Wang Wei was an eminent poet and outstanding statesman during the Tang Dynasty. He served as chancellor of the imperial government. Wang Wei was one of the most famous men of arts and letters of his time. Many of his poems are preserved, and twenty-nine were included in the highly influential 18th century anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems. Wang Wei had a successful career as an official as well as achieving eminence as a poet and a painter.
Background
Wang Wei was born into an aristocratic family, of Han ethnicity, originally from Qixian. Wang Wei’s father, Wang Chulian, belonged to the powerful Taiyuan Wang clan, while Wang Wei’s mother belonged to the prominent Boling Cui clan. The Wangs and the Cuis were among the “Seven Great Surnames” and wielded much political power. Wang Wei's father moved east of the Yellow River to Puzhou, part of the historic Hedong Commandery (today's Yongji, Shanxi). His mother was from a distinguished literary family.
Education
Wang Wei set off for the imperial capital at the age of nineteen, in order to study and take the jinshi civil service entrance examination. He passed the jinshi examination with the first class award (Zhuangyuan).
Career
Wang Wei's career as an official had its ups and downs. His first appointment was as a court musician, or "Deputy Master of Music"; however, he was then demoted to a position of being in charge of a granary in the former province of Jizhou. The reason for this demotion, according to tradition, was Wang's breach of etiquette by performing a lion dance.
Wang Wei was dispatched to Liangzhou as a government official, which was then the northwestern frontier of the Chinese empire and the scene of constant military conflicts. By invitation of the local commander, Wang served in this location until returning to Chang'an in 738 or early 739.
In 740-741 Wang resumed his successful governmental career, including an inspection tour of Xiangyang, Hubei (the home territory of Meng Haoran), and afterwards serving in various positions in Chang'an.
Besides the official salary connected with this government work, he had received financial rewards as an artist.
Wang Wei made extra-ordinary achievements in poetry. He created brilliant poems of different types, such as frontier poems, landscape poems, octaves, and quatrains. With his unique skill at describing natural scenery, Wang Wei depicted various views precisely, briefly, perfectly and vividly, such as magnificent mountains and rivers, deserted frontiers, tranquil streams, and so on. He did not like wordiness, yet his poems are full of profound meaning, in which strong emotion is integrated with picturesque description.
Among the masterpieces of his pastoral poems, Wang Wei expressed his joy in living a quiet and reclusive life. Many of his works are filled with an air of desolation, loneliness or seclusion, showing his indifference to reality and absorption in the aloofness of Zen.
After he died, he was referred to as the Poetic Buddha.