Wei Yingwu A Great Poet in Tang Dynasty

Source:cultural-china.com

Wei Ying-wu (737—791) was one of China’s greatest poets. But unless you are a student of traditional Chinese literature, chances are you have never heard of him. There are no volumes in English devoted to his poetry. Even in Chinese you have to look hard. I can count on one hand the books I have managed to find. Somehow Wei Ying-wu has slipped past unnoticed. But somebody liked his poetry and took the trouble to pass it down.

Less than thirty-five years after Wei Ying-wu died in Suchou, Pai Chu¬yi(772—846) became magistrate of the same city. Pai was the most famous poet of his day and wrote, “Wei of Suchou leaves me speechless, the feeling in his poems is so pure and serene", Pai told his friends, “When it comes to five-character lines, Wei is in a class by himself” He liked Wei’s poems so much he had some of them carved in stone. Pai wasn’t alone in his estimation of Wei’s poetry, but it wasn’t until the Sung dynasty (960— 1278) that Wei was finally recognized as one of the great literary figures of the T’ang dynasty (618—906).

In the Sung-dynasty poetry anthology Chienchiashih (Poems of the Masters), which Chinese schoolchildren have memorized for the past seven hundred years, only Tu Fu, Li Pai,WangWei, and Meng Hao-jan are rep¬resented by more poems among T’ang poets. And in the equally popular Ming-dynasty anthology Tangshih Sanpaishou (Three Hundred Poems of the T’ang), only Tu Fu, Li Pai,WangWei, Meng Hao-jan, and Li Shang¬yin are given more entries. The Sung-dynasty neo-Confucian philosopher Chu Hsi (1130—1200) considered Wei Ying-wu’s poetry superior even to Wang Wei’s and Meng Hao-jan’s. And yet, despite such appreciation and the inclusion of a few poems in anthologies, Wei has remained an enigma. He was, and still is, a poet’s poet.