| Chapter : | Introduction |
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Echoing Emperor Jianwen's poem under a similar title, the poem excerpted here describes the practice of viewing painting, compares the painted object with the real one, and addresses the relationship between art and reality. It foreshadows the poetics of Tang tihuashi in terms of the modes of representation and of signification. Later, Yu Xin (513-581), Yu Jianwu's son, wrote a series of twenty-five poems about screen paintings that loosely fit the modern definition of tihuashi. Those screen paintings depicting merrymaking amid scenic, seasonal landscapes must have inspired Yu's imagination, for what is written in his poems goes far beyond the painterly scenes:
The garden is fragrant with plants.
When bamboo [branches] move cicadas fly away;
When lotus [flowers] sway fish jump suddenly.
as if with wine,
The evening breeze gently flips their blouses.
Leaning on the rock [I] was watching long,
Until the lotus-harvesters' boats went home.
In Yu's poems, painterly scenes mingle with the poet's imagination; his poetic style smacks of gongti (literally, palatial style)-featuring sensualistic description while seeking a pictorial appeal-which might have prompted him to adopt painting as a poetic subject. A synthesizer of Six Dynasties poetry and a harbinger of Tang poetry, Yu Xin was one of the greatest poets of his time. As the Qing critic Ye Xie (1627-1703) wrote in his treatise Yuan shi (The principles of poetry), Yu Xin took the lead in “gradually opening the window for Tang poets and opening their hands and eyes as well.”38 Yu's poetic creation has exerted a significant influence on