Life
Wang Wei is especially known as a poet and painter of nature. Of his poems some four-hundred survive: these were first collected and originally edited into a corpus by his next-youngest brother, Wang Jin, by imperial command. Of his paintings, no authenticated specimens survive, although there is evidence of his work through influences on later paintings and descriptive accounts of his paintings. His musical talents were also regarded very highly, however of this only reports survive. He was also known for his talent as a calligrapher. Wang Wei had a successful career as an official as well as achieving eminence as a poet and a painter; eventually, he became a devout Zen Buddhist and a vegetarian. Wang Wei spent ten years studying with Chán master Daoguang.
Read more about this topic: Wang Wei (8th Century Poet)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind’s eye the notion of a better life ahead.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)