1. Chinese Landscape Painting and Poetry
Tang and Song Dynasties

2. Landscape Painting Often pen and ink on silk scrolls
Often combined with poetry
Not intended as realism
To express emotion
To express the rhythms of nature

3. “Scholar By a Waterfall,” Ma Yuan, Southern Song dynasty, 12th-13th century

4. “The Simple Retreat,” Wang Meng, Yuan Dynasty, 1370

5. Landscape Poetry Ancestor of haiku Contemplation of nature
Yin and yang: natural dualities: dark/ light, masculine/feminine, etc.
Vivid natural images, daily life
Mood often in harmony or in contrast with a season
Calligraphy often integrated into landscape paintings

7. “Wooded Mountains at Dusk,” Kuncan, 1644, Qing Dynasty
I want to go further, But my legs are bruised and scratched. The bony rocks appear chiseled, The pines look as if they had been dyed. Sitting down, I feel like a small bird, As I look out at the crowd of peaks gathered before me. Having ascended the heights to the brink of the abyss, I hold fast and ponder the need to sincerely face criticism. Wherever a road ends, I will set myself down, Wherever a source opens, I will build a temple. All this suffices to nourish my eyes, And rest my feet.
(Translation by Yangming Chu and Maxwell K. Hearn)

8. Tang Dynasty 618-907 “Golden Age” of literature and the arts
3,000 Tang poets still known today
Extensive and unified empire
Rise of Buddhism (from Confucianism)
Aristocracy = education, property more than birth
Cosmopolitan, open to foreign influence

9. An Lushan Rebellion Bloody civil war, 755-763
Last Tang emperor, Xuanzong, distracted by love of concubine
Famine, floods, droughts also weakened Tang
An Lushan: general, favorite of emperor, plotted revolt in secret
Estimated 36 million killed (most till WWII)—out of world pop.: 224 million
Disrupted intellectual/cultural life

10. Tu Fu, 712-770 Wanted to be a civil servant, failed test
Mother died young, raised by aunt
Asthma
Best friend, other famous poet Li Bo
Distressed by social inequalities
Horrified by carnage of An Lushan rebellion
Family disruptions: son died, many moves
Lived in Three Gorges area towards end of life

11. Night in My House by the River
It is late in the year;
Yin and Yang struggle
In the brief sunlight.
On the desert mountains
Frost and snow
Gleam in the freezing night.
Past midnight,
Drums and bugles ring out,
Violent, cutting the heart

12. Three Gorges

13. Song Dynasties Northern: 960-1127 Southern: 1127-1269
First paper money, gunpowder, compass
Wet-rice production: population doubled
Neo-Confucianism: world is real (vs. Buddhism: world is illusion
Huge emphasis on education

14. Li Ch’ing-chao, 1084-1151 Most famous Chinese woman poet
At 17, challenged a male poet
Husband a court official, travelled a lot
Big collection of art, elegant furnishings
House burned when capital city fell
Husband died—she never recovered
Many poems about love, sexuality, loneliness

15. Alone in the Night The warm rain and pure wind
Have just freed the willows from
The ice. As I watch the peach trees,
Spring rises from my heart and blooms
On my cheeks. My mind is unsteady,
As if I were drunk. I try
To write a poem

16. Works Cited: “An Shi Rebellion.” Wikipedia. Last modified: 11-9-08.
Elements of Literature: World Literature. Austin: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Rexroth, Kenneth, trans. One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. New York: New Directions, 1971.
Yonglin, Jiang. “Tang Dynasty.” Encyclopedia of Modern Asia. New York: Scribner's, 2002.
_________. “Song Dynasty.” Encyclopedia of Modern Asia. New York: Scribner’s, 1988