WANG WEI

(701-761) Tang Dynasty poet. The character Mozhi. Originally from Qi (present-day Qixian, Shanxi), he moved to Puzhou (present-day Yongji, Shanxi), and in his later years, he lived in a villa on the rim of the Lantian River. As a teenager, he was rich in literary talent, and was good at painting figures, bamboo and landscapes. In 721 A.D. (the ninth year of the reign of Emperor Kaiyuan), he won the first prize and became the Minister of Dale. For some reason, he was banished from Jeju to serve as a barn counselor. Later, he returned to Chang'an and was promoted to the post of Right Gleaner. Before the Anshi Rebellion, he was promoted to the position of Minister of Justice. In 756 A.D. (Tianbao 15), he was captured by the Anshi Rebellion and was appointed as a pseudo-government official. After the recovery of the two capitals, he was demoted to the post of Crown Prince Zhongyun, and later served as the right minister of Shangshu, so he was also known as the right minister of Wang. Wang Wei's poems are about 400 in number, and his most representative poems are those that depict natural landscapes such as mountains and gardens, as well as those that sing about the life of a hermit. He inherited and developed the tradition of writing landscape poems initiated by Xie Ling Yun, and also drew on the freshness and nature of Tao Yuanming's idyllic poems, which brought landscape and idyllic poems to a peak of achievement. His poems are on a par with those of Meng Haoran, known as "Wang and Meng", and are representative of the Sheng Tang school of landscape and idyllic poetry. In his later years, he was not interested in his career and devoted himself to Buddhism, so later generations called him "Poetry Buddha". He is known as the "Poetry Buddha".