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Su Shi: The Poetry of Exile

Jun 26, 2026 / terry / No comments

Su Shi (蘇軾; simplified 苏轼; Sū Shì, literary name 東坡 dōngpō “east slope,” 1037-1101) was a poet, calligrapher, painter and statesman during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). After criticizing some of the new government policies in his poetry, he was indicted in 1079 for treason. After the Crow Terrace Poetry Trial (烏臺詩案), he was found guilty and condemned to death. The emperor commuted his sentence, and Su was exiled to Huangzhou in Hubei Province. There he converted an old army camp on the eastern slope of a mountain near the city into a farm. During his exile from 1080 to 1084, he adopted the name of his farm as his professional pseudonym, practised Buddhism and wrote poetry.

Category: Art, History, Language, Painting, Poetry, Politics, Religion / Tags: Battle of the Red Cliffs, Calligraphy, Cao Cao, East Slope, Huangzhou, Mount Lu, Su Shi Dongpo, Sung Dynasty, Wang Anshi

Modern Chinese Calligraphy: Wang Dongling

Jun 10, 2026 / terry / No comments

Chinese calligraphy began over 3000 years ago. Over the years several distinct styles of writing evolved: oracle, bronze, seal, clerical, regular, semi-cursive (running) and cursive (grass). The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) overturned the respect shown to these traditional modes. However, calligraphy flourished in the format of the big-character posters (大字报, dàzì bào). In the years following the revolution, Chinese calligraphy became more abstract. One of the most important modern calligraphers is Wang Dongling (王冬龄). Among his many achievements is a new writing style that he calls “chaos script” 亂書 luànshū.

Category: Art, Language, Literature, Painting, Photography, Poetry / Tags: chaos script, Cultural Revolution, Daodejing, Heart Sutra, Lin Sanzhi, Lu Weizhao, Sha Menghai

Bright is the Ring of Words: English Art Song

May 17, 2026 / terry / No comments

During the 19^th Century, composers began to set poems to music. In these “art songs” or Lieder, the piano accompaniment accentuated the emotions and complemented the meaning of the poem. Although Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte (1816) was the first cycle of art songs, Schubert was the composer who definitively established the genre. He was followed by Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, and Mahler. In the British Isles, a golden age of art song occurred in the first 20 years of the 20^th Century. Young composers, many trained in the German tradition, set to music both the lines they had learned in school and the poems of their contemporaries. The illustration is a wood cut from 1903 by Wassily Kandinsky.

Category: Art, Language, Literature, Music, Painting, Poetry / Tags: Battle of the Somme, Butterworth, de la Mare, Denis Browne, Gallipoli, Gurney, Kelly, Lieder, Masefield, Schubert, Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, Stevenson, Tennyson, Vaughan Williams, W.B. Yeats

Zoroaster: Struggles between Good and Evil

Mar 21, 2026 / terry / No comments

Zoroaster, a legendary prophet who probably lived toward the end of the 2^nd Millennium BCE, proclaimed a new religion based on a belief in a supreme god Ahura Mazda (Lord of Wisdom) who fights for truth and order (asha) against the forces of deceit and chaos (druj) led by Angra Mainyu (Evil Spirit). Since fire is the symbol of asha, Zoroastrian temples contain an eternal sacred flame, which represents the presence of Ahura Mazda. Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest organized religions of the world and one of the smallest, with only about 120,000 adherents in the world today.

Category: Art, Ethics, History, Language, Religion, Sculpture / Tags: Achaemenid Empire, Ahura Mazda, Asha, Dakhma, Dariu the Great, Dualism, Eternal return, Final Judgement, Mani, Manichaeism, Mithra, Mithraeum, Mithraism, Monotheism, Nietzsche, Parsis, Sasanian Emprire, Slave Morality, Tauroctony, Ubermensch, Zarathustra, Zoroastrianism

Antonello da Messina: Sicilian Master

Feb 24, 2026 / terry / No comments

Antonello da Messina (~1430-1479) was born in Messina, Sicily. While studying in Naples, he became aware of a technique of painting using oil-based pigments that had originated in the Netherlands with Jan van Eyck (~1390-1441) and his followers. Antonello soon became a master of this new method. He was an expert portraitist able to capture his sitters’ distinct identities and depths of feeling. The illustration shows a painting from 1473, that was once thought to be a self-portrait, but there is no real evidence for this. Although many of Antonello’s works have been lost, three absolute masterpieces have survived: Saint Jerome in his Study, The Virgin Annunciate, both dated to around 1474, and Saint Sebastien from about 1478. Read more

Category: Art, History, Language, Literature, Painting, Philosophy, Religion / Tags: Annunciation, Ecco Homo, Giovanni Bellini, Humanism, Humanities, Jan van Eyck, Oil Painting, Petrus Christus, Renaissance Portraits, Saint Jerome, Saint Sebastian

The Letter of Lord Chandos: Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Jan 16, 2026 / terry / No comments

In 1901, Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) wrote an essay on the inadequacy of language in the form of a letter (Ein Brief) from the fictional Philip Lord Chandos to the actual Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a famous English philosopher of science, essayist and statesman. The letter is a response to Bacon’s inquiry about the two years of unexpected silence that following Chandos’ early success as a poet. Chandos replies that he has “completely lost the ability to think or to speak of anything coherently.” He feels a deep sympathy with the world, but finds no words whereby to express this experience. He seeks but has not yet, found a language “in which inanimate things speak to me and wherein I may one day have to justify myself before an unknown judge.” The illustration shows a 1916 portrait of von Hofmannsthal by Karl Bauer.

Category: Language, Literature, Music, Poetry, Religion / Tags: Der Rosenkavalier, Elizabeth Costello, Francis Bacon, Fritz Mauthner, J. M. Coetzee, Language Crisis, Ludwig Wittgentsein, Mysticism, Richard Strauss, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Wu Wei: Effortless Action

Nov 23, 2025 / terry / No comments

One of the central ideas in the Daodjing of Laozi is the idea of wu wei (無為, simplified 无为; wúwéi). This has been translated in many ways: “non-action,” “actionlessness,” “effortless action,” and “doing nothing.” The 37^th chapter of the Daodjing considers wu wei an attribute of the eternal Dao. The 48^th chapter promotes wu wei as a human virtue. The illustration shows wu wei in regular script (left) and in cursive (right).

Category: Ethics, Language, Literature, Philosophy, psychology, Religion / Tags: Butcher Ding, Daodejing, flow, in the zone, Lao Tzu, Laozi, nondual action, Pen bird, Tao Te Ching, Thomas Merton, Zhao Mengfu, Zhuangzi

Laozi: the Nature of the Dao

Nov 23, 2025 / terry / 2 comments

Laozi (老子, lǎozǐ, “the old master”) was a legendary character from the 6^th Century BCE who put together a collection of philosophical and ethical sayings that has come to be known as the Dàodéjing (道德經 simplified:道德经; or Tao Te Ching in the Wade-Giles romanization, “The Book of the Way and of Virtue”) or Laozi after the name of the author. The illustration shows a depiction of Laozi from a scroll by Sheng Mao. Following the discovery of early versions of the text written on silk and bamboo slips dating to the 2^nd Century BCE (Chan, 2016, 2025), several new translations and annotated editions have been published. This essay presents a close reading of the first chapter.

Category: Art, History, Language, Painting, Philosophy, Poetry, Religion / Tags: Alan Watts, being, Coleridge, Daodejing, Daoism, desire, LaoTzu, Naming, pantheism, Spinoza, Tao Te Ching, Wordsworth, Zhuangzi

A Way of Writing: The Art of Chinese Calligraphy

Nov 6, 2025 / terry / No comments

Chinese calligraphy (書法, simplified 书法, shūfǎ, literally ‘way of writing’) is the art of writing Chinese characters (漢字, simplified 汉字, hànzì) with a brush. Together with poetry and painting, calligraphy is considered one of the “Three Perfections” (三絕 sānjué) of Chinese art. This essay reviews the development of calligraphy and provides some examples of its beauty. The illustration shows the calligraphy of the characters of shūfǎ in regular and semi-cursive styles.

Category: Art, History, Language, Painting, Poetry / Tags: Bada Shanren, Cangjie, Clerical Script, Cursive Script, Deng Shiru, Lotus Sutra, Ni Zan, Oracle Script, Regular Script, Seal Script, Shufa, Six Gentlemen, Thousand Character Classic, Wang Jiqian, Xu Chu, Zhang Xu, Zhao Mengfu

Wang Wei: the Wheel River Poems

Oct 20, 2025 / terry / No comments

Wang Wei (王维; traditional 王維; pinyin, Wáng Wéi; 699–761) was a Chinese musician, painter, and poet during the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907). He was a devout Buddhist and used the courtesy name Wang Weimojie in homage to the early Buddhist teacher and boddhisattva Vimalakirti (Chinese name 維摩詰 Wéimójí). Vimalakirti taught the practice of sunyata (Sanskrit, emptiness; Chinese 空性 Kōng xìng), a meditative state wherein the mind is emptied of the self and becomes one with the universe. After a tumultuous life, Wang Wei retired to his villa on the Wang River about 40 km southeast of the imperial capital Chang’an (present day Xi’an). There he composed the Wǎngchuān jí (辋川集 The Wheel River Collection): a set of twenty quatrains describing various locations near his villa. Each quatrain was accompanied by a reply from his protégé Pei Di (裴迪 pinyin, Péi Dí, 714-?).

Category: Art, History, Language, Painting, Poetry, Religion, Uncategorized / Tags: An Lushan Rebellion, Calligraphy, Chan Buddhism, Chinese Poetry, Confucianism, Deer Park, Du Fu, High Tang Poetry, Li Bai, Pei Di, Sunyata, Taoism, Wangchuan Ji

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