Collected Poems
composition: secureauthorship: probable
Quiet landscape poems in which the human observer is often absent by the final line give Chinese verse its most sustained Buddhist register.
- the observer withdrawn from the scene by the poem's end
- Buddhist detachment enacted formally rather than stated
- landscape treated as the whole subject, without allegory
- poetry and painting regarded as one practice
Wang Wei held office, painted, and wrote short poems of great restraint, typically five characters to the line, in which a scene is stated and the poet withdraws from it. Empty mountains, unseen voices, light returning into a forest, and the deliberate absence of event are the recurring materials. He was regarded as an accomplished painter as well, and later criticism treats his poems and paintings as one practice. The Buddhist content is structural rather than doctrinal: the poem enacts detachment rather than arguing for it.
Commentary
Readers' notes on this work. No account needed - be scholarly, or at least civil.
Loading commentary…