Wang Wei(699 — 759)
Wang Wei
dynastie Tang
7 min read
Wang Wei (701-761) was one of the greatest poets of the Tang dynasty, as well as a painter, musician, and high-ranking official. Deeply influenced by Chan Buddhism, he is celebrated for his landscape poetry in which nature and contemplation merge.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born in 701 in Shanxi, he passed the imperial examination (jinshi) around 721
- A high-ranking official at the Tang court, he rose to senior posts under Emperor Xuanzong
- Captured during the An Lushan Rebellion (755-763), he later escaped severe punishment
- Retiring to his Wangchuan estate, he composed landscape poetry imbued with Chan Buddhism
- Died in 761; tradition (Su Shi) praises in his work “painting within poetry and poetry within painting”
Works & Achievements
A series of twenty quatrains composed in dialogue with his friend Pei Di, each devoted to a site on the Wangchuan estate. A summit of Chinese landscape poetry.
A four-line quatrain, one of the most translated poems in all of Chinese literature. In a few words it captures the luminous solitude of a forest.
A farewell poem set to music under the name “Three Variations on the Yang Pass,” sung for centuries at times of parting.
A regulated poem in which the mountain landscape after rain becomes meditation. A model of the genre, uniting painting and inner emotion.
A frontier poem born of his official journey westward, famous for the line “in the great desert, a lone column of smoke rises straight.”
A youthful poem written at seventeen, which became the proverbial expression of longing for family in China.
A long painted scroll depicting his estate, now lost but known through copies. A founding work associated with literati landscape painting.
Anecdotes
Wang Wei's given name (Wei) and his courtesy name (Mojie), joined together, form “Weimojie” — the Chinese transcription of Vimalakirti, a famous lay sage of Buddhism. This choice reveals his family's devotion: his mother was for more than thirty years the disciple of a master of the Chan school.
At seventeen, far from his family, Wang Wei wrote a poem for the Double Ninth Festival, thinking of his brothers who had stayed east of the mountains. The line “on every joyful festival, one thinks twice as much of one's loved ones” became so famous that Chinese people still quote it today when they are far from those they hold dear.
It is said that Wang Wei, an accomplished musician, once looked at a painting of an orchestra. He immediately declared that the musicians were playing “the first bar of the third section” of a famous tune, the Nishang yuyi. Connoisseurs questioned real musicians: he had been right simply by observing the position of the fingers.
In 756, when An Lushan's rebel troops seized the capital Chang'an, Wang Wei was captured and forced to serve the new regime. As a prisoner, he secretly composed a poem lamenting the fate of the deposed emperor. When the Tang retook the city, this poem — and the intervention of his brother Wang Jin, who was ready to sacrifice his own rank — spared him a conviction for treason.
Wang Wei acquired a vast estate at Wangchuan, at the foot of the Zhongnan Mountains, once the property of the poet Song Zhiwen. With his friend Pei Di, he composed there a collection of twenty short poems, each describing a place on the estate: a deer enclosure, a hut among the bamboos, a landing stage. He also painted there a long scroll, the Wangchuan tu, copied and admired for centuries.
Primary Sources
Empty mountain, no one to be seen; yet the echo of voices can be heard. The setting sunlight enters the deep forest and shines once more upon the green moss.
The morning rain at Weicheng dampens the light dust; at the inn, the freshened willows take on a new green. Let me urge you to drain one more cup of wine: once you pass Yang Pass and head west, you will have no friends left.
Ten thousand households broken-hearted, wild smoke rising; when will the hundred officials again pay homage to the imperial court? The pagoda-tree leaves fall in the deserted palace, and by Ningbi Pond they play the flute and strings.
Wei excelled at painting landscapes of mountains and waters; after his wife's death he did not remarry, and lived alone for more than thirty years, fasting and meditating in the Buddhist manner.
Key Places
The ancestral home of Wang Wei's family, in present-day Shanxi. This is where his roots lie and where the “eastern mountains” mentioned in his early poems are found.
Capital of the Tang dynasty and the largest city in the world at the time, a center of power and the arts. Wang Wei pursued his career as a government official here and died here.
A country property at the foot of the Zhongnan Mountains, near Lantian, where Wang Wei would retreat to write and paint. The place inspired his most famous poetry collection and scroll painting.
A mountain range south of Chang'an, a major site for Buddhist and Taoist retreat. Wang Wei found here the setting for his contemplative landscape poetry.
A frontier town on the Silk Road where Wang Wei was sent on an official mission. From it he brought back famous poems of the borderlands, such as “On a Mission to the Frontier.”