Page 164 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

time I clean the inkstone and spread out a scroll, I

am oblivious even to the roar of thunder by my

side, and the taste of food is forgotten I suspect

that after I die I will become a silverfish who enters

into scrolls of prized calligraphy, with gold-lettered

title inscriptions and jade rollers, roaming about but

without causing harm." 4 "Letters" by "the men of

antiquity" refers primarily to casual notes written

by calligraphers of the Jin dynasty (265-420),

especially those ofWang Xizhi (307?-365?) and his
son Wang Xianzhi (344-388), who were long

considered the most brilliant writers active during a

golden age of calligraphy. By the eleventh century

these were extremely rare works, prized not only

for the quality of the writing but also for the

untrammeled personalities of the writers

themselves, who lived, it was imagined, at leisure in

the beautiful landscape of the Yangzi River basin.

Mi Fu and others knew of the quirks and follies of

the men ofJin from collections of miscellaneous

anecdotes, such as Shishuo xinyu ("A New Account

of Tales of the World"), compiled under the aegis of

LiuYiqing (403—444), biographies in the official
history, and various early writings on calligraphy.

In the autumn of 1088, at the height of Mi Fu's Fig. 4. Wang Xizhi (307?—365?). "Ping'an tie, Heju tie,
Fengju tie. "Tang dynasty (61S-907) tracing copy. Detail
infatuation with Jin calligraphy, he was invited by a of letters mounted as a handscroll, ink on paper. Palace
local magistrate to participate in an outing along Museum, Taipei.
Tiao Stream, a scenic stretch of landscape just south
As Mi Fu's story illustrates, in Chinese calligraphy
of Lake Tai in what is now Zhejiang Province. In
anticipation of the excursion, Mi Fu wrote and sent the vertical expanse of history can seemingly be
to his host a number of poems on one scroll transformed into the horizontal space of the
present. This combined sense of unity and
(fig. 3); afterward he recorded on another scroll the continuity is an important characteristic of
poems he had written during the trip. 5 Both sets of calligraphy. Moreover, it extends back to the so-
poems repeatedly refer to people ol the Jin dynasty
as if they were alive and present, sometimes called high tradition that began with Wang Xizhi
conflating them with other members of the outing. and Jin calligraphy. With the preservation and
In one poem, written for their gathering on the
continued, if limited, practice of such ancient
Double Ninth Festival, Mi Fu quotes a line directly scripts as seal (zhuanshu) and clerical (lishu) (see cat.
183 for an example of the latter), later calligraphers
from the most celebrated of all works of felt conversant with a spectrum of writing that
calligraphy, Lanting xu ("Preface for the Poems
literally spanned millennia. The catalyst for the
Written at the Orchid Pavilion"), written by Wang interaction could be a masterful genuine work or a
Xizhi in 353, thereby suggesting that their own rare tracing copy of the type Mi Fu sought; it could
gathering in 1088 had somehow merged with that be a faded rubbing from a compendium of
famous meeting of seven hundred years earlier. The collected writings engraved in stone or from some
likely source for Mi Fu's flight of fancy was a
ancient stele accidentally discovered in a farmer's
superb Tang dynasty tracing copy ofWang's field. In each case, the right viewer under the right

"Preface," which Mi Fu had acquired earlier in the circumstances would become engaged, assimilate
what had been learned, and thereby invigorate his
year and no doubt was proudly showing off to his or her own art. It is an ever-expanding circle.

friends. Needless to say, Mi Fu's calligraphy in these

two scrolls of poems closely follows the Jin dynasty
style associated with Wang Xizhi and the Orchid
Pavilion Preface. Although Jin calligraphy, even
copies, became increasingly rare in later dynasties,
the spirit ofWang Xizhi and the Orchid Pavilion
gathering would still be invoked through such
writing objects as inkstones carved with scenes
from the life ofWang Xizhi.

CALLIGRAPHY 162