ORIENTAL CONCEPTIONS
In China, there is little doubt but that the nature
of the ideograph as well as the use of the same brush
for writing and for the usually monochromatic painting
encouraged the identification of the sister arts. The
Chinese poet, Su Shih (Su Tung-po, 1036-1101) wrote,
Tu Fu's poems are figureless paintings, Han Kan's paintings
are wordless poems.
Developments in the relationship of poetry and
painting are remarkably parallel to Western views.
Although we know painting was seen as a respectable
avocation by the second century, it was not until the
Sung dynasty (960-1280) that it became clearly estab-
lished as a fine art. In the twelfth century the state
examinations for official posts included one in painting:
the “problem” was set by asking the candidate to paint
a scene suggested by a few lines of poetry. (This
method reflects the re-creation of poetry by means of
painting practiced at least as early as the fourth cen-
tury.) During the later part of this period the premiss
that the painter should be a learned man became
generally accepted. From the fifteenth century “figure
poems” were well-known.
Western culture since the eighteenth century has
been rich in landscape poetry. Chinese literature,
however, reveals an older and more constant interest
since the end of the Han dynasty (A.D. 220), although
a full development did not occur until about the fourth
century when landscape, and especially mountains,
symbolized cosmic forces. From the fourth century on,
with the introduction of Buddhism and Taoism, nature
became reality itself and, as a part of religion, an object
of contemplation. Poetry reflected this pervading con-
cern through regular pictorialization of landscape
(Frankel, 1957, and Frodsham, 1967).
