Why do some people disagree with Su Shi's evaluation of Wang Wei's poems: "There are paintings in poems and poems in paintings"?

"The poem of interest is fascinating, and there are pictures in the poem; Look at the picture, there are poems in the picture. " After Su Dongpo made this comment, "there is a picture in the poem that pushes Wang Wei" became a conclusion, and many people applied for it. Ye Xie even said directly: "The rubbings' poems are paintings, and the rubbings' paintings are poems. Why talk about nothing?" . Modern people also regard painting in poetry as the biggest feature of Wang Wei's poetry, and have repeatedly affirmed and explained it. According to my incomplete statistics, since the 1980s, there have been more than 60 papers on the artistic characteristics of Wang Wei's poems with "paintings in poems" or paintings as the core (this is another typical example of the repetition of classical literature research and Chen Xiangyin's topic), and the articles on analyzing the appreciation of works with "paintings in poems" are even more impressive. From the perspective of fine arts, Yuan Xingpei, Wen Dasan and Jin Xuezhi, who came out earlier, have made a thorough and sufficient analysis on this issue, and there are few new inventions in subsequent papers. In foreign studies, Taiwan Province scholars Yang, Jian Jinghui and She Chongsheng all have their own papers to study the artistic implication of Wang Wei's poems, and Japanese scholar Maruya also discussed this issue. In the article "The Painting Significance of Wang Wei's Poems" by Professor Liu Shengjun, this paper analyzes the artistic characteristics of Wang Wei's "integrating painting into poetry and expressing unique aesthetic feeling in poetry" from the aspects of business standpoint, material selection, comparison and contrast. As the main feature of Wang Wei's poetry, "painting in poetry" seems to have been recognized by Chinese and foreign scholars.

However, I have always held different views on this, and I think it is worthy of scrutiny to discuss Wang Wei's poems with "painting in poetry". A few years ago, I also talked with Mr. Chen Tiemin, an expert on Wang Wei's research. Mr. Chen has reservations about the theory of "painting in poetry" represented by literature and art. He once put forward different opinions in the article "The Art of Landscape Writing in Wang Wei's Poetry", and added the viewpoint that "I am in the landscape". However, it seems that his opinions have not been heard. At the same time, I think there is still room for further academic development, so I propose to discuss it again.

As far as the proposition of painting in poetry itself is concerned, "painting" should refer to the interest of painting, or painting. Mr. Deng believes that it has three meanings in poetry: first, it attaches importance to providing visual environment and creating the uniqueness of artistic conception; Secondly, convey the charm and interest of the visual environment with refined words; Third, "what can be painted but difficult to draw is clumsy when it comes to painting, but when it comes to poetry, it is the strength and victory of poetry, so it is not what' shape' can do, but what it means." The third meaning is divided into two kinds: one is dynamic or contains the time process of the scene; Second, although it is seen by the eyes, it is more felt by others, or it is related to the change of facial expression. Although talking about painting in poetry is different from painting itself, in the sense of general art theory, diachronic, empathetic and changing scenery is not suitable for painting materials after all, and it is basically opposite to painting. But they are the most poetic materials, and we can all see their successful application in the works of outstanding poets. This leads to a question: when we separate this meaning that is incompatible with painting from "painting in poetry", can "painting in poetry" still retain its original aesthetic meaning and support our aesthetic evaluation of Wang Wei's poems? It seems that we must first discuss the significance and value of "painting" in "painting in poetry".

Second, the understanding of the relationship between poetry and painting.

Let's review laocoon and Lessing's classic analysis of the characteristics of poetry and painting. Although it is a cliche, people seem to have forgotten it. Regarding the difference between poetry and painting, Lessing first pointed out that poetry and painting are both imitative arts, and all the laws based on the concept of imitation are equally applicable to poetry and painting, but the media or means of imitation are completely different. The differences in this respect have produced their own special laws (P. 18 1). As far as plastic arts are concerned, "in the ever-changing nature, artists can only choose a moment, especially painters can only use this moment from a certain angle", so in addition to choosing the typical characteristics that are most suitable for expressing the object-such as Venus's dignity, dignity and elegance, rather than her long hair and anger in revenge-it is also suitable for expressing the moment that can produce the most effect, that is, "imagination can move freely" (P.83 Poetry "Poetry often has sufficient reasons to value non-picture beauty more than picture beauty" (P.5 1), so he asserts that the above reasons "completely come from the characteristics of art and its necessary restrictions and requirements" cannot be applied to poetry (P.22). Indeed, an artist usually cherishes the unique artistic characteristics of the art category he is engaged in, as Delacroix said, "Anything for the eyes should be seen; Listen to what is prepared for your ears. " This kind of treasure sometimes even becomes an absolute rejection of different artistic features. For example, we saw Turner's criticism of art history in Philosophy of Art, and Lessing also thought that Marjorie and Titian's integration of different plots into a painting was an invasion of the poet's field, which could not be praised by good aesthetic taste. From this standpoint, there are also neoclassicists and Schopenhauer who oppose the mixing of various artistic features. In the field of literature, there is a poet Pope who advocates: "Any writer who wants to be worthy of the title of poet should give up description as soon as possible." Here, the talent of poetry even stands out from the denial of description as painting. Are poems and paintings really so inconsistent?

We might as well review China's ancient views on this issue. Generally speaking, it may be thought that China's classical art theory tends to connect poetry and painting. A Japanese scholar, Mr. Yang Zhi, pointed out that this concept can be traced back to Lu Ji's words quoted in Records of Famous Paintings of Past Dynasties: "The prosperity of Danqing, the description of elegant songs, the fragrance of the great cause of beauty", which gave full play to Liu Xie's "carving dragons with literary mind" and "appreciating words by painting colors", and quoted Mr. Qian Zhongshu's China Poetry and Chinese Painting. Here I would like to add a few more materials for future generations. Wang Xingyan in Ming Dynasty was the general commentator of poetry and painting;

Poetry is a picture with sound, made with clear voice; Painting is silent poetry, and culture is wonderful.

Qing Tang Laihe said:

A good poet has pictures in his sentences, and a good painter has charm in his paintings.

Modern Zhang Kezhong also said:

Poetry is a picture with rhyme, and painting is a poem without rhyme.

On the "Creative Motivationists", there is a sentence from Li Jing, the army and the people:

Scholar-officials praised feelings, wrote things, and entrusted paintings instead of poems. Therefore, there are paintings in poems and poems in paintings, and people's hearts can grasp nature and make it happy.

From the perspective of artistic structure, Dai has a generation:

It is well known that there are pictures in Wang Mo's poems and books, and there are poems in the paintings. I didn't know that all ancient poems had paintings, and all famous paintings had poems. Why is there still a long way to go? For example, mountains and rivers are undulating, trees are swaying, and smoke clouds are floating in the middle. Isn't poetry better? For example, feathers are flying and screaming, and you are looking forward to life. Isn't poetry better? For example, the characters are lifelike in clothes, but poetry is not as good as yeah? His painter's brushwork is vigorous, magnificent and beautiful, steep and vigorous, quaint and exquisite, magnificent and gorgeous, exotic and sparse, simple and neat, free and easy and round, but not all poetic?

From the perspective of artistic effect, there is Wang Yuyang's "Dried Powder Yuhua" Volume II:

I am a disciple of Guangling Zongmeicen. His name is Ding Yuan and I live in Dongyuan. His poem "Only Mobilization" is graceful and charming, and it is unique. I tasted the small painting of Wujiang ancient bridge and gave it to Yu, saying, "Red maple in Qingshan Wild Temple is white wine. At the painting place in the south of Mohan River, several fishing flutes started in Tingzhou. " Yu Fu replied with a quatrain, saying, "Dongyuan Red Maple Tree is a gift to Danqing Gu Kaizhi. Playing is actually a must, and there are pictures in poetry. "

However, this is only a one-sided statement, which does not agree with the similarity between poetry and painting, but advocates that poetry and painting have their own opinions, which also appeared in the Song Dynasty. That is, Mr. Qian's Reading laocoon was quoted by the philosopher Shao Yong's Poetry and Painting: "A good brush is better than a painting. The painter thinks skillfully, and everything is invisible. Poetry and songs are all good things, better than luck and sincerity. Dan Cheng enters the show sentence, and everything has no feeling. " As for the incompetence of painting in the face of diachronism, Xu Ning's "View of Fishing Terrace" (Volume 474 of all Tang poems) in the late Tang Dynasty has already said: "It is difficult to paint a heart and cry, but it is difficult to sound three times." This poem not only confirms Shen Kuo's assertion that each painting can only be painted once (Meng Qian Bi Tan, Volume 17), but also questions Wang Yuyang's statement above: How is the picture of "several fishing flutes starting from Tingzhou" expressed? Even if it is not a few but one, how can it be drawn?

Of course, Wang Yuyang's paintings here are just ready-made compliments to his master. He doesn't know the limitations of painting in expressing hearing. Song Wan's poem "The Mountain Road is Broken" says: "In June, there are remnants of snow on the cliff, and thousands of people ride the night to draw a clear picture. Dan Qing is like Li Cheng. " Yu Yang commented: "Li Yingqiu was originally going to write about scenery, but can he write a cold spring painting angle?" Chen's "Good Things Near Summer Girls", "Swallows whisper with petals", also said: "Swallows can't paint in two words." It is not a profound truth that painting can't express senses other than vision. People with a little brains will understand it, so the ancients criticized it alone. Mr. Qian Zhongshu has quoted Shen Liao, Zhu Chen, Zhang Dai, Dong Qichang and Cheng Zhengqi since Chang Kang's "A painter swings five strings easily, but it is difficult to return to Hong". Ye Xie's The Original Poem: The Second Part discusses the beauty of Du Fu's Xuanyuan Palace, saying: "Anyone who can paint a poem can do something for a poet. If the rain and snow scene is empty, the painter can't draw it on the pen. If it is cold first, the scenery inside and outside, that is, Dong and Ju are resurrected, I am afraid I will stop there. " Obviously, "cold first", as a diachronic state, and "external", as a directional explanation based on virtual reality, have exceeded the limit that painting can convey, making the brush poor. Ye Zhu Gu Li Yu Tan (Volume 5):

"People are young and rainy, and sand roads are whiter than smoke." You Jiang, Li Lanqing and Xiang also wrote the sentence "Night on Wangjiang". I read it as a preface, and the preface appreciated it, saying that it was picturesque and unattainable.

Lu Qiu's Poems on Asking Hua Lou Volume 1:

It used to be said that there are paintings in poems and poems in paintings, but there are also people that painters can't reach. First, read a wide range of ci, including Liu's Eight Poems on Longmen, A Thousand Peaks of Light in One Night, Pumice's poem "Apes crow heavily in the mountains, and people in the empty river speak loudly", the poem "Lake color does not flow, but it is still far away" and the poem "Autumn in Nanshan" is a theory of reflection.

Pan Huanlong's "Woyuan Poetry" Volume II also said:

It used to be said that there are paintings in poetry and poems in paintings. However, people who draw water can't draw the sound of water, people who draw things can't draw the shadow of things, people who draw people's feelings can't draw poems. This is more wonderful than drawing things.

This is not only to point out the difference between poetry and painting and the limit of painting expression, but also to emphasize the artistic aspect of poetry and painting. In other words, the poetic content conveyed by poetry is not only difficult for painting to reproduce in the sense of information transmission means, but also its incomparable richness is difficult for painting to reach. Therefore, although painting in poetry is a poet's realm, the ancients did not regard it as a high realm in poetry. Four comments on "Returning to Tian Ju" by Qing Dynasty Tao "Warm and Far Village, Smoke in the Town". In the deep alley where the dog crows and the mulberry tree jumps, he said, "It used to be said that there are paintings in ink and ink poems and poems in paintings. When these four words are spoken, the traces of poetry and painting will melt. " Isn't it obvious that the vastness of Tao poetry is regarded as higher than the realm of painting in poetry Zhang Dai once said: "Poetry is wonderful with ethereal talents, and poems that can be painted are still gold and silver in the eyes." Qiao Bo in the early Qing Dynasty said more directly: "Every sentence in the poem is a painting, not a good poem!" This reminds me of Lessing's assertion once again: "If a poet paints an object and allows a painter to follow him with a brush, he gives up his privilege of that kind of art and restricts it." Within this limit, poetry lags far behind its opponents. " (P. 183) Poetry, after all, has an irreplaceable expressive function, which is the most essential life of poetry. Su Dongpo's view of Wang Wei's painting can be expressed as a sigh of "painting in poetry", but did later generations blindly make a fuss about "painting in poetry" and fall into the misunderstanding of art theory from the beginning? Now let's go back to Wang Wei's Painting in Poetry and make a review of the existing views.

Third, Wang Weishi's transcendence of painting.

It should be said that Su Dongpo's assertion actually only illustrates one fact, and does not contain value judgment in itself-let's not forget Lessing's warning: "Whether you can enter the painting or not is not the standard for judging the quality of poetry!" (Page 78) Su Dongpo's ci, as a family statement and as a reference for comments, is indispensable, but it is not an exaggeration to emphasize that it is the main feature of Wang Wei's poetry, which is not only a disregard for the artistic characteristics of poetry, but also an underestimation of the artistic value of Wang Wei's poetry. It is Lessing's criticism that ignores the artistic differences between poetry and painting, and "starting from the consistency of poetry and painting, he has made some rough conclusions in the world" (P.3). In Porimetis, Lessing criticized Spencer for attributing the poet's imagination to the inspiration of ancient paintings and obliterating the poet's creativity. Fortunately, Wang Wei's poems are not like this, because there is no empirical material to link the framing, coloring and painting of Wang Wei's poems (although there are many speculations). However, attributing the achievements of Wang Wei's poetry to "painting in poetry" has damaged the artistic value of Wang Wei's poetry. Why do you say that? Of course, Wang Wei's poems are distinctive in painting, that is, descriptive, but what dominates or represents the characteristics of Wang Wei's poems is that poems cannot be painted, or rather, they give full play to the diachronic experience of poetry and resist the instantaneous characteristics of painting.

It is not difficult to demonstrate this view, just review whether the previous statement can be established. First of all, it should be pointed out that Su Dongpo probably didn't realize that the example he cited was actually not suitable for demonstrating "painting in poetry". Zhang Dai once asked: "Lantian white stone, Yushan thin red leaves" can still be painted, how can it be "there is no rain on the mountain road and the air is green and wet?" He has a point. If the first two sentences can be regarded as indicative, then the latter sentence aims to explain the subtle causality contained in a climate phenomenon, which can not be expressed as a spatial state at all: it is a state and a reason that it doesn't rain on mountain roads, and wet clothes are a process and a result. According to my on-the-spot experience in Nanshan many times, the so-called "empty emerald" is not like Mr. Yuan Xingpei's explanation that "it turned out to be Shan Lan emerald, too tender and moist, as if my clothes were wet", but it is really a haze in the mountains: empty just because it feels wet but can't see water droplets; Facing the mountain, it seems to be green, so it is green. I really got my clothes wet before I knew it! This is really a feeling that is difficult to convey, just as Mr. Zong Baihua pointed out a long time ago: "There can be paintings in poems, as written in the first two sentences, but poems are not all paintings. The last two sentences that can't be drawn directly are precisely' there is a poem in the poem', which constitutes the essence that this poem is a poem rather than a painting. " . Let's look at Xu's statement again. He is a representative who gives full play to Su Dongpo's viewpoint;

Dongpo cloud: "the poem of taste is full of paintings;" Look at the picture. There are poems in it. "Foolish press: Poems written by Mo Mo are like" Returning to the west of the city for rain, returning to the original village ","The residual rain shines obliquely, and the birds return at dusk ","The small garden is overcast, and the trees in Weichuan are dim ","I will go to the water to stop my path, and then sit and watch Yun Qi ","Another night in Shan Yu, hundreds of silk waterfalls come from each peak ","Birds suddenly come to the stream, when they. The setting sun suddenly turned blue, and two phoenixes were held on the roof of the Forbidden City. There were many leaves in the clouds and spring to shelter the rain, and pedestrians came back from hunting and riding in Xinfeng tree, a small garden city.

Among the poems quoted here, there are only four couplets that can be drawn, namely, Rain Coming from the West, Several Houses on the Stream, Two Phoenix in the Cloud on the Roof of a Forbidden City, and Pedestrian Degree on the Trade Wind Tree. However, it is probably difficult for some people to recognize these couplets as the essence of Wang Wei's poetic art. There are some famous sentences in other poems, but they just can't be expressed. The "residual rain setting in the sun", the "fatigue" of "gloomy little garden city", the "recovery" of "shining back on me from the moss" and the "sudden" of "sunset green suddenly turning blue" are all the results of a time process. How to express this painting? "One night after Shan Yu" is a period of time. How to copy this painting? The "time", "bright and clean", "bright and dark at the end of the green forest" and "constant" of the waterfall and pine often bring rain are all recurring phenomena. How can painting be described? The most typical example is "I will walk until the water checks my path, and then sit there and watch the rising clouds". Mr. Liu Ruoyu has discussed in detail the expression techniques of spatialization of time process and spatialization of spatial relationship. How does painting show this complicated process?

Look at Mr. Yuan Xingpei's poems in Zen and Painting in Wang Wei's Poems. His views are quite representative:

The spring water in the mountains hits the dangerous rocks, and the sun in the pine forest is cold. (Ji Xiang Temple)

It's raining in Mao Mao in the light shade pavilion, and the deep courtyard opens in the daytime. Sitting watching the color of moss, I want to wear clothes. (The Story of the Book)

The river crosses heaven and earth, where the colors of the mountains are yes and no. Human habitation seems to float on the ripples in the distant sky. (Looking at the Han River)

The bright moon shed clear light from the cracks and cleared the fountain on the rocks. The bamboo forest is sonorous, the washerwoman returns, and the lotus leaves are swaying to get on the canoe. (An autumn night in the mountains)

The white clouds merged behind, and the blue mist melted into the mountains and disappeared. (Zhong Nanshan)

Towering mountains, towering trees, cuckoo singing in the depths of Qian Shan. Half of the rain on the mountain, hundreds of silk waterfalls came from each peak. (Letter to Li, Special Commissioner of Zizhou)

As the sun sets, the rivers and lakes are white and the tide rises all over the sky. ("Xing Guizhou")

Pigeons sing on the house in spring, and apricot flowers are white on the edge of the village. (Rural Work in Spring)

The trees in the distant mountains cover your shadow, and the sunset is beautiful and colorful. (Money was taken home after failing the list)

The water town is in the city, and the mountain bridge is tree-lined. ("Little Star Pacha")

The silvery white river is shining in the fields, especially bright, and the green mountains stand behind the ridge. (Looking at the new sunny night)

An egret flies over the quiet swamp, and mango birds sing in the trees in midsummer. ("Accumulated Rain Wangchuan Zuo Zuo")

The poems that can be drawn here are only the last six examples. Apart from the couplet "Sunset", it is not a famous sentence of Wang Wei, which is not enough to represent Wang Wei's achievements, but more like the number of the top ten talents in Dali. The first six examples are really the extraordinary handwriting of Wang Wei, and there is no work on Wang Wei's poetry that does not quote these examples. But can they draw? Zhang Dai once pointed out that the sound of spring, dangerous rocks, the color of the sun and pine trees can all be described, but the words swallow and cold can never be drawn. This is different from the simple "moonlight in the pine forest, crystal stone in the stream", which highlights the subject's feeling impression, which is the expression of hearing and touch, and painting is at a loss. "Sitting and looking at the moss and wanting to get dressed" is also a typical feeling impression. As Mr. Yuan said, "this kind of poem has both artistic meaning and effect that painting can't get." Only the combination of poetry and painting and the combination of poetry and painting can achieve such a perfect artistic realm. " If we admit that the charm of this poem lies in "wanting to wear clothes", it is just a performance outside painting. How do we define it by painting in poetry? "This river flows through the heavens and the earth, and there are both mountains and mountains here" in the Grand View of Hanshui, not to mention painting, even words are difficult to explain. I was just lucky enough to witness this scene when I climbed the tower and looked at the Yangtze River in Jiao Shan, Zhenjiang: the vast Yangtze River reflected slightly in the dim sunlight, and both ends of the line of sight were connected by Tianshui, which was empty; The mountains on the other side of the river seem to be shrouded in a thin mist. At that time, two poems of Wang Wei flashed through my mind. The visual image in front of us can still be painted, but Wang Wei's feeling impression is that there are mountains and mountains flowing in the river outside the world. How to write a pen? The couplet "People's residence seems to float on the ripples in the distant sky" is a unique experience of the aerodynamic power of the Yangtze River. How to communicate with paper and ink? This teaches us to admit that the sigh of our predecessors is reasonable: "There are many people who can paint in the scenery where the forest is covered with hedges, and nine times out of ten people who can't paint poetry." The four sentences in "Autumn Night in the Mountain" belong to another type. Mr. Yuan said: "The poet selected four most distinctive fragments from the mountain village scenery in autumn night and outlined them in a way close to sketch." It should be said that the previous couplets can be drawn, but the "bamboo noise" couplets can't be drawn. Both sentences are inverted sentences of causality. If you don't see anyone in the first sentence, just listen to his voice first. The last sentence did not see the boat, the lotus leaf shook first, and no matter how the composition was composed, it could not accurately convey the poet's meaning. This involves the characteristics of painting in the process of expressing action. Lessing said, "Homer deals with two kinds of characters and behaviors: one is visible and the other is invisible. This difference cannot be shown in painting: everything is visible in painting, and it is all visible in the same way "(page 69). Although Lessing's distinction between the two refers to man and god, it can be used to discuss the actions of characters. Some actions can be represented by a point, but some actions can only be represented by a process. Huannu and fishing boat movements belong to the latter, which can't be seen in the picture at the time set by the poet. There are only noisy bamboo forests and swaying lotus leaves on the picture. If you hold this view, you will draw bamboo forests and lotus ponds in the breeze. If you want to see the girl and the fishing boat, you have to make the film into a continuous picture. This confirms Lessing's theorem: "Because the symbols or imitation media used in painting can only cooperate in space, it is bound to completely abandon time, so continuous action cannot become the main body of painting just because it is continuous." (P.82) After pondering the sentence "Clouds, when I look back, are behind me, and fog, when I enter them, they are gone", we will more agree with Lessing's assertion. These two sentences contain the poet's experience of climbing Nanshan: climbing from bottom to top, watching the misty mist in the distance, climbing without a trace; Looking back, I don't know when it was blocked by white clouds. Here, "looking back" implies foresight, "looking in" implies a vision, some visions are close to disappearing, and people without foresight suddenly turn back. The poet's perspective is somewhere in the calendar, but the poem contains all experiences and unexpected changes in visual impression from the beginning to the prospect to the visit. This is a typical poetic method of "stepping on deformation", which may span several hours. Even if you use movie montage, you need at least three sets of shots, and you must abandon the experience of "entering the movie". How can we expect painting to carry such rich connotations?

The examples given by those who hold the theory of "painting in poetry" seem to be unable to justify themselves. You can't draw beautiful sentences that truly represent Wang Wei's achievements, you can only draw some more general poems. This supports Zhang Dai's point of view: "There is a picture in poetry, and there is a poem in painting, which is combined into one, because both are wonderful." If you paint with a poem, the painting can't be good; Picturesque poetry is poetry, and poetry will be bad. In fact, as long as we get rid of the mindset of "painting in poetry" and look at Wang Wei's poems without any prejudice, it is not difficult to find that his poems are more unpainted: the poet's sensitive capture of his strange feelings, the subjective color observed by the painter's eyes, the quiet voice heard by the musician's ears, and the cosmic life rhythm realized by the Zen master are all integrated into a holographic poetic experience beyond vision, pushing his poems forward. So, when we think of Wang Wei's poems, what we see is the kind of scenery with dynamic colors, quiet sounds, psychological feelings and spatial display flowing with time ... Finally, we can only draw a conclusion from the helplessness of the painter Cheng Zhengqi-

"Painting is also painting, but it is not like poetry."

Fourthly, the limitation of "painting in poetry" as a criticism standard.

Then, is it unreasonable to say that "there is a picture in poetry" that has been circulating for hundreds of years? So many scholars don't know Lessing? I think, when you read Wang Wei's poems, you must clearly feel a kind of artistic conception like Xiangling in A Dream of Red Mansions, and then you will have a * * * sound on Su Dongpo's point of view. The key is how to treat this artistic conception.

Lessing once said: "The picture of a poem may not be transformed into a material picture. When the poet vividly writes his object in front of us, making us realize that it is clearer than his language, every stroke he writes and the combination of many strokes are picturesque and a picture. Because it can make us have a realistic illusion, close to the kind of realistic illusion that material pictures can especially produce. " (Page 79-80) That is to say, the language of poetry has a modeling ability, which can give people an almost intuitive impression like painting (although contemporary art scholars disagree with this view). For example, the most typical "the desert is lonely and straight, and the long river sets the yen" does have a sense of reality. But even here, don't forget Xiangling's appreciation experience: "Close the book and think about it, as if I have seen this scene." This "thinking with the book closed" is a process of mobilizing memory representation. Without the participation of readers' experience, any poem is just a bunch of words and concepts, which has nothing to do with painting. Croce believes: "Anyone with artistic sense will find musicality and picture sense, as well as carving power and architectural structure from a line and a poem of the poet." If this conclusion is somewhat arbitrary, then we can narrow the extension of the proposition and say that anyone with a certain artistic accomplishment can read pictures with poetry. In fact, as Wilde said, "what we see and how we look at it depends on the art that affects us." "Painting in Poetry" is basically the result of readers who have been influenced by art reading Wang Wei in a specific way (the painter's cognitive framework)-Su Dongpo was not the earliest reader of this kind, and Yin Kun came earlier, and he had already seen the potential of Wang Wei's poems. In this sense, what kind of readers there are, what kind of Wang Wei there is; How many readers there are, there are pictures of lonely smoke in the desert and sunset in the long river. If readers are used to appreciating poetry from this artistic point of view and from the modeling ability of language, they will find "China's prose poems spread and painted" like Si Kongshu's (all Tang poems, 293 volumes, giving Cao a chair), or "leisure scenery, especially sketching" like Meng Haoran's. Yang Er's paper quoted many poems in Song Dynasty, which showed that all poems from Cao Zhi, Tao Yuanming to Du Fu were picturesque. Of course, the characteristics of composition, framing and color can also be analyzed. Didn't Su Dongpo read the Invisible Painting of Momo in Shaoling (Wang Zhifang's Poems)? It's just that Lao Du doesn't pass the brush and can't catch the shadow; Wang Wei is good at Dan Qing, so he gives people an excuse. In fact, as a painter, there are also poets who have no paintings in their poems. For example, Gu Kuang is also a famous painter, and his poems lack interest in modeling. How will we explain this situation? It seems that whether there is a painting in a poem does not depend on whether the author is a painter or not. Emphasizing Wang Wei's "painting in poetry" and its relationship with painting can not highlight Wang Wei's uniqueness, but to some extent, it fully obscures the more essential things that form Wang Wei's poetic style. I found that Mr. Chen Yiyun, the earliest contemporary expert on Wang Wei studies, hardly talked about "painting in poetry". He believes that the artistic feature of Wang Wei's landscape poems is "paying attention to grasping and describing the overall impression of objective scenery on aesthetic subjects" In addition, Professor Stephen Owen, who does not belong to the cultural circle of Chinese characters and has a good feeling for China's poetry, only said in Poems in the Prosperous Tang Dynasty that most researchers "found the painter's vision from their works", and he did not mention anything about it, but focused on Wang Wei's pursuit of a certain authenticity-not the authenticity of the general reaction obtained from the genre convention, but the authenticity of direct feelings. "By describing what he saw in the poem rather than the poet's observation activities, the opinions of the poet and two experts are worth pondering.

Furthermore, as mentioned above, "painting in poetry" does not represent the essence of Wang Wei's landscape poems, and Wang Wei's own creation also shows the consciousness of trying to transcend painting, which is his breakthrough and transcendence of "paying attention to the descriptive and revealing characteristics of poetic language" represented by Xie Lingyun since the Six Dynasties, and landscape poems have gained agility, depth and fresh life. Critics don't focus on Wang Wei's success beyond painting, but talk about "painting in poetry" and inappropriately exaggerate its significance in Wang Wei's poems, which really devalues the artistic value of Wang Wei's poems. Finally, from the general art theory, poetry is the art of language, the art of appealing to spirit and time, which is higher than painting and second only to music in the artistic level. It is obviously not advisable to measure music by painting, that is, visual modeling ability, just as music is measured by reproducibility, that is, auditory modeling ability. Although Beethoven's pastoral symphony, moonlight sonata, Chopin's dog waltz and Groffe's Grand Canyon all win by imitating nature, they are not the mainstream of music after all, and even the title music has always been in a controversial position. Although Musorgskiy's Pictures in Exhibition is an opening song, the opening song only marks the theme, not the content or plot. It is ridiculous to discuss "pictures in music" from this. Even the Soviet music aesthetics, which loves to talk about the suspicious concept of "musical image", does not do it.

In the final analysis, I don't think it is necessary to overemphasize the artistic meaning in Wang Wei's poems. China's landscape poems are naturally picturesque, because their main objects are "picturesque scenery" and "picturesque scenery". Since the rise of landscape poems in the Six Dynasties, giving answers and descriptions have been accompanied by China's classical poems, occupying a prominent position. It would be strange if landscape poems have no artistic significance. For the poet Wei, what we can study in detail is: how did he appreciate the scenery, especially what cognitive framework or "pre-understanding structure" did his painter's vision and talent give him? How does this cognitive framework affect his viewing style and interest, and how is this style and interest different from predecessors and contemporary people? In this regard, Japanese scholars have made some achievements worth learning. As far as I know, one is a series of papers on the relationship between poetry and painting, which has a detailed analysis of the poet's viewing style before Tang and Song Dynasties; First of all, Gao's Understanding of China's Landscape Poems summarizes Japanese scholars' research on China's landscape poems. I translated this article into Chinese, and interested friends can refer to it.