How to Read Chinese Poetry A Guided Anthology

r e C e n t-s t y l e Sh i P oe t ry : quat ra i n s 207

a devout Buddhist—he studied with the Chan master Daoguang for ten years and
even converted part of his country estate into a monastery. His landscape poems
are characterized by an integrated minimalism: in them, nature is distilled to a
few essential images, which are harmoniously arranged in a balanced and stable
whole that yet pulses with the energy of their interrelationships. Nature is the
main actor; the poet becomes a distanced observer, or even seems to be absent.
An overall impression of direct and unmediated reality is imparted, although in
fact the landscapes are idealizations created by Wang Wei’s poetic imagination.
He carefully chooses his images to appeal to the senses, primarily the eye; this
has given rise to an oft-repeated maxim about Wang Wei: “In his poems, there are
paintings” (shizhong you hua). Following are two fine examples of his landscape
wujue; the first, “The Deer Fence,” is from his famous “Wang River Collection,”
which describes sites at his estate at Lantian, south of the Tang capital of Chang’an
(present-day Xi’an, Shaanxi Province):

C 1 0. 6

The Deer Fence

On the empty mountain, no one is seen

But the sound of voices is heard

Returning: light enters the deep forest

Again: it shines on the green moss

[QTS 4:128.1300; QSTRJJ, 112–113]

鹿柴 (lù zhài)

empty mountain no see man 空山不見人 (kōng shān bú jiàn rén)
only hear person language sound 但聞人語響 (dàn wén rén yŭ xiăng)
return reflection enter deep forest 返景入深林 (făn yĭng rù shēn lín)
again shine green moss top 復照青苔上 (fù zhào qīng tāi shàng)

This deceptively simple poem is in fact more difficult than it looks—one book dis-
cusses how nineteen different translators have rendered it in nineteen different
ways!14
What is an “empty mountain”? Clearly it is not barren, as we are informed that
there is a “deep forest” there. Kong (empty) is the Chinese translation of the San-
skrit Buddhist term śūnyatā. Primarily the word is a negation, a denial that phe-
nomena have self-existence—that is, permanence independent of causes and con-
ditions. Yet emptiness does not imply nihilism, for it is also “empty.” Rather, it is a
practical term that has meaning only in the context of salvation; in Edward Conze’s
description, through the exercise of wisdom (prajñā), the practitioner negates the
world and thereby gains emancipation from it.15 Paul Williams has explained: “To
see entities as empty is to see them as mental constructs, not existing from their
own side and therefore in that respect like illusions and hallucinatory objects....
Emptiness is the ultimate truth (paramārthasatya) in this tradition in the sense