The History of Poetry, Calligraphy and Painting: From Su Dongpo to Zheng Banqiao – Xinhuanet Client

Regarding the relationship between poetry and painting, the most famous statement comes from Su Dongpo’s “Shu Mojie’s “Mist and Rain in Lantian””: “When you taste Mojie’s poems, there are paintings in the poems; when you look at Mojie’s paintings, there are poems in the paintings.” Originally. Su Dongpo used the superiority of painting to praise the brilliance of poetry, which only refers to Wang Wei’s poetry and is not universal. However, this famous saying later became the theoretical basis for the unification of poetry and painting, and there were also sayings that “poems are invisible paintings, and paintings are tangible poems” and “paintings are silent poems, and poems are audio paintings.”

Mo Mei Tu Yuan Wang Mian/painting information picture

In fact, as art forms, poetry and painting are both opposites and unified. The unity is the unity in opposition. If you only see the unity and ignore the opposition, it will be biased. Zhang Dai, a native of the Ming Dynasty in the 16th century, said: “If you use a painting with poetic lines as a painting, the painting will not be good; if you use a poem with painting meaning as a poem, the poem will not be good. For example, Li Qinglian’s “Silent Night Thoughts”: ‘Look up at the bright moon, lower your head and think. Hometown. ‘What is there to draw?” Zhang Dai’s question is very eloquent. The psychological activity of thinking about hometown cannot be expressed in visual pictures. “Laocoön” by Lessing, a German in the eighteenth century, also revealed the difference between poetry and painting, discussed the contradiction between poetry and painting, poetry and plastic arts, and became an aesthetic classic. In the 1980s, Zhu Guangqian translated it into Chinese. However, for a long time, the theory of the unity of poetry and painting has still been regarded as an unpublished theory.

This is not accidental. There is a big difference between the relationship between poetry and painting in Chinese and Western art. Chinese poetry and painting have a particularly close relationship. Music, chess, calligraphy and painting are comprehensive accomplishments of traditional Chinese literati. Many poets are also good at calligraphy and painting. The great painters of the Western Renaissance often wrote poems, such as the sonnets of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, which have a place in the history of literature. However, in the West, poetry and painting are independent of each other, and poetry is not written for painting.

Chinese poets often write poems for paintings. In the forty-sixth year of Kangxi (1707), one hundred and twenty volumes of “Yu Ding Inscribed Painting Poems” were collected, with a total of 8,962 poems divided into thirty categories, such as trees and rocks, landscapes, historical sites, etc. Fishing and woodcutting, farming and weaving, animal husbandry, orchids, bamboo, wheat, flowers, etc. This is just before the Ming Dynasty. If all the poems on paintings in the past three hundred years of the Qing Dynasty are included, there must be more than 10,000 poems. This is a unique artistic miracle in the history of world painting.

From the perspective of Western painters, writing sonnets into paintings will undoubtedly destroy the structure of the picture. This is because of the difference in tools. European classical paintings generally use a brush (English brush, both a brush and a paintbrush) to apply paint to the canvas, while for poetry, swan feathers and wild goose feathers (English pen comes from the Latin penna, A feather (plume in French, both a feather and a pen) cannot be used to spread paint when dipped in ink, and a brush cannot be used to compose poetry. However, the tools used in Chinese painting and poetry are all brushes and inks, which are all applied to paper and silk. Therefore, poetry and painting are closely related to each other and can be said to be two flowers.

The painting of bamboo in the Weixian County Department of the Nian Bo Bao Dazhong Cheng Kuo Qing Zheng Xie / Painting information picture

Of course, there is a development process between poetry and painting from closeness to coexistence. Initially, the text and pictures were independent of each other, and even the names of Wu Daozi and Li Sixun, the great painters of the Tang Dynasty, were not found in the paintings. Even if the signature is in the painting, some are also signed in an inconspicuous corner, which is called “hidden money”. The author of the classic Song Dynasty painting “Traveling to Streams and Mountains” was debated endlessly. It was not until 1958 that a scholar discovered Fan Kuan’s title hidden in the leaves of the dense forest. Later, painters used “mostly inscriptions and postscripts”, not only writing names, but also some concise words such as the meaning of the title. Because when writing in paintings, calligraphy must match it, so it has to be paid attention to. Calligraphy then entered painting.

However, words alone are not poetry. From the Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties to the Song Dynasty, the trend of painting with poems became popular. However, unlike the name, the poem cannot be “hidden” anymore. Writing it directly into the painting may interfere with the structure of the painting. Therefore, the poem was originally written outside the painting.

Paintings are made on paper and silk, so they are more difficult to preserve and are easily damaged. Poems, on the other hand, are written in words and are easy to spread. Therefore, few paintings have been authentically passed down, while more poems have been handed down. There are only more than 48,000 poems in “The Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty”, and as many as 10,000 poems on paintings have been handed down. A large number of paintings have been lost to obscurity. Meng Haoran was a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, who left more than 300 poems. He was also a great painter, but none of his paintings have survived. Almost no one today knows that he was also a great painter.

Zhang Yuming, a man of the Ming Dynasty, has no place in the history of Ming poetry, but the title of “Meng Xiangyang’s Snow Tour” is “It’s so snowy that Qin Jing is late, and old friends meet each other on the road. There are many amazing sentences in his life, but he recites poems of resentment to the king. “, but included in the “Poems on Paintings” in Sikuquanshu.

Cai Sui of the Song Dynasty said in “Western Qing Poetry” that poems on paintings cannot “just describe the scenery”, “if you express your emotions, the inscription will be the highlight of the poem.” In other words, poetry on paintings cannot be limited to visual content, but should break through the limitations of the moment of the picture and bring out the superiority of poetry as a language art.

“Ink Plum Blossom” written by Wang Mian in the late Yuan Dynasty: “My family washes inkstones on the tree at the head of the pool, and all the flowers bloom with faint ink marks. Don’t let anyone praise the color, just leave the pure air to fill the universe.” This poem is titled in the blank of “Ink Plum Blossom Picture” at. Great painters such as Dong Qichang, Tang Yin, and Shen Zhou were also good at calligraphy and poetry. After completing the paintings, they wrote poems, which became a temporary trend.

In this way, the relationship between poetry and painting has undergone major changes. Poetry is no longer an accessory outside painting, but an integral part of painting. The poem is placed in a conspicuous place in the painting, and its calligraphy cannot but match the painting. Poetry, calligraphy and painting are the trinity. Poetry and painting are no longer two flowers. Together with calligraphy, they become three flowers.

Looking back at the ancient Chinese sayings “Painting is a silent poem, poetry is a sound painting” and Su Dongpo’s “There is painting in the poem, there is poetry in the painting”, at most they can only be regarded as the prelude to the trinity of poetry, calligraphy and painting.

After all, poetry, calligraphy and painting are three arts, each with its own rules. In order to integrate the three art forms into one, there must be a process from scratch to maturity. Even in the Ming Dynasty, when inscriptions and postscripts were popular, the artistic standards of the three were not balanced. Most of them were paintings, while the quality of calligraphy and poetry was often slightly worse. The reason is that poetry is poetry within paintings, most of which are attached to paintings and expand on the unfinished meaning of paintings. The poem “Inscriptions on Painting” written by Shen Zhou, a relatively high-level painter, says: “The clear water and red mountains reflect the sticks and quinoa, and the setting sun is still in the west of the small bridge. The birds that startle the stream with their faint chants fly into the depths of the chaotic clouds and cry.” The last couplet, It cannot be said that it is not of lasting interest, but it is not considered a masterpiece among Ming people. Another example is Tang Bohu’s self-inscribed poem in “The Picture of Prostitutes in the Palace of Meng Shu”: “The lotus crown adorns Taoist clothes, serving the king every day. The flowers bloom and they don’t know the person has gone, and they fight for green and scarlet every year.” The tail couplet is certainly not without reason. The aura, however, is limited to the sighing of the characters in the painting. Poetry is subordinate to painting and subordinate to painting. The poet’s spiritual magnanimity cannot be fully expressed.

It was not until Xu Wei that the combination of poetry, calligraphy and painting developed to a new stage. His large-scale freehand paintings are open-minded and open-minded, and there is a word of “playing” in the title. His self-titled painting poems transcend the content of the painting. For example, the poem “Bamboos and Chrysanthemums Follow the Stone” reads: “For nine days I have been caressing the dragon mountain, and I can’t sleep even after I’m tired from walking. When I ask about the wine, I sometimes feel astringent, so I try to use the spots to exchange for money.” The content is no longer limited to the interpretation of the painting; He used the bamboo in the painting to make fun of himself. He had no money to buy wine, so he used the bamboo in the painting as wine money to show that he was poor and unrestrained. His calligraphy is sometimes in regular script and sometimes in cursive script, with a “playful” style.

To achieve organic unity between poetry, calligraphy and painting, we face three difficulties. First, the quality of poetry; second, the quality of calligraphy; third, and most importantly, poetry, calligraphy and painting cannot be simply added together. This problem finally had a theoretical summary in the eighteenth century. Fang Xun (1736-1799) said this in the second volume of “Mountain Quiet Residence Painting Theory”: “Those who use the position of the title to paint the scene will also benefit from the title. If you are high in emotion and thought, if the painting is insufficient, the title will be used to express it.” This statement is to the point. The trinity of poetry, calligraphy and painting requires not only that the quality of poetry must reach the level of painting, but more importantly, poetry on painting, including calligraphy, must be “positioned and painted”, that is, it must obey the structure of the picture, and at the same time, “the deficiencies of painting” , it is necessary to express “high emotions and thoughts” through poetry.

However, such theory still lags behind practice. Zheng Banqiao, who was nearly half a century ahead of him, had already achieved a high degree of harmony among the three in art. He not only wrote poems in paintings, but also wrote poems in the frame. If he was not satisfied with one poem, he would write another. Sometimes he even wrote poetry onto the stone that was the subject of the painting. His eclectic “positional painting” does not interfere with the picture at all. This is because his calligraphy is self-contained. He added running script, regular script and cursive script to the “eight-point script” of the Han Dynasty to form a six-and-a-half-point calligraphy. It looks a bit chaotic on the surface, but it is scattered and arranged in an orderly manner. His poetry is also unique, with poetic thoughts, calligraphy and painting highly unified and harmonious. Let’s give an example:

Don’t let go of the green mountains, and keep your roots in the broken rocks. It has been strong despite countless hardships, regardless of the winds from east to west, north and south.

This is a poem written by Zheng Banqiao on his bamboo and stone paintings. Bamboo is placed in the relationship with stone. Stone is not soil and is not suitable for plants to take root and sprout. Zheng Shi emphasizes the tenacity of bamboo and uses the word “decided”. Bamboo is better than stone and benefits from “thousands of grinding and countless blows”. Without changing “toughness”, he finally added “Let the east, west, north, and south wind blow”, using vernacular, reaching the climax of the poem. This is not writing about bamboo, but clearly writing about people. His “high emotion and thoughtfulness” really improved the “deficiency of painting”. If this kind of poem still uses the symbol of bamboo, in “Weixian County Department Painting Bamboo to Present Nianbo Bao Dazhong Chengkuo”, it is simply lyrical:

Lying down in the government office, I listened to the rustling bamboos, which I suspected were the sounds of suffering among the people. These little officials in Caozhou County are always caring about each branch and leaf.

The bamboo in the painting is silent, but what is touching is that the natural sound of this plant has become the auditory sound of people’s suffering. Zheng Banqiao once wrote in “Bamboo and Stone Pictures” that “the bamboo in the heart is not the bamboo in the eyes” and “the bamboo in the hand is not the bamboo in the heart.” It should be added that the bamboo written in the poem is different from the bamboo painted. The bamboo in the poem is a simmering energy in the poet’s chest due to the suffering of the people, which is always on the verge of breaking out. “Every branch and leaf is always related to feelings.” Each branch and leaf of the bamboo in the painting has acquired the spirit of the bamboo in the poem, and the bamboo in the poem has acquired a perceptual image due to the bamboo in the painting. He wrote the inscription on “Orchid, Bamboo and Stone Pictures”: “Every time I paint orchids, bamboos, or rocks, I use them to provide for the toiling people of the world, not to provide for the enjoyment of the people of the world.”

Looking at the bamboos painted by Zheng Banqiao, they never look like they are crouching in the wind. The bamboos are all independent in, on, and between the waterless standing stones. There is a wind spirit that is free and noble, but there is no spirit trapped in it. Even when he abandoned his official position and returned to his hometown, he would paint bamboos to say goodbye to the county people. In “I tell you to return home, I paint bamboos to say goodbye to the gentlemen and people of Weixian County”, he wrote a poem like this:

The black gauze is thrown away and it is not an official. The bag is fluttering and the sleeves are cold. A thin bamboo was used as a fishing pole on the river in the autumn wind.

The bamboo here stands out for its thinness. On the one hand, it echoes the “cold sleeves” in the previous sentence. On the other hand, it is also a foreshadowing of “making a fishing rod”. The thin bamboo has become an off-screen fishing rod in nature. It is not only full of unrestrained taste, but also has noble humor. Poetry and painting complement each other, and the effect far exceeds the simple sum of poetry and painting.

Zheng Banqiao also organically unified the two arts of calligraphy and painting. Painting is perceptual and intuitive, while calligraphy is abstract, but both are inseparable from lines. Zheng Banqiao’s bamboo paintings are famous for their thin, dry and plump leaves. He used official script to express the fullness of bamboo leaves, and used cursive calligraphy to paint bamboo branches. The calligraphy and painting have different tunes but have the same effect. He also used orchid and bamboo brushstrokes in the book to reveal delicacy. Therefore, his poetry, calligraphy and painting are intertwined. Zheng Banqiao Poetry, calligraphy and painting can be said to be three unique things in one.

This art form has been inherited and developed in the hands of the older generation of painters in our country. The more prominent one is Pan Tianshou, who left more than a hundred poems on paintings, such as “On the Fuchun River”, “The leisure time of the wax clogs cannot be deleted, the green water of the Fuchun River is gurgling. Don’t think that the paper is infinitely long, and you are afraid of writing about the ink painting of the crazy mountain” “, which expresses his spirit of breaking through tradition. He often wrote the same poem in both seal script and regular script. Feng Zikai also has a whole volume of “Ancient Poems and New Paintings”, each using a line from an ancient poem to give the simple pictures a new meaning. In addition, Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong, etc. are also among the masters. (Author: Sun Yanjun, Associate Professor, School of Overseas Education, Fujian Normal University)