The ancient sages discussed the book, and their references were far-reaching and ingenious, such as "a dragon leaps over the Tianmen, a tiger lies in the Phoenix Pavilion", what kind of words are they? Or if you resign to seek employment, you will go too far to study, which will be of no benefit to the scholar. Therefore, what I am talking about must be introduced to others and not be overstated.
My calligraphy is written in small cursive characters, just like large characters. Only the original manuscripts and postscripts are occasionally found in the family collection and are not available to those seeking the book. Once you have stored it in your heart, you can write it at will, and it will be natural and elegant. I was unable to establish a family in my prime, so people said that my book is a collection of ancient characters, which is composed of all the strengths. Since he started his own family at an old age, when people see him, they don’t know who they are as their ancestors.
The list inscribed by Dali of Jiangnan Wu
Lao Du's poem "Xue Ji Huipu Temple" says: "The three characters of Yu Yu are intertwined with dragons." Today there are stone books that can be seen, but the outlines are drawn backwards, and the strokes are like steamed cakes, " The word "Pu" is like a person holding two fists and standing with arms outstretched, which is ugly and difficult to describe. From this point of view, there is no true big character in ancient times.
Ge Hong's "View from the Rooftop" is the most famous among all the big characters in ancient and modern times. Ouyang Xun's "Daolin Temple" is frugal and lacks spirit. Liu Gongquan's Guoqing Temple is disproportionate in size and requires a lot of effort. Pei Xiu's way of writing cards is genuine and interesting, and does not lead to ugliness. The real characters are very easy, but the body posture is difficult. It is better to draw and draw, and the movement is more vivid.
The eight sides of the character can only be seen in Shang Zhenkai, and each has its own size. Zhiyong has eight sides and few Zhongfa. Ding Daohu, Ou and Yu's pens began to draw, and the ancient method was lost. Liu Gongquan's master, Ou, was not as good as Yuanjie, but he was the ancestor of the ugly and evil. There have been secular books since the Liu Dynasty.
When Tang Guan Gao was alive, he was the body of Chu, Lu, Xu and Qiao, and he was particularly outstanding. The Kaiyuan period has come, and due to the popular style of Emperor Ming's calligraphy, Xu Hao began to adapt to the emperor's taste. The scripts of the classics also became fatter from then on, and the ancient style of the Kaiyuan period is no longer the same.
It is very inappropriate for people in the Tang Dynasty to regard Xu Hao as more pious than the monks. The vast and small ethics are similar to official regular scripts. Monk Qian, Xiao Ziyun's Zhong Dharma is no different from Zijing's, each has its own distinction, big and small, and is not consistent. Xu Hao created a guest calligraphy rhyme for Yan Zhenqing. He came from the blood of Zhang Dian and taught Yan how to use big characters to encourage small characters and small characters to make big characters bigger. This is not ancient.
Stone carving cannot be learned, but it is no longer your own handwriting to have others carve it, so you must observe the original work to gain enjoyment. For example, Yan Zhenqing, every time he asked his children to carve words, he would understand the master's ideas and modify them, resulting in great distortion. Only the one from Lushan, Jizhou, inscribed the name, and left after the inscription, and later generations engraved it, so they all got the truth, without any artificiality, and it was because he knew his beauty came from Chu. There is no silkworm-headed or swallow-tailed strokes in any of the original works. "Watching for a Seat with Guo Zhiyun" has a seal-like style, which Yan Jiesi is also thinking of. Liu and Ou are the ancestors of the ugly and evil Zha, and their younger brother Gongchuo is better than his elder brother. The theory of muscles and bones comes from Liu. People in the world only think that they are muscles and bones when they are angry, but they don’t know that if they are not angry, they have their own muscles and bones.
All big characters should be like small characters, and small characters should be like big characters. Chu Suiliang's small characters are like big ones. Later, his ancestors wrote about them, and there were some wonderful ones. Big characters are like small characters that are invisible.
People in the world tend to hold their pens harder when writing large characters. The characters become less muscular and lifeless, and the round pen tip is as big as a steamed cake, which is despicable. It is better if it is as sharp as the fine print and has no artificiality. From ancient times to the present, I have not been sensitive, and the words on the list have definitely been known to those who have knowledge throughout the world.
When Shi Manqing wrote the Buddha's name, there was no tendency to turn back and forth. The small characters made the order bigger, while the big characters made the order smaller. This is the fallacy of Yan Zhenqing's teaching. The characters on the cover are naturally proportional in size, and if the word "Tai Yi's Palace" is written, it is divided into four nests. How can one word fill a nest to match the word "Palace"? The cover has its own proportional size and does not spread out. Yu Chang wrote Tian Qing's Guan. The characters "天" and "天" are written in four strokes. The characters "Qing" and "Guan" are mostly drawn at the bottom. They are written in proportion to each other. When hanging up, the momentum comes with it. They are all the same size, although they are really flying. .
When writing came to Li, the ancient seal script method was greatly deteriorated. Each seal script follows the shape and size of the characters, so the shape of all things can be known, the activities are complete, and each one is sufficient. From then on, Li began to develop and accelerate, and the Three Dynasties Dharma was destroyed.
Ou, Yu, Chu, Liu and Yan are all written in one stroke. Arrangements are labor-intensive, how can they last forever? Li Yong lost his temper and his body was weak and slender. In his later years, Xu Hao was exhausted and lacked strength and spirit. He was not as good as the Wuzhou Monument when he was a Langguan. Dong Xiaozi's bad words in his later years were all bad, and he was completely devoid of charm. Those with knowledge will know this. Master Shen changed his style and had a transcendent real interest, which Xu was not as good as. The censor Xiao Cheng's inscription in Taiyuan was unparalleled in the Tang Dynasty. It is "Sima Xi Nanyue Zhenjun's Monument", which is very interesting to the King of Zhong, and it is not as good as the others.
Zhi Yonglin collected thousands of articles, which are beautiful, round and vigorous, with all aspects covered and authentic works. Since the word "Dianpei" has been in Tang Linfu's place, others can't accept it.
The characters must be bone-like, the flesh must be wrapped around the tendons, and the tendons must hide the meat. The post must be beautiful and moist, so it is stable but not vulgar, dangerous but not weird, old but not withered, and moist but not fat. Abnormality values ??form over suffering, suffering produces anger, and anger produces strangeness; valuing form over painting, painting into painting, painting into vulgarity: these are all calligraphy diseases.
"A little success is like nature, and habits are like nature." This is an old saying. I dreamed that a man in ancient clothes taught me how to make origami books, and my calligraphy has improved since then. I don’t know if I write it to others. When Cai Yuanchang saw it, he was shocked and said, "Why is the method so different?" This gentleman is also a discerning person. Zhang Zihou named himself Zhen, and called me Xingcao alone. He wanted my calligraphy to be like Pai Shuzi, but Zhen characters must have body and posture, which is better.
Yan Lugong's calligraphy can be taught, and it will become popular among the people.
Yin Ren and other ancients wrote, but I don’t know that I have many books from this school. Children do cursive writing, which is interesting during the holidays.
If Zhiyong inkstone turns into a mortar, he can reach the right army; if it penetrates, he can only reach the bell and rope. May be encouraged forever.
If you don’t read for a day, you will feel dull. I think that the ancients did not waste books for a while. Because of Sisu Zhicai's "Heng Gong Zhi Luo Tie", the words are clear in meaning and extremely skillful, making it the best Dharma book in the world.
There are many official documents on the platform of Banshan Villa. I don’t know whether they exist now. Wen Gong and Yang Ningshi are rarely known to calligraphers. I told him the reason, and the public appreciated his insights.
The official list of Mushan Tower in Jinling was written 21 years ago by Guan Weizong. I think the list of palaces in the Six Dynasties was like this.
When Xue Ji wrote about Huipu Temple, Lao Du thought that "dragons are entangled with each other." Now that I see the original, it is like a heavy boy holding a steamed cake. I believe that Lao Du could not write.
Studying books must be interesting. He only knows how to be good at it. Don't linger around for a good reason, otherwise you won't be able to work.
Hai Yue summoned the pair with a doctorate in calligraphy. I would like to ask how many people in this dynasty are famous for their books. Haiyue each responded to his calligraphy: "Cai Jing has no pen, Cai Bian has a pen but lacks elegant rhyme, Cai Xiangle's calligraphy, Shen Liao's typesetting, Huang Tingjian's calligraphy, Su Shi's calligraphy." He asked him again how his calligraphy was, and he replied. : "Chen Shu brushes calligraphy."
Translation:
Looking through the comments and quotations of famous writers of the past generation on calligraphy, they are all tortuous and abstract, just like "The dragon leaps over the Tianmen, "Hu Chen Feng Pavilion" and so on, what kind of language is this? Otherwise, the pursuit of gorgeous rhetoric is actually further away from the specific writing method, which is of no benefit to calligraphy students. So what I am saying here is just for people to understand easily, without using those exaggerated words.
The small cursive calligraphy I write is just like the large calligraphy; but I only write this occasionally after the inscriptions and postscripts on the original manuscripts I keep at home, and do not give them to people who ask for calligraphy. The key to writing this kind of calligraphy is to be confident and feel free to write. The writing will be natural and the handwriting will be simple and elegant. When I became an adult, my calligraphy was not yet unique, and others said that my calligraphy was a "collection of ancient calligraphy." In fact, I am absorbing the strengths of various schools and combining them. When I get older, I start to live in my own family. When other people meet me, they don’t even know which family I’m from.
Wu [Shan Wan] from the south of the Yangtze River and Wang Zishao from Dengzhou used large-character official script to inscribe the list, which is very ancient; my son Youren's large-character official script is just like them. Furthermore, my youngest son Youzhi wrote stele and handwritten large characters for me, and no one else could tell them apart. Xu Shilang from the province under my family especially liked his small regular script and once said to me: "If there is a short script for me, you can Let your son write it for you." He was talking about my son Youzhi.
Du Fu wrote a poem titled "Xue Ji Huipu Temple", in which two sentences said: "The three characters of Yu Yu are entangled with dragons." Now I have seen the rubbings of the original stone, and at first glance, it turns out that they were made with Hui Feng Sele, and every stroke looks like a steamed cake. The word "Pu" in it is like a person clenching two fists, stretching his arms and standing there, which is really weird and beautiful. From this point of view, the ancients did not have real big characters at all.
The four-character Feibai calligraphy of "The View from the Tiantai" written by Ge Hong is the highest among large characters in ancient and modern times. "Daolin Temple" written by Ouyang Xun is thin and shabby, without spirit. Liu Gongquan wrote "Guoqing Temple", the font size is not commensurate, and it took a lot of effort. Pei Xiu wrote the plaque as he pleased, which was very tasteful and not ugly. Regular script is easy to write, but it is difficult to write with momentum. It should be said that as long as it is not as rigid as a calculation, the brushstrokes will come alive.
A Chinese character has eight sides, and only in block letters can all of them be expressed. Each of the large and small characters has its own unique charm. Zhiyong's calligraphy has eight sides, but it lacks Zhong Yao's brushwork. The brushwork of Ding Daohu, Ouyang Xun, Yu Shinan and others began to become neat and well-proportioned, and at this time the ancient methods were exhausted. Liu Gongquan learned his calligraphy from Ouyang Xun, but he was far inferior to Ou and became the ancestor of the ugly and grotesque. Since Liu Gongquan, there have been popular books in the world.
At that time, the appointment documents of the Tang Dynasty all used the calligraphy of Chu Suiliang, Lu Jianzhi and Xu Qiaozhi, and some of them were quite outstanding.
Since the Kaiyuan Dynasty, because the handwriting of Emperor Ming of the Tang Dynasty was fat and customary, people like Xu Hao began to write the characters "Fengfei" to please the emperor, and the scribes' handwriting also began to become fatter. The ancient spirit before Kaiyuan is no longer there.
It is very inappropriate for people in the Tang Dynasty to compare Xu Hao to Wang Sengqian. Xu Hao's handwriting is of the same size, similar to the regular script of lower-level officials. Wang Sengqian and Xiao Ziyun inherited Zhong Yao's calligraphy, which is the same as Wang Xianzhi's calligraphy. The size of each calligraphy is appropriate and there is no insistence on uniformity. Xu Hao was a disciple of Yan Zhenqing, and his calligraphy style came from Zhang Xu's school. Zhang Xu taught Yan Zhenqing to reduce the size of large characters and enlarge small characters, which was not an ancient method.
You cannot learn the words written on stone. Because if you let someone else engrave your handwriting, it will look different when it comes out. Therefore, it is necessary to appreciate and study the original work in order to understand its true meaning. For example, Yan Zhenqing often asked his servants to engrave his calligraphy on stone. The servant guessed the master's thoughts and modified the strokes such as strokes and strokes when carving, so Yan's handwriting was greatly distorted. Only the inscription in Lushan, Jizhou, was done at that time and left. Later generations carved stone according to the original traces, so the original appearance of the Yan calligraphy was preserved without the shortcomings of artificiality and vulgarity. After reading this, I realized that Yan Shu is from Chu style. Moreover, there are no strokes of silkworm head and wild goose tail in the authentic calligraphy of Yan. Yan Zhenqing's "Seat Competition" written by Yan Zhenqing to Guo Yingyi has the flavor of seal script and is a masterpiece in Yan's book. Liu Gongquan and Ouyang Xun are the ancestors of ugly and vulgar characters, but their younger brother, Chao Gongchuo, is not as vulgar as his elder brother. The saying "valuing bones and muscles" comes from Liu. People in the world only know that those who express themselves in anger have muscles and bones, but they do not know that those who do not pretend to be angry also have muscles and bones.
It is said that big characters should be written as small characters, and small characters should be written as large characters. Chu Suiliang's small characters were as powerful and open as large characters. Later copyists imitated him and occasionally wrote well. The large characters are written with as much detail and meticulousness as the small characters. I have never seen anyone else write such characters.
Most people in the world hold their pens hard when writing large characters, which makes them even less energetic. The end of the round pen they write looks like a steamed cake, which is really despicable and ridiculous. The large characters must be written with the same subtlety as the small characters, and the writing style must be as full of momentum as possible. There must be no artificiality at all to be considered a masterpiece. Since ancient times, no one has written big characters as well as small characters. I am not talented, but fortunately I have mastered the trick. Nowadays, big characters can be seen everywhere, and there will always be someone among these people who understands me.
The name of the Buddha written by Shi Yannian (also known as Manqing) has no twists and turns; the small characters are enlarged and the large characters are reduced. This is a fallacy taught to Yan Zhenqing by the casual and crazy Zhang Jiao. In fact, the characters themselves can be large or small. For example, if you write the four characters "Tai Yi Zhi Dian" and write them in four boxes, should you write the character "一" so fat that it takes up a whole box to match the character "Dian"? Keep the size consistent? In fact, if the size is appropriate, there is no need to expand or reduce it. I once wrote the four characters "Tianqingzhiguan". The characters "天" and "之" both have only four strokes. There are many strokes below the characters "Qing (Qing)" and "Guan (Guan)". Write it in a natural form. After you hang it up and take a look, you will see that the momentum is coherent, the size is appropriate, and it does have the potential to fly.
When the official script came into being, the ancient seal script method was completely destroyed. Seal characters are all written according to their shape and size, just like everything in the world, vivid and perfect, each with its own style. Official script began to have a writing method of shrinking the big ones and enlarging the small ones. From then on, the ancient writing methods of ancient Chinese, seal script and zhen no longer existed.
Ouyang Xun, Yu Shinan, Chu Suiliang, Yan Zhenqing, and Liu Gongquan all have only one kind of calligraphy, and their writing is deliberately artificial and painstaking. How can such calligraphy be passed down to future generations? Li Yong's calligraphy came from Wang Xianzhi, but it lost the appropriate adjustment of slenderness and plumpness. Xu Hao's writing power declined in his later years, and his writing became even less impressive. It was not as good as the "Wuzhou Stele" written when he was a Langguan. His "Stele of Dong Xiaozi" and "Stele of Monk Fu Kong" were all written in his later years. They are completely failures and have no sense of beauty. Anyone with an appreciation of them will understand this. Master Shen has a unique approach, but he has extraordinary real interest. Xu Hao is not as good as him. The title of Taiyuan was written by Xiao Cheng, the imperial censor. There was no one better than him in the Tang Dynasty. "The Nanyue Zhenjun Guanstele" written by Sima Shi has a strong flavor of Zhong Yao and Wang Xizhi, and other works are not as good as this one.
Zhi Yonglin wrote a thousand-character essay, with a beautiful face, a round and powerful pen, and all aspects of it; this work has been handed down authentically. Since "Dianpei (bandit loss)", no one else has collected as much as Tang Linfu.
The characters must have a bone-like style, the flesh must be wrapped with tendons, and the tendons must hide the flesh, so that they can be handsome and plump, with a well-structured and unconventional character. We must be dangerous but not strange, old but not withered, and plump but not swollen. The importance of change and innovation lies in the ingenuity of form rather than the use of brute force.
Bitterness means anger, and anger means weirdness; the important thing is that the form is ingenious but not artificial. If artificiality becomes painting, writing becomes painting, which is vulgar. These are the drawbacks of writing.
“Young success is like nature, habits are like nature” This is an old saying passed down from ancient times. I once dreamed that a man in costume taught me to fold paper and make calligraphy. Since then, calligraphy has improved a lot, and I can’t tell the difference when writing to others. Only Cai Jing saw it and said in amazement: "What's wrong with your calligraphy?" So much has changed suddenly? "He is really discerning. Zhang Dun relied on his excellent regular script, but he only praised my cursive writing, implying that my regular script was as dull and lifeless as a layout plan; however, regular script must have good posture to be considered good.
Yan Lugong (Zhenqing)’s running script can be learned, but regular script is vulgar.
My son Youren and others are learning ancient calligraphy, but in fact they mostly learn my style. The cursive script written by this guy still has some meaning.
Zhiyong wrote until the inkstone turned into a mortar, then he could learn from Wang Xizhi's style. If you penetrate the inkstone, you can reach the level of Zhong Yao and Suo Jing. So you have to work harder to study!
If you don’t write for a day, your thinking will feel sluggish. I think the ancients were practicing all the time. From this, I think of Su Zhicai's "Heng Gong Zhi Luo Tie". The handwriting is clear, the meaning is extraordinary, and it shows his skill. It should be regarded as the best calligraphy in the world.
There were many handwritings of Wang Wengong (Anshi) on the stage of Banshan Villa. I wonder if they are still there today? Wang Wengong learned Yang Ning's calligraphy, which few people in the world know. As soon as I told him, he admired my vision.
The official script plaque of Jinling Mushan Tower was written by Guan Weizong 21 years ago. I guess the plaques in the palaces during the Six Dynasties all looked like this.
The three characters "Huipu Temple" written by Xue Ji were regarded by Du Fu as "dragons entangled in each other". Now when I see the original stone rubbing, it looks like a child struggling to hold the steamed cake in his hand, which shows that Du Fu can't write.
To learn calligraphy, you must be interested and forget about other hobbies to write well. If you have other hobbies lingering in your mind, you won't be able to write well.
I was summoned by the emperor to answer questions because of my knowledge of calligraphy. The emperor asked about some people in this dynasty who people thought could write. I answered this way: "Cai Jing did not know the essentials of calligraphy, Cai Bian had good calligraphy but little charm, Cai Xiang wrote with engraving, Shen Liao used calligraphy, and Huang Tingjian did. Su Shi used painting." The emperor asked again: "What about you writing?" I replied: "I use brushes to write."