The Shanghai Museum has a large collection of calligraphy treasures from ancient times, including rare national treasures such as Wang Xianzhi's "Duck Head Pill" and Huai Su's "Bitter Bamboo Shoot Post". Among them, there is a calligraphy work, although it is not so famous, but the degree of preciousness is no less than the above-mentioned works, that is, the "Purpose of the Lengyan Classic" written by Wang Anshi, a famous politician, scribe and writer of the Northern Song Dynasty. Recently, with the external exhibition of "Sheng Shi Fanghua - Shanghai Museum Donated Cultural Relics Exhibition", Wang Anshi's "The Purpose of the Lengyan Classic" was also able to meet with the audience.
Stone statue of Wang An
This volume of the "Outline of the Lengyan Classic" was written by Wang Anshi a year before his death. At that time, Wang Anshi had already resigned for the second time and returned to the Nanjing Mid-Levels Garden, where he and his disciples lived a life of writing books and teachings and learning Buddhism and Zen meditation. Since Zen Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty tried to sinicize Buddhism, the Chinese literati class has gradually begun to accept Buddhist ideas. In the Song Dynasty, "external for gentlemen and Confucians, internal cultivation of bodhisattva behavior" became a common practice in the literati class at that time. Wang Anshi is no exception, his life has ups and downs, and he is fortunate to have the Dharma to rely on. From his youth, he devoted himself to Buddhism and Zen, studied Buddhist texts intensively, and was particularly fond of the Lengyan Sutra. Many of his poems have rich connections with the Lengyan Jing in terms of vocabulary, scriptures, and righteousness. Once, Wang Anshi's daughter, who was married, sent him a letter expressing his affection for his family, so he gave his daughter his "Leng Yan Xinshi" and advised her to "read The Leng Yan Mo Yi Family well". Therefore, during Wang Anshi's seclusion in Nanjing's Mid-Levels Garden, when his brother-in-law Shen Jichang sent a copy of the "Leng Yan Jing", Wang Anshi personally proofread its text and wrote this volume of "The Purpose of the Leng Yan Jing".
Song Wang Anshi "Xingshu Leng Yan Jing Essential Volume"
This volume of Wang Anshi's manuscript, the "Outline of the Lengyan Sutra", is on paper, 119cm long and 30cm wide. The font is a letter with a line meaning. Like most of the copied works, the "Outline of the Lengyan Sutra" is basically presented in the form of a single word, with only a few places where two words are connected. Moreover, the two words are generally synthically synthetical, such as "remembrance", "Pifo", "eager to learn" and so on. Unlike some calligraphy works, there will be two semantically unrelated words connected, such as the last word of the previous sentence and the first word of the next sentence. This shows that the author paid more attention to the content of the text during the writing process, rather than treating it as a deliberate work of art.
The knot structure of the "Ling Yan Jing Zhi" is relatively majestic, and sometimes there are long horizontal and long skims, which are somewhat similar to the style of Huang Tingjian's calligraphy spear and euphorbia, and some of the long horizontal also show obvious characteristics of "one wave and three folds", perhaps because Wang Anshi lived in Jiangnan and was an official, and Huang Tingjian also observed the "Crane Ming" and was influenced by such southern stele works. Huang Tingjian, who ranked among the "Four Houses of the Song Dynasty", had a close personal relationship, and not only admired them, but also greatly appreciated their calligraphy, believing that "Jinggong calligraphy is strangely ancient, like the pen and ink of the Jin and Song dynasties", so it is not surprising that their calligraphy is somewhat similar.
Later, Zhang Bangji, who was later in their hands, believed that Wang Anshi's calligraphy was "clear and steep, ethereal and extraordinary, and the world is called the wind and rain." At that time, when the Northern Song Dynasty literati commented on Wang Anshi's calligraphy, they believed that he should have benefited more from the five generations of calligraphers Yang Ningshi, and Yang Ning's calligraphy was being praised by the Song people as "horizontal wind and rain, falling paper clouds and smoke". Judging from this volume of the "Outline of the Lengyan Sutra", the characteristics of "horizontal wind and rapid rain" are also very obvious. Although its font is in letters, it is faster to write, similar to the rush to the chapter. Moreover, there are strange vertical changes in the posture of the word, left and right, up and down, the viewer is indeed prone to a "horizontal wind and rain" like a feeling of pain and happiness. At the same time, the kerning and line spacing are more compact, but the strokes are loosely arranged, forming a sharp contrast between the two. Therefore, although the whole chapter is close, due to the large gap between the strokes, coupled with the one-stroke stroke style, the overall rhythm of the work is jumpy, and the inner breath is flowing, without the oppressive feeling of some copying bodies.
Yang Ning-style "Leek Flower Thesis"
Wang Anshi's "Xingshu Lengyan Jing Zhi Zhi Volume" (Partial)
The Xuanhe Book Genealogy also has a high evaluation of Wang Anshi's calligraphy, saying that Wang Anshi "writes a lot of ink and disease, and at first he did not taste a little understanding, but only reached his words... Critics of his books said that the Jin and Song dynasties used penmanship, beautiful but not heavenly, beautiful and not withered. "The Xuanhe Book Genealogy was compiled under the auspices of Emperor Huizong of Song himself, and is said to have been examined and approved by Cai Jing, Cai Bian, and Mi Fu, which can be described as the official evaluation of Wang Anshi's calligraphy in the Northern Song Dynasty. It should be said that this evaluation is relatively objective and comprehensive. It first pointed out two characteristics of Wang Anshi's calligraphy, one is that he likes to use light ink, and the other is that he writes quickly. Then he pointed out that Wang Anshi was spontaneous about the calligraphy itself, and in the process of writing, his attention was focused on the content, and he had no intention of deliberately sculpting the form, but the knowledgeable people could see that he overestimated the method and had a Wei and Jin demeanor.
As the Xuanhe Pictorial Notation said, in addition to the rapid writing of the Lengyan Jing, the ink color is also relatively light in general. In our book French context, rapid writing is an important manifestation of intention, and light ink is often associated with intention. In the history of calligraphy, the most famous use of light ink is the Ming Dynasty calligrapher Dong Qichang. Dong Qichang once compared himself with Zhao Mengfu, believing that "Zhao Shu has no intentions, and Wu Shu has no intentions." And this kind of carelessness is also a significant feature of Wang Anshi's calligraphy. It can be said that behind Wang Anshi's artistic style of "horizontal wind and rain" is also supported by the understanding that calligraphy should be spontaneous. As Wang Anshi said when watching Yan Zhenqing's calligraphy, "But there is a genius in doubting skills, and there is no need to force Fang to understand the gods." The poem "There is no need to force Fang to understand the gods" is a poem in Du Fu's treatise, "Books are expensive, hard and thin, and fang is theosophical.". Although the two poems are similar in form, the aesthetic meaning is very different. In Du Fu's case, there are clear standards for the quality of calligraphy. And here in Wang Anshi, calligraphy is to break the box in order to convey the gods. These two different attitudes are also the epitome of the calligraphy aesthetics of the Tang and Song dynasties. As the Qing Dynasty calligrapher Liang Wei believed, "The Tang people still have the law, the Song people still mean" . So why did the Tang and Song people differ so much in their calligraphy aesthetics? Although the Tang and Song dynasties are not far apart, after the great turmoil of the five dynasties at the end of the Tang Dynasty, the calligraphy inheritance system has been destroyed, and the Song Dynasty calligraphers have begun to build their own aesthetic system on a ruin. Moreover, Tang Dynasty calligraphers often used bureaucratic status when writing books, and the political function of calligraphy was very obvious. Famous calligraphy passages of the Tang Dynasty, such as the "JiuchengGong Liquan Ming", "Yanta Sacred Order", "Ode to The Tang Dynasty Zhongxing" and so on. Although most of the calligraphers of the Song Dynasty also had an official and a half-position, they were often writing books as literati, and calligraphy was not to sing praises and praise virtue, political and religious weathering, but to express their spirit, emotions and personality. Su Dongpo's sentence is very representative, "Calligraphy is the attitude of a person, not for the country to pass on." At the same time, the emperor of the Song Dynasty collected a wide range of calligraphy and painting cultural relics, placed them in the secret cabinet of the three museums, often organized the group of courtiers to hold "book viewing meetings", and also published the "Chunhua Pavilion Post" and "Taiqing Lou Tie", making it easier for the literati class to see the Wei and Jin book posts than before. After viewing the Jin and Tang dynasties, Song Dynasty calligraphers used the wind and bone charm of the Jin Dynasty to break the cage of the Tang people's Fadu, which became the most desirable way at that time. And Wang Anshi, who believes that "the heavens are not enough to be feared, the ancestors are not enough to be law-abiding, and the words of the people are not enough to be compassionate", naturally have naturally become an active practitioner of this turn.
Wang Xianzhi's "Duck Head Pill Thesis"
Huai Su "Bitter Bamboo Shoot Thesis"
Although Wang Anshi had ups and downs in politics, as mentioned earlier, the People of the Northern Song Dynasty mainly appreciated his calligraphy. However, after the Jing Kang Rebellion and the Southern Crossing of the Song Dynasty, Wang Anshi was unfortunately regarded as the culprit that led to the collapse of the Northern Song Dynasty, and was completely overthrown politically. During the reign of Emperor Lizong of Song, Wang Anshi was even removed from the Confucian Temple, and was completely denied academically. Therefore, the evaluation of Wang Anshi's calligraphy during the entire Southern Song Dynasty took a sharp turn for the worse, the most typical of which was Zhu Xi. Zhu Xi's father, Zhu Song, was a loyal fan of Wang Anshi's calligraphy, and his writing of Wang Anshi was almost distorted. However, Zhu Xi himself had a very low evaluation of Wang Anshi's calligraphy, and in his "The Book of Wei and Ouyang Gongshu of Han Dynasty", he borrowed the words of another theorist, Zhang Yu, "The Books of Wang Jing that I have seen in my life are all written in a busy way, and I do not know that the public security must be as busy as Xu Busy", to ridicule the temperament of Wang Anshi's calligraphy of "irritability and urgency". In view of Zhu Xi's great influence on future generations, this sentence "I don't know that public security is as busy as Xu" became the golden branch jade bar for later conservative literati to evaluate Wang Anshi's calligraphy. For example, the Qing Dynasty scholar Liang Zhangju once wrote, "Zhu Ziyun: 'Zhang Jingfu tasted words, and the Wang Jing gongshu he saw in his life was written as if he was busy, and he didn't know that the public security was as busy as Xu?' Yu Zuo's books are scribbled, and reading this phrase is like a thorn in the back. At first glance, this statement seems to be self-warning, but in fact, it is also a paradoxical irony of Wang Anshi's calligraphy.
Ouyang Inquiry "Jiucheng Palace Liquan Ming"
Although some people after the Southern Song Dynasty also admired Wang Anshi's calligraphy, the depreciation of his calligraphy has become the mainstream of history, just as it is for his government, for learning and for people. The reason why the theoreticians have so much belittled Wang Anshi's calligraphy is not only related to Wang Anshi's original advocacy of new learning and suppression of science, but also from the artistic level, the style of "carelessness" and "eagerness" embodied in Wang Anshi's calligraphy is very different from the "quiet" and "graceful" temperament advocated by Science, so it is even more intolerable to them. Because theoreticians pay more attention to the influence of character on books than other critics. Zhu Xi said that when he was a child, he studied Cao Cao's calligraphy, and his classmate Liu Gongfu at that time learned Yan Zhenqing's calligraphy. Liu Gongfu criticized Zhu Xi by saying, "My scholar Tang Zhizhongchen, the public scholar Han Zhi's usurper ear." Zhu Xi thus realized that he had awakened to consciousness and began to become a loyal believer in "discussing books and discussing life". Later generations of theorists further promoted the idea of linking books with character, and Wang Anshi also became a cultural symbol that scrawled calligraphy because he was impatient. Some people even said that when Wang Anshi dropped the money, because he was too anxious to write, the word "stone" was always written like the word "evil", or like the word "anti", which can be said to be the image of this great traitor and villain in the eyes of the theoreticians in the calligraphy. Although this was not fair to Wang Anshi, even his nemesis Sima Guang did not approve of slandering him because of his different political views. But for later generations of society, there is a real need for such a cultural image that has been discredited because of the lack of adherence to the ancestral system as a negative example to warn those who are potentially trying to restore the new, so as to maintain their conservative feudal rule. Therefore, for some literati at that time, in addition to political and academic, it is best to improve such an image artistically and make this image more plump. And it is precisely in Wang Anshi's calligraphy art that there seems to be qualities that can be used to express this image. Therefore, although it is also the artistic characteristics or artistic evaluation of the storm, everyone feels that there is nothing wrong with Yang Ningshi, but here in Wang Anshi, it shows the urgency and narrowness of his heart.
Wang Anshi's paragraph in the "Xingshu LengYan Jing Zhi Volume"
The interpretation of the author's spiritual character from the artwork comes from the story of learning the piano from Confucius to ShiXiang. When Sima Qian wrote this story, he was more to illustrate Confucius's way of learning. In later calligraphy reviews, it further evolved into the view that character determines the quality of books, especially for the theologians who consider themselves Confucian orthodox. They often use their understanding of the author's deeds and moral integrity to dominate the artistic interpretation of the work. This seems to be the same as Roland. Barthes's literary and artistic view that the author is dead is similar, because the interpretation of the work of art is difficult to complete without the subjective intervention of the reader. However, judging from the history of the evaluation of Wang Anshi's calligraphy, the theologians are not satisfied with interpreting a work based on their special cultural experience, but also have to prove or strengthen their original understanding of the author's original understanding of the morality of deeds through the interpretation of the work. Shakespeare said: There are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand viewers. But in the aesthetics of the calligraphy of the theoreticians, there is also an important point, that is, to prove Shakespeare's handsomeness or ugliness, good or evil through the image of Hamlet.