Wang Wei

Life

His ancestral home was Qixian in Taiyuan. His family later moved to Puzhou (modern Yongji, Shanxi), making him a man of Hedong. His father, Wang Chulian, ended his career as Sima of Fen Prefecture; his mother was a Cui. His younger brother was Wang Jin; Wang Fan was a younger agnatic cousin, and Cui Xingzong was his wife's younger brother.

Wang Wei was precocious, learned, and gifted in many arts. At fifteen he traveled between the two capitals and lived at East Creek of Mount Song, gaining notice among powerful patrons for his talents. In the ninth year of the Kaiyuan era (721), he passed the jinshi examination; one account calls him the zhuangyuan, or top graduate. He began his official career as Taile cheng, but was implicated when a performer violated regulations by dancing the Yellow Lion and was demoted to Jizhou sicang canjun.

After completing his term in the fourteenth year of Kaiyuan (726), Wang Wei traveled and served in the Qi region before withdrawing there. Around the seventeenth year of Kaiyuan he returned to Chang'an and studied Buddhism with the monk Daoguang of Jianfu Temple. In 735, while Zhang Jiuling was in power, he was promoted to You shiyi; in the autumn of 737 he joined Cui Xiyi's Hexi military headquarters as Investigating Censor and Military Commissioner's Staff Judge.

In 740 he became Palace Investigating Censor and went to Gui prefecture as deputy commissioner for selection, serving as director of the southern selection. He crossed Xiangyang, where he wrote “Crying for Meng Haoran,” returned to Chang'an the following spring and summer, and withdrew to Zhongnan Mountain. He re-entered public life in 742 as Left Buque; in 744 he began building the Wangchuan estate at Lantian, served as an envoy to Yulin and Xinqin in 745, and later became Kubulangzhong.

After 750 Wang Wei observed mourning for his mother; when the mourning period ended in 752, he became Libu langzhong, later renamed Wenbu langzhong, while combining office with retreat at Wangchuan. In 755 he was promoted to Jishizhong. When the An Lushan rebellion captured Chang'an in 756, he was taken to Luoyang, attempted to avoid service by feigning illness, was nevertheless compelled to accept office under the usurpers, and composed the “Ningbi Pool Poem” to declare his loyalty to the Tang.

After the two capitals were recovered in 757, Wang Wei escaped the severest punishment because of the Ningbi Pool Poem and because his brother Wang Jin asked to surrender his own office to redeem him; Wang Wei was instead assigned as Taizi Zhongyun. In 758 he was also made a Jixian academician, then Zhongshu shereng and again Jishizhong, and he at one point served as Taizi zuo shuzi. In 760 he reached the office of Right Vice Director of the Department of State Affairs. He died in the seventh month of 761 and was buried west of his Wangchuan estate at Lantian.

Religion and associations

Wang Wei and his brother Wang Jin both followed Buddhism. He ordinarily ate vegetarian food, kept a strict vegetarian regimen in later life, and avoided fine clothing; after his wife died he did not remarry, had no children, and lived alone in one room for thirty years, apart from worldly entanglements. In later life he lived for long periods at Wangchuan, balancing official service and withdrawal.

In his early years Wang Wei traveled with the Princes of Qi and Xue, was a friend of Pei Di, and exchanged poems and prose with Zhang Jiuling; his literary talent also won the favor of princes and eminent men of the time.

Literature and art

Wang Wei excelled in poetry and prose and mastered many poetic forms, especially five-character regulated verse and five-character quatrains. His early frontier and aspirational poems convey an expansive and vigorous spirit; as his study of Chan and devotion to Buddhism deepened, his later work turned toward landscapes, rural life, and a realm beyond worldly attachment, even as its artistry continued to mature and its subject matter and outlook became more restrained. Together with Meng Haoran, he is known as one half of the “Wang–Meng” pairing and as a representative poet of the High Tang landscape-and-pastoral tradition; later generations also called him the “Poet Buddha.”

He was accomplished in poetry, calligraphy, painting, and music. Later writers regarded him as the founder of the Southern School of landscape painting, while Su Shi summarized the unity of his poetry and painting with the phrase “in Wang Wei’s poetry there is painting, and in his painting there is poetry.”

Works and reception

Wang Wei's ten-volume collected works are known as Wang Wei ji, and Song and Ming editions also used titles such as Wang Mojie wenji and Wang Youcheng ji. The Quan Tang shi preserves four volumes of his poetry, with two additional lines in its supplement. His transmitted works also include Wangchuan ji; related treatises on painting include Huaxue mijue, Wang Wei shanshui lun in one juan, and Wangchuan huajue. Sixty-nine prose and fu pieces are extant, and he also wrote lyrics such as Yangguan qu.

After Wang Wei's death, Wang Jin was ordered to gather his surviving writings; he assembled more than four hundred pieces for presentation and received an imperial commendation.