Hsü Wei (1521–93)
Hsü Wei, a native of Shan-yin in the prefecture of Shao-hsing, Chekiang, was well known for his talent even when he was only a student at the prefectural school, but he failed in all subsequent attempts at the higher civil service examinations. He became a private secretary and protégé of Hu Tsung-hsien (1511–65), the powerful governor of Chekiang and supreme commander of troops in the southeastern provinces, and became the latter’s consultant in his military maneuvering against the Japanese pirates and other insurgents in the region. Hsü enjoyed Hu’s trust and stayed with him until the latter was impeached and dismissed in 1562. Three years later, after Hu was arrested and died in prison, Hsü began to live in fear of being implicated, and made several attempts to kill himself. In a fit of madness he killed his wife, was imprisoned, and was sentenced to death. After seven years of confinement, he was released in 1573 after repeated appeals on his behalf from officials who knew and admired him. In 1576 he went to serve as a private secretary of the Grand Coordinator of Hsüan-fu Prefecture on the northern frontier, but after only one year there he came back south. For the rest of his life Hsü earned a living by writing and painting, and often lived under the roof of a student or an admirer as a houseguest.
Hsü Wei was one of the most colorful Ming intellectuals. His life and works—which might remind a Western reader of someone like Oscar Wilde or Vincent van Gogh—provide a rare sample from Chinese cultural history for a study of “art and madness.” A versatile artist, he once ranked his own multifarious talents in the order of calligraphy first, poetry second, prose third, and painting last. In saying this, he did not mention his extraordinary swordsmanship and his musical talent, nor his remarkable achievements as a playwright and drama critic. His Four Ape Cries, a set of four plays ingeniously structured and brilliant in style, has been acknowledged as among the best of Ming drama. Ironically, though, Hsü has since been best known in Chinese art history, under his cognomen Master of the Green Vines Studio, an area he himself ranked last among his achievements. Cheng Hsieh (1693–1765), one of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangchow, made a seal for himself with the emblem “A Running Dog at the Threshold of the Green Vines.” An echo of such worship was heard from Ch’i Pai-shih (1863–1957), one of China’s greatest painters of the twentieth century, who once claimed that he would willingly serve as a slave in the household of the “Green Vines” in the next incarnation of his life. A vivid account of Hsü’s life is provided in Yüan Hung-tao’s “A Biography of Hsü Wen-ch’ang” in this anthology.
To Ma Ts’e-chih
My hair is white, my teeth are shaking, and yet I still hold an inch-long writing brush in hand, travel thousands of miles, and keep myself busy on a cold brick bed.1 How is this in any way different from an old farm bull, with tears in his eyes and scabs all over his shoulders, who staggers along tilling in the fields and finds it hard to pull the plough anymore? Alas, how deplorable! Every time the season for water chestnuts and bamboo shoots arrives,2 I am sure to sit quietly alone, in a trance, and what I miss most of all is where Ts’e-chih lives! Please take good care of my books in the cases; when I return, if my health permits, I’ll read them with you.
Foreword to Yeh Tzu-shu’s Poetry
A human being who has learned the speech of birds may sound like a bird but is by nature a human being. A bird who mimics human speech may sound like a human being but is by nature still a bird. This should surely be the standard by which to tell human beings from birds!
Those who write poetry today—are they any different from that? Having nothing to say themselves, they just steal what has already been said by others. They make the observation that a certain poem is after the style of such and such a person, and another one is not; that a certain line resembles the work of such and such a person, and another one does not. No matter how extremely skillful and how strikingly similar [to someone else’s] such poetry is, it is no more than a bird mimicking human speech.
Now, my friend Tzu-shu’s poems are not like that. He is honest and straightforward in personality; therefore, what he says is never obscure. He is interested in a wide variety of things and he is erudite; therefore, what he says knows no restrictions. He is by nature cheerful most of the time and seldom sad; therefore, what he says, even when bitter, can provide an emotional outlet. He aspires to the lofty-minded and disdains the ignoble; therefore, what he says, though terse, is actually rich in content. This is what I would call the kind of poetry that finds everything out of one’s own mind and doesn’t steal what has already been said by others. To discuss what he sings on his own based upon what he has learned by himself, to give advice against his slight blemishes so as to attain the utmost purity—these are what I could contribute to Tzu-shu. But to claim that a certain piece is not after such and such a style, that a certain line does not resemble that of such and such a person—it is surely not the way of someone who knows Tzu-shu well!
Another Colophon (On the Model Script “The Seventeenth” in the Collection of Minister Chu of the Court of the Imperial Stud)
Yesterday, on a visit to someone’s garden, I saw some rare flowers embroidering its ground and some uncommon fruit trees reaching for the sky, but those were mixed with wild vines and prickly trailing plants. I looked back at my host and said, “How could you have given so much room to these guys?” The host said, “Indeed. But if they are all cast out, it won’t make a garden.”
I am not good at calligraphy, yet His Excellency Chu told me to write in the space at the beginning and end of this model script. Isn’t his intention quite close to the remark of that host?
A Dream
I went deep into the mountains. It was smooth and effortless all the way. It was daytime. The broad road, tens of steps wide, was unpaved. Then I came to an undulating hill, at the northern foot of which there were four or five government office buildings, all facing south, with their doors closed, and with tens of soldiers on guard. Some strange birds and animals, each three or four in number, were tied up on the left side; I couldn’t tell what they were. I walked up among these. The ground beneath suddenly quaked, and the buildings almost collapsed. I looked up north of the hill and saw the green pines there, lush like a kingfisher’s feathers, and I ran fast until I came to a Taoist temple. I went in. The doorman took me to the master of the temple, who wore a yellow cap and a cotton gown. The doorman wanted me to stay there, but the master said, “This is not a place for you to stay.” I was about to take leave when the master took out a notebook. He opened it and showed it to me, saying, “Your name is not Wei. The character ‘Shen’1 here—that is your name.” The temple was extremely desolate, and both the doorman and the master wore shabby clothes.