No More Learning

Ti? ang Chinai? s immense influence on Japanese culture echoes in the Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibui? s poetic novel set sometime in the Heian period of the ninth and tenth centuries AD. Picking up the theme of the Emperor
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? captivated by a concubine from the Ti? ang, the Tale of Genji enters a similar world of midnight assignations, neglected women, aesthetic appreciation, and reticent, subtle feeling. e? What men wanted was women not of high station but with true and delicate sensibilities who would hint to them of their feelings through poems and letters as the clouds passed and the blossom and grasses flowered and faded. i? To the Buddhists, Confucians and true Taoists this was a marred world of sensuality and attachment, of foolish intoxication and dangerous refinement. It is a world which the Ti? ang poets move in, and whose passing, with all its faults, they regret. The aesthetic easily slips into the sensual. Beauty appreciated in flowers, rivers, trees and mountains, in moonlight and stars, is also appreciated in women and wine, music and dance. Courtesans and dancing girls are the subject of many delicate poems that often stress loneliness and neglect, misplaced affection and fading beauty. Li Po e? would take his singing
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? girls Chin-ling and Chao-yang with him on his journeysi? . And e? when he was drunk his page boy Cinnabar would play the Waves of the Blue Oceani? , the tune that Genji danced to in front of the Emperor so that he e? seemed not of this worldi? . It is a beautiful, wasteful, clinging, suspect atmosphere, seductive and delightful, but confusing the mind and absorbing the senses. It entices with the joy of youthful faces and deludes with the transience of passing things.
In Ti? ang China the intoxicating beauty and subsequent neglect of women is a charged theme. A social role based on sexual availability and feminine beauty and talents did not carry the stigma of the West but equally did involve the risks and uncertainties of a precarious life. Concubines of the Emperor or a wealthy lord might see him seldom if at all and be effectively imprisoned within the life of the harem. It was often seen as an immoral practice by sections of the educated classes, being unnatural and dangerous to good government while
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? condemning the girls to a life of loneliness and neglect. Dancing girls might attract a man of wealth and become entangled only to see him vanish again. Taoism provided a refuge for daughters of high officials or these concubines put away by their lords. Many Taoist nuns were just such women, while others used their education, talents and connections to pursue a life as high-class courtesans.
Sexuality in itself carried no stigma but the predilection of the men for very young girls and the natural intensity of relationships still brought with it all the complexities, confusions and heartbreak of the transient or clandestine liaison. There is ambivalence about the stories of the obsessions of older men with young women. Were they in themselves pernicious relationships that in the case of the Emperor and high officials damaged the State, or could a private love matter more than the ruin of a kingdom?
There were many concubines and courtesans who were famous for their beauty and
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? their relationships with the powerful, and their situation echoes through later Chinese and Japanese literature so that the names of the one evoke the other. There are therefore many analogues for Yang Kuei-fei. In the Han Dynasty there is the concubine of Emperor Chi? eng-ti, Lady Pan, put aside because of her humble birth and slanders spoken against her, in favour of the consort Fei Yen, or Flying Swallow, who was said to be so light and delicate she could dance on a mani? s palm. Lady Pani? s fate was the subject of many poems including her own. Wang Weii? s e? Three Songs for Lady Pani? is a set of variations on the theme. There is Hsi Shih, the most beautiful of women, legendary consort of King Wu, referred to by Li Po in e? The Roosting Crowsi? . There is Lu-chu, Green Pearl, Shih Chungi? s concubine in the third century AD who sang and danced for him at his famous estate at Golden Vale. There is Wang Chao-ch ? n, concubine of Emperor Y ? an of Han who gave her as wife to a Tartar Khan, and on whose tomb
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? ? ? ? the grass was always green, or that earlier Chinese princess sent to a Tartar chieftain who yearned e? to be the yellow swan that returns to its homei? . And in the Japanese Tale of Genji who follows e? the way of lovei? there is Genjii? s cluster of consorts, the Akashi Lady, the Lady of the Evening Face, the Safflower Lady, and the child Murasaki, e? the lavender that shares its roots with anotheri? si? . Li Poi? s poems e? Jade Stairs Grievancei? and e? Yearningi? capture the sadness, regret and longing of a frequently disappointed love. Emperor Wu-ti of the Liang Dynasty, he who invited the Buddhist Bodhidarma founder of the Chi? an (Zen) school to China, writes a love poem as if from the woman, as was the poetic convention. e? My dress fragrant still with the perfume you wore. My hand still touching the letter you sent. i?
e? Silk robes rustled as her women moved softly about. i? The wind was rising. i? says the Tale of Genji, e? The perfumed mystery of dark incense drifted over the blinds to mix with the
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? ? ? ? faint altar incense and the fragrance of his own robes bringing intimations of the Western Paradise. i? e? With the blinds still lifted the delicate scent of the plum blossoms blew in. i?
Courtesans and concubines were often skilled in music. The Ti? ang poets generally used the verse form known as 8? ? ? , basically five or seven syllable lines in paired couplets with the even lines rhyming. The five- syllable line is made up of two plus three syllables with a caesura or pause (a sigh) between them. The seven-syllable line is made up of four and three. These forms appeared in Chi? ang-an round about the first century AD introduced from the song and dance rhythms of professional girls, possibly from Persia and Central Asia. Li Poi? s e? Yearningi? displays a courtesan who is also a skilled musician.
? The old-style 8? ? ? poems developed into the highly regulated new style verse, the eight-line form with internal balancing and alternation of characters and tones. There were also four line
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? e? stop-shorti? poems, the ? Q0? ? 1: ballad forms, and traditional songs. Poets were among those who frequented the entertainment quarters of the city like Heng-ti? ang, entering the e? floating worldi? of the e? blue housesi? . The singing and dancing girls, the female musicians and courtesans composed songs and lyrics and sang and played the compositions of the educated men who visited them. Music and poetry were intermingled. In the case of Wang Wei his musicianship may have been on a par with both his poetry and his painting.
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Wang Wei was born in 699AD in Shensi province. His father was a local official, his mother a member of a distinguished literary family. He and his brother were introduced to society in the Capital when he was about sixteen years old. An early poem e? Words for the Mica Screeni? already shows the acute sensibility and light, quiet touch of the poet and painter. The transparent screen reveals the landscape as though it was a painting made by Nature. Behind the artifice is the reality that obviates the need for artifice. Nature is a better painter than humanity. Through art Nature can be shown and enhanced, but Nature is always beyond art as the greater existence that can only be reached by simplicity, sensitivity and attentiveness. This tension remains throughout Wangi? s work, the desire for expression and realisation
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? ? ? counterbalanced by the knowledge that Nature should be sufficient. That feeling for the profundity of reality, that renders art superfluous and unnecessary, was a factor in Wangi? s attraction to Buddhism and led to a perpetual dissatisfaction with his artistic achievement that perhaps made him a greater poet and painter.
His lines e? Written on the Wang River Scrolli? acknowledge the e? errori? of any perception of him as purely an artistic surface, and point to the elusiveness of the true self that is beyond art. He was drawn to the pleasures of art and creation, but also understood the Taoist ideal of non- action and a more profound passivity. Equally he is full of feelings, not expressed or inexpressible, below the surface of the poems, while trying to follow the Buddhist path to extinction of desire and self.
This early period also produced the poem on e? Peach Blossom Springi? , a retelling of Ti? ao Chi? ieni? s famous story. Here is the Taoist theme, of a truer life that can be achieved outside or
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? ? ? beyond the contemporary world, a life that is found and too easily lost again, that is deep in the Yin reality symbolised by peach blossom and clouded woods, by the green stream and bright moon. There, human beings are free of intrusiveness, forget time, achieve simplicity, and become e? Immortalsi? . There, they cultivate their gardens outside the mainstream of events. As against the Confucian ideals of rational and benevolent engagement with the world this is escapism, and the land of Peach Blossom Spring is a e? refugei? from the unacceptable and inhuman world. But from a Taoist or Buddhist perspective it is a transcendence of the inhuman, a deeper existence. Since the goal human beings chase after is merely a transient illusion, then what is it an escape from, what is it an escape to?
In Wangi? s life and that of the other great poets, there is the tension between engagement and disengagement, between living in the suffering and feeling world, and living in the Vortex or the Void, between being a part and
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? entering the mountains without looking back. From the perspective of the world, the Way is an escape, a turning away from what drives human affairs. From the perspective of the spirit however it is a realisation, an awakening, as in Chi? an (Zen) Buddhism, or a more gradual realisation of and eventual existence in harmony with the Tao, or a progression towards that extinction of the Self that is the Buddhist Nirvana.
When he was twenty-three in 722AD Wang Wei passed the . ? ? 3? 8? ? ? , the e? presented scholari? examination, which was a passport to official service. Introduced by the Sui Dynasty and elaborated by the Ti?
ang the Civil Service examinations demanded a comprehensive knowledge of the Confucian Classics and also tested literary ability, including poetic composition. The Han Dynasty had encouraged officials who possessed moral integrity, intellectual ability, and respect for good manners, combined with the courage to speak
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? out where the good of the State was at stake. It enabled the creation of a talented administrative elite controlled by the Imperial Court and therefore owing it allegiance, and in principle independent of other power-groups and factions. The Sui and Ti? ang strengthened and formalised this approach through the . ? ? 3? 8? ? ? , the e? degree of advanced learningi? that aimed to find and promote men of intellect, integrity and culture.
Officials were therefore practising literary men, who had sufficient leisure to maintain sponsorship and practise of the arts, and whose concentration was on the cultured life (? 03). In the mid eighth century the Ti? ang State Academy Directorate at Chi? ang-an had an enrolment of over two thousand students with a smaller version of the Directorate at Lo-yang. Though it recruited mainly from those with aristocratic backgrounds other candidates recognised as having great potential were also sponsored. The graduates of the system occupied about a seventh of the higher official executive posts
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? including many of the key ones and formed a Court F? ? 90. Only twenty or thirty . ? ? 3? 8? ? ? students graduated successfully each year from about a thousand candidates, since the examinations demanded not only skill in two forms of composition and extensive ability to quote from the Confucian Classics, but also expert analysis of contemporary administrative and economic problems. Li Po never entered for the examination and Tu Fu did so but failed.
Wang was a man of multifarious talents, and he was immediately appointed to the Court, becoming the Assistant Secretary for Music. However he soon fell foul of the strict adherence to rules which officialdom required, and, through some minor error, was packed off to a lowly post in the provinces. e? Minor officials easily court troublei? he says in a poem, e? so here am I sent out to Chichoui? . He stayed in Shantung for a few years before resigning and returning to Chi? ang- an. He married, and bought his beloved estate in the Chungnan foothills, south of the capital at
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? Lanti? ien, where he spent time whenever he could throughout his life. e? Leaving Wang Riveri? reveals his attachment to the solitude and spirituality that his retreat there allowed him, as though iti? s reality was an echo of the Peach Blossom Paradise.
His wife died young when he was only thirty, and, though childless, he never remarried. One sad poem seems to refer to this difficult time. He entered public service again at the age of thirty-five. He then alternated his time between his official duties, including a mission to the north west frontier for three years in 737AD when he was thirty-eight (the poem e? Missioni? refers to this), and his life at his Wang River estate where he could paint and write, be musician and scholar. His poetry and painting is filled with the natural landscape and a deeply felt Taoist sympathy.
His poem e? A Replyi? for instance communicates the elusiveness of the mind that is lost in contemplation of natural beauty.
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? ? ? ? e? Chungnani? expresses his need for solitude and meditation relieved now and then by human companionship. Poems like these reveal the instinctive Taoist, the artist with great aesthetic sensibility whose response to Nature is empathetic. His aspiration is to be part of the natural world, to release the will, create spontaneously, think tranquilly, and merge with the perceived beauty. He became an archetype of the scholar-painter, and his genius allowed him to be appropriated later as the founder of the Southern School of landscape painting, though none of his paintings survive. The Wang River Scroll was particularly famous and showed twenty scenes around his estate with accompanying verses, the scroll form allowing the unrolling of an extended landscape and creating a new mode of depiction. Later landscape painting concentrates on natural harmony often to the exclusion of humankind, the human being represented by tiny figures in the landscape, lost amongst Yin valleys, clouds
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? ? and rivers, Yang mountains, rocks and pines. Parts of the paint surface are often blank, using the emptiness of the underlying texture to generate a sense of the Tao. e? What we realise is Somethingi? says the Tao Te Ching, e? but it is by using Nothing that we allow it to exist. i? Hsieh Ho, at the end of the fifth century AD stated the six main techniques of painting. The first and most important being . ? ? ? ? ? Q3? 8? 03? ? 9:3? , the achievement of an atmosphere and tone that is fully alive.
The painter should express a depth and clarity of spirit that is in sympathy with the natural world. The painting is created with spontaneity, harmony and vitality. It captures the essence of things. Kuo Hsi in the eleventh century said that painting depended on concentration, seriousness, lightness of spirit, and energy. This is the Taoist inner harmony and spontaneity, combined with a deep intuition of Nature, supported by technique, but ultimately capable of communicating despite blemishes of
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? technique. Lack of harmony leaves art lifeless despite technical excellence.
e? ? ? ? ? means the mind guiding the brush in complete controli? , said the tenth century painter Ching Hao, e? When you picture the form but miss the spirit that is merely a likeness. The real essence is to capture the form ,3/ the spirit. When the spirit is missing the form is dead. To do it without apparent effort and catch the natural form is the work of a master. i? e? Pictures are made in the mindi? wrote Kuo Jo-hs ? a great critic of the Sung Dynasty, e? they are expressed and revealed through the tip of the brush. The sense of the form of things is created mysteriously to rouse the feelings and awaken the greatness of mensi? spirits. i? Shen Tsung- chi? ien in the eighteenth century talks about the need for sureness of touch and firmness of line. e? ? ? ? ? (breath, spirit, atmosphere or here force) is all-important in applying the brush. Force gives strength to the stroke and any line drawn is alive with energy. We say the line has spirit. i? The
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? artist by embracing Taoist spontaneity allied to technical capability can meditate to escape the self-conscious desire to create, and in doing so can create in a deeper mode than that achievable by mere knowledge and effort. It is a mode of inspiration, since . ? ? ? ? is precisely spirit, vital spirit, or breath. Combined with technical excellence it achieves greatness.
We no longer have any original paintings by Wang, but he is said to have painted with sensitive, thin lines with delicate, additional line- shading emphasising fine detail. Forms and colours blurred in the distance in fluid atmosphere. The use of rhythmic lines with emphasis on contour and texture, rather than the use of ink shading as in the West, is a feature of much of later Chinese painting. A ninth century writer Chang Yen-y ? an mentions Wang for the depth of his paintings. Ching Hao talks about his harmonious brushstrokes, elevated tone, and deep knowledge of forms. Mi Fei, the great eleventh century painter, mentions seeing a self-
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? portrait by Wang in a yellow robe, with palms together, that he states as genuine. He also comments that any paintings with delicate lines are too freely ascribed to Wang, for example snow scenes, and he protests at this indiscriminate mis-attribution of inferior paintings in order to enhance their value.
Wang is claimed as the author of two early treatises on painting technique and traditionally he is held to be the inventor of monochrome ink landscape painting. The Chi? an Buddhist School was to develop monochrome in a penetrating and profound way to express the meditative atmosphere from which Buddhist enlightenment was achieved. Using multi-toned Chinese black ink on paper or silk it combined calligraphy, imitating e? grass writingi? , with the vital immediacy of the spontaneous brush stroke. The hand flows over the surface in a continuous movement combining grace, strength, rapidity, fluidity and lightness of touch.
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? Wang seems to have used a more restrained, but harmonious technique, that led to him being viewed as the founder of the later 'Southern School'. He no doubt helped that concentration on pure landscape, the e? mountains and watersi? motif that became the favourite theme of Chinese art alongside e? flowers and birdsi? , e? bamboo in inki? and e? quadrupeds and plantsi? . All the elements of a painting were designed to evoke the flow of natural energies, the dragon veins of rocks, the flickering life of birds, the graceful interlacing of flowers and leaves in the breeze, the movement of water, the outlines of snow-covered mountains, the branches of pines. Light and season invoke mood, plants and animals point beyond physical representation to an inner life and growth. The perspective is calm, but the content is ceaselessly moving. The landscape painting does not rest in a single focal point or in a definite moment, but draws the eye in to its windings and spaces, its valleys and bays, its heights and depths, allowing the mind
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? to wander over the fixed surface without exhausting the scene. The Tao is present in white cloud space, in green tree and river depths, in curving shorelines and falling water, in the shapes of mountains, the bones of the earth, cliffs and gorges, fissures and caverns, erosion and layering, cascades and torrents.
In the Tale of Genji there is an evocative scene. e? The emperor loved to paint which he did beautifully and to look at paintings. i? he encourages his ladies to paint and collect. Genji and Murasaki sort out a set of paintings that includes e? moving and interesting pictures of those tragic Chinese ladies Yang Kuei-fei and Wang Chao-ch ? n. i? There is a competition between the ladies where illustrations of stories are compared and the stories discussed. The chapter e? A picture contesti? culminates with the Emperor viewing selected paintings with Genji acting as umpire. The power, fluidity and gracefulness of the old masters are contrasted with the ingenuity and technical skill of the
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? moderns. Genjii? s scroll evoking his life at Suma beach wins with its delicacy and sureness of touch. The ability of art to recreate emotion in the audience is key. e? They had pitied him and had thought they had suffered with him, but now they felt how it had actually been. They saw the bleak unnamed shores and bays. i? e? He had depicted the mood of those years. i?
Wangi? s mother, who died when he was about fifty-one years old, in 750AD, had been a Buddhist, as were his brothers. At her death he resigned from office and performed a ritual three years of mourning to express his love for her, and acknowledge their Buddhist beliefs.