Wang Wei (8th Century Poet) - Life

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.

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