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Poems
Wang Wei, one of Chinese literature's greatest poets, divided his time between the court and his country estate, where he drew inspiration from the mountains and solitude. His poetry affirms his belief in a whole natural order, and his delicately observed descriptions of landscapes are infused throughout with a sense of unity and Buddhist devotion. Yet it also bears testament to the tension Wang Wei experienced in his own life, between that unity and the worldly pleasures of life at court: the result is some of the most memorable poetry in Chinese literature.
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First published January 1, 1920
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
July 11, 2018
"In a past life I was mistakenly a poet
In a former existence I must have been a painter
Unable to throw off my remnant habits."
I’ve been reading a lot of Chinese poetry in translation lately. I’m in the early stages of researching my Master’s dissertation; I will be looking at how twentieth century western writers appropriated Chinese poetry and brought it into the modern world. Wang Wei is one of the best poets I’ve come across and he exemplifies the forms I will be discussing.
There’s a certain simplicity in his words that is thoroughly deceptive. Chinese poetry is bare and precise. The language appears commonplace and ordinary. It does not feel like an overflow of feelings or passion: it is discreet. Yet, for all that, it carries with it a certain persuasive power.
The poetry of Wang Wei is very much driven by descriptions of nature. Regardless of what’s happening in the world, whether it’s war or a woeful departure, nature remains a beautiful inspiration. Nothing can change that for him, as he marches on, as he plods through life, the splendour of nature remains. Like so:
On Leaving the Wang River retreat
“At last I put my carriage in motion
Go sadly out from these ivied pines
Can I bear to leave these blue hills?
And the green stream – what of that?”
It’s deceptively simple. These four lines carry so much meaning. The narrator is leaving, but that doesn’t matter. The reasons for his departure aren’t important. The real world isn’t important. The issues are small and perhaps petty when faced with such glory. His surroundings here mean more to him, in this instance, than the whole of mankind combined. Leaving the purity of the ivied pines behind is a lamentable loss. Walking away from the blue hills, the hills of stability, of intelligence and of heaven itself is no easy departure. They represent much. It’s all about the colours. The sky and the sea are both blue, as are these symbolic hills. And the stream, the green stream, that represents oneness with nature that is the hardest of all to walk away from. The line “at last I put my carriage in motion,” says it all. The reluctance is palpable. Simple language is the key.
It would remiss though to dub Wang Wei a nature poet. Such a thing ignores the mystical and spiritual elements to his writing. Much of it was driven by love and loss, by the sorrows of human existence. And he copes with such things rather well, as such there are echoes of Buddhist philosophy across his writing. For example:
Suffering from the heat
My thoughts went out to the world
To somewhere utterly alone
Far winds came from a thousand miles
Rivers and seas washed impurities away
Now I realized the body is the affliction
At last I knew, my mind has never awakened
Here is the way to Nirvana, the gate
To pass though the joy of purity.
The words suggest a certain separation the physical world, to the world of possession and objects. They recognise the impermanence of physical sensation, and that overcoming such an obstacle is the final hurdle on the road to enlightenment: to nirvana.
Wang Wei is an excellent poet, and his words are moving. They are driven by isolation, loneliness and will to reconcile with the natural order of things.
In a former existence I must have been a painter
Unable to throw off my remnant habits."
I’ve been reading a lot of Chinese poetry in translation lately. I’m in the early stages of researching my Master’s dissertation; I will be looking at how twentieth century western writers appropriated Chinese poetry and brought it into the modern world. Wang Wei is one of the best poets I’ve come across and he exemplifies the forms I will be discussing.
There’s a certain simplicity in his words that is thoroughly deceptive. Chinese poetry is bare and precise. The language appears commonplace and ordinary. It does not feel like an overflow of feelings or passion: it is discreet. Yet, for all that, it carries with it a certain persuasive power.
The poetry of Wang Wei is very much driven by descriptions of nature. Regardless of what’s happening in the world, whether it’s war or a woeful departure, nature remains a beautiful inspiration. Nothing can change that for him, as he marches on, as he plods through life, the splendour of nature remains. Like so:
On Leaving the Wang River retreat
“At last I put my carriage in motion
Go sadly out from these ivied pines
Can I bear to leave these blue hills?
And the green stream – what of that?”
It’s deceptively simple. These four lines carry so much meaning. The narrator is leaving, but that doesn’t matter. The reasons for his departure aren’t important. The real world isn’t important. The issues are small and perhaps petty when faced with such glory. His surroundings here mean more to him, in this instance, than the whole of mankind combined. Leaving the purity of the ivied pines behind is a lamentable loss. Walking away from the blue hills, the hills of stability, of intelligence and of heaven itself is no easy departure. They represent much. It’s all about the colours. The sky and the sea are both blue, as are these symbolic hills. And the stream, the green stream, that represents oneness with nature that is the hardest of all to walk away from. The line “at last I put my carriage in motion,” says it all. The reluctance is palpable. Simple language is the key.
It would remiss though to dub Wang Wei a nature poet. Such a thing ignores the mystical and spiritual elements to his writing. Much of it was driven by love and loss, by the sorrows of human existence. And he copes with such things rather well, as such there are echoes of Buddhist philosophy across his writing. For example:
Suffering from the heat
My thoughts went out to the world
To somewhere utterly alone
Far winds came from a thousand miles
Rivers and seas washed impurities away
Now I realized the body is the affliction
At last I knew, my mind has never awakened
Here is the way to Nirvana, the gate
To pass though the joy of purity.
The words suggest a certain separation the physical world, to the world of possession and objects. They recognise the impermanence of physical sensation, and that overcoming such an obstacle is the final hurdle on the road to enlightenment: to nirvana.
Wang Wei is an excellent poet, and his words are moving. They are driven by isolation, loneliness and will to reconcile with the natural order of things.
September 4, 2013
Wang Wei (699/701 - 761) is often held up as a model for Chinese scholar-artists. He was an office holder in the T'ang dynasty administration, a poet, musician, calligrapher and painter. He is considered to be the father of the Southern School of Chinese landscape painting (unfortunately, it appears that none of his paintings have survived, though some later paraphrases of his painting still exist; some experts believe that the painting of which only a detail is shown above is by Wang Wei). Some 400 of his poems have survived, thanks to his brother, who was the prime minister at Wei's death and ordered that his poems be collected and preserved. It appears, however, that many of his poems had already been lost in the preceding turmoil during the rebellion of An Lu-shan.
G.W. Robinson translates around one fourth of the surviving poems in this book and provides an interesting introduction and explanatory notes. And these are entirely necessary, not only for establishing social, historical and artistic context, but also because Chinese writers allude so often to previous works in the tradition. With a single phrase an entire work (and its history of commentary) is summoned to the mind of the connoisseur, and this is part of the intended effect of the poem. Clearly, most of this escapes a modern reader not immersed in the history of Chinese literature, though Robinson's notes lets one get a fleeting taste of this effect. But also most of the music of the poetry is lost in English translation. True, rhyme and rhythm could, in principle, conceivably be approximated, but then there is the additional poetry inherent in a tonal language.
In Chinese (and Vietnamese and Thai) the "tone" in which the syllable is pronounced carries meaning - the same syllable said in different tones means completely different things. And, needless to say, great poets draw upon all of the resources of their languages to enhance their poetry. So, just as rhyme and rhythm schemes adorn poetry (familiar in Western poetry), also tone schemes play an important role in some genres of Chinese poetry. Wang Wei wrote primarily in one of these schemes...
In light of all this, one can well decide (as I have seen some mention here in GR) that there is little point in reading (this and other) poetry in translation. Not me. For, as distant an approximation any modern English translation of classic Chinese poetry must be, one can still perceive something unmistakably unique; the connection may be full of static and most of the frequency range may be cut off, but meaning still comes through from a mind distant both in time and in culture. I'll tell you flatly: I love that. And it doesn't hurt at all that I happen to vibrate in a sympathetic manner to many of the characteristic elements of classic Chinese poetry.
It also doesn't hurt that Wang Wei was a practicing Buddhist; his Buddhist quietism clearly informs his poetry, distinguishing his work at once from that of his famous contemporaries Li Po (Li Bai) and Tu Fu (Du Fu). Although both the translator and some reviews here at GR use the words "nature poetry" in connection with Wang's poetry, it does not aspire to the awe-full power of, say, Hsieh Ling-yün :
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Much more than Hsieh, Wang was torn between his Buddhist desire to "withdraw from the world" and his attraction to social status and life at the T'ang court. This conflict is sometimes addressed in his poems. But he never did give up the world of the court, rising to his highest position shortly before his death. I find Wang's poetry (or at least this distantly refracted version of it) to be beautiful and moving, full of the joys and sorrows of life. Here is one from the end of his life:
I sit alone sad at my whitening hair
Waiting for ten o'clock in my empty house
In the rain the hill fruits fall
Under my lamp grasshoppers sound
White hairs will never be transformed
That elixir is beyond creation
To eliminate decrepitude
Study the absolute.
And, finally, one of his most distilled poems:
It was near Kuangwu City
I met the end of spring
A traveller returning from Wenyang
handkerchief wet with tears
Silent silent falling flowers
birds crying in the hills
Green green the willows
at our crossing place.
(Once again, GR's text defaults forbid correctly reproducing the text's line breaks.)
December 18, 2019
Huatzu Hill
Flying birds away into endless spaces
Ranged hills all autumn colours again.
I go up Huatzu Hill and come down –
Will my sadness never come to its end?
---
Willow Waves
The two rows of perfect trees
Fall reflected in the clear ripples
And do not copy those by the palace moat
Where the spring wind sharpens the good-bye
---
Fireflies pass across jewelled windows
Voices have ceased in the golden palace
One stays up through the autumn night, gauze-curtained
And a solitary light gleams on
---
You’ve just come from my village
You must have news of my village –
That winter plum outside her curtained window – Tell me, had it flowered when you left?
---
Light cloud, on the pavilion a small rain
Remote cloister, at noon still shut
Sit and regard the colour of the green moss
That seems it will merge up into one’s clothes
---
A spider hangs in the empty window
Crickets sing on the front steps
The cold wind of the year’s evening is here –
How are things with you now, my friend?
---
Inscription for a friend’s mica screen
This screen of yours unfolded
Against that wild courtyard
Can show you hills and springs
Uncontrived with paint
---
Human feelings turn over and over
like the waves of the sea
---
Light lines on a flat rock
Dear flat rock
facing the stream
Where the willows are sweeping
over my wine cup again
If you say that the spring wind
has no understanding
Why should it come blowing me
these falling flowers
---
Lamenting white hairs
Once a child’s face
now an old man’s
White hairs soon replace
the infant’s down
How much can hurt the heart
in one life’s span
We must turn to the gate to Nirvana
where else can we end our pain?
---
We’ve not seen
We’ve not seen each other now
For a long time.
Each day at the head of the stream
I remember us there arm in arm
Arm in arm, at one we were –
And memory renews
The pain of the sudden good-bye.
If today’s memory is thus
How deep was feeling then
Flying birds away into endless spaces
Ranged hills all autumn colours again.
I go up Huatzu Hill and come down –
Will my sadness never come to its end?
---
Willow Waves
The two rows of perfect trees
Fall reflected in the clear ripples
And do not copy those by the palace moat
Where the spring wind sharpens the good-bye
---
Fireflies pass across jewelled windows
Voices have ceased in the golden palace
One stays up through the autumn night, gauze-curtained
And a solitary light gleams on
---
You’ve just come from my village
You must have news of my village –
That winter plum outside her curtained window – Tell me, had it flowered when you left?
---
Light cloud, on the pavilion a small rain
Remote cloister, at noon still shut
Sit and regard the colour of the green moss
That seems it will merge up into one’s clothes
---
A spider hangs in the empty window
Crickets sing on the front steps
The cold wind of the year’s evening is here –
How are things with you now, my friend?
---
Inscription for a friend’s mica screen
This screen of yours unfolded
Against that wild courtyard
Can show you hills and springs
Uncontrived with paint
---
Human feelings turn over and over
like the waves of the sea
---
Light lines on a flat rock
Dear flat rock
facing the stream
Where the willows are sweeping
over my wine cup again
If you say that the spring wind
has no understanding
Why should it come blowing me
these falling flowers
---
Lamenting white hairs
Once a child’s face
now an old man’s
White hairs soon replace
the infant’s down
How much can hurt the heart
in one life’s span
We must turn to the gate to Nirvana
where else can we end our pain?
---
We’ve not seen
We’ve not seen each other now
For a long time.
Each day at the head of the stream
I remember us there arm in arm
Arm in arm, at one we were –
And memory renews
The pain of the sudden good-bye.
If today’s memory is thus
How deep was feeling then
Read
January 27, 2015I usually do not read poetry in translation, unless (a)it's a narrative poem or (b)it's translated by a poet who has essentially recreated the poem, rather than faithfully translating word by word. In my opinion, poetry owes its beauty to the cadence of the language, a kind of rhythmic beat as the words trip over one another, which is well nigh impossible to achieve in translation. However, I bought this book against my better judgement because it was going dirt cheap at a garage sale, and I felt the need to expand my reading horizon to ancient China.
Well, I should have listened to my judgement, as the poems fell flat with me. Wang Wei seems to be a nature poet, and all his poems are full of descriptions of the landscape. No doubt they would be beautiful in the original Chinese, but in English they seemed repetitive and uninteresting.
My review is not a judgement on the book, author or translator: it is just my reading experience based on my personal preferences.
I am not rating the book, as I do not feel qualified to do so.
Well, I should have listened to my judgement, as the poems fell flat with me. Wang Wei seems to be a nature poet, and all his poems are full of descriptions of the landscape. No doubt they would be beautiful in the original Chinese, but in English they seemed repetitive and uninteresting.
My review is not a judgement on the book, author or translator: it is just my reading experience based on my personal preferences.
I am not rating the book, as I do not feel qualified to do so.
August 7, 2025
Simple, peaceful poems about simple, peaceful pleasures - and stark, striking poems about stark, striking displeasures! Sometimes these images are so precise and focused that it becomes exciting, but occasionally they're so sparse that it all feels a bit elusive and lacking in imapct particularly impactful. I wonder how much of the good stuff has been lost in translation, or lost over time? From the introduction it seems like the translator was more focussed on preserving sentence structure than emotionality, which might account for why some of these poems feel a bit clunky, or don't seem to land anywhere... still though, there's a lot of humanity that has survived intact. It's great to see wilderness poems that aren't romanticizing everything, and seriously explore what it means to be on your own all the time in the middle of the countryside. Lots of poems about this guy's friends arriving, then leaving, then him being sat in his cottage in the middle of an empty valley and going "okay what now?". And then the what now is always a fish, or a tree, or the moon. This guy likes what he likes, and likes sharing it with people. I get a sense that he writes it all down because he doesn't always have people around to share it with
March 28, 2017
Midst the self-detachment experienced in reading the poems of Wang Wei (699-761) - surely an attainment of the state hoped for by the poet in the reader, as attained by the poet himself - or rather, not himself, but at one with his most involved moments with the subjects of his own immersion - is there an experience of the glimmer of the soul emerging forward from its suspended state.
Through solitude comes quietude, from quietude, peace.
So it is, when reading the best of these poems, along with a wandering of the spirit - which we reflect on later as imagination, yet it is more a sloughing of the self, and the entering of some other realm - some sort of suspension from the present reality into a wistfulness of being other, elsewhere, not presently conscious of being 'here and now'.
Perhaps the most redolent of this magical state is the poem Song Of The Peach Tree Spring (which is accompanied and illuminated by a prose version of the story recounted from T'ao Ch'ien) - which on its own made me love Wang Wei's poetry above that of Li Po or Tu Fu while reading the little classic compilation of their poetry. If there were ever an evocation of the attainment of a state of paradise, lost in the harkening of the call of one's own country, impossible again to regain, this echoes so familiarly. Apart from having multi-layered meaning and symbolism - the poet's attempts, success, and then impossibility of again attaining perfection in his art; the sense of achieving this 'otherworldliness' in meditative contemplation (Zen Buddhism), and then seeing it carried off in the wind as one returns back to earth - is the exact same sense of oneness of which Chuang Tzu's dream evokes, a little before Wang Wei's time (Zhuang Zhou, 369-286 BC):
'Once Chuang Tzu dreamt that he was a butterfly. He did not know that he had ever been anything but a butterfly and was content to hover from flower to flower. Suddenly he awoke and found to his astonishment that he was Chuang Tzu. But it was hard to be sure whether he really was Tzu and had only dreamt that he was a butterfly, or was really a butterfly, and was only dreaming that he was Tzu.' - On Love And Barley - Haiku of Matsuo Bashō, Penguin Classics 1985, p90.
The entire transport of the poem Song Of The Peach Tree Spring evokes this sense of loss of self in some mystical paradise, and although the sense of loss is triggered in ourselves, the reader, it is not evident in the tone of the poem's ending, which rather expresses an acceptance of its not being found again, in the surety that one day it will. This inner sureness is gently comforting within a sentiment so deeply familiar to we who know of the pain of loss in our lives, yet is of such reassuring sustenance. So, in this sweep of feelings and gentleness of acceptance, Wang Wei's poems teach us both of the meaningfulness of Zen, and the comfort of the artist's genius - a kind of comfort of quietude, in this sureness of attainment. Further, it profoundly dissolves the separation of quotidian reality and the mystical call of the next life.
I find the power in this expression phenomenal, transforming. I feel intrinsically a part of the world this poet paints, for it speaks of a communing of the soul of a man a thousand years ago as if I were experiencing it with him this morning, a oneness where time is experienced as the same pool then and now.
The most evocative and affecting of this collection - 98 poems in all, plus the two prose stories - are those which capture you in total immersion during which your time is suspended and you live present in that of Wang Wei's reverie. This is an entirely new experience each time because of the impression of the poem in its place, its subject and its emotional landscape, but it is the same sense in the way that your own life is momentarily suspended in a magic of the time past, thus linking you to a form of wondrous solitude unlike your own reveries, your sense a wash of the poet's evocation of perfection.
Of these moments, I have chosen my 10 favourite poems which lift you above all the others in some idyll of heaven or vivid emotional suspense:
· The Wang River Sequence
· Song Of The Peach Tree Spring
· Passing the mountain cloister of the holy man, T'an-hsing, at Kanhua Temple
· Living in the hills
· Seeing off Chang the Fifth back to the hills
· Seeing off Ch'en Tzu-Fu to the east of the Yangtze
· In answer to Assistant Magistrate Chang
· Four poems on the pleasures of the country
· Watching a farewell
· Lines (2)
Each of these poems has its individual 'colour', depending upon its principal sentiment - loneliness, fondness, tranquility, the perception of the surrounding nature, the season or the weather - and often all of these elements - but they all carry one common quality: the sense of solitude, of loneliness even, yet they bring with these usual sadnesses the balance of a calm, quiet acceptance of oneness with this wash of emotion. And each one of these superb pieces captivates you in their world for a moment where your own dissolves completely.
If poetry were painting, this is painting in dimensions.
Through solitude comes quietude, from quietude, peace.
So it is, when reading the best of these poems, along with a wandering of the spirit - which we reflect on later as imagination, yet it is more a sloughing of the self, and the entering of some other realm - some sort of suspension from the present reality into a wistfulness of being other, elsewhere, not presently conscious of being 'here and now'.
Perhaps the most redolent of this magical state is the poem Song Of The Peach Tree Spring (which is accompanied and illuminated by a prose version of the story recounted from T'ao Ch'ien) - which on its own made me love Wang Wei's poetry above that of Li Po or Tu Fu while reading the little classic compilation of their poetry. If there were ever an evocation of the attainment of a state of paradise, lost in the harkening of the call of one's own country, impossible again to regain, this echoes so familiarly. Apart from having multi-layered meaning and symbolism - the poet's attempts, success, and then impossibility of again attaining perfection in his art; the sense of achieving this 'otherworldliness' in meditative contemplation (Zen Buddhism), and then seeing it carried off in the wind as one returns back to earth - is the exact same sense of oneness of which Chuang Tzu's dream evokes, a little before Wang Wei's time (Zhuang Zhou, 369-286 BC):
'Once Chuang Tzu dreamt that he was a butterfly. He did not know that he had ever been anything but a butterfly and was content to hover from flower to flower. Suddenly he awoke and found to his astonishment that he was Chuang Tzu. But it was hard to be sure whether he really was Tzu and had only dreamt that he was a butterfly, or was really a butterfly, and was only dreaming that he was Tzu.' - On Love And Barley - Haiku of Matsuo Bashō, Penguin Classics 1985, p90.
The entire transport of the poem Song Of The Peach Tree Spring evokes this sense of loss of self in some mystical paradise, and although the sense of loss is triggered in ourselves, the reader, it is not evident in the tone of the poem's ending, which rather expresses an acceptance of its not being found again, in the surety that one day it will. This inner sureness is gently comforting within a sentiment so deeply familiar to we who know of the pain of loss in our lives, yet is of such reassuring sustenance. So, in this sweep of feelings and gentleness of acceptance, Wang Wei's poems teach us both of the meaningfulness of Zen, and the comfort of the artist's genius - a kind of comfort of quietude, in this sureness of attainment. Further, it profoundly dissolves the separation of quotidian reality and the mystical call of the next life.
I find the power in this expression phenomenal, transforming. I feel intrinsically a part of the world this poet paints, for it speaks of a communing of the soul of a man a thousand years ago as if I were experiencing it with him this morning, a oneness where time is experienced as the same pool then and now.
The most evocative and affecting of this collection - 98 poems in all, plus the two prose stories - are those which capture you in total immersion during which your time is suspended and you live present in that of Wang Wei's reverie. This is an entirely new experience each time because of the impression of the poem in its place, its subject and its emotional landscape, but it is the same sense in the way that your own life is momentarily suspended in a magic of the time past, thus linking you to a form of wondrous solitude unlike your own reveries, your sense a wash of the poet's evocation of perfection.
Of these moments, I have chosen my 10 favourite poems which lift you above all the others in some idyll of heaven or vivid emotional suspense:
· The Wang River Sequence
· Song Of The Peach Tree Spring
· Passing the mountain cloister of the holy man, T'an-hsing, at Kanhua Temple
· Living in the hills
· Seeing off Chang the Fifth back to the hills
· Seeing off Ch'en Tzu-Fu to the east of the Yangtze
· In answer to Assistant Magistrate Chang
· Four poems on the pleasures of the country
· Watching a farewell
· Lines (2)
Each of these poems has its individual 'colour', depending upon its principal sentiment - loneliness, fondness, tranquility, the perception of the surrounding nature, the season or the weather - and often all of these elements - but they all carry one common quality: the sense of solitude, of loneliness even, yet they bring with these usual sadnesses the balance of a calm, quiet acceptance of oneness with this wash of emotion. And each one of these superb pieces captivates you in their world for a moment where your own dissolves completely.
If poetry were painting, this is painting in dimensions.
June 26, 2025
queria que fosse minha praia mas infelizmente não é! tem alguns poemas muito bonitos
January 18, 2016
vague sound of birds in the valley
I spent a long time over this little book, trying to contemplate the spaces the small poems leave. G W Robinson's notes are pleasantly confrontational while also providing a strong intertextual and contextual background to the writing. Really quite a wonderful book.
May 13, 2021
Wang Wei's poetry is like the Tao, there is nothing that can be added or taken away. To try to add a comment would be like adding a second head. Like a drink of cool spring water, or a walk in the clear air amid the mist shrouded mountains and the pines. Just perfect.
July 26, 2023
How refreshing!
"Song of the Peach Tree Spring"
"Duckweed Pool" (from Four Poems about Cloud Valley)
"Inscription for a friend's mica screen"
"Giving P'ei Ti a drink"
"The Lady of Hsi"
"Another oral composition for P'ei Ti"
"In the hills at nightfall in autumn"
"Song of the Peach Tree Spring"
"Duckweed Pool" (from Four Poems about Cloud Valley)
"Inscription for a friend's mica screen"
"Giving P'ei Ti a drink"
"The Lady of Hsi"
"Another oral composition for P'ei Ti"
"In the hills at nightfall in autumn"
January 12, 2026
Wang Wei's collection of poems are serene and sensitive. Frequently Wei will write of lush green trees, the sounds of monkeys, snow, and the vastness of waters; yet his writing does not try to hide the emotions felt during the departure of an old or new friend, the closed gates of men in solitude, or the sorrow of longing and white hair.
Wei's poems can be classified as beautiful despite their simplicity. He is sometimes lyrical, yet his depictions of China's nature and its people are relatively normal and regular. To me, Wei writes his best poetry when he misses an old friend or loved one, such as when he depicts the narrator or the subject as alone:
"Hills empty, no one to be seen..." - Deer Park
"And he neared the green stream, seeing no one..." - Song of the Peach Tree Spring
His writing when he is sorrowful is also choice:
"Perhaps clouds do form in these rafters
and make rain among men." - Apricot Wood House
"And who will live here in the future
To grieve vainly for him that was before?" - Meng Wall Hollow
"I am back in my deep solitude
Renewed sadness, redoubled sighs." - To repay my friends for a visit
"How can we escape from these earthly toils
Shake off the dust and leave the noise of the world..." - Another oral composition for P'ei ti
"Here I am alone
In a strange place a stranger..." - Remembering my brothers east of the mountains
"I realize we shall not see each other
Back in my house still hoping - but in vain." - Waiting for Hsu Kuang-i who did not come
His verses are short and carry the weight of thoughts from a man who lived his life quietly and with frequent saddening. I think he is like us in that way.
Wei's poems can be classified as beautiful despite their simplicity. He is sometimes lyrical, yet his depictions of China's nature and its people are relatively normal and regular. To me, Wei writes his best poetry when he misses an old friend or loved one, such as when he depicts the narrator or the subject as alone:
"Hills empty, no one to be seen..." - Deer Park
"And he neared the green stream, seeing no one..." - Song of the Peach Tree Spring
His writing when he is sorrowful is also choice:
"Perhaps clouds do form in these rafters
and make rain among men." - Apricot Wood House
"And who will live here in the future
To grieve vainly for him that was before?" - Meng Wall Hollow
"I am back in my deep solitude
Renewed sadness, redoubled sighs." - To repay my friends for a visit
"How can we escape from these earthly toils
Shake off the dust and leave the noise of the world..." - Another oral composition for P'ei ti
"Here I am alone
In a strange place a stranger..." - Remembering my brothers east of the mountains
"I realize we shall not see each other
Back in my house still hoping - but in vain." - Waiting for Hsu Kuang-i who did not come
His verses are short and carry the weight of thoughts from a man who lived his life quietly and with frequent saddening. I think he is like us in that way.
February 18, 2025
“Our parting in these hills is over
The sun sets and I shut my door
The spring will be green again next year -
Will my good friend come back too?”
-
“Bow strings singing in the strong wind
The general hunts near Wei city
Grass dead - the falcons' sight is sharper
Snow gone — the horses' tread light
Quickly we are past Hsinfeng
And back at Hsiliu camp
Behind, where we have shot our game, I see
A thousand miles all calm evening clouds.”
-
“I sit alone in the dark bamboos
Play my lute and sing and sing
Deep in the woods where no one knows I am
But the being moon comes and shines on me there.”
The sun sets and I shut my door
The spring will be green again next year -
Will my good friend come back too?”
-
“Bow strings singing in the strong wind
The general hunts near Wei city
Grass dead - the falcons' sight is sharper
Snow gone — the horses' tread light
Quickly we are past Hsinfeng
And back at Hsiliu camp
Behind, where we have shot our game, I see
A thousand miles all calm evening clouds.”
-
“I sit alone in the dark bamboos
Play my lute and sing and sing
Deep in the woods where no one knows I am
But the being moon comes and shines on me there.”
September 22, 2023
Leaning alone in the close bamboos,
I am playing my lute and humming a song
Too softly for anyone to hear --
Except my comrade, the bright moon.
(Engelse vertaling op shigeku.com)
rustig zit ik tussen de bamboes
speel op de lier en zing
niemand weet dat ik in het bos ben
alleen de maan dringt door tot hier
(W. Hussem)
De poëzie van Wang Wei is zeer beeldend, eenvoudig en verstild. Dat de schilder Willem Hussem, die geen woord Chinees sprak, zich in het Nederlands taalgebied deze dichter heeft toegeëigend, is een beetje jammer. Willem Hussem stond bekend als dé Wang Wei vertaler van Nederland, maar ik vond deze selectie een enorme teleurstelling. Wang Wei (699–759) is een klassiek Chinese beelddichter. Hussem neemt de beelden slordig over, zonder precisie, en slaat ze plat tot figuratieve schilderijtjes met gebrek aan kleur en contrast.
Het gedicht hierboven is een goed voorbeeld. In de Engelse versie is het eenvoudig, maar heeft toch een zekere kracht en meerduidigheid: die zit in het contrast tussen de zachte, stille geluiden vs de helderheid van het maanlicht; in de eenzaamheid van de luitspeler, vs de maan die hem op het laatst in de spotlights zet en meeluistert (een personificatie; een oog dat toekijkt, een oor dat luistert). Hiermee wordt ook de lezer in de positie van de maan geplaatst, want de lezer is het heldere oog en het aandachtige oor dat het oeroude, stille gedicht van Wang Wei tot leven wekt.
Door de opbouw van het gedicht is de eindregel een wending met impact. Chinese klassieke poezie leunt vaak op dit soort contrasten en plotse perspectiefverschuivingen in kleine, intieme scenes.
In de vertaling van Hussem blijft van dit alles vrijwel niets over. Hij zet in op een beetje rijm: lier - zing in de tweede regel wordt geechoot in de laatste regel door dringt - hier). Maar de rest is een wazige vlek. Het contrast tussen stilte en helder maanlicht, de personificatie, de maan als spotlight, de identificatie van lezer met maan; allemaal weg. "Leaning alone in the close bamboos" wordt "Rustig zit ik tussen de bamboes". Het "alleen" is weg, het idee van verborgen zijn is weg, in plaats daarvan komt het lege woord "rustig". Een beeldverarming. En zo in elke regel.
Ik zou aanraden deze Chinese dichter in Engelse vertalingen te lezen, of in een contemporaine vertaling door een goede Nederlandse vertaler zoals de onvolprezen Lloyd Haft. Dan is Wang Wei meteen een stuk interessanter. Na het lezen van Hussems vertaling dacht ik in eerste instantie dat Wang Wei gewoon een beroerde dichter was, een vroeg-middeleeuwse Rupi Kaur. Maar dat is niet zo, W. Hussem heeft Wang Wei gesloopt.
I am playing my lute and humming a song
Too softly for anyone to hear --
Except my comrade, the bright moon.
(Engelse vertaling op shigeku.com)
rustig zit ik tussen de bamboes
speel op de lier en zing
niemand weet dat ik in het bos ben
alleen de maan dringt door tot hier
(W. Hussem)
De poëzie van Wang Wei is zeer beeldend, eenvoudig en verstild. Dat de schilder Willem Hussem, die geen woord Chinees sprak, zich in het Nederlands taalgebied deze dichter heeft toegeëigend, is een beetje jammer. Willem Hussem stond bekend als dé Wang Wei vertaler van Nederland, maar ik vond deze selectie een enorme teleurstelling. Wang Wei (699–759) is een klassiek Chinese beelddichter. Hussem neemt de beelden slordig over, zonder precisie, en slaat ze plat tot figuratieve schilderijtjes met gebrek aan kleur en contrast.
Het gedicht hierboven is een goed voorbeeld. In de Engelse versie is het eenvoudig, maar heeft toch een zekere kracht en meerduidigheid: die zit in het contrast tussen de zachte, stille geluiden vs de helderheid van het maanlicht; in de eenzaamheid van de luitspeler, vs de maan die hem op het laatst in de spotlights zet en meeluistert (een personificatie; een oog dat toekijkt, een oor dat luistert). Hiermee wordt ook de lezer in de positie van de maan geplaatst, want de lezer is het heldere oog en het aandachtige oor dat het oeroude, stille gedicht van Wang Wei tot leven wekt.
Door de opbouw van het gedicht is de eindregel een wending met impact. Chinese klassieke poezie leunt vaak op dit soort contrasten en plotse perspectiefverschuivingen in kleine, intieme scenes.
In de vertaling van Hussem blijft van dit alles vrijwel niets over. Hij zet in op een beetje rijm: lier - zing in de tweede regel wordt geechoot in de laatste regel door dringt - hier). Maar de rest is een wazige vlek. Het contrast tussen stilte en helder maanlicht, de personificatie, de maan als spotlight, de identificatie van lezer met maan; allemaal weg. "Leaning alone in the close bamboos" wordt "Rustig zit ik tussen de bamboes". Het "alleen" is weg, het idee van verborgen zijn is weg, in plaats daarvan komt het lege woord "rustig". Een beeldverarming. En zo in elke regel.
Ik zou aanraden deze Chinese dichter in Engelse vertalingen te lezen, of in een contemporaine vertaling door een goede Nederlandse vertaler zoals de onvolprezen Lloyd Haft. Dan is Wang Wei meteen een stuk interessanter. Na het lezen van Hussems vertaling dacht ik in eerste instantie dat Wang Wei gewoon een beroerde dichter was, een vroeg-middeleeuwse Rupi Kaur. Maar dat is niet zo, W. Hussem heeft Wang Wei gesloopt.
December 23, 2022
Wang Wei was another of the Tang dynasty's beloved poets, along with Li Bai and Du Fu. Like other poets, he became a court official, holding a number of posts throughout the country, though it is his country retreat that he most loved. His poetry is filled with nature imagery and bits of personal information--including friends and postings, mostly, with little mention of family other than his brother--but it all feels personal, in a way. Like so many poets of the time, he typically wrote in his own voice; the thoughts are his real thoughts and the feelings presented are his feelings. (Mostly.) There is a small mention (in this volume, at least) of the tragedy of his wife's death when he was only 30, though it is only in the notes that this is made explicit, and it seems odd to me, a modern reader from the US, thousands of miles away and 1200 years later, that he might so directly express sadness at being parted from a friend but suppress and barely mention any feelings he had about a more personal grief. It feels backwards to me. But I suspect that says more about culture and norms, about which topics are deemed appropriate for literature and which aren't, than it says about personality and his true feelings.
This volume is small but contains a good chunk of his known poetry. The foreword and notes are useful, clarifying a lot of the opaque references, and the translation is very readable. As far as the poetry itself, I found I liked most of it but felt drawn to and connected to just a little. My reactions were more like, "Nice, interesting, well done," and only sometimes like, "Oh, right, I get that!" But maybe I'll try a bit in another anthology to see if I can't run onto more of the second type.
Anyway, a nice collection. A lot of readers of poetry might enjoy this.
This volume is small but contains a good chunk of his known poetry. The foreword and notes are useful, clarifying a lot of the opaque references, and the translation is very readable. As far as the poetry itself, I found I liked most of it but felt drawn to and connected to just a little. My reactions were more like, "Nice, interesting, well done," and only sometimes like, "Oh, right, I get that!" But maybe I'll try a bit in another anthology to see if I can't run onto more of the second type.
Anyway, a nice collection. A lot of readers of poetry might enjoy this.
May 31, 2022
It's so important when reading translated poems to have a good introduction to the material in terms of both background information relating to the poet's life and experiences that may have (or will have) influenced his or her poems, as well as to the challenges that different forms of poetry take that make translation at times both a literary and engineering challenge. This is especially true in Chinese poetry when the rhymes and rhythms of classical Chinese poetry are infamous for their complexities. Translator G. W. Robinson has done a fine job of this collection of one of the most famous poets of the Tang Dynasty, Wang Wei (699-761 CE).
"He survived several political upheavals, dividing the time between the court and his country estate, where he drew inspiration from the mountains and solitude... and his poetry affirms his belief in a whole natural order, which includes mankind." The introduction's brief biography does a lovely non-scholarly job of explaining why one finds the line "Friends who have gone grey together may still reach for their swords" (an argument with an old friend) and why the opening line was "I will pour you some wine and you must relax...." Similarly, his love of nature yet his desire to follow in the Buddha's footsteps of detachment from things that bind one to this world, ring clear with the line that closes one of his poems written while enjoying the beauty of a gentle rainfall on a mountainside: "He does not make this Progress because he values the beauty of things."
In short, a lovely introduction for those who need only a light touch before embarking on the very enjoyable voyage of reading a handful of Wang Wei's poems.
"He survived several political upheavals, dividing the time between the court and his country estate, where he drew inspiration from the mountains and solitude... and his poetry affirms his belief in a whole natural order, which includes mankind." The introduction's brief biography does a lovely non-scholarly job of explaining why one finds the line "Friends who have gone grey together may still reach for their swords" (an argument with an old friend) and why the opening line was "I will pour you some wine and you must relax...." Similarly, his love of nature yet his desire to follow in the Buddha's footsteps of detachment from things that bind one to this world, ring clear with the line that closes one of his poems written while enjoying the beauty of a gentle rainfall on a mountainside: "He does not make this Progress because he values the beauty of things."
In short, a lovely introduction for those who need only a light touch before embarking on the very enjoyable voyage of reading a handful of Wang Wei's poems.
May 26, 2024
Born "of a family of distinguished littérateurs", Wang Wei wrote about nature --
-- as if he was starving for it. So many of the verses were visceral in the extreme. Due to his precocious poetic talents, he was brought into official positions in the court, although seemingly always longing for his secluded estate on the Wang River. He did not advance his political career far, nonetheless, he carries "the smell of the bien pensant about one who managed to weather palace revolutions and a bloody rebellion unscathed."
There are too many gems laden amongst the cool streams and green trees in this collection to give a thorough catalog of my favorites -- go read them yourself! -- so I will highlight just one, the poem titled "Giving P'ei Ti a drink":
Sound of a stream choking on sharp rocks
Sun cool coloured among green pines
-- as if he was starving for it. So many of the verses were visceral in the extreme. Due to his precocious poetic talents, he was brought into official positions in the court, although seemingly always longing for his secluded estate on the Wang River. He did not advance his political career far, nonetheless, he carries "the smell of the bien pensant about one who managed to weather palace revolutions and a bloody rebellion unscathed."
There are too many gems laden amongst the cool streams and green trees in this collection to give a thorough catalog of my favorites -- go read them yourself! -- so I will highlight just one, the poem titled "Giving P'ei Ti a drink":
I will pour you som wine
and you must relax
Human feelings turn over and over
like the waves of the sea
Friends who have gone grey together
may still reach for their swords
And the first with vermillion doors
may mock those cap in hand
Colours of grasses all arise
from the wet of a little rain
Buds are on the point of opening --
and the spring wind is cold
the world's affairs and the floating clouds --
why question them?
You had best take life easily --
and have a good dinner
November 5, 2015
Verse that relies less on narrative than on subtle effects of metre, rhyme, collocation, or rhetorical effects such as metaphor, is inevitably going to lose something when taken out of its original language, but these English translations of around a quarter of Wang Wei's surviving poetry work very well as poems in their own right. Their observations of landscape and leave-taking are unshowy but evocative, giving the impression that their richness derives from the scene being described, rather than the language used to describe it. I particularly enjoyed the "Wang River Sequence", the "Song of the Peach Tree Spring", and the nine "white clouds" poems, which G.W. Robinson allows to speak for themselves, translating "白雲" directly as "white clouds" rather than attempting to build up their potential symbolic weight. Without any knowledge of Chinese (in fact, this is my first encounter with Chinese literature in any form), I felt that I was reading something both close to the original, and natural in English, with the sparing use of more obviously "poetic" effects such as the doubling of some adjectives - like "far far" for the original "悠悠" in "Lake Pavilion" - making for a satisfying feeling of authenticity, rather than artificiality.
February 3, 2021
No poetry is as beautiful as old Chinese poetry, the poems deserve 5 stars. I had to take one star off, though, because of how this particular book is done.
Having interesting facts and explanations in the footnotes is great - when they are placed in the actual footnotes, not when it's walls and walls of text surrounding the poems themselves. There was more space given to the explanations than to the poems, it felt. It was terribly distracting and after a while, it felt like I was studying for an exam, not reading a book of poetry. It's why most anthologies have this info stuck in the back where you can either look it up or not, it's up to you. This was definitely not a good way how to go about it.
Having interesting facts and explanations in the footnotes is great - when they are placed in the actual footnotes, not when it's walls and walls of text surrounding the poems themselves. There was more space given to the explanations than to the poems, it felt. It was terribly distracting and after a while, it felt like I was studying for an exam, not reading a book of poetry. It's why most anthologies have this info stuck in the back where you can either look it up or not, it's up to you. This was definitely not a good way how to go about it.
June 10, 2023
The poetry itself I really enjoyed but rhere are certain things like the translator forcibly inserting the word God into one poem that make aspects of this a dated and not whole accurate at least only in a couple places translation. It's an entertaining read bit I don't think unless you have spme experience in reading Chinese poetry that you should take the translators use of certain terms like Huns very seriously. Also some of the footnotes are not exactly complete and there's some parts where the translator declares that he doesn't know the answer but could have easily gotten it by speaking to someone chinese versed in poetry.
Anyways. I hope they'll be a better translation of these poems that I will be able to find in English soon.
Anyways. I hope they'll be a better translation of these poems that I will be able to find in English soon.
April 12, 2023
On a warm and sunny day, there is nothing quite as serene as reading poetry by the tranquil pond. It is a moment of contemplation, a chance to escape the hustle and bustle of modern life and immerse oneself in the beauty of language. Wang Wei, the Chinese poet of quietitude par excellence, is a master of this art form. His selected poems, which I recently had the pleasure of reading, are a testament to his brilliance. His poems, steeped in Taoist philosophy and the natural world, seem to exist outside of time and place. They transcend cultural and linguistic barriers, speaking to the universal human experience.
January 28, 2018
Lovely collection of poems from a time that Britain calls the dark ages because so few written records survived from the other end of Eurasia. Wang Wei was particularly good at capturing small details of scenes - the way a canoe's paddle moves through the water, or subtle changes in a town with the seasons - but he must also have taken great joy in people because another rich seam in this collection is poems of farewell, greeting, and missing people in between.
January 7, 2016
Pretty hard to comment on the quality of the poems themselves, seeing how they're from a culture and era so long ago. The annotations are superb though, and the curation of the poems- you can see the themes of nature, loss, grief, meditation, allow for one to have a good idea about how this canonical poet lived.
August 8, 2023
I picked this one up to better understand the Kishotenketsu, four-act plot structure, but reading it has had the unintended consequence of making me want to abandon the novel idea I had and just write a hundred jueju quatrains instead. A beautiful collection of Chinese poetry, meditative and understated.
July 29, 2009
tr. Pauline Yu, 1980
February 21, 2010
Another gem of a "lost" book of Wang Wei. There could never be enough translations and this is essential work with in-depth commentary and scholarship. Essential reading.
March 29, 2010
This is an early and available translation of one of the greatest world poets ever.
June 24, 2013
Wonderful collection of poetry by eighth century Chinese poet. I've read and re-read this collection several times over.
October 15, 2015
WATCH THIS SPACE !!!!!!
December 13, 2017
Simple and evocative poems, beautiful imagery.
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