Wang Wei: Poet, Painter
Wang Wei (Tang Dynasty), one of the key figures in the history of Chinese Incense Culture(香学).
Wang Wei · Tang
Identity:Poet, Painter
Representative Incense Works / Incense Practices:Incense in Poetry
Wang Wei's work features "painting in poetry and poetry in painting"; his Zen states are often accompanied by incense: "At dusk the fishermen and woodcutters return, the mountains are filled with fragrance" and "Burning incense, watching the rain roll by; tasting tea, savoring the spring mountains." Incense, the empty mountains, clear springs, and temple bells are as one—this is the origin of literati using incense to attest to Zen.
And Chinese Incense Culture(香学)
Seen through Wang Wei, Chinese Incense Culture(香学) is not an isolated craft, but a process in which generations of literati and artisans continuously documented, systematized, and spiritualized olfactory experience. Only by understanding these sages can one understand the weight of that wisp of incense in your hand today.
Representative Incense Formulas · Incense Poems · Incense Discourses
Incense Poems"Xinyi Hollow"
"At the tips of branches, hibiscus flowers; in the mountains, red calyxes bloom. By the ravine's door, silent and peopleless, they fall one after another." — Xinyi is magnolia; its flowers can be used in incense and its seeds in medicine. Wang Wei uses the empty-mountain magnolia to depict the solitude of a Chan practitioner.
Incense Poems"Bird Cries in the Ravine"
"With people at leisure, osmanthus flowers fall; the night is quiet, the spring mountain empty. The moon rises and startles the mountain birds, which cry now and then in the spring ravine." — Osmanthus (muxi) incense is clear and the moon white; this is Wang Wei's representative work of 'writing stillness through incense.'