The Lyrical Resonance Between Chinese Poets and Painters: The Tradition and Poetics of Tihuashi
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The Lyrical Resonance Between Chinese Poets and Painters: The Tra ...

Chapter :  Introduction
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Tang poets inherited this practice, and their poems [yongwushi] became more refined. This practice continued throughout the Song, Yuan, and Ming periods, when poems [yongwushi] covered a wider range [of material objects and things]. Therefore, the genre of yongwu has its wellhead in the Shi jing. Its rules were completed during the Six Dynasties. Its beauty was the exclusive possession of the Tang poets. Its tradition was carried out during the Song, Yuan, and Ming periods.… Reading poems [yongwushi], scholars can have their temperaments elevated and their talents brought into full play.32

Opinions differ among contemporary scholars as to who wrote tihuashi first. According to Lei Zhengmin, for instance, the poem “Monochrome Bamboo, Trees, and Rocks“-reputedly authored by the Wei (220-265) poet Cao Xi-seems to be the first tihuashi.33 Wu Hongyi, however, credits the Eastern Jin (317-420) poet Tao Yuanming (365-427) as the first to write tihuashi.34 Tao penned a series of thirteen poems collectively entitled “Reading the Classic of Mountains and Seas.” The classic he read was an illustrated text, which he clearly indicated in the first piece of this series: “[I] glance through the biography of the King [King Mu (reign ca. 976-ca. 922 BC)] of the Zhou dynasty [ca. 1046-256 BC]; / [I] browse over the pictures of mountains and seas.”35 What is also worth noting is the poem “About a Beauty Viewing a Painting Written at the Request [of Emperor Jianwen (503-551), of the Liang dynasty (reign 550-551)],“ by the poet Yu Jianwu (487-553?):

If you want to know the artistry of painting,
Call on the real for comparison.
Side by side, they look as if from the same body;
Face to face, they look like mirror images.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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