian Cen Shen Dai Shulun Hanshan Huineng Jia Dao Li Bai Li Pin

Li Qi Li Shangyin Liu Changqing Liu Jia Liu Zongyuan Liu Yuxi Lu Yan (Lu Dongbin) Meng Haoran Meng Jiao

Pei Di Qiwu Qian Shide Song Zhiwen Su Ting Taishang Yinzhe Wang Wei Wang Zhihuan Wei Yingwu

Xue Ying Yuan Jie Yuan Zhen Zhang Hu Zhang Xu Zhang Jiuling Zhang Ruoxu Zhu Fang

I mentioned earlier that the quotations chosen by Huang Yao could be regarded as vehicles of his self-expression. An excellent example would be three paintings based on a long poem by Li Qi titled “On Listening to Dong the Elder Playing ‘Air on Tartar Reed Pipe’ on the Zither—Sent to Supervising Secretary Fang.”

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In the first painting, Huang Yao quotes (previous page below left; also see page 137): In the empty hills flocks of birds scatter, then come together again; Over thousands of miles the floating clouds are in shadow, then in the light.

The second painting is inscribed with the following equally picturesque lines (previous page below center; also see page 139): Bursts of water splash and sweep across the tops of trees, And wild deer bark and bellow as they pass below the hall.

And the very last lines from the poem inspire the third painting (previous page below right; also see page 141): There a highly talented man, dismissive of fame and profit, Is hoping day and night to see you, carrying in your zither.

I think these three paintings, and the deliberately chosen quotes, clearly illustrate the self-expressive nature of Huang Yao’s shiyi tu. One of the challenges for present-day viewers, of course, is to become familiar with the original poem in its entirety and the contexts of the quoted lines.

Although the Tang Dynasty can indeed be regarded as the golden age of Chinese poetry, many critics have unjustifiably neglected the poetry of the Song Dynasty. There has been, however, a great deal of re-evaluation and revival of Song Dynasty poetry after the Qing Dynasty. During the early Republican period, there was a “modern archaic” movement in poetry in which the artistry of Song Dynasty poetry was studied and emulated by many talented intellectuals.

One of the best-known Song poets quoted by Huang Yao is Su Shi. An example uses one of the most famous poems in the Chinese tradition. Echoing Zhuangzi’s scepticism about the objectivity of beauty, Su Dongpo notes, in a poem about the beautiful and scenic Mountain Lu (page 195), the partial condition of our perception, pointing out that one must be content with the immediate awareness of the present moment, of what is—not of what was or will be: From one side the mountain looks rounded; From another it is pointed.

Far, near, high, low—no view is the same.

One cannot know the true face of the Lu Mountain; Only because one is in the mountain.

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Other Huang Yao paintings quoting Su Dongpo’s poems range from the lyrical to the philosophical. These poems include: “The Fisherman IV” (below upper left; also see page 191) “Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea” (below upper right; also see page 193) “The End of the Year” (below lower left; also see page 197) “Impromptu Verse Written in Exile” (below lower right; also see page 203)

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Other Song Dynasty poets quoted by Huang Yao include: Cheng Hao Fan Chengda Lu Meipo

Lu You Ouyang Xiu Wang Anshi

Yang Wanli Zhu Fang Zhu Xi

In addition to poems by well-known or obscure figures from Chinese history, Huang Yao also often alluded to philosophical or religious classics such as the Daodejing, which he quotes concerning the great virtue of water. In several paintings, some with the inscribed title “Dream of the Butterfly,” Huang Yao refers to one of the best-known passages from the Daoist classic Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu) about the butterfly’s dream: (below center; also see page 267) Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuang Zhou.

Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

The passage about the butterfly’s dream exemplifies the Daoist belief in the subjectivity of happiness and beauty; I am sure Huang Yao must have been very sympathetic to this view, judging from the many times the poem was quoted in his paintings.

It is clear that, as a whole, Huang Yao’s paintings, based on either poems or other classical literary, religious, and philosophical texts, are his homage to the grand tradition of Chinese culture and his highly personal expression of who he was or wanted to be. By the time he created these paintings, these poems and texts had become an integral part of the subconscious of educated persons in Chinese culture. At the same time, his choices of poems and texts to quote and transcribe to accompany his paintings embody his own sense of how best to live in a time of tremendous turbulence and in a place that is far from China.

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黄尧：诗意图 黄尧是（1917–1987）一位多彩多姿的艺 术家与教育家。早年以牛鼻子笔名所作的 漫画相当著名。后来移居南洋，除了推广 中国文化教育，也在中国书画方面继续作 了不少的探索。在他现存的作品里有多数 的作品可以归类为「诗意图」。本书可分 为两部份。第一部份对于「诗意图」及诗 书画三绝的现象作了简单的历史及理论上 的介绍。第二部份则即企图对于这类作品 加以介绍及分析，并选出黄尧基金会所藏 精品一部份，以供观赏。

宋朝宫廷以画取士，往往以诗句为题。 士大夫画家也经常以诗句入画。例子如郭 思（郭熙的儿子）在《林泉高志》一书 （1080年）就写到： 因记先子尝所诵道古人清篇秀句， 有发于佳思而可画者，并思亦尝旁 搜广引，先子谓为可用者，咸录之 于下： 女几山头春雪消，路傍仙杏发柔条。 心期欲去知何日？惆望回车下野桥。 （羊士谔《望女几山》）

所谓「诗意图」是以他人的诗句的意境为 内容的绘画作品；大部份的情况是由画家 题写他人的诗（或更广义的说他人的文 章）；有些情况是根本不题写他人的诗与 文。最早的诗意图例子可举传为晋朝顾恺 之以曹植《洛神赋》故事情节所绘的《洛 神赋图》卷（有多种后人摹本，见10页） 。其中较为著名的一本现藏美国首都华 盛顿佛瑞尔艺术馆。（图见Michael Sullivan 所著 The Art Of China, 加州大学出版 社，2008年，第5版，图5.7）

独访山家歇还涉，茅屋斜连隔松叶。 主人闻语未开门，绕篱野菜飞黄蝶。 （长孙左辅《寻山家》）

又如宋代李公麟、元代张渥、明代陈洪 绶、清代萧云从、现代傅抱石、徐悲鸿、 当代刘旦宅都曾以屈原的《九歌》作图。 可以说诗意图是中国传统的重要的成份。 （参见萧芬琪《傅抱石和屈原》，收入《 傅抱石研究文集》上海书画出版社，2009 年，页128–144）

舍南舍北皆春水，但见群鸥日日来。 （老杜）

关于艺术的功能，中国文艺传统里的两大 类观点是「诗以言志」与「文以载道」。 黄尧的诗意图（包括他引用前人散文如 《庄子》与陶潜《桃花源记》）可以说在 不同程度上符合了这两类功能。但归根就 底，就如同近人褚德彝题石涛所作《陶 渊明诗意图》（现藏北京故宫博物院）， 黄尧的大量诗意图目的不外是「借他人酒 杯，浇自家块磊」，也就是自我的表现 （self-expression）。（图见杨新主编《四 僧绘画》香港商务印书馆1999年，页221– 226）

南游兄弟几时还？知在三湘五岭间。 独立衡门秋水阔，寒鸦飞去日沉山。 （窦巩） 钓罢孤舟系苇梢，酒开新瓮鲊开包。 自从江浙为渔父，二十余年手不扠。 （无名氏）

渡水蹇驴双耳直，避风羸仆一肩高。 （卢雪诗） 行到水穷处，坐看云起时。 （王摩诘） 六月杖藜来石路，午阴多处听潺湲。 （王介甫） 数声离岸橹，几点别州山。 （魏野） 远水兼天净，孤城隐雾深。 （老杜） 犬眠花影地，牛牧雨声陂。 （李后村）

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密竹滴残雨，高峰留夕阳。 （夏侯叔简） 天遥来雁小，江阔去帆孤。 （姚合） 雪意未成云著地，秋声不断雁连天。 （钱惟演） 春潮带雨晚来急，野渡无人舟自横。 （韦应物） 相看临远水，独自坐孤舟。 （郑谷） （引自俞剑华《中国画论类编》台 北河洛影印本1975年页641） 邓椿《画继》一书（1170年左右）就提到 宋代画院考试的例子。有一年的画题是「 野水无人渡，孤舟尽日横」。大多数画家 只画一空舟横于岸边，也有人画一只鹭鸶 拳足于舟舷之间。但被选入的画则画一船 夫卧于船尾，身边横一短笛。可见诗意图 并不容易创作。 一九八五年夏天，笔者有幸参加美国大都 会博物馆「文字与意象」研讨会。会中高 友工发表的《中国抒情思想的演变》是一 篇包容广大的论文。一开始就点明这次 研讨会的主题：「诗书画三绝可以说是最 能反映中国诗歌与美术理论发展的核心问 题，也代表了中国艺术理论发展的峰巅。 」高友工接着指出中国艺术传统里「抒情 思想」的重要性及特色，这种思想的两个 条件为「内化过程」（internalization）及 「意象性质」（symbolization）。中国的 艺术不管诗、书、画，皆不为外围所拘， 而意在创造出一种「心境」（inscape） 。最后高友工以「游心空际」及「写意象 外」两个特色来描述中国诗、书、画共有 的特色。（参见 Yu-Kung Kao, “Chinese Lyric Aesthetics,” 收入 Alfreda Murck 与 Wen C. Fong 主编，Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting (New York: The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, 1991), 页 47–90） 32

历来讨论诗画关系的人通常围绕着一些老 生常谈的观念打转（如「诗中有画，画中 有诗」或「诗是无形画，画是有形诗」 等），并未能增加读者对这一问题的理 解。唯一的例外也许是钱钟书早年的一篇 《中国诗与中国画》（原载《开明书店二 十周年纪念文集》1946年上海开明书局， 最近修订后收在其《旧文四篇》（1979年 上海古籍出版）及《七缀集》（1985年上 海古籍出版社）），但其结论则为整天喊 诗画一致的人在头上浇了冷水：「中国旧 诗和旧画有标准上的分歧」；「用杜甫的 诗风来作画，只能达到品位低于王维的吴 道子，而用吴道子的画风来作诗，就能达 到品位高于王维的杜甫。」 在中西文艺批评史里,诗画关系一直是 争论不休的问题。在西方最有名的是罗 马文学黄金时代的诗人及批评家贺拉斯 （Horace，65–8 B.C.）在他的《论诗艺》 （Ars Poetica,第361行）里用了一个明喻:「 诗会像画」（Ut pictura poesis）。这个明 喻，到了后来被人断章取义，解释成「画 会像诗」（Ut pictura poesis erit)。当然， 根据普鲁塔克（Plutarch，45–129 A.D.） ，最先提出诗画关系的是希腊诗人席蒙尼 德斯（Simonides of Ceos，大约556–468 B.C.）所说的「画为不语诗，诗是能言 画」（见Plutarch,《雅典的荣耀》De gloria Atheniensium, III，第346f–347c行） 。中国的诗人及批评家则自宋朝以后就普 遍倡导诗画一致的看法。其中可以苏东坡 为代表。苏东坡曾说：「诗画本一律，天 工与清新。」（《集注分类东坡先生诗》 ，卷十一，四部丛刊初编）。他又说：「 味摩诘之诗，诗中有画；观摩诘之画，画 中有诗。」（《东坡题跋》，世界书局影 印汲古阁本，卷五）。又如其他人用「无 声句」来比喻宋迪的「萧湘八景图」，或 如诗人吴龙翰在画家杨公远诗集《野趣有 声集》所作的序文里所说的：「画难画之 景，以诗凑成；吟难吟之诗，以画补足」 （曹庭栋《宋百家诗存》卷十九），都代 表当时要求「艺术换位」（transposition of art）的理想。但是诗与画之间的关系究 竟如何？却一直没有明确的答案。诗与画 虽然同样是艺术，理论上应该有相同的地

方，但究意这些相同的地方是如何透过艺 术作品来传达一致的意义？在中国文艺批 评史里，也有不少对于诗画一致的看法提 出评论，认为诗中即使有画，也并不一定 能为画所表达。苏东坡指出杜甫的诗句： 「楚江巫峡半灵雨，清簟疏帘看奕棋」， 此句可画，但恐画不就尔！」（《东坡题 跋》卷三）。明朝张岱亦说：「如李青莲 『静夜思』：『举头望明月，低头思故 乡』，『思故乡』有何可画？王摩诘『山 路』诗：『蓝田自石出，玉川红叶稀』， 尚可入画；『山路原无语，空翠湿人衣』 ，则如何入画？又『香积寺』；『泉声 咽危石，日色冷青松』、『泉声』、『危 石』、『日色』、『青松』皆可描摩，而 『咽』字、『冷』字决难画出。」（《琅 娘文集》卷三）。明末清初画家与诗人程 正揆记载他与董其昌的一席话：「『洞庭 湖西秋月辉，潇湘江北早鸿飞』，华亭 爱诵此语，曰：『说得出，画不就。』予 曰：『画也画得就，只不像诗。』华亭大 笑。然耶？否耶？」以画入诗的困难由此 可见一斑。诗画相通或一致的看法之所以 僵化，自有其内在之困难。（详见钱钟书 《七缀集》1985年上海古籍出版社，页5 ，32–33） 十八世纪的批评家方薰即在其《山静居画 论》里指出：「款题图画始自[苏东坡][米 芾]，至元明而遂多，以题语位置画境者， 画亦由题益妙，高情逸思，画之不足，题 以发之，后世乃为滥觞」（见俞剑华的《 中国画论类编》，台北，河洛影印本，一 九七五，页二四一。）中国绘画史上最早 「以题语位置画境」的，似以元代赵孟頫 为首，例如他的「二羊图」卷（现藏美国 佛瑞尔艺术馆）。画的左方画家自提：「 余尝画马，未尝画羊。因仲信求画，余故 戏为写生，虽不能逼近古人，颇于气韵有 得。」这段题语除了点出画家的意图，给 予观者在意义上的指示，并且有其构图上 的功能。两只羊在画的右方自成一个圆形 的形象，左方的空间则由题语所填补。（ 参见守谦《元代绘画理论之研究》，台大 历史研究所中国艺术史组硕士论文，1977 ，页一二五；图见Masterpieces of Chinese and Japanese Art: Freer Gallery of Art Hand-

book (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, 1976)页50) 在上面提到的一九八五年的「文字与意 象」研讨会里，古原宏伸《中国画卷》一 文比较了中国人物画卷与日本绘卷之异 同，包括中国画卷里对所画的文字（如《 九歌》、《诗经》、《孝经》、《左传》 等）忠实的程度，以及中国画卷对时间、 空间描写的方式（日本绘卷中动作通常极 富连续性，有如卡通画；中国画卷则一 场一景之间并不一定要有关连，日本绘卷 常采异时同图法，中国画卷则极少见此种 方式）。日本的绘卷内容大都为通俗性， 极具戏剧性；中国画卷则以古典经典及诗 文为主。古原教授认为这与中日两国文化 性质之差异有关，因此这不只是艺术史的 问题，也是文化史的问题。（参见Kohara Hironobu, “Narrative Illustration in the Handscroll Format,” 收在前引 Words and Images 一书中，页247–266） 从黄尧现存的画作来看，他对传统的诗文 有极广泛的涉猎，也对不同的宗教（道教 及佛教）及哲学有相当同情的了解。例如 他喜欢读唐朝诗人刘禹锡的《陋室铭》（ 黄尧曾用其中的名句如「山不在高，有仙 则名。水不在深，有龙则灵」题画；参见 《墨缘随笔》吉隆坡雪兰莪中华大会堂 2000年，页42–43），宋朝范仲淹的《严 先生祠堂记》（黄尧曾用其中的名句「先 生之风，山高水长」题画；严先生指的是 东汉人严光，少时与太子光武（刘秀）同 学，光武即位皇帝之后，严光即变姓名， 隐居富春山；后人名其钓鱼处为严陵濑） 。这些诗文已成为黄尧他那一辈人的文化 记忆里不可磨灭的一部份。生活在动荡不 安的异土里，这种文化记忆肯定是对黄尧 有相当鼓舞精神的作用。 黄尧引用诗文的范围非常广泛，从《老 子》、《庄子》到六朝的陶潜、阮籍，从 唐朝的李白、杜甫及僧人寒山，到宋朝的 苏东坡、欧阳修、王安石，可以说涵盖了 中国文化的精华。从黄尧喜爱引用的诗句 来看，我们可以说他在作画的时候是在与 这些过去的诗人在做一种心灵上的交谈， 33

诗句里许多元素很明确是不能被表现的， 因此也没有表现在画面里。黄尧似乎选择 专注于最后两句，以突显李白的角色。

也同时来表达他流落异土的处世态度。 从黄尧的散文集《墨缘随笔》所收的文 章，我们可以看出他意识到引用诗文来作 画时，必须考虑到诗文中那些是在画中可 以或不可以画出的；同时在作画时，画家 有时又必须加入诗文中没有提到的。例如 他以李白《春夜宴桃李园序》（见125页） 为题的画就加入诗中并不明显提到的人 物。另外又以李白《下终南山过斛斯山人 宿置酒》（见上图）为题的画里，整副画 作被诗句所占据，只在一个小空间里画了 一个人物，应该是黄尧想象中的李白（《 墨缘随笔》，页124–125）： 暮从碧山下，山月随人归。 却顾所来径，苍苍横翠微。 相携及田家，童稚开荆扉。 绿竹入幽径，青萝拂行衣。 欢言得所憩，美酒聊共挥。 长歌吟松风，曲尽河星稀。 我醉君复乐，陶然共忘机。

34

这些例子让我在黄尧的诗意图上观察出几 点要素：

1）主要的人物，几乎都是一位老翁，

可了解为黄尧的自画像。

2）画中黄尧选的诗文，无论是哪一

位，都是有意或下意识的表达了自

己。

3）每一幅画都是这些诗词的诠释或重

塑。 他引用陶潜的名文及名诗《桃花源诗并 记》（见下图或211页），《归去来辞》（ 见213页）及《读山海经》（见215页）作 画，很明显的是突显他自己的乌托邦的理 想，以及他想放弃世俗的世界而回归到一 个更朴实与更真诚的生活方式。我们甚至 可以说经由陶潜及苏轼对陶潜诗文及人生 的赏识，黄尧在他的诗意图里明显的超越 不理想的现实生活而达到掌握自己命运的 目的。 在所有黄尧引用诗句的唐代诗人中，黄 尧或许在生命的探索方面与白居易最为接 近。例如，在引用白居易的《山雉》（见 49页）时，黄尧的想法或许与白居易所见 略同，认为我们要像山雉一样，宁可贫穷 却是自由的。黄尧以李白的名作《春夜宴 桃李园序》（见125页）所作的短卷可以例

证他同意李白的人生哲学：「夫天地者， 万物之逆旅；光阴者，百代之过客。而浮 生若梦，为欢几何？」黄尧对李白这样一 个「痛苦的道教徒诗人」（参见李长之《 道教徒的诗人李白及其痛苦》天津人民出 版社2008年）似乎有不寻常的同情。 李白有好几首诗被黄尧重复的引用。例 如：《庐山谣寄卢侍御虚舟》（见103,105 及107页），黄尧引用在画面上，至少也有 三幅画之多。 另外，李白许多诗中，以船比喻通往自由 的工具也多次出现在黄尧的画面上：「人 生在世不称意，明朝散发弄扁舟。」（见 132页） 虽然杜甫和王维的诗句，黄尧似乎引用得 少于白居易和李白，但从他所选择的杜甫 与李白的特句可看出他的趣向。例如，他 引用杜甫的《望岳》（见69页）是诗人在 山东泰山结束他想像的旅程后所创：「会 当凌绝顶，一览众山小」。这首诗所提的 画面，是以书法为主要的元素，图像为次 要。同时，左下角能见到一位文人手握登 山杖，正看着山中的风景，这或许就是黄 尧自己。 然而在黄尧引用杜甫的其他两首诗中，能 看出黄尧与唐朝伟大诗人最密切的关联。 诗句中刻画出个人的苦难、流放、以及中 国人在动荡时期的苦楚。 在第一首《旅夜书怀》（见本页或61页） ，诗中杜甫他把自己比喻为“天地一沙 鸥！”。第二首《江亭》（见67页）说的 是“水流心不竞，云在意俱迟”的心情。在 黄尧的画作里，他运用了伟大诗画家王维 几首引人深思的诗句。王维的《竹里馆》 也至少被引用了两次。第一个例子中，黄 尧把整首诗以文字画（见下页或221页） 的方式抄出，和另一幅抄杜甫诗的画有异 曲同工之妙。观者能看到画中的左下角， 一位孤独的文人正弹着琴。这里，此人物 可以同时代表王维或黄尧。在第二个例子 中，（见223页）人物形象更为突出。黄尧 多次以一首诗为几幅画的主题，或许说明

他非常喜欢那一首诗，也说明他认同诗句 里提到的人物。我们可以确切的说他的诗 意图是十分意图明显的自我表现（self-expression）。 第二首被黄尧引用的王维诗《渭城曲》（ 见225页），包含了一对几乎每一位中国学 生都能倒背如流的诗句：

劝君更尽一杯酒， 西出阳关无故人。

而黄尧引用王维的诗作中，最引人深思的 或许就是《鹿柴》（见227与229页）：

空山不见人，但闻人语响。 返影入深林，复照青苔上。 35

《鹿柴》是王维名诗《辋川二十首》中最 为人称道的。目前已有至少十九种不同的 西文翻译。而黄尧的这件诗意图，也可算 做对这首诗的诠释。 在黄尧以王维另一首以《送别》（见231 页）为主题的诗意图中，最明显的例证了 黄尧人生观的是下面两句话：

君言不得意，醉卧南山陲。

或许，当黄尧在阅读与抄写这些唐朝伟大 诗人（白居易、杜甫、李白和王维）的诗 句时，他敏锐的意识到这些伟大文人所抒 发的是生活中所遇到的无穷的沮丧。 这里列出了其他一些在黄尧画作里所引用 的唐朝诗人，从而看出他的趣向： 白居易 常建 岑参 戴叔伦 寒山 慧能 贾岛 李白 李频 李颀 李商隐 刘长卿 36

刘驾 柳宗元 刘禹锡 吕岩（吕洞宾） 孟浩然 孟郊 裴迪 綦毋潜 拾得 宋之问 苏颋 太上隐者

王维 王之涣 韦应物 薛莹 元结 元稹

张祜 张旭 张九龄 張若虛 朱放

在三件诗意图里，黄尧选用了唐朝诗人李 颀的《听董大弹胡笳弄兼寄语房给事》： 蔡女昔造胡笳声，一弹一十有八 拍。胡人落泪沾边草，汉使断肠对 归客。古戍苍苍烽火寒，大荒沉沉 飞雪白。先拂商弦后角羽，四郊秋 叶惊摵摵。董夫子，通神明，深山 窃听来妖精。言迟更速皆应手，将 往复旋如有情。空山百鸟散还合， 万里浮云阴且晴。嘶酸雏雁失群 夜，断绝胡儿恋母声。川为净其 波，鸟亦罢其鸣。 乌孙部落家乡远，逻娑沙尘哀怨 生。幽音变调忽飘洒，长风吹林雨 堕瓦。迸泉飒飒飞木末，野鹿呦呦 走堂下。长安城连东掖垣，凤凰池 对青琐门。高才脱略名与利，日夕 望君抱琴至。 有趣的是，三件作品所引用的诗句都不相 同： 在第一幅画里，黄尧所引用的诗句：

空山百鸟散还合， 万里浮云阴且晴 。（见137页） 第二幅所引用的诗句也是一样的生动： 迸泉飒飒飞木末， 野鹿呦呦走堂下。（见139页） 第三幅画依据诗作里的最后一对诗句： 高才脱略名与利， 日夕望君抱琴至。（见141页） 这三幅画和黄尧精心挑选的诗句，表现了 黄尧在诗意图里的自我表达。今日读画者 所面对的一项挑战，当然就是必须熟悉整 首诗的原作，并了解引句的意思。

横看成岭侧成峰，远近高低各不同。 不识庐山真面目，只缘身在此山中。 其他黄尧所引用苏东坡诗句的范围包括抒 情的及哲学性的主题： 《渔父四首其四》（见191页） 《汲江煎茶》（见193页） 《别岁》（见197页） 《纵笔三首其一》（见203页 ） 黄尧所引用的其他宋朝诗人包括： 程颢 陆游 杨万里 范成大

朱放 盧梅坡 王安石 朱熹

欧阳修 虽然唐诗历来被认为达到了中国诗的黄金 时代，但清代以来也有不少人注意到宋诗 的特色。清代及民国对于宋诗的重新评估 及复兴似乎在黄尧身上也产生了影响，因 此他有不少诗意图是根据宋诗所作。 宋朝最著名的诗人或许就是苏轼（苏东 坡）。我们先从黄尧的诗意图里所引用的 著名诗句入手。根据《庄子》对于客观美 的质疑，苏东坡在关于美丽和壮观的庐山 （见本页或195页）的一首诗中，指出我们 应该对目前当下的意识感到知足，而不是 之前或之后的意识：

除了引用著名或无名诗人的诗句以外，黄 尧也经常引用哲学或宗教的经典著作。一 个很好的例子是他依据《道德经》中关于 「上善若水」的句子所作的画。另外，黄 尧引用了著名的道教经典《庄子》关于庄 周梦蝶的故事作了至少三件画作（见267 页）： 昔者庄周梦为胡蝶，栩栩然胡蝶也。 自喻适志与，不知周也。俄然觉，则 蘧蘧然周也。不知周之梦为胡蝶与？ 胡蝶之梦为周与？周与胡蝶则必有分 矣。此之谓物化。 这故事体现了道家思想对于幸福和美好的 主观性的观点。从他在画作中多次引此文 来看，黄尧显然同意庄子这观点。 整体而言，我们能十分清楚的看出，黄尧 依据诗词或其他的文学、宗教或哲学的经 典所作的画是他对于自己文化传统的敬意 的例证，也是他表达自己是何人或自己想 要成为何人的体现。他在作这些画时，这 些诗词文字已是中国文人潜意识的一部 分。与此同时，他所引用的诗词文字体现 出他对身在中国以外遥远之处时，一个人 应如何生活所作的思考。

37

38

PLATES

39

40

NOTE ON INFORMATION ACCOMPANYING EACH PAINTING On each double-page spread, you will find on the left the poem that inspired the painting, with the words marked in bold indicating the parts of the poem that Huang Yao used. On the right of you will find the painting, the Huang Yao Foundation archive number, the year, and the size of the painting.

Title in Chinese Name of poet in Chinese Poem in Chinese

Painting

Title in English Name of poet in English Poem in English Source of translation

The Foundation archive's unique number for each painting.

Year

Size

41

慵不能 白居易 架上非无书 ，眼慵不能看。 匣中亦有琴 ，手慵不能弹。 腰慵不能带 ，头慵不能冠。 午后恣情寝 ，午时随事餐。 一餐终日饱 ，一寝至夜安。 饥寒亦闲事 ，况乃不饥寒。

Too Lazy Bai Juyi Though many a book my bookshelf graces, I am too lazy to survey them.

I’ve lutes in plenty in their cases, But rarely have a mind to play them.

I am too lazy ev’n to wear A belt at my waist, or hat on hair.

To doze at afternoon I wish— At noon I take a casual bite, Which makes an ample daily dish, With sleep sufficient till the night.

Hunger and cold mean naught to me.

Besides, from both of them I’m free.

Turner, John A., trans. A Golden Treasury of Chinese Poetry. Hong Kong: Center for Translation Project, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1976, p. 187.

42

B09_2539-090_03

1979

75.3cm x 45.1cm 43

买花 白居易 帝城春欲暮，喧喧车马度。 共道牡丹时，相随买花去。 贵贱无常价，酬直看花数。 灼灼百朵红，戋戋五束素。 上张幄幕庇，旁织篱笆护。 水洒复泥封，移来色如故。 家家习为俗，人人迷不悟。 有一田舍翁，偶来买花处。 低头独长叹，此叹无人谕。 一丛深色花，十户中人赋。

Buying Flowers Bai Juyi Spring ends; all around the Imperial city they go by horses and carriages through the crowded streets to gardens where peonies bloom and go on sale, their prices varying with their quality; some come one hundred blooms to the stalk clustered together as red as fire; and there are others of different shades covered by awnings enclosed with fences, with gardeners sprinkling them with water; later as transplants they are dug out for sale; earth is packed around their roots so the flowers do not fade; all great families buy as it is their custom; none pondering it over very much; there came an old peasant who saw these peonies and stood sighing; when asked why, he said he wondered whether anyone realized the cost of a bunch of blooms was more than ten farming families paid in taxes out of the bitterness of their toil.

Rewi Alley, trans. Bai Juyi: 200 Selected Poems. Beijing: New World Press, 1983, pp. 130–31.

44

B03_8432-069_16

1980

58.8cm x 52.1cm

45

赠梦得 白居易 前日君家饮，昨日王家宴。 今日过我庐，三日三会面。 当歌聊自放，对酒交相劝。 为我尽一杯，与君发三愿。 一愿世清平，二愿身强健。 三愿临老头，数与君相见。

A Gift for Mengde Bai Juyi Two days ago I drank in your house, And yesterday we feasted at Mr. Wang’s, Today you have done me the honour of coming to my home; In three days we have had three meetings!

When there was singing we both let ourselves go; When wine came round, we egged one another on.

And now, to please me, drink this cup to the dregs While both of us together utter the same prayer.

Let us first pray that the world may be at peace, And next pray that our bodies may grow sound and strong.

Let our third prayer be that in our last years We may see each other more than ever before.

Waley, Arthur. The Life and Times of Po Chü-i, 772–846 A.D. London: Allen and Unwin, 1949, p. 202.

46

B05-9012-101_22

1979

42.6cm x 35.5cm

47

舟中晚起 白居易 日高犹掩水窗眠，枕簟清凉八月天。 泊处或依沽酒店，宿时多伴钓鱼船。 退身江海应无用，忧国朝廷自有贤。 且向钱唐湖上去，冷吟闲醉二三年。 Night on the Boat Bai Juyi Though the sun shines at high noon I pull the cover Across the boat’s window overlooking the water. I sleep.

This is a day in early autumn, My pillow and mat clean and cool.

Perhaps we shall anchor beside a wine-shop?

Fishing boats often accompany us while I sleep.

Here am I, actually of no use, Withdrawn to the lakes and rivers.

There are sages enough at court.

Why worry about the nation?

Besides, I am now headed Towards lovely Ch’ien-t’ang Lake.

There I shall idle a few years In tipsiness and verse.

Levy, Howard S. Translations from Po Chü-i’s Collected Works. 4 volumes. New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corporation, 1971–78, vol. 3, p. 35.

48

B08_2304-094_01

1980

44.5cm x 35.8cm

49

山雉 白居易 五步一啄草，十步一饮水。 适性遂其生，时哉山梁雉。 梁上无罾缴，梁下无鹰鹯。 雌雄与群雏，皆得终天年。 嗟嗟笼下鸡，及彼池中雁。 既有稻粱恩，必有牺牲患。

The Mountain Pheasant Bai Juyi Five paces, a mouthful of grass; ten paces, a drink of water.

The mountain pheasant follows life in accord with its nature.

Above the rafters (of the bridge nearby) there is neither net nor arrow, and below there is neither kite nor hawk.

(That is why) cocks, hens, and fledglings get to finish the years (allotted to them by) Heaven.

Alas! There is the chicken under the eaves and the goose within the pond.

Since they receive the favor of rice and grains (from their owners), they inevitably have the worry of being sacrificed.

Levy, Howard S. Translations from Po Chü-i’s Collected Works. 4 volumes. New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corporation, 1971–78, vol. 1, p. 34.

50

B05-9970-100_00

1980

70.8cm x 45.2cm 51

遗爱寺 白居易 弄石临溪坐，寻花绕寺行。 时时闻鸟语，处处是泉声。

At Yiai Temple Bai Juyi I play with stones and sit beside the stream, I search for flowers and walk around the temple.

Sometimes I listen to the song of birds; The sounds of spring are everywhere.

Payne, Robert. The White Pony: An Anthology of Chinese Poetry from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, Newly Translated. New York: J. Day Corporation, 1947, p. 218.

52

B01_7243-045_09

1979

48.3cm x 33.4cm 53

山房春事 岑参 梁园日暮乱飞鸦，极目萧条三两家。 庭树不知人去尽，春来还发旧时花。

The Mountain Ruins in Spring Cen Shen Day and night at Liang-yüan¹ crows fly in a wild flurry; Of the houses that crowned it, Only two or three can still be distinguished.

Unaware that all who were once there are gone, Flowers still bloom in the spring as long ago.

Note: ¹ A garden built by Prince Hsiao of Liang 梁孝王, second son of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty 汉文帝, who reigned from 179 to 158 B.C. Liu Shih Shun. One Hundred and One Chinese Poems, with English Translations and Preface. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967, p. 61.

54

B05-9070-097_25

1979

37.1cm x 29.8cm

55

与高适薛据登慈恩寺浮图 岑参 塔势如涌出，孤高耸天宫。 登临出世界，磴道盘虚空。 突兀压神州，峥嵘如鬼工。 四角碍白日，七层摩苍穹。 下窥指高鸟，俯听闻惊风。 连山若波涛，奔凑似朝东。 青槐夹驰道，宫馆何玲珑。 秋色从西来，苍然满关中。 五陵北原上，万古青蒙蒙。 净理了可悟，胜因夙所宗。 誓将挂冠去，觉道资无穷。

Ascending Ci’en Temple with Other Poets Cen Shen In shaping the pagoda seems to bubble up High and alone, jutting to Heaven’s palaces.

I climb for the view and bypass the world’s bounds On a stairway of stone that winds through the void.

Upthrusting, it weighs down the holy domain, Towering as though of demon’s work.

Its four corner eaves blot out the bright sun, It’s seventh story rubs the blue sky’s vault.

I peer down, point to high-flying birds, Bend my ears, listen to roaring gales: A string of mountains like mighty waves Rush eastward like rivers to the court of the sea.

Green linden line the royal highway Where halls and palaces glitter and sparkle.

Now autumn’s countenance comes from the west And a rich green fills the capital region, There Five Barrows on the northern plain, For eternity lies in blue haze.

At last I am enligthened to that Pure Truth, Having always honored perfect Cause— I vow to put off my cap of office, Aware of the Way, I rely on What is Forever.

Owen, Stephen. The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981, p. 178.

56

B02_7423-043_36

c. 1982

46.9cm x 30.3cm 57

与高适薛据登慈恩寺浮图 岑参 塔势如涌出，孤高耸天宫。 登临出世界，磴道盘虚空。 突兀压神州，峥嵘如鬼工。 四角碍白日，七层摩苍穹。 下窥指高鸟，俯听闻惊风。 连山若波涛，奔凑似朝东。 青槐夹驰道，宫馆何玲珑。 秋色从西来，苍然满关中。 五陵北原上，万古青蒙蒙。 净理了可悟，胜因夙所宗。 誓将挂冠去，觉道资无穷。

Ascending Ci’en Temple with Other Poets Cen Shen In shaping the pagoda seems to bubble up High and alone, jutting to Heaven’s palaces.

I climb for the view and bypass the world’s bounds On a stairway of stone that winds through the void.

Upthrusting, it weighs down the holy domain, Towering as though of demon’s work.

Its four corner eaves blot out the bright sun, It’s seventh story rubs the blue sky’s vault.

I peer down, point to high-flying birds, Bend my ears, listen to roaring gales: A string of mountains like mighty waves Rush eastward like rivers to the court of the sea.

Green linden line the royal highway Where halls and palaces glitter and sparkle.

Now autumn’s countenance comes from the west And a rich green fills the capital region, There Five Barrows on the northern plain, For eternity lies in blue haze.

At last I am enligthened to that Pure Truth, Having always honored perfect Cause— I vow to put off my cap of office, Aware of the Way, I rely on What is Forever.

Owen, Stephen. The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981, p. 178.

58

B10_2850-164_11

c. 1978

29.9cm x 48.0cm

59

三闾大夫庙 戴叔伦 沅湘流不尽，屈子怨何深。 日暮秋风起，萧萧枫树林。

Passing the Shrine to the Master of the Three Gates Dai Shulun The waters of the Yuan and Hsiang never cease Ch’u Yuan’s grief is too deep the autumn wind rises at sunset and blows through a grove of maples Red Pine (Bill Porter). Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2003, p. 37.

60

B13_0657-151_08

c. 1983

33.4cm x 35.5cm

61

旅夜书怀 杜甫 细草微风岸，危樯独夜舟。 星垂平野阔，月涌大江流。 名岂文章著，官应老病休。 飘飘何所似，天地一沙鸥。

Nocturnal Reflections While Travelling Du Fu The breezes stroke along the grassy strands; The junk-mast tall and lone in the darkness stands.

The sparkling stars spread down to the fields wide; The moon emerges from the rough river tide.

My pen has won me fame - has it my will?

An official should not retire till old and ill.

What am I like who am everywhere wandering?

A gull between heaven and earth hovering!

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 176.

62

L61_4409-055_18

1979

74.5cm x 32.5cm 63

望岳 杜甫 岱宗夫如何，齐鲁青未了。 造化钟神秀，阴阳割昏晓。 荡胸生层云，决眦入归鸟。 会当凌绝顶，一览众山小。

Looking over the Peak of T’ai Mountain Du Fu And what is T’ai Mountain like?

Over Ch’i and Lu a green unceasing.

Here Creation concentrated unearthly glory, Dark north slope, the sunlit south divide dusk and dawn.

Sweeping past breast growing layered cloud, Eye pupils split, moving in with homing birds.

The time will come when I pass up to its very summit, And see in one encompassing vision how tiny all other mountains are.

Owen, Stephen. The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981, p. 187.

64

B03_8488-069_35

1979

63.8cm x 46.4cm 65

客至 杜甫 舍南舍北皆春水，但见群鸥日日来。 花径不曾缘客扫，蓬门今始为君开。 盘飧市远无兼味，樽酒家贫只旧醅。 肯与邻翁相对饮，隔篱呼取尽余杯。

The Visitor Du Fu North and South of our hut spread the Spring waters, And only flocks of gulls daily visit us; For guests our path is yet unswept of petals, To you our wattle gate the first time opens: Dishes so far from town lack subtle flavours, And wine is but the rough a poor home offers; If you agree, I’ll call my ancient neighbour, Across the fence to come help us finish it!

Cooper, Arthur. Li Po and Tu Fu. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1973, p. 193.

66

B08_2400-095_17

1984

48.5cm x 44.6cm

67

江亭 杜甫 坦腹江亭暖，长吟野望时。 水流心不竞，云在意俱迟。 寂寂春将晚，欣欣物自私。 故林归未得，排闷强裁诗。

River Kiosk Du Fu Lying flat, resting in river kiosk; Chanting poems, at times gazing to wide spaces.

Waters rush and eddy — in heart no strife; Clouds drift slowly — thoughts drift with them.

Still, still, Spring about to wane; Joy, joy, all things their secret desire.

Cannot yet undertake return to old forest, So force myself to cut out poems, and push open door of melancholy which closes on my heart.

Ayscough, Florence. Travels of a Chinese Poet: Tu Fu, Guest of Rivers and Lakes, A.D. 712–770. Vol. 2, A.D. 759–770. London: Jonathan Cape, 1934, pp. 93–94.

68

B05-9072-097_23

1979

28.7cm x 34.9cm

69

望岳 杜甫 岱宗夫如何，齐鲁青未了。 造化钟神秀，阴阳割昏晓。 荡胸生层云，决眦入归鸟。 会当凌绝顶，一览众山小。

Looking over the Peak of T’ai Mountain Du Fu And what is T’ai Mountain like?

Over Ch’i and Lu a green unceasing.

Here Creation concentrated unearthly glory, Dark north slope, the sunlit south divide dusk and dawn.

Sweeping past breast growing layered cloud, Eye pupils split, moving in with homing birds.

The time will come when I pass up to its very summit, And see in one encompassing vision how tiny all other mountains are.

Owen, Stephen. The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981, p. 187.

70

L105_5525-053_04

c. 1986

90.5cm x 239.5cm

71

高淳道中 范成大 路入高淳麦更深，草泥沾润马骎骎。 雨归陇首云凝黛，日漏山腰石渗金。 老柳不春花自蔓，古祠无壁树空阴。 一箪定属前村店，衮衮炊烟起竹林。

On the Road to Kao-ch’un (Gao Chun) Fan Chengda My way enters Kao-ch’un (Gao Chun); wheat grows deeper still; Mud splatters wet on the grass as the horse races by.

Rain settles on the head of the field, clouds congeal to form eye-shadow; Sunlight leaks from the waist of the hill, stones ooze gold.

Though it isn’t spring, the flowers of the old willow hang in coils; The ancient shrine is wall-less, trees shade it in vain.

The lunch box will be for the teahouse in the coming village.

Cooking smoke rises thick from the bamboo grove.

Xu Yuanzhong 许渊冲. Song of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry 中国古诗词六百首. Beijing: New World Press, 1994, p. 157.

72

L61_4401-055_10

1980

68.5cm x 36.5cm 73

壁上诗 丰干 本来无一物，亦无尘可拂。 若能了达此，不用坐兀兀。

Written on the Wall Feng Gan At root there is not a single thing, And no dust that can be brushed away.

If you can understand to this point, No need to sit straight-backed!

Egan, Charles. Clouds Thick, Whereabouts Unknown: Poems by Zen Monks of China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010, p. 66.

74

B16_2297-140_16

1980

78.5cm x 55.5cm 75

寒山 我家本住在寒山，石岩栖息离烦缘。 泯时万象无痕迹，舒处周流遍大千。 光影腾辉照心地，无有一法当现前。 方知摩尼一颗珠，解用无方处处圆。

Hanshan My true home is on Cold Mountain perched among cliffs beyond the reach of trouble images leave no trace when they vanish I roam the whole universe from here lights and shadows flash across my mind not one dharma appears before me since I found the magic pearl I can go anywhere everywhere is perfect Red Pine (Bill Porter). The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Revised and Expanded. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2000, p. 177.

76

L107_5561-112_17

1981

183.7cm x 96.4cm 77

寒山 千年石上古人踪，万丈岩前一点空。 明月照时常皎洁，不劳寻讨问西东。

Hanshan On ancient rocks are ancient tracks below high cliffs there’s a clearing always bright when the bright moon shines no need to ask if it’s east or west Red Pine (Bill Porter). The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Revised and Expanded. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2000, p. 173.

78

L105_5532-087_05

1982

239.0cm x 89.0cm 79

寒山 高高峰顶上，四顾极无边。 独坐无人知，孤月照寒泉。 泉中且无月，月自在青天。 吟此一曲歌，歌终不是禅。

Hanshan From a lofty mountain peak The view extends forever I sit here unknown The long moon lights Cold Spring In the spring there is no moon The moon is in the sky I sing this one song A song in which there is no Zen Red Pine (Bill Porter). The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Revised and Expanded. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2000, p. 239.

80

L69_4590-041_19

1982

75.8cm x 46.2cm 81

寒山 岩前独静坐，圆月当天耀。 万象影现中，一轮本无照。 廓然神自清，含虚洞玄妙。 因指见其月，月是心枢要。

Hanshan Before the cliffs I sat alone the moon shone in the sky but where a thousand shapes appeared its lantern cast no light the unobstructed spirit is clear the empty cave is a mystery afinger showed me the moon the moon is the hub of the mind Red Pine (Bill Porter). The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Revised and Expanded. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2000, p. 43.

82

L31_3570-101_10

1982

44.5cm x 72.09cm

83

寒山 吾心似秋月，碧潭清皎洁。 无物堪比伦，教我如何说？

Hanshan My mind is like the autumn moon clear and bright in a pool of jade nothing can compare what more can I say Red Pine (Bill Porter). The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Revised and Expanded. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2000, p. 39.

84

B16_2300-140_13

1980

78.5cm x 55.5cm 85

寒山 智者君抛我，愚者我抛君。 非愚亦非智，从此断相闻。 入夜歌明月，侵晨舞白云。 焉能住口手，端坐鬓纷纷。

Hanshan Wise ones you ignore me I ignore you fools neither wise nor foolish I’ll disappear henceforth at night I’ll sing to the moon at dawn I’ll dance with the clouds how can I still my mouth and hands and sit up straight with all this hair Red Pine (Bill Porter). The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Revised and Expanded. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2000, p. 57.

86

B16_2302-140_11

1980

78.5cm x 55.5cm 87

寒山 寒山自寒山，拾得自拾得。 凡愚岂见知，丰干却相识。 见时不可见，觅时何处觅。 借问有何缘，向道无为力。

Hanshan Cold Mountain is a cold mountain and Pickup was picked up Big Stick knows our faces fools can’t recognize us they don’t see us when we meet when they look we aren’t there if you wonder what’s the reason it’s the power of doing nothing Red Pine (Bill Porter). The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Revised and Expanded. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2000, p. 281.

88

B16_2299-140_14

1980

78.5cm x 55.5cm 89

回乡偶书二首其一 贺知章 少小离家老大回，乡音无改鬓毛催。 儿童相见不相识，笑问客从何处来。

Impromptu Lines Composed upon Returning to My Native Place He Zhizhang To leave home very young and to return very old, With accent unchanged, but hair grown thin.

They see but know me not, the smiling children who inquire: “And from where do you come, Honored Guest?”

Zhang Ting-chien and Bruce M. Wilson, eds. and trans. 100 Tang Poems. Hong Kong: Commercial Press 1988, p. 13.

90

B18_3001-151_07

1982

78.5cm x 54.6cm 91

慧能 菩提本无树，明镜亦非台。 本来无一物，何处惹尘埃。

Huineng The Tree of Perfect Wisdom is originally no tree.

Nor has the bright mirror any frame.

Buddha-nature is forever clear and pure.

Where is there any dust?

Suzuki, D. T. The Zen Doctrine of No Mind: The Significance of the Sutra of Hui-Neng (Wei-lang). London: Rider and Company, 1958, p. 22.

92

L15_3200-179_04

1980

141.0cm x 75.0cm 93

慧能 菩提本无树，明镜亦非台。 本来无一物，何处惹尘埃。

Huineng The Tree of Perfect Wisdom is originally no tree.

Nor has the bright mirror any frame.

Buddha-nature is forever clear and pure.

Where is there any dust?

Suzuki, D. T. The Zen Doctrine of No Mind: The Significance of the Sutra of Hui-Neng (Wei-lang). London: Rider and Company, 1958, p. 22.

94

B05-9027-098_20

1979

46.0cm x 37.5cm

95

慧能 菩提本无树，明镜亦非台。 本来无一物，何处惹尘埃。

Huineng The Tree of Perfect Wisdom is originally no tree.

Nor has the bright mirror any frame.

Buddha-nature is forever clear and pure.

Where is there any dust?

Suzuki, D. T. The Zen Doctrine of No Mind: The Significance of the Sutra of Hui-Neng (Wei-lang). London: Rider and Company, 1958, p. 22.

96

L108_5583-111_37

1981

90.6cm x 180.0cm

97

寻隐者不遇 贾岛 松下问童子，言师采药去。 只在此山中，云深不知处。

Looking for a Recluse without Success Jia Dao Below the pines I ask the boy he says his master has gone to find herbs he’s somewhere on this mountain but the clouds are too thick to know where Red Pine (Bill Porter). Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2003, p. 59.

98

B08_2224-093_30

c. 1979

33.2cm x 34.6cm

99

老子 上善若水，水利万物而不争， 处众人之所恶，故几於道。 居善地，心善渊， 与善仁，言善信， 政善治，事善能，动善时。 夫唯惟不争，故姑无尤。

Laozi The highest good is like water.

Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.

It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao. In dwelling, be close to the land.

In meditation, go deep in the heart.

In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.

In speech, be true.

In ruling, be just.

In daily life, be competent.

In action, be aware of the time and the season.

No fight: No blame.

Feng, Gia-fu, and Jane English, trans. Tao Te Ching / Lao Tsu. New York: Vantage Books, 1989, p. 10.

100

L116_5676-181_07

c. 1984

121.8cm x 90.0cm

101

蜀道难 李白 噫吁嚱！危乎！高哉！蜀道之难、难于上青天。蚕丛及鱼 凫，开国何茫然：尔来四万八千岁，不与秦塞通人烟。 西当太白有鸟道，可以横绝峨眉巅；地崩山摧壮士死，然 后天梯石栈相钩连。上有六龙回日之高标，下有冲波逆 折之回川；黄鹤之飞尚不得过，猿猱欲度愁攀援。青泥何 盘盘：百步九折萦岩峦，扪参历井仰胁息，以手抚膺坐长 叹。 问君西游何时还？畏途巉岩不可攀！但见悲鸟号古木，雄 飞雌从绕林间；又闻子规啼夜月，愁空山。蜀道之难，难 于上青天；使人听此凋朱颜。 连峰去天不盈尺，枯松倒挂倚绝壁；飞湍瀑流争喧豗，砯 崖转石万壑雷。其险也如此，嗟尔远道之人，胡为乎来 哉？剑阁峥嵘而崔嵬：一夫当关，万夫莫开；所守或匪 亲，化为狼与豺。朝避猛虎，夕避蛇。磨牙吮血，杀人如 麻。锦城虽云乐，不如早还家。蜀道之难，难于上青天， 侧身西望长咨嗟！

Hard is the Road to Shu Li Bai Oho! behold! how steep! how high!

The road to Shu is harder than to climb to the sky.

Since the two pioneers

Put the kingdom in order,

Have passed forty-eight thousand years.

And few have tried to pass its border.

There’s a bird track o’er Great White Mountain to the west, which cuts through Mountain Eyebrows by the crest.

The crest crumbled, five serpent-killing heroes slain, along the cliffs a rocky path was hacked then.

102

Above stand peaks too high for the sun to pass o’er; Below, the torrents run back and forth, churn and roar.

Even the Golden Crane can’t fly across; how to climb over, gibbons are at a loss.

What tortuous mountain path Green Mud Ridge faces!

Around the top we turn nine turns each hundred paces.

Looking up breathless, I can touch the stars nearby; Beating my breast, I sink aground with long, long sigh.

When will you come back from this journey to the west?

How can you climb up dangerous path and mountain crest, Where you can hear on ancient trees but sad birds wail And see the female birds fly, followed by the male?

And hear home-going cuckoos weep

Beneath the moon in mountains deep?

The road to Shu is harder than to climb to the sky, On hearing this, your cheeks would lose their rosy dye.

Between the sky and peaks there is not a foot’s space.

And ancient pines hang, head down, from the cliff’s surface, And cataracts and torrents dash on boulders under, Roaring like thousands of echoes of thunder.

So dangerous these places are, Alas! why should you come here from afar?

Rugged in the path between the cliffs so steep and high,

Guarded by one

And forced by none,

Disloyal guards

Would turn wolves and pards, Man-eating tigers at daybreak And at dusk blood-sucking long snake.

One may make merry in the Town of Silk, I know, But I would rather homeward go.

The road to Shu is harder than to climb to the sky, I’d turn and westward look with long, long sigh.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, pp. 103–4.

L107_5563-112_20

1981

182.7cm x 96.4cm 103

庐山谣寄卢侍御虚舟 李白 我本楚狂人，凤歌笑孔丘。手持绿玉杖，朝别黄鹤楼。 五岳寻仙不辞远，一生好入名山游。 庐山秀出南斗傍，屏风九叠云锦张，影落明湖青黛光。 金阙前开二峰长，银河倒挂三石梁。香炉瀑布遥相望，回崖沓嶂凌苍苍。 翠影红霞映朝日，鸟飞不到吴天长。登高壮观天地间，大江茫茫去不还。 黄云万里动风色，白波九道流雪山。好为庐山谣，兴因庐山发。 闲窥石镜清我心，谢公行处苍苔没。早服还丹无世情，琴心三叠道初成。 遥见仙人彩云里，手把芙蓉朝玉京。先期汗漫九垓上，愿接卢敖游太清。

Song of Mount Lu - To Censor Lu Xuzhou Li Bai I’m just a freak come from the South, With frank advice e’er in my mouth.

Holding at dawn a green-jade cane, I leave the tower of Yellow Crane.

Of the long trips to Sacred Mountains I make light, All my life I have loved to visit famous height.

Lu Mountains tower high beside the Wain bright Like a nine-paneled screen embroidered with clouds white.

Their shadows fall into the lake like emerald; Two peaks stand face to face above the Gate of Gold.

A waterfall is hanging down from Three Stone Beams, Cascades of Censor Peak like upended silver streams.

Cliff on cliff, ridge on ridge lead to the azure skies, Their green shapes kindled by flaming clouds at sunrise Barring the boundless Heaven’s vault where no bird flies.

I climb to view the sky o’erhead and earth below, The ne’er-returning waves of the River onward go.

In yellow clouds outspread for miles I see wind blow, Nine forming tributaries splash like mountain snow.

Of Mountain Lu I love to sing, Of my poetry it is the spring.

I gaze at the Stone Mirror, my heart purified, I seek the poet Xie’s path which green mosses hide.

Elixir swallowed, I care not what people say; The zither played thrice, I begin to know the Way. I see from afar immortals in the cloudy land, They come to the celestial city, lotus-bloom in hand.

I’ll go before you somewhere beyond the ninth sphere And wait for you to wander in the Zenith Clear.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百首新译.

Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, pp. 119–20.

104

L31_3580-101_07

c. 1982

49.6cm x 36.9cm

105

庐山谣寄卢侍御虚舟 李白 我本楚狂人，凤歌笑孔丘。手持绿玉杖，朝别黄鹤楼。 五岳寻仙不辞远，一生好入名山游。 庐山秀出南斗傍，屏风九叠云锦张，影落明湖青黛光。 金阙前开二峰长，银河倒挂三石梁。香炉瀑布遥相望，回崖沓嶂凌苍苍。 翠影红霞映朝日，鸟飞不到吴天长。登高壮观天地间，大江茫茫去不还。 黄云万里动风色，白波九道流雪山。好为庐山谣，兴因庐山发。 闲窥石镜清我心，谢公行处苍苔没。早服还丹无世情，琴心三叠道初成。 遥见仙人彩云里，手把芙蓉朝玉京。先期汗漫九垓上，愿接卢敖游太清。

Song of Mount Lu - To Censor Lu Xuzhou Li Bai I’m just a freak come from the South, With frank advice e’er in my mouth.

Holding at dawn a green-jade cane, I leave the tower of Yellow Crane.

Of the long trips to Sacred Mountains I make light, All my life I have loved to visit famous height.

Lu Mountains tower high beside the Wain bright Like a nine-paneled screen embroidered with clouds white.

Their shadows fall into the lake like emerald; Two peaks stand face to face above the Gate of Gold.

A waterfall is hanging down from Three Stone Beams, Cascades of Censor Peak like upended silver streams.

Cliff on cliff, ridge on ridge lead to the azure skies, Their green shapes kindled by flaming clouds at sunrise Barring the boundless Heaven’s vault where no bird flies.

I climb to view the sky o’erhead and earth below, The ne’er-returning waves of the River onward go.

In yellow clouds outspread for miles I see wind blow, Nine forming tributaries splash like mountain snow.

Of Mountain Lu I love to sing, Of my poetry it is the spring.

I gaze at the Stone Mirror, my heart purified, I seek the poet Xie’s path which green mosses hide.

Elixir swallowed, I care not what people say; The zither played thrice, I begin to know the Way. I see from afar immortals in the cloudy land, They come to the celestial city, lotus-bloom in hand.

I’ll go before you somewhere beyond the ninth sphere And wait for you to wander in the Zenith Clear.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百首新译.

Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, pp. 119–20.

106

B02_7400-044_20

c. 1982

55.4cm x 37.7cm 107

庐山谣寄卢侍御虚舟 李白 我本楚狂人，凤歌笑孔丘。手持绿玉杖，朝别黄鹤楼。 五岳寻仙不辞远，一生好入名山游。 庐山秀出南斗傍，屏风九叠云锦张，影落明湖青黛光。 金阙前开二峰长，银河倒挂三石梁。香炉瀑布遥相望，回崖沓嶂凌苍苍。 翠影红霞映朝日，鸟飞不到吴天长。登高壮观天地间，大江茫茫去不还。 黄云万里动风色，白波九道流雪山。好为庐山谣，兴因庐山发。 闲窥石镜清我心，谢公行处苍苔没。早服还丹无世情，琴心三叠道初成。 遥见仙人彩云里，手把芙蓉朝玉京。先期汗漫九垓上，愿接卢敖游太清。

Song of Mount Lu - To Censor Lu Xuzhou Li Bai I’m just a freak come from the South, With frank advice e’er in my mouth.

Holding at dawn a green-jade cane, I leave the tower of Yellow Crane.

Of the long trips to Sacred Mountains I make light, All my life I have loved to visit famous height.

Lu Mountains tower high beside the Wain bright Like a nine-paneled screen embroidered with clouds white.

Their shadows fall into the lake like emerald; Two peaks stand face to face above the Gate of Gold.

A waterfall is hanging down from Three Stone Beams, Cascades of Censor Peak like upended silver streams.

Cliff on cliff, ridge on ridge lead to the azure skies, Their green shapes kindled by flaming clouds at sunrise Barring the boundless Heaven’s vault where no bird flies.

I climb to view the sky o’erhead and earth below, The ne’er-returning waves of the River onward go.

In yellow clouds outspread for miles I see wind blow, Nine forming tributaries splash like mountain snow.

Of Mountain Lu I love to sing, Of my poetry it is the spring.

I gaze at the Stone Mirror, my heart purified, I seek the poet Xie’s path which green mosses hide.

Elixir swallowed, I care not what people say; The zither played thrice, I begin to know the Way. I see from afar immortals in the cloudy land, They come to the celestial city, lotus-bloom in hand.

I’ll go before you somewhere beyond the ninth sphere And wait for you to wander in the Zenith Clear.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百首新译.

Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, pp. 119–20.

108

L112_5625-111_06

1981

89.1cm x 88.1cm

109

秋浦歌 李白 白发三千丈，离愁似个长。 不知明镜里，何处得秋霜。

Chiupu (Qiupu) River Song Li Bai My white hair extends three miles the sorrow of parting made it this long looking in a mirror who would guess where autumn frost comes from Red Pine (Bill Porter). Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2003, p. 67.

110

B08_2261-094_31

c. 1983

44.5 x 37.8 cm

111

山中与幽人对酌 李白 两人对酌山花开，一杯一杯复一杯。 我醉欲眠卿且去，明朝有意抱琴来。

Drinking with a Friend, Among the Mountains Li Bai Together, we drink; the mountain flowers open.

A cup, a cup, and one more cup.

Drunk, I’d sleep; you go.

Tomorrow, come again: Do bring your lute.

Minford, John and Lau, Joseph S. M., eds. Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 761.

112

L106_5537-053_10

c. 1978

135.3cm x 80.7cm 113

关山月 李白 明月出天山，苍茫云海间。 长风几万里，吹度玉门关。 汉下白登道，胡窥青海湾。 由来征战地，不见有人还。 戍客望边色，思归多苦颜。 高楼当此夜，叹息未应闲。

The Moon over the Mountain Pass Li Bai From Heaven’s Peak the moon rises bright, Over a boundless sea of cloud.

Winds blow for miles with main and might, Past the Jade Gate which stands so proud.

Our warriors march down the frontier, While Tartars peer across Blue Bays.

From the battlefield outstretched here, None have come back since olden days.

Guards watch the scene of borderland, Thinking of home, with wistful eyes.

Tonight upstairs their wives would stand, Looking afar with longing sighs.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 100.

114

B02_7401-044_19

c. 1982

51.3cm x 37.5cm

115

自遣 李白 对酒不觉暝，落花盈我衣。 醉起步溪月，鸟还人亦稀。

To Amuse Myself Li Bai Drinking alone without knowing the coming of dusk, I discover my robe covered with fallen petals.

Drunk, I rise to walk along the moonlit creek— The birds have gone and few are the people around.

Li Wu-chi and Lo Yucheng, eds. Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1975, p. 110.

116

B05-9984-099_30

1982

68.5cm x 47.6cm 117

山中与幽人对酌 李白 两人对酌山花开，一杯一杯复一杯。 我醉欲眠卿且去，明朝有意抱琴来。

Drinking with a Friend, Among the Mountains Li Bai Together we drink; the mountain flowers open.

A cup, a cup, and one more cup.

Drunk, I’d sleep; you go.

Tomorrow, come again: Do bring your lute.

Minford, John, and Joseph S. M. Lau, eds. Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 761.

118

B05-9978-099_35

1982

74.2cm x 46.2cm 119

独坐敬亭山 李白 众鸟高飞尽，孤云独去闲。 相看两不厌，只有敬亭山。

Alone In Chingting Mountain Li Bai Flocks of birds disappear in the distance lone clouds wander away who never tires of my company only Chingting Mountain Red Pine (Bill Porter). Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2003, p. 17.

120

B02_7387-044_34

c. 1984

37.0cm x 33.6cm

121

将进酒 李白 君不见黄河之水天上来，奔流到海不复回！ 君不见高堂明镜悲白发，朝如青丝暮成雪。 人生得意须尽欢，莫使金樽空对月！天生我材必有用，千金散尽还复来。 烹羊宰牛且为乐，会须一饮三百杯。岑夫子，丹丘生，将进酒，杯莫停！ 与君歌一曲，请君为我倾耳听！钟鼓馔玉不足贵，但愿长醉不愿醒！ 古来圣贤皆寂寞，惟有饮者留其名。陈王昔时宴平乐，斗酒十千恣欢谑。 主人何为言少钱，径须沽取对君酌。五花马，千金裘， 呼儿将出换美酒，与尔同销万古愁！

Invitation to Wine Li Bai Do you not see the Yellow River come from the sky, Rushing into the sea and ne’er come back?

Do you not see the mirrors bright in chambers high Grieve o’er your snow-white hair though once it was silk-black?

When hopes are won, Oh! drink your fill in high delight, And never leave your wine-cup empty in moonlight.

Heaven has made us talents, we’re not made in vain.

A thousand gold coins spent, more will turn up again.

Kill a cow, cook a sheep and let us merry be, And drink three hundred cupfuls of wine in high glee.

Dear friends of mine, Cheer up, cheer up!

I invite you to wine.

Do not put down your cup!

I will sing you a song, please hear, O, hear! lend me a willing ear!

What difference will rare and costly dishes make?

I only want to get drunk and never to wake.

How many great men were forgotten through the ages?

But great drinkers are more famous than sober sages.

The Prince of Poets feast’d in his palace at will, Drank wine at ten thousand a cask and laughed his fill.

A host should not complain of money he is short, To drink with you I will sell things of any sort.

My fur coat worth a thousand coins of gold And my flower-dappled horse may be sold To buy good wine that we may drown the woes age-old.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 112.

122

B08_2422-089_27

1980

61.0cm x 45.5cm

123

行路难三首其三 李白 有耳莫洗颍川水，有口莫食首阳蕨。 含光混世贵无名，何用孤高比云月？ 吾观自古贤达人，功成不退皆殒身。 子胥既弃吴江上，屈原终投湘水滨。 陆机雄才岂自保，李斯税驾苦不早， 华亭鹤唳讵可闻，上蔡苍鹰何足道。 君不见吴中张翰称达生，秋风忽忆江东行。 且乐生前一杯酒，何须身后千载名！

Hard is the Way of the World III Li Bai Don’t wash your ears on hearing something you dislike Nor die of hunger like famous hermits on the Pike!

Living without a fame among the motley crowd, Why should one be as lofty as the moon or cloud?

Of ancient talents who failed to retire, there’s none But came to tragic ending after glory’s won.

The head of General Wu was hung o’er city gate; In the river was drowned the poet laureate.

The highly talented scholar wished in vain To preserve his life to hear they cry of the crane.

Minister Li regretted not to have retired To hunt with falcon gray as he had long desired.

Have you not heard of Zhang Han who resigned, carefree, To go home to eat his perch with high glee?

Enjoy a cup of wine while you’re alive!

Do not care if your fame will not survive!

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, pp. 109–10.

124

B08_2421-089_26

1980

61.5cm x 45.4cm

125

春夜宴桃李园序 李白 夫天地者。万物之逆旅。光阴者。百代之过客。而浮生若梦。为欢几 何。古人秉烛夜游，良有以也。况阳春召我以烟景。大块假我以文章会 桃李之芳园。序天伦之乐事。群季俊秀。皆为惠连吾人咏歌。独惭康乐 幽赏未已。高谈转清。开琼筵以坐花，飞羽觞而醉月，不有佳作。何伸 雅怀。如诗不成。罚依金谷酒数。

Preface for the Poetry from a Spring Evening Party for My Cousins in a Peach Blossom Garden Li Bai This Heaven and Earth are the hostel for the Creation’s ten thousand forms, where light and darkness have passed as guests for a hundred ages. But our floating lives are like a dream; how many moments do we have for joy?

When the ancients took out candles for nighttime revels, they had the right idea. And we the more, when warm spring summons us with misted scenes and the Great Lump of Earth lends us patterned decoration.

Assembled in this garden perfumed by flowering peaches, we shared the happiness of those whom Heaven has related. My young brothers were all talented as the poet Xie Huilian, though my own songs could only shame me before Lingyun, his elder cousin. Yet our quiet enjoyment had not reached an end when the wit of our conversation grew more refined. We spread carnelian mats to sit beneath the flowers, let fly our winged cups and got drunk with the moon.

But if there were no handsome verse, how could you express exquisite feelings? When the poems did not succeed, we exacted forfeits in jars of wine as they did in the garden of Golden Valley.

Minford, John and Lau, Joseph S. M., eds. Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 723.

126

L108_5572-189_22

1980

90.1cm x 180.4cm

127

赠孟浩然 李白 吾爱孟夫子，风流天下闻。 红颜弃轩冕，白首卧松云。 醉月频中圣，迷花不事君。 高山安可仰，徒此挹清芬。

A Gift for Meng Haoran Li Bai I love my Master Meng!

Who has not heard of the romance of his life?

In ruddy youth he renounced worldly honors; In gray hairs he nestles amidst clouds and pines.

Inebriate with the moon, he often hits the peak of bliss.

Bewitched by the flowers, he refuses to serve the king.

O high mountain! How can I aspire to you?

I only look from afar, inhaling your pure fragrance.

Wu, John C. H. The Four Seasons of T’ang Poetry. Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1972, p. 48.

128

L59_4300-065_20

1984

47.5cm x 47.0cm

129

早发白帝城 李白 朝辞白帝彩云间，千里江陵一日还。 两岸猿声啼不住，轻舟已过万重山。

Leaving the White Emperor Town for Jiangling Li Bai Leaving at dawn the White Emperor crowned with cloud, I’ve sailed a thousand li through Canyons in a day.

With the monkeys’ adieus the riverbanks are loud, My skiff has left ten thousand mountains far away.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 92.

130

L105_5531-087_04

c. 1982

239.0cm x 87.0cm 131

春日醉起言志 李白 处世若大梦，胡为劳其生。 所以终日醉，颓然卧前楹。 觉来盼庭前，一鸟花间鸣。 借问此何时？春风语流莺。 感之欲叹息，对酒还自倾。 浩歌待明月，曲尽已忘情。

A Homily on Ideals in Life, Uttered in Springtime on Rising From a Drunken Slumber Li Bai Since Life is but a Dream, Why toil to no avail?

Therefore it is that drunk all day Listless beneath my porch I lay.

Waking, across the lawn I peer.

A bird from out the blossoms cried.

Tell me what season of the year, What day may this day be?

‘Twas a chance oriole That babbled on the springtime gale.

At thought of which I all but sighed: But then again addressed me to my bowl; And sang with mighty din To usher the moon in.

And now my song is done—Ay me, I have forgot the theme.

Turner, John A., trans. A Golden Treasury of Chinese Poetry. Hong Kong: Center for Translation Project, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1976, p. 115.

132

B05-9067-097_27

1979

40.8cm x 29.0cm

133

宣州谢朓楼饯别校书叔云 李白 弃我去者昨日之日不可留， 乱我心者今日之日多烦忧！ 长风万里送秋雁，对此可以酣高楼。 蓬莱文章建安骨，中间小谢又清发， 俱怀逸兴壮思飞，欲上青天览日月。 抽刀断水水更流，举杯销愁愁更愁， 人生在世不称意，明朝散发弄扁舟。

Farewell to Uncle Yun, the Imperial Librarian, at Xie Tiao’s Pavilion in Xuanzhou Li Bai What left me yesterday Can be retained no more; What troubles me today Is the times for which I feel sore.

In autumn wind for miles and miles the wild geese fly.

Let’s drink, in face of this, in the pavilion high.

Your writing’s forcible like ancient poets while Mine is in Junior Xie’s clear and elegant style.

Both of us have an ideal high: We’d bring down the moon from the sky.

Cut running water with a sword, ‘twill faster flow; Drink wine to drown your sorrow, it will heavier grow.

If we despair of all human affairs, Let us roam in a boat with loosened hairs!

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 117.

134

B02_7399-044_21

c. 1982

60.0cm x 41.4cm 135

金陵酒肆留别 李白 风吹柳花满店香，吴姬压酒劝客尝。 金陵子弟来相送，欲行不行各尽觞。 请君试问东流水，别意与之谁短长？

Parting at a Tavern in Jinling Li Bai The tavern’s sweetened when wind blows in willow-down, A Southern maiden bids the guests to taste the wine.

My dear young friends have come to see me leave the town, They drink their cups and I, still tarrying, drink mine.

O, ask the river flowing to the east, I pray, Whether his parting grief or mine will longer stay!

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 101.

136

B02_7398-044-22

c. 1982

59.4cm x 41.6cm 137

听董大弹胡笳弄兼寄语弄房给事 李颀 蔡女昔造胡笳声，一弹一十有八拍。 胡人落泪沾边草，汉使断肠对归客。 古戍苍苍烽火寒，大荒阴沉飞雪白。 先拂商弦后角羽，四郊秋叶惊摵摵。 董夫子，通神明，深松窃听来妖精。 言迟更速皆应手，将往复旋如有情。 空山百鸟散还合，万里浮云阴且晴。 嘶酸雏雁失群夜，断绝胡儿恋母声。 川为静其波，鸟亦罢其鸣。 乌珠部落家乡远，逻娑沙尘哀怨生。 幽音变调忽飘洒，长风吹林雨堕瓦。 迸泉飒飒飞木末，野鹿呦呦走堂下。 长安城连东掖垣，凤凰池对青琐门。 高才脱略名与利，日夕望君抱琴至。

On Listening to Dong the Elder Playing ‘Air on Tartar Reed Pipe’ on the Zither—Sent to Supervising Secretary Fang Li Qi Once the lady Cai composed an air on a Tartar pipe, With eighteen pieces made into a single melody.

The tears of the listening Tartars wet the grasses of the frontier, And the heart of the envoy sent by the Han ached for his homebound guest.

Now the old fortress is dark and obscure and the army beacons are cold In a wasteland sunk in gloomy shadow and white with flying snow.

As you play the second note on the scale, then the third and the fifth, There’s a rustling swish beyond the walls of trembling autumn leaves.

Grand Master Dong,

138

Your talents are inspired!

From in the deep pines demons come out stealthily to listen.

Slowly, and then again with speed, your touch is always sure; Notes fade away before surging back, as if they are swayed by passion.

In the empty hills flocks of birds scatter, then come together again; Over thousands of miles the floating clouds are in shadow, then in the light.

A gosling is mewling bitterly as it loses its flock in the night; A tartar boy cries longingly, cut off from his mother.

Then you still the waves of the river

And bring the birds call to an end.

Out there with the Wusun tribe, home is far away; In the sand and dust of Lhasa desolation grows.

Darkly now the tune has changed, with a sudden fluttering breeze; A strong wind blows through the woods, rain falls on the tiles, Bursts of water splash and sweep across the tops of trees, And wild deer bark and bellow as they pass below the hall.

Adjoining the Chang’an city walls are the walls of the Chancellery, Where Phoenix Pool lies right across from the Green Tracery Gate.

There a highly talented man, dismissive of fame and profit, Is hoping day and night to see you, carrying in your zither.

Peter Harris, ed. and trans. Three Hundred Tang Poems.

Alfred A. Knopf New, York, London, Toronto, 2009.

B02_7403-044_17

c. 1982

48.6cm x 37.6cm

139

听董大弹胡笳弄兼寄语弄房给事 李颀 蔡女昔造胡笳声，一弹一十有八拍。 胡人落泪沾边草，汉使断肠对归客。 古戍苍苍烽火寒，大荒阴沉飞雪白。 先拂商弦后角羽，四郊秋叶惊摵摵。 董夫子，通神明，深松窃听来妖精。 言迟更速皆应手，将往复旋如有情。 空山百鸟散还合，万里浮云阴且晴。 嘶酸雏雁失群夜，断绝胡儿恋母声。 川为静其波，鸟亦罢其鸣。 乌珠部落家乡远，逻娑沙尘哀怨生。 幽音变调忽飘洒，长风吹林雨堕瓦。 迸泉飒飒飞木末，野鹿呦呦走堂下。 长安城连东掖垣，凤凰池对青琐门。 高才脱略名与利，日夕望君抱琴至。

On Listening to Dong the Elder Playing ‘Air on Tartar Reed Pipe’ on the Zither—Sent to Supervising Secretary Fang Li Qi Once the lady Cai composed an air on a Tartar pipe, With eighteen pieces made into a single melody.

The tears of the listening Tartars wet the grasses of the frontier, And the heart of the envoy sent by the Han ached for his homebound guest.

Now the old fortress is dark and obscure and the army beacons are cold In a wasteland sunk in gloomy shadow and white with flying snow.

As you play the second note on the scale, then the third and the fifth, There’s a rustling swish beyond the walls of trembling autumn leaves.

Grand Master Dong,

140

Your talents are inspired!

From in the deep pines demons come out stealthily to listen.

Slowly, and then again with speed, your touch is always sure; Notes fade away before surging back, as if they are swayed by passion.

In the empty hills flocks of birds scatter, then come together again; Over thousands of miles the floating clouds are in shadow, then in the light.

A gosling is mewling bitterly as it loses its flock in the night; A tartar boy cries longingly, cut off from his mother.

Then you still the waves of the river

And bring the birds call to an end.

Out there with the Wusun tribe, home is far away; In the sand and dust of Lhasa desolation grows.

Darkly now the tune has changed, with a sudden fluttering breeze; A strong wind blows through the woods, rain falls on the tiles, Bursts of water splash and sweep across the tops of trees, And wild deer bark and bellow as they pass below the hall.

Adjoining the Chang’an city walls are the walls of the Chancellery, Where Phoenix Pool lies right across from the Green Tracery Gate.

There a highly talented man, dismissive of fame and profit, Is hoping day and night to see you, carrying in your zither.

Peter Harris, ed. and trans. Three Hundred Tang Poems.

Alfred A. Knopf New, York, London, Toronto, 2009.

B02_7404-044_16

c. 1982

49.9cm x 37.4cm

141

听董大弹胡笳弄兼寄语弄房给事 李颀 蔡女昔造胡笳声，一弹一十有八拍。 胡人落泪沾边草，汉使断肠对归客。 古戍苍苍烽火寒，大荒阴沉飞雪白。 先拂商弦后角羽，四郊秋叶惊摵摵。 董夫子，通神明，深松窃听来妖精。 言迟更速皆应手，将往复旋如有情。 空山百鸟散还合，万里浮云阴且晴。 嘶酸雏雁失群夜，断绝胡儿恋母声。 川为静其波，鸟亦罢其鸣。 乌珠部落家乡远，逻娑沙尘哀怨生。 幽音变调忽飘洒，长风吹林雨堕瓦。 迸泉飒飒飞木末，野鹿呦呦走堂下。 长安城连东掖垣，凤凰池对青琐门。 高才脱略名与利，日夕望君抱琴至。

On Listening to Dong the Elder Playing ‘Air on Tartar Reed Pipe’ on the Zither—Sent to Supervising Secretary Fang Li Qi Once the lady Cai composed an air on a Tartar pipe, With eighteen pieces made into a single melody.

The tears of the listening Tartars wet the grasses of the frontier, And the heart of the envoy sent by the Han ached for his homebound guest.

Now the old fortress is dark and obscure and the army beacons are cold In a wasteland sunk in gloomy shadow and white with flying snow.

As you play the second note on the scale, then the third and the fifth, There’s a rustling swish beyond the walls of trembling autumn leaves.

Grand Master Dong,

142

Your talents are inspired!

From in the deep pines demons come out stealthily to listen.

Slowly, and then again with speed, your touch is always sure; Notes fade away before surging back, as if they are swayed by passion.

In the empty hills flocks of birds scatter, then come together again; Over thousands of miles the floating clouds are in shadow, then in the light.

A gosling is mewling bitterly as it loses its flock in the night; A tartar boy cries longingly, cut off from his mother.

Then you still the waves of the river

And bring the birds call to an end.

Out there with the Wusun tribe, home is far away; In the sand and dust of Lhasa desolation grows.

Darkly now the tune has changed, with a sudden fluttering breeze; A strong wind blows through the woods, rain falls on the tiles, Bursts of water splash and sweep across the tops of trees, And wild deer bark and bellow as they pass below the hall.

Adjoining the Chang’an city walls are the walls of the Chancellery, Where Phoenix Pool lies right across from the Green Tracery Gate.

There a highly talented man, dismissive of fame and profit, Is hoping day and night to see you, carrying in your zither.

Peter Harris, ed. and trans. Three Hundred Tang Poems.

Alfred A. Knopf New, York, London, Toronto, 2009.

B02_7406-044_15

c. 1982

46.2cm x 37.1cm

143

夜雨寄北 李商隐 君问归期未有期，巴山夜雨涨秋池。 何当共剪西窗烛，却话巴山夜雨时。

Written on a Rainy Night to My Wife in the North Li Shangyin You ask me when I can come back but I don’t know, The pools in western hills with autumn rain o’erflow.

When by our window can we trim the wicks again And talk about this endless, dreary night of rain?

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 344.

144

L108_5589-112_21

1981

93.1cm x 186.5cm

145

听弹琴 刘长卿 泠泠七弦上，静听松风寒。 古调虽自爱，今人多不弹。

Zither Playing Liu Changqing Upon the seven-stringed tinkling zither Mutely I heard the chilly Wind-through-the-Pine.

O how I love it, though it is out-moded, Though to play it most moderns would decline!

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 199.

146

B14_1305-145_31

1984

53.0cm x 39.8cm

147

送灵澈 刘长卿 苍苍竹林寺，杳杳钟声晚。 荷笠带斜阳，青山独归远。

Parting with the Monk Lingche Liu Changqing Green, green the temple ‘mid bamboo, Late, late bells ring out the evening.

Along, he’s lost in mountains blue With sunset his hat’s carrying.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 201.

148

B03_8316-071_35

c. 1973

44.5cm x 56.8cm

149

醒后 刘驾 醉卧芳草间，酒醒日落后。 壶觞半倾覆，客去应已久。 不记折花时，何得花在手。

With Wine and Flowers Liu Jia One day while I tipsily snoozed in my bower, The sun disappearing had darkened the land; My guests had all left me for many an hour; The cup and the wine-jar lay strewn on the sand...

I could not recall I had picked me a flower, Yet I woke up to find I had one in my hand.

Giles, Herbert A., ed. Gems of Chinese Literature. New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corporation, 1965, p. 373.

150

B05-9989-099_27

1982

68.6cm x 47.6cm 151

醒后 刘驾 醉卧芳草间，酒醒日落后。 壶觞半倾覆，客去应已久。 不记折花时，何得花在手。

With Wine and Flowers Liu Jia One day while I tipsily snoozed in my bower, The sun disappearing had darkened the land; My guests had all left me for many an hour; The cup and the wine-jar lay strewn on the sand...

I could not recall I had picked me a flower, Yet I woke up to find I had one in my hand.

Giles, Herbert A., ed. Gems of Chinese Literature. New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corporation, 1965, p. 373.

152

B05-9025-098_23

1979

48.9cm x 34.3cm 153

秋风引 刘禹锡 何处秋风至？萧萧送雁群。 朝来入庭树，孤客最先闻。

Summer Dying Liu Yuxi Whence comes the autumn’s whistling blast, With flocks of wild geese hurrying past?...

Alas, when wintry breezes burst, The lonely traveller hears them first!

Giles, Herbert A., ed. Gems of Chinese Literature. New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corporation, 1965, p. 357.

154

B05-9046-098_01

c. 1982

44.7cm x 34.1cm

155

秋风引 刘禹锡 何处秋风至？萧萧送雁群。 朝来入庭树，孤客最先闻。

Summer Dying Liu Yuxi Whence comes the autumn’s whistling blast, With flocks of wild geese hurrying past?...

Alas, when wintry breezes burst, The lonely traveller hears them first!

Giles, Herbert A., ed. Gems of Chinese Literature. New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corporation, 1965, p. 357.

156

B13_0743-026_18

1984

46.6 x 37.2 cm

157

乌衣巷 刘禹锡 朱雀桥边野草花，乌衣巷口夕阳斜。 旧时王谢堂前燕，飞入寻常百姓家。

Black Robe Lane Liu Yuxi Wildflowers bloom by Red Bird Bridge the fading light slants down Black Robe Lane where swallows once lived among Hsiehs (Xies) and Wangs they now frequent homes of ordinary people Red Pine (Bill Porter). Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2003, p. 303.

158

B03_8449-069_01

1979

58.9cm x 52.0cm

159

乌衣巷 刘禹锡 朱雀桥边野草花，乌衣巷口夕阳斜。 旧时王谢堂前燕，飞入寻常百姓家。

Black Robe Lane Liu Yuxi Wildflowers bloom by Red Bird Bridge the fading light slants down Black Robe Lane where swallows once lived among Hsiehs (Xies) and Wangs they now frequent homes of ordinary people Red Pine (Bill Porter). Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2003, p. 303.

160

B13_0656-150_13

c. 1985

36.1cm x 34.5cm

161

江雪 柳宗元 千山鸟飞绝，万径人踪灭。 孤舟蓑笠翁，独钓寒江雪。

Snowfall on the River Liu Zongyuan A thousand mountains whence the birds have flown; Ten thousand paths deserted by all travellers.

Only an old man in a rain-hat and coat Is fishing in the snow aboard his lonely craft.

Liu Shih Shun. One Hundred and One Chinese Poems, with English Translations and Preface. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967, p. 71.

162

L109_5596-087_00

c. 1979

92.8cm x 212.5cm

163

溪居 柳宗元 久为簪组束，幸此南夷谪。 闲依农圃邻，偶似山林客。 晓耕翻露草，夜榜响溪石。 来往不逢人，长歌楚天碧！

Dwelling by a Stream Liu Zongyuan I was long cramped by official girdle till Happily banished to this wild southernland: Now I’m an idle neighbour of farmer’s plots and Sometimes look like a guest of a wood of a hill.

At dawn I plough through the weeds wet with dew, At dusk my boat-pole raps the pebbly rill.

I roam, with scarcely a passer-by in view, I sing and sing until the skies grow blue.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 302.

164

B02_ 7408-044_13

c. 1982

44.1cm x 37.2cm

165

度浮桥至南台 陆游 客中多病废登临，闻说南台试一寻。 九轨徐行怒涛上，千艘横系大江心。 寺楼钟鼓催昏晓，墟落云烟自古今。 白发未除豪气在，醉吹横笛坐榕阴。

Crossing a Boat-bridge to South Tower Lu You Traveller, midroad, sick, forsakes landscapes.

Heard tales of South Tower, might give it a try; nine-rutted path, I walk slow where wrath waves rise, countless hulls, sidelong, gird the great stream’s hub.

Kirk’s height, bell and drum incite dusk and dawn; hamlet’s dooryard of clouds, from of old till now, white hair not yet wiped out my nerve’s worth: wine, play side-blown flute beneath banyan shade.

Gordon, David M. The Wild Old Man: Poem of Lu Yu. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984, p. 3.

166

B05-0031-098_35

1980

55.4cm x 42.9cm

167

三月十七日夜醉中作 陆游 前年脍鲸东海上，白浪如山寄豪壮； 去年射虎南山秋，夜归急雪满貂裘。 今年摧颓最堪笑，华发苍颜羞自照。 谁知得酒尚能狂，脱帽向人时大叫。 逆胡未灭心未平，孤剑床头铿有声。 破驿梦回灯欲死，打窗风雨正三更。

Third Month, Night of the Seventeenth, Written While Drunk Lu You Years ago feasting on raw whale by the eastern sea, white waves like mountains flinging me their beauty and awe; last year shooting tigers, south mountain autumn, coming home at night, thick snow plastered on my sable coat; this year-so worn and broken it really makes you laugh; hair flecked gray, ashen face-I’m ashamed to look at myself.

Who’d think, given some wine, I could still raise a fuss, yanking off my cap, facing men, a big shout for every one?

Traitorous barbarians still not crushed, my heart never at peace; the long sword by my pillow sings out its clanging cry.

In a fallen-down posthouse I wake from dreams, the lamp about to die; tapping at the window, wind and rain—third watch by now.

Li Wu-chi and Lo Yucheng, eds. Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry.

Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1975, p. 378.

168

L61_4400-055_09

1980

59.5cm x 33.8cm 169

春晓 孟浩然 春眠不觉晓，处处闻啼鸟。 夜来风雨声，花落知多少。

Spring Morning Meng Haoran How we have overslept the spring morning!

Here, there, everywhere, birds are heard twittering.

After a long night’s clamor of wind and rain, how many petals are fallen on the ground?

Qiu Xiaolong. Evoking Tang: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry. St. Louis, Missouri: Penultimate Press, 2007, p. 11.

170

B05-9052-097_37

1979

46.1cm x 36.0cm

171

与诸子登岘山 孟浩然 人事有代谢，往来成古今。 江山留胜迹，我辈复登临。 水落鱼梁浅，天寒梦泽深。 羊公碑尚在，读罢泪沾襟！

Mounting Xian Mountain with Friends Meng Haoran Vicissitudes do mark human affairs always; Time comes, time goes, thus there’re olden and modern days.

In Nature’s bosom remains the historical site; My friends and I now in our turn climb to the height.

The ebb tide exposes the shallow Kiddle Shoal; Dream Marsh appears to be deeper when winds grow raw.

The monument to Lord Yang* still stands, and I lament When reading the inscription and tears wet my garment.

Note: Yang Hu (221–278), minister and high-ranking general of the Western Jin Dynasty (265–317), came to Xian Mountain to drink wine and recite poems. He said to his companions: “The mountain is there ever since the cosmos came into being. So many people like us have mounted it, but they are all in oblivion. It makes me sad.” After his death, people built a monument on Xian Mountain in memory of his merits.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 24.

172

B14_1104-140_24

1980

73.0cm x 47.6cm 173

春日西湖寄谢法曹歌 欧阳修 西湖春色归， 春水绿於染。 群芳烂不收 ， 东风落如糁。 参军春思乱如云， 白发题诗愁送春。 遥知湖上一杯酒， 能忆天涯万里人。 万里思春尚有情， 忽逢春至客心惊。 雪消门外千山绿， 花发江边二月晴。 少年把酒逢春色， 今日逢春头已白。 异乡物态与人殊， 惟有东风旧相识。

A Song of Spring at West Lake, Sent to Circuit Officer Hsieh Ouyang Xiu The colors of spring have returned to West Lake, The waters of springtime greener than the dye.

Full-blown flowers in bright hue Drop their petals in the east wind, in disarray.

Tangled like clouds are the spring sentiments of this magistrateA whitehead, versifying, grieves in bidding farewell to spring.

From far away at the lake, a goblet of wine, I imagine, Can bring back the memory of someone at world’s end.

Many thousand li away, I still can cherish the spring; But suddenly confronting spring, a traveler’s heart’s startled.

Snow melting outside my door, a thousand hills turn green; Flowers open on the riverbank, a sunny day in March.

As a young man, I drank wine to dally with spring’s radiance; Encountering spring today, I discover my hair’s already white.

Everything in a strange land looks unfamiliar: Only the east wind acts like my old acquaintance.

Note: Written on his way to Hsu-chou in 1037, where the poet was remarried. The poem was addressed to his friend Hsieh in the Bureau of Justice at Hsu-chou, who had sent him a poem to comfort him during his exile at Yi-ling.

Li Wu-chi and Lo Yucheng, eds. Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1975, pp. 325–26.

174

B05-9034-098_17

1979

46.2cm x 37.7cm

175

琅琊溪 欧阳修 空山雪消溪水涨，游客渡溪横古槎。 不知溪源来远近，但见流出山中花。

Lang-yeh (Langya) Creek Ouyang Xiu Mountain snows melt,

swell the stream.

I cross on a tree felled long ago No way to know

the distance to the source: watch it rush

from among mountain flowers.

Seaton, J. D., ed. and trans. Love and Time: Poems of Ou-yang Hsiu. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1998, p. 68.

176

L97_5203-024_27

1984

90.5cm x 46.0cm 177

送崔九 裴迪 归山深浅去，须尽丘壑美。 莫学武陵人，暂游桃源里。

A Parting Wish Pei Di Deeper yet deeper into the mountains go, Drain every beauty there of hill and dale; Strive not to be the fisherman of old— Mere sojourner of the Peach-blossom Vale Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 217.

178

L114_5644-028_01

c. 1982

92.0cm x 209.3cm

179

送崔九 裴迪 归山深浅去，须尽丘壑美。 莫学武陵人，暂游桃源里。

A Parting Wish Pei Di Deeper yet deeper into the mountains go, Drain every beauty there of hill and dale; Strive not to be the fisherman of old— Mere sojourner of the Peach-blossom Vale Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 217.

180

B08_2389-095_08

c. 1984

44.2cm x 47.1cm

181

春泛若耶溪 綦毋潜 幽意无断绝，此去随所偶。 晚风吹行舟，花路入溪口。 际夜转西壑，隔山望南斗。 潭烟飞溶溶，林月低向后。 生事且弥漫，愿为持竿叟。

Drifting on the Jo-yeh (Ruoye) Stream in Spring Qiwu Qian The longing for serenity knows no pause; Aimlessly I go whither I am carried; The evening breeze drives the boat onward; The flowers spread into the river’s mouth.

To the western vale I turn as darkness descends; Across the mountain, I gaze on the stars.

Swiftly the thick cloud drifts over the stream; Behind the trees the low moon sheds its rays.

Life is like a sea never-ending.

Would I were a fisherman, living untroubled.

Liu Shih Shun. One Hundred and One Chinese Poems, with English Translations and Preface. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967, p. 53.

182

B02_7424-043_35

c. 1982

50.6cm x 34.5cm 183

咏怀八十二首其一 阮籍 夜中不能寐，起坐弹鸣琴。 薄帷鉴明月，清风吹我襟。 孤鸿号外野，翔鸟鸣北林。 徘徊将何见？忧思独伤心。

Poems Expressing My Feelings I Ruan Ji Deep in the night and unable to sleep I rise and sit to play my singing lute, thin curtains mirror the bright moon clear breezes tug my lapels a single swan shrieks past the fields hovering birds cry in the north woods, pacing round, what is it that awaits me? anxious thoughts alone that hurt the heart.

Li Wu-chi and Lo Yucheng, eds. Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1975, pp. 49–50.

184

B08_2167-198_32

1979

44.0cm x 35.3cm

185

拾得 无去无来本湛然，不居内外及中间。 一颗水精绝瑕翳，光明透漏出人天。

Shide Not waxing or waning essentially still not inside or outside and nowhere between a single flawless crystal whose light shines through to gods and men Red Pine (Bill Porter). The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain Revised and Expanded. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2000, p. 287.

186

L115_5661-028_12

1981

185.5cm x 93.0cm 187

拾得 无去无来本湛然，不居内外及中间。 一颗水精绝瑕翳，光明透漏出人天。

Shide Not waxing or waning essentially still not inside or outside and nowhere between a single flawless crystal whose light shines through to gods and men Red Pine (Bill Porter). The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain Revised and Expanded. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2000, p. 287.

188

B14_1326-145_10

1984

43.1cm x 35.0cm

189

渡汉江 宋之问 岭外音书绝，经冬复立春。 近乡情更怯，不敢问来人。

Crossing the Han river Song Zhiwen Beyond the mountain there came no tidings and letters; Winter passed, and then went Spring.

As I near my village my heart grows more afraid, And I dare not inquire of those that come to meet me.

Davis, A. R., ed. The Penguin Book of Chinese Verse. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1962, p. 12.

190

B08_2393-095_11

1984

46.6cm x 46.1cm

191

渔父四首其四 苏轼 渔父笑，轻鸥举，漠漠一江风雨。 江边骑马是官人，借我孤舟南渡。

The Fisherman IV Su Shi The fisherman, laughing, Takes off like a light seagull, Into a misty river of wind and rain.

On horseback, along the riverbank, is an official Asking me for my little boat to ferry him southward.

Li Wu-chi and Lo Yucheng, eds. Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1975, p. 346.

192

L83_4933-033_04

1979

63.0cm x 48.0cm

193

汲江煎茶 苏轼 活水还须活火烹，自临钓石取深清。 大瓢贮月归春瓮，小杓分江入夜瓶。 雪乳已翻煎处脚，松风忽作泻时声。 枯肠未易禁三碗，坐听荒城长短更。 Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea Su Shi Living water needs living fire to boil; lean over Fishing Rock, dip the clear deep current; store the spring moon in a big gourd, return it to the jar; divide the night stream with a little dipper, drain it into the kettle.

Frothy water, simmering, whirls bits of tea; pour it and hear the sound of wind in pines.

Hard to refuse three cups to a dried-up belly; I sit and listen — from the old town, the striking of the hour.

Watson, Burton, trans. Selected Poems of Su Tung-p’o. Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1994, p. 140.

194

L65_4497-041_26

1982

76.0cm x 60.3cm

195

题西林壁 苏轼 横看成岭侧成峰，远近高低各不同。 不识庐山真面目，只缘此身在山中。

West Forest Cliff Su Shi From one side the mountain looks rounded; From another it is pointed.

Far, near, high, low- no view is the same.

One cannot know the true face of the Lu Mountain; Only because one is in the mountain.

Translated by Jason C. Kuo

196

B07_2099-056_21

1979

33.5cm x 31.4cm

197

别岁 苏轼 故人适千里，临别尚迟迟。 人行犹可复，岁行那可追。 问岁安所之，远在天一涯。 已逐东流水，赴海归无时。 东邻酒初熟，西舍彘亦肥。 且为一日欢，慰此穷年悲。 勿嗟旧岁别，行与新岁辞。 去去勿回顾，还君老与衰。

The End of the Year Su Shi When a friend starts on a journey of a thousand miles, As he is about to leave, he delays again and again.

When men part, they feel they may never meet again.

When a year has gone, how will you ever find it again?

I wonder where it has gone, this year that is ended?

Certainly someplace far beyond the horizon.

It is gone like a river which flows to the East, And empties into the sea without hope of return.

My neighbors on the left are heating wine.

On the right they are roasting a fat pig.

They will have one day of joy As recompense for a whole year of trouble.

We leave the bygone year without regret.

Will we leave so carelessly the years to come?

Everything passes, everything Goes, and never looks back, And we grow older and less strong.

Rexroth, Kenneth. One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. New York: New Directions Books, 1959, p. 88.

198

B08_2283-094_21

1979

44.3cm x 35.2cm

199

惠崇春江晚景 苏轼 竹外桃花三两枝，春江水暖鸭先知。 蒌蒿满地芦芽短，正是河豚欲上时。

An Evening Landscape of the Yangtze in Spring by Hui-ch’ung (Huichong) Su Shi A few branches of peach blossoms beyond the bamboo, As the spring river warms, the ducks are the first to notice.

Artemisia fills the land, the reed-sprouts are tiny, It’s the time the puffers start upstream.

Egan, Ronald C. “Poems on Paintings: Su-Shih and Huang T’ing-chien.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43, no. 2 (December 1983), p. 436.

200

L97_5205-024_29

1984

91.0cm x 38.5cm 201

惠崇春江晚景 苏轼 竹外桃花三两枝，春江水暖鸭先知。 蒌蒿满地芦芽短，正是河豚欲上时。

An Evening Landscape of the Yangtze in Spring by Hui-ch’ung (Huichong) Su Shi A few branches of peach blossoms beyond the bamboo, As the spring river warms, the ducks are the first to notice.

Artemisia fills the land, the reed-sprouts are tiny, It’s the time the puffers start upstream.

Egan, Ronald C. “Poems on Paintings: Su-Shih and Huang T’ing-chien.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43, no. 2 (December 1983), p. 436.

202

B14_1321-145_15

1984

34.0cm x 45.5cm

203

纵笔三首其一 苏轼 寂寂东坡一病翁，白须萧散满霜风。 小儿误喜朱颜在，一笑那知是酒红。

Impromptu Verse Written in Exile Su Shi I, lonely Master of Eastern Slope, lie ill in bed; My straggling white beard flows in the wind like frost spread.

Seeing my crimson face, my son is glad I’m fine; I laugh, for he does not know I have drunken wine.

Xu Yuanzhong, trans. Golden Treasury of Tang and Song Poetry 唐宋诗一百五十首.

Peking: Peking University Press, 1995, p. 337.

204

L65_4508-041_28

1982

75.6cm x 68.1cm

205

西湖 苏轼 毕竟西湖六月中，风光不与四时同。 接天莲叶无穷碧，映日荷花别样红。

The West Lake Su Shi Now in the sixth moon, The appearance of the West Lake Is different from in other seasons.

Lotus leaves upon the far horizon Are a boundless green, And flowers in the sun burn with an unusual red.

Liu Shih Shun. One Hundred and One Chinese Poems, with English Translations and Preface. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967, p. 115.

206

B13_0662-150_16

c. 1983

36.1cm x 34.5cm

207

将赴益州题小园壁 苏颋 岁穷惟益老，春至却辞家。 可惜东园树，无人也作花。

Inscribed on the wall of my small garden as I was about to go to I-chou (Yizhou) Su Ting The year is ended, and it only adds to my age; Spring has come, but I must take leave of my home.

Alas, that the trees in this eastern garden, Without me, will still bear flowers.

Davis, A. R., ed. The Penguin Book of Chinese Verse. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1962, p. 12.

208

B08_2238-087_37

c. 1983

33.5cm x 40.6cm

209

答人 太上隐者 偶来松树下，高枕石头眠。 山中无历日，寒尽不知年。

In Reply to an Inquirer Taishang Yinzhe Casually I placed myself beneath the pines; High on a stony pillow I lay down to sleep.

There is no calendar in these high mountains; The winter ends, with no clear signs To mark the year’s changes.

Liu Shih Shun. One Hundred and One Chinese Poems, with English Translations and Preface. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967, p. 113.

210

B09_2601-090_12

1979

75.1cm x 34.5cm 211

桃花源诗并记 陶潜 晋太元中，武陵人捕鱼为业。缘溪行，忘路之远 近。忽逢桃花林，夹岸数百步，中无杂树，芳花鲜 美，落英缤纷。渔人甚异之。复前行，欲穷其林。 林尽水源，便得一山，山有小口，髣髴若有光。便 舍船从口入。初极狭，才通人。复行数十步，豁然 开朗。土地平旷，屋舍俨然，有良田美池桑竹之 属。阡陌交通，鸡犬相闻。其中往来种作，男女衣 着悉如外人。黄发垂髫，并怡然自乐。见渔人，乃 大惊，问所从来，具答之。便要还家，设酒杀鸡作 食。村中闻有此人，咸来问讯。自云先世避秦时 乱，率妻子邑人来此绝境，不复出焉，遂与外人间 隔。问今是何世，乃不知有汉，无论魏晋。此人一 一为具言所闻，皆叹惋。余人各复延至其家，皆出 酒食。停数日，辞去。此中人语云。不足为外人道 也。 既出，得其船，便扶向路，处处志之。及郡下，诣 太守，说如此。太守即遣人随其往，寻向所志，遂 迷，不复得路。南阳刘子骥，高尚士也，闻之，欣 然规往。未果，寻病终，后遂无问津者。

Peach Blossom Spring Tao Qian During the reign-period T’ai yuan [326-97] of the Chin dynasty there lived in Wu-ling a certain fisherman.

One day, as he followed the course of a stream, he became unconscious of the distance he had travelled.

All at once he came upon a grove of blossoming peach trees which lived either bank for hundreds of paces.

No tree of any other kind stood amongst them, but there were fragrant flowers, delicate and lovely to the eye, and the air was filled with drifting peach bloom.

The fisherman, marvelling, passed on to discover where the grove would end. It ended at a spring; and then there came a hill. In the side of the hill was a small opening which seemed to promise a gleam of light. The fisherman left his boat and entered the opening. It was almost too cramped at first to afford him passage; but when he had taken a few dozen steps he emerged into the open light of day. He faced a spread of level land. Imposing buildings stood among rich fields and pleasant ponds all set with mulberry and willow. Linking paths led everywhere,

212

and the fowls and dogs of one farm could be heard from the next. People were coming and going and working in the fields. Both the men and the women dressed in exactly the same manner as people outside; white-haired elders and tufted children alike were cheerful and contented.

Some, noticing the fisherman, started in great surprise and asked him where he had come from. He told them his story. They then invited him to their home, where they set out wine and killed chickens for a feast. When news of his coming spread through the village everyone came in to question him.

For their part they told him their forefathers, fleeing from the troubles of the age of Ch’in, had come with their wives and neighbors to this isolated place, never to leave it. From that time on they had been cut off from the outside world. They asked what age was this: they had never even heard of the Han, let alone its successors of the Wei and the Chin. The fisherman answered each of their questions in full, and they sighed and wondered at what he had to tell. The rest all invited him to their homes in turn, and in each house food and wine were set before him. It was only after a stay of several days that he took his leave.

“Do not speak of us to the people outside,” they said. But when he had regained his boat and was retracting his original route, he marked it at point after point; and on reaching the prefecture he sought audience of the prefect and told him of all these things.

The prefect immediately dispatched officers to go back with the fisherman. He hunted for the marks he had made, but grew confused and never found the way again.

The learned and virtuous hermit Liu Tzu-chi heard the story and went off elated to find the place.

But he had no success, and died at length of a sickness.

Since that time there have been no further “seekers of the ford.”

Source for the prose: Birch, Cyril, ed. Anthology of Chinese Literature. Volume 1, From Early Times to the Fourteenth Century. New York: Grove Press, 1965, pp.

167–68.

Source for the poem: Minford, John, and Joseph S. M. Lau, eds., Classical

Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. pp. 515–17.

L108_5581-189_25

1980

96.0cm x 212.8cm

213

归去来辞 陶潜 归去来兮，田园将芜胡不归？既自以心为形役，奚惆 怅而独悲。悟已往之不谏，知来者之可追。实迷途其 未远，觉今是而昨非。

舟遥遥以轻飏，风飘飘而吹衣。问征夫以 前路，恨晨光之熹微。乃瞻衡宇，载欣载奔。僮仆欢 迎，稚子候门。三径就荒，松菊犹存。携幼入室，有 酒盈樽。引壶觞以自酌，眄庭柯以怡颜。倚南窗以寄 傲，审容膝之易安。园日涉以成趣，门虽设而常关。 策扶老以流憩，时矫首而遐观。云无心以出岫，鸟倦 飞而知还。景翳翳以将入，抚孤松而盘桓。

归去来兮，请息交以绝游。世与我而相违， 复驾言兮焉求？悦亲戚之情话，乐琴书以消忧。农人 告余以春及，将有事于西畴。或命巾车，或棹孤舟。 既窈窕以寻壑，亦崎岖而经丘。木欣欣以向荣，泉涓 涓而始流。善万物之得时，感吾生之行休。

已矣乎！寓形宇内复几时，曷不委心任去 留？胡为乎遑遑欲何之？富贵非吾愿，帝乡不可期。 怀良辰以孤往，或植杖而耘耔。登东皋以舒啸，临清 流而赋诗。聊乘化以归尽，乐夫天命复奚疑？

The Return Tao Qian To get out of this and go back home!

My fields and garden will be overgrown with weeds — I must go back.

It was my own doing that made my mind my body’s slave Why should I go on in melancholy and lonely grief?

I realize there’s no remedying the past But I know that there’s hope in the future.

After all I have not gone far on the wrong road And I am aware that what I do today is right, yesterday wrong.

My boat rocks in the gentle breeze Flap, flap, the wind blows my gown; I asked a passerby about the road ahead, Grudging the dimness of the light at dawn.

Then I catch sight of my cottage — Filled with joy I run.

The servant boy comes to welcome me My little son waits at the door.

The three paths are almost obliterated But pines and chrysanthemums are still here.

214

Leading the children by the hand I enter the house Where there is a bottle filled with wine.

I draw a bottle to me and pour myself a cup; Seeing the trees in the courtyard bring joy to my face.

I lean on the south window and let my pride expand, I consider how easy it is to be content with a little space.

Every day I stroll in the garden for pleasure, There is a gate there, but it is always shut.

Cane in hand I walk and rest Occasionally raising my head to gaze the distance.

The clouds aimlessly rise from the peaks, The birds, weary of flying, know it is time to come home.

As the sun’s rays grow dim and disappear from view I walk around a lonely pine tree, stroking it.

Back home again!

May my friendships be broken off and my wanderings come to an end.

The world and I shall have nothing more to do with one another.

If I were again to go abroad, what should I seek?

Here I enjoy honest conversation with my family And take pleasures in books and zither to dispel my worries.

The farmers tell me that now spring is here There will be work to do in the west fields.

Sometimes I call for a covered cart Sometimes I row a lonely boat Following a deep gully through the still water Or crossing the hill on a rugged path.

The trees put forth luxuriant foliage, The spring begins to flow in a trickle.

I admire the seasonableness of nature And am moved to think that my life will come to its close.

It is all over — So little time are we granted human form in the world!

Let us then follow the inclinations of the heart: Where would we go that we are so agitated?

I have no desire for riches And no expectation of Heaven.

Rather on some fine morning to walk alone Now planting my staff to pick up a hoe, Or climbing the east hill and whistling long Or composing verses beside the clear stream: So I manage to accept my lot until the ultimate homecoming.

Rejoicing in Heaven’s command, what is there to doubt?

Minford, John, and Joseph S. M. Lau, eds., Classical Chinese Literature: An

Anthology of Translations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, pp.

517–18.

L108_5571-189_21

1980

90.1cm x 180.4cm

215

读山海经十三首其一 陶潜 孟夏草木长，绕屋树扶疎。 众鸟欣有讬，吾亦爱吾庐。 既耕亦已种，时还读我书。 穷巷隔深辙，颇回故人车。 欢言酌春酒，摘我园中蔬。 微雨从东来，好风与之俱。 泛览周王传，流观山海图。 俯仰终宇宙，不乐复何如？

On Reading the Shan Hai Ching (Mountain and Sea Classic) Tao Qian In mid-spring trees and grasses flourish; Around the house rich foliage spreads.

Birds, safe from danger, enjoy their refuge; I too love the home I have settled in.

I sow and plough; Some of my time I spend reading.

There are no deep ruts in narrow lanes, And old friends don’t stop their carriages here.

With joy we drink the new wine of the spring And pluck the vegetables from my garden.

A drizzle comes from the east And with it a pleasant breeze. I study The Chronicles of the Kings of Chou and con<template> Maps of far seas and mountains; I ‘explore’ The universe from east to west.

How can I help being filled with pleasure?

Liu Shih Shun. One Hundred and One Chinese Poems, with English Translations and Preface. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967, p. 5.

216

B08_2196-198_07

1979

33.3cm x 32.8cm

217

读山海经十三首其一 陶潜 孟夏草木长，绕屋树扶疎。 众鸟欣有讬，吾亦爱吾庐。 既耕亦已种，时还读我书。 穷巷隔深辙，颇回故人车。 欢言酌春酒，摘我园中蔬。 微雨从东来，好风与之俱。 泛览周王传，流观山海图。 俯仰终宇宙，不乐复何如？

On Reading the Shan Hai Ching (Mountain and Sea Classic) Tao Qian In mid-spring trees and grasses flourish; Around the house rich foliage spreads.

Birds, safe from danger, enjoy their refuge; I too love the home I have settled in.

I sow and plough; Some of my time I spend reading.

There are no deep ruts in narrow lanes, And old friends don’t stop their carriages here.

With joy we drink the new wine of the spring And pluck the vegetables from my garden.

A drizzle comes from the east And with it a pleasant breeze. I study The Chronicles of the Kings of Chou and con<template> Maps of far seas and mountains; I ‘explore’ The universe from east to west.

How can I help being filled with pleasure?

Liu Shih Shun. One Hundred and One Chinese Poems, with English Translations and Preface. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967, p. 5.

218

B14_1308-145_28

1979

50.7cm x 35.1cm 219

山中送别 王维 山中相送罢，日暮掩柴扉。 春草明年绿，王孙归不归？

Parting Among the Hills Wang Wei I watch you leave the hills, compeer; At dusk I close my wicket door.

When grass turns green in spring next year, Will you return with spring once more?

Xu Yuanzhong 许渊冲. Song of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry 中 国古诗词六百首. Beijing: New World Press, 1994, p. 60.

220

B08_2396-095_14

1984

46.5cm x 49.4cm

221

竹里馆 王维 独坐幽篁里，弹琴复长啸。 深林人不知，明月来相照。

Hut Among the Bamboos Wang Wei Sitting among bamboos alone, I play my lute and croon carefree.

In the deep woods where I’m unknown, Only the bright moon peeps at me.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 86.

222

L107_5553-112_07

1981

90.3cm x 181.4cm

223

竹里馆 王维 独坐幽篁里，弹琴复长啸。 深林人不知，明月来相照。

Hut Among the Bamboos Wang Wei Sitting among bamboos alone, I play my lute and croon carefree.

In the deep woods where I’m unknown, Only the bright moon peeps at me.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 86.

224

B02_7410-044_11

c. 1982

43.6cm x 35.0cm

225

渭城曲 王维 渭城朝雨浥轻尘，客舍青青柳色新。 劝君更尽一杯酒，西出阳关无故人。

The Wei-ch’eng1 Song Wang Wei Wei-ch’eng’s morning rain has moistened the earth; The willows round the inn are newly green.

Have yet another drink, west of Yang-kuan2 There will be no trace of bosom friends.

Note 1: An old town east of Sian, Shensi Province.

Note 2: A pass south-west in Tun-huang district, Kansu Province.

Liu Shih Shun. One Hundred and One Chinese Poems, with English Translations and Preface. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967, p. 33.

226

B08_2300-094_06

c. 1983

45.0cm x 35.9cm

227

鹿柴 王维 空山不见人，但闻人语响。 返景入深林，复照青苔上。

The Deer Enclosure Wang Wei I see no one in mountains deep But hear a voice in the ravine.

Through the dense wood the sunbeams peep And are reflect’d on the mosses green.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 87.

228

B08_2395-095_13

1984

45.5cm x 45.4cm

229

鹿柴 王维 空山不见人，但闻人语响。 返景入深林，复照青苔上。

The Deer Enclosure Wang Wei I see no one in mountains deep But hear a voice in the ravine.

Through the dense wood the sunbeams peep And are reflect’d on the mosses green.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 87.

230

B14_1425-145_05

1984

46.0cm x 35.8cm

231

送别 王维 下马饮君酒， 问君何所之？ 君言不得意， 归卧南山陲。 但去莫复问， 白云无尽时。

A Farewell Wang Wei Dismounting, I invite you to drink wine; Where are you leaving for? Is there a place fine?

Unheeded by the world, home you’ll make your way To lie down at Zhongnan Mountain’s foot, you say.

No more questions I’ll put but bid you good-bye; The endless clouds are waiting for you on high!

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 57.

232

L91_5086-012_17

1984

51.2cm x 45.5cm

233

登鹳雀楼 王之涣 白日依山尽，黄河入海流。 欲穷千里目，更上一层楼。

On the Stork Tower Wang Zhihuan The sun beyond the mountains glows; The Yellow River seawards flows.

You can enjoy a grander sight By climbing to a greater height.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 14.

234

B01_7206-046_11

c. 1973

44.4cm x 57.1cm

235

登鹳雀楼 王之涣 白日依山尽，黄河入海流。 欲穷千里目，更上一层楼。

On the Stork Tower Wang Zhihuan The sun beyond the mountains glows; The Yellow River seawards flows.

You can enjoy a grander sight By climbing to a greater height.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 14.

236

B02_7417-044_04

c. 1982

35.5cm x 44.4cm

237

寄全椒山中道士 韦应物 今朝郡斋冷，忽念山中客。 涧底束荆薪，归来煮白石。 欲持一瓢酒，远慰风雨夕。 落叶满空山，何处寻行迹？

For the Mountain Hermit of Quanjiao Wei Yingwu Shuddering this morning at my office end, I suddenly thought upon my mountain friend— Gathering thorn twigs down in the valley wood, Returning then to boil white stones for food.

I wish I could send him a gourd of wine, To cheer him up with love, in rain or shine.

But fallen leaves have covered up the slopes, How could I find his track, hoping ‘gainst hopes?

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 238.

238

B02_7407-044_14

c. 1982

44.6cm x 34.9cm

239

答李浣 韦应物 林中观易罢，溪上对鸥闲。 楚俗饶辞客，何人最往还。

In Reply to Li Huan Wei Yingwu I left the Yiching in the woods now I drift with the gulls by the stream among the singers of the ways of Ch’u to whom do you most often turn Red Pine (Bill Porter). Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2003, p. 47.

240

B13_0741-026_15

1984

47.0cm x 36.4cm

241

秋夜寄邱二十二员外 韦应物 怀君属秋夜，散步咏凉天。 山空松子落，幽人应未眠。

To Secretary Ch’iu on an Autumn Night Wei Yingwu Out walking and singing of cooler days I think of you on an autumn night pinecones falling on deserted slopes the recluse I suspect not yet asleep Red Pine (Bill Porter). Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2003, p. 51.

242

B05-9047-098_00

c. 1982

45.0cm x 34.9cm

243

秋夜寄邱二十二员外 韦应物 怀君属秋夜，散步咏凉天。 山空松子落，幽人应未眠。

To Secretary Ch’iu on an Autumn Night Wei Yingwu Out walking and singing of cooler days I think of you on an autumn night pinecones falling on deserted slopes the recluse I suspect not yet asleep Red Pine (Bill Porter). Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2003, p. 51.

244

B07_2020-121_09

c. 1978

53.4cm x 43.5cm

245

秋夜寄邱二十二员外 韦应物 怀君属秋夜，散步咏凉天。 山空松子落，幽人应未眠。

To Secretary Ch’iu on an Autumn Night Wei Yingwu Out walking and singing of cooler days I think of you on an autumn night pinecones falling on deserted slopes the recluse I suspect not yet asleep Red Pine (Bill Porter). Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2003, p. 51.

246

B14_1424-145_06

c. 1984

37.3cm x 33.8cm

247

秋夜寄邱二十二员外 韦应物 怀君属秋夜，散步咏凉天。 山空松子落，幽人应未眠。

To Secretary Ch’iu on an Autumn Night Wei Yingwu Out walking and singing of cooler days I think of you on an autumn night pinecones falling on deserted slopes the recluse I suspect not yet asleep Red Pine (Bill Porter). Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2003, p. 51.

248

B13_0695-026_24

1984

46.6cm x 36.4cm

249

秋日湖上 薛莹 落日五湖游，烟波处处愁。 浮沉千古事，谁与问东流？

Autumn Day Xue Ying Sailing on the Great Lake at sunset mist and waves and everywhere sorrow rising and falling events of the past who can tell me why they flow east Red Pine (Bill Porter). Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2003, p. 55.

250

B05-9054-097_35

c. 1982

43.4cm x 35.0cm

251

桧径晓步二首 其二 杨万里 雨歇林间凉自生，风穿径里晓逾清。 意行偶到无人处，惊起山禽我亦惊。

Walking at Dawn on Juniper Path, second of two poems Yang Wanli In the grove, the rain ends, and coolness grows.

As the wind penetrates the path, dawn is yet more pure.

Walking as mood directed, I happen upon a place with no people.

Startling up the mountain birds, I also startle.

Fuller, Michael A. Drifting among Rivers and Lakes: Southern Song Dynasty and the Problem of Literary History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013, p. 204.

252

L97_5200-024_24

1984

90.5cm x 46.0cm 253

落花 杨万里 红紫成泥泥作尘，颠风不管惜花人。 落花辞树虽无语，别倩黄鹂告诉春。

Fallen Blossoms Yang Wanli Petals red and purple turn to mud, and mud to dust.

The mad wind doesn’t care for those who love flowers.

Though the blossoms have fallen from trees without saying goodby, They’ve entrusted the orioles with a message for spring.

Li Wu-chi and Lo Yucheng, eds. Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousands Years of Chinese Poetry. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1975, p. 373.

254

B13_1074-005_29

1980

43.3cm x 51.8cm

255

贼退示官吏·并序 元结

spared us. How can the commissioners be so merciless in taxation? I have therefore written this poem to show to my officers.

癸卯岁西原贼道州，焚烧杀掠，几尽而去。明年， 贼又攻永破邵，不犯此州边鄙而退，岂力能制敌？ 盖蒙其伤怜而已！诸使何为忍苦征敛，故作诗一篇 以示官吏。

In the past when peace prevailed, For long I a hermit did simulate.

A spring gushed in my courtyard, A vale opened out before my gate.

The tax was regular and light, It was possible to get up late.

昔岁逢太平，山林二十年。 泉源在庭户，洞壑当门前。 井税有常期，日晏犹得眠。 忽然遭世变，数岁亲戎旃。 今来典斯郡，山夷又纷然。 城小贼不屠，人贫伤可怜。 是以陷邻境，此州独得全。 使臣将王命，岂不如贼焉？ 今彼征敛者，迫之如火煎。 谁能绝人命，以作时世贤！ 思欲委符节，引竿自刺船。 将家就鱼麦，归老江湖边。

Suddenly a civil war broke out, I was called up to join the campaign.

Since I took charge of this area, The tribesmen have made havoc again.

But the raiders spared out small town, And the poor people living in pain.

While neighbouring towns were sacked, Our area has remained intact.

Should the royal tax commissioners More cruelly than the rebels act?

Should the taxed and levied, Be subjected to a broiling severe?

Can one deprive others of living, And yet attain a famous career?

To Officers After the Retreat of the Raiders Yuan Jie In 763 tribesmen-raiders from Xiyuan entered Daozhou and killed people and pillaged and burned nearly everything before they left. The next year they attacked Yongzhou and broke into Shaozhou. But they retreated this time without invading the borders of our prefecture (Daozhou, of which Yuan Jie had become governor). Was it because we were powerful enough to resist them? No. It was merely because they pitied and

256

I’ll turn to poling my own boat, And my assigned post forsake, Lead my family to fishing, And spend my last days by a lake.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New

Translation 唐诗三百首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p.

218.

L115_5662-028_14

1981

89.4cm x 180.0cm

257

行宫 元稹 寥落古行宫，宫花寂寞红。 白头宫女在，闲坐说玄宗。

At an Old Palace Yuan Zhen Deserted now the Imperial bowers Save by some few poor lonely flowers…

One white-haired dame, An Emperor’s flame, Sits down and tells of bygone hours.

Giles, Herbert A, ed. Gems of Chinese Literature. New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corporation, 1965, p. 366.

258

B08_2388-095_07

1984

49.8cm x 46.7cm

259

宫词 张祜 故国三千里，深宫二十年。 一声何满子，双泪落君前。

The Swan-Song Zhang Hu Home-sick a thousand miles away, Shut in the palace twenty years, Singing the dying swan’s sweet lay, Oh! how can she hold back her tears!

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 323.

260

B08_2386-095_05

1984

48.8cm x 45.5cm

261

感遇十二首其四 张九龄 兰叶春葳蕤，桂华秋皎洁。 欣欣此生意，自尔为佳节。 谁知林栖者，闻风坐相悦。 草木有本心，何求美人折。

Thoughts IV Zhang Jiuling The thoroughwort flourishes in spring, The osmanthus blooms in autumn.

Each takes delight in its own prime, Each joys when its season does come.

They have no idea that wood-dwellers To their sweet smell should so succumb.

Plants and trees have their own ways and Seek not Beauty’s bouquet to become.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百 首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, pp. 10–11.

262

B07_2026-121_08

c. 1978

53.7cm x 43.7cm

263

桃花溪 张旭 隐隐飞桥隔野烟，石矶西畔问渔船： 桃花尽日随流水，洞在清溪何处边？

Peach-Blossom River Zhang Xu A bridge flies away through a wild mist, Yet here are the rocks and the fisherman’s boat.

Oh, if only this river of floating peach-petals Might lead me at last to the mythical cave!

Bynner, Witter. The Works of Witter Bynner: The Chinese Translations. Ed. by James Kraft.

New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1978, p. 68.

264

B01_7224-045_33

c. 1978

58.3cm x 43.3cm

265

庄子 昔者庄周梦为胡蝶，栩栩然胡蝶也。自喻适志与，不知周也。俄然觉， 则蘧蘧然周也。不知周之梦为胡蝶与？胡蝶之梦为周与？周与胡蝶则必 有分矣。此之谓物化。

Zhuangzi Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

Minford, John, and Joseph S. M. Lau, eds. Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, pp. 212–13.

266

B05-9965-099_05

1980

72.8cm x 35.3cm 267

庄子 昔者庄周梦为胡蝶，栩栩然胡蝶也。自喻适志与，不知周也。俄然觉， 则蘧蘧然周也。不知周之梦为胡蝶与？胡蝶之梦为周与？周与胡蝶则必 有分矣。此之谓物化。

Zhuangzi Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

Minford, John, and Joseph S. M. Lau, eds. Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, pp. 212–13.

268

L35_3676-110_17

1981

73.0cm x 69.3cm

269

庄子 昔者庄周梦为胡蝶，栩栩然胡蝶也。自喻适志与，不知周也。俄然觉， 则蘧蘧然周也。不知周之梦为胡蝶与？胡蝶之梦为周与？周与胡蝶则必 有分矣。此之谓物化。

Zhuangzi Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

Minford, John, and Joseph S. M. Lau, eds. Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, pp. 212–13.

270

L23_3399-178_25

1982

135.0cm x 74.9cm 271

LIST OF POETS Bai Juyi 白居易 (772–846) Cen Shen 岑参 (715–770) Dai Shulun 戴叔伦 (732–789) Du Fu 杜甫 (712–770) Fan Chengda 范成大 (1126–1193) Feng Gan 丰干 (7th century CE) Hanshan 寒山 (7th century CE) He Zhizhang 贺知章 (659–744) Huineng 慧能 (638–713) Jia Dao 贾岛 (779–843) Laozi 老子 (5th to 4th century BCE) Li Bai 李白 (701–762) Li Qi 李颀 (690–751) Li Shangyin 李商隐 (813–858) Liu Changqing 刘长卿 (709–785) Liu Jia 刘驾 (822–?)

Liu Yuxi 刘禹锡 (772–842) Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 (773–819) Lu You 陆游 (1125–1209) Meng Haoran 孟浩然 (689–740) Ouyang Xiu 欧阳修 (1007–1072) Pei Di 裴迪 (714–?)

Qiwu Qian 綦毋潜 (692–749) Ruan Ji 阮籍 (210–263) Shide 拾得 (7th century CE) Song Zhiwen 宋之问 (660–712) Su Shi 苏轼 (1037–1101) Su Ting 苏颋 (680–737) Taishang Yinzhe 太上隐者 (Tang Dynasty) Tao Qian 陶潜 (365–427) Wang Wei 王维 (699–761) Wang Zhihuan 王之涣 (688–742) Wei Yingwu 韦应物 (737–792) Xue Ying 薛莹 (9th century CE) Yang Wanli 杨万里 (1127–1206) Yuan Jie 元结 (719–772) Yuan Zhen 元稹 (779–831) Zhang Hu 张祜 (792–853) Zhang Jiuling 张九龄 (678–740) Zhang Xu 张旭 (675–750) Zhuangzi 庄子 (370–287 BCE)

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40–51 52–57 58–59 60–69 70–71 72–73 74–87 88–89 90–95 96–97 98–99 100–35 136–41 142–43 144–47 148–51 152–59 160–63 164–67 168–71 172–75 176–79 180–81 182–83 184–87 188–89 190–05 206–07 208–09 210–17 218–31 232–35 236–47 248–49 250–53 254–55 256–57 258–59 260–61 262–63 264–69

SELECT BIBLIOGRAGHY Ayscough, Florence. Travels of a Chinese Poet: Tu Fu, Guest of Rivers and Lakes, A.D. 712–770.

Vol. 2, A.D. 759–770. London: Jonathan Cape, 1934.

Birch, Cyril, ed. Anthology of Chinese Literature. Volume 1, From Early Times to the Fourteenth Century. New York: Grove Press, 1965.

Bynner, Witter. The Works of Witter Bynner: The Chinese Translations. Ed. by James Kraft. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1978.

Cahill, James. The Lyric Journey. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Chaves, Johnathan. “Some Relationships between Poetry and Painting in China.” Renditions, no. 6 (Spring 1976).

Chaves, Johnathan. “Reading the Painting: Levels of Poetic Meaning in Chinese Pictorial Art.” Asian Art 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1987).

Cooper, Arthur. Li Po and Tu Fu. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1973.

Davis, A. R., ed. The Penguin Book of Chinese Verse. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1962.

Egan, Charles. Clouds Thick, Whereabouts Unknown: Poems by Zen Monks of China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Egan, Ronald C. “Poems on Paintings: Su-Shih and Huang T’ing-chien.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43, no. 2 (December 1983), pp. 413–51.

Feng, Gia-fu, and Jane English, trans. Tao Te Ching / Lao Tsu. New York: Vantage Books, 1989.

Fuller, Michael A. Drifting among Rivers and Lakes: Southern Song Dynasty and the Problem of Literary History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013.

Giles, Herbert A., ed. Gems of Chinese Literature. New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corporation, 1965.

Jenyns, Soame. A Further Selection from the Three Hundred Poems of the T’ang Dynasty. London: John Murray, 1944.

Levy, Howard S. Translations from Po Chü-i’s Collected Works. 4 volumes. New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corporation, 1971–78.

Liu Shih Shun. One Hundred and One Chinese Poems, with English Translations and Preface.

Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967.

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Li Wu-chi and Lo Yucheng, eds. Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry.

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Minford, John, and Joseph S. M. Lau, eds. Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Owen, Stephen. The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.

Payne, Robert. The White Pony: An Anthology of Chinese Poetry from the Earliest Times to the Present, Newly Translated. New York: J. Day Co., 1947.

Phua Kin Siang, ed. On My Encounter with Ink (Moyuan suibi). Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall, 2000.

Qi Gong. “The Relationships between Poetry, Calligraphy and Painting.” In Words and Images, edited by Alfreda Murck and Wen C. Fong New York: Metropolitan Musuem of Art, 2013.

Qiu Xiaolong. Evoking Tang: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry. St. Louis, Missouri: Penultimate Press, 2007.

Red Pine (Bill Porter). The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Revised and Expanded. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2000.

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Red Pine & Mike O’Connon, eds. The Clouds Should Know Me by Now: Buddhist Poet Monks of China. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1998.

Rewi Alley, trans. Bai Juyi: 200 Selected Poems. Beijing: New World Press, 1983, pp. 130–31.

Rexroth, Kenneth. One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. New York: New Directions Books, 1959.

Seaton, J. D., ed. and trans. Love and Time: Poems of Ou-yang Hsiu. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1998.

Silbergeld, Jerome. “The Political Landscapes of Kung Hsien in Painting and Poetry.” Journal of the Institute of Chinese 8, no. 2 (December 1976).

Sullivan, Michael. The Three Perfections: Chinese Painting, Poetry and Calligraphy. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1980.

Suzuki, D. T. The Zen Doctrine of No Mind: The Significance of the Sutra of Hui-Neng (Wei-lang).

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Tagore, Amitendranath. Moments of Rising Mist: Collection of Sung Landscape Poetry. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973.

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Turner, John A., trans. A Golden Treasury of Chinese Poetry. Hong Kong: Center for Translation Project, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1976.

Waley, Arthur. The Life and Times of Po Chü-i, 772–846 A.D. London: Allen and Unwin, 1949.

Watson, Burton, trans. Selected Poems of Su Tung-p’o. Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1994.

Wu, John C. H. The Four Seasons of T’ang Poetry. Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1972.

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百首新 译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987.

Xu Yuanzhong 许渊冲. Song of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry 中国古 诗词六百首. Beijing: New World Press, 1994.

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This edition first published 2019.

Copyright © 2019 by the Huang Yao Foundation.

Mailing Address: 100 Tras Street, #16-01, Singapore, 079027 Written by Jason C. Kuo Copy-editing by Joel Kalvesmaki All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the Singapore Copyright Act (Chapter 63) (Original Enactment: Act 2 of 1987 and Revised Edition 2006), without the prior permission of the Huang Yao Foundation.

The Huang Yao Foundation publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Front and back cover image: Huang Yao, Shiyi tu after a poem by 李商隐 (Li Shangyin), 夜雨寄北Written on a Rainy Night to My Wife in the North, painting and photo copyright © the Huang Yao Foundation.

Back cover image poem: You ask me when I can come back but I don’t know, The pools in western hills with autumn rain o’erflow.

When by our window can we trim the wicks again And talk about this endless, dreary night of rain?

Xu Yuanzhong, Loh Bei-yei, and Wu Juntao. 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation 唐诗三百首新译. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987, p. 344.

All images © Huang Yao Foundation, except for images on pages 10, 16, 17, 19 and 20.

For information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyrighted material in this book or to purchase for educational, or business use, please contact us at enquiry@huangyao.org. 如若有意申请书中资料的使用权，或购买为教育或商业用途，请与我们 联系。 ISBN 978-981-11-0984-3 (ebook) ISBN 978-981-11-7180-2 (paperback) National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data Name(s): Kuo, Jason C., 1950Title: Huang Yao : paintings of poetic ideas (Shiyi tu) : selections from the Huang Yao Foundation / by Jason C. Kuo. Description: Singapore : Huang Yao Foundation, 2019.

Identifier(s): OCN 1035523350 | ISBN 978-981-11-7180-2 (paperback) | ISBN 978-981-11-0984-3 (ebook) Subject(s): LCSH: Huang, Yao, 1917-1987--Criticism and interpretation. | Huang Yao Foundation--Art collections. | Painting, Chinese--20th century.

Classification: DDC 759.951--dc23

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HUANG YAO: PAINTINGS OF POETIC IDEAS (SHIYI TU)

黄尧：诗意图

By JASON C. KUO