Chinaberry flowers float down, sending forth a delicate fragrance. After the plum rain, water plants grow. My love flows with the water afar; my dream about the green Mount Wushan flies around. Being tired of elegant arts, I am aroused by a partridge near the south window. Who can I share my feelings with? Who can take away my melancholy? By the bamboo grove, in the thin curtain, songs flows, and dust is blown by fans; dance ends, and our clothes are wrinkled by winds. After people left, a crescent moon hangs over the sky that as quiet as water.
—— By Xie Yi (1068-1113) A Thousand Autumns·Summer Scenery
Mute, mounting west tower alone, I see the hooklike moon. Lonely plane trees lock in the courtyard drear. Cold autumn clear. Cut, it won’t break. Ruled, it will make a mess to wake. An unspeakable taste in the heart. Such is the grief to part.
—— By Li Yu (937-978) Joyful Reunion
My parting grief is boundless when the sun sinks low;Eastward I point my whip and far away I’ll go. The fallen blossoms are not an unfeeling thing;Though turned to mud, they’d nurture flowers’ growth next spring.
—— Gong Zizhen (1792-1841) Miscellanies of the Year 1839 (V)
In his article Art Learning, Feng Zikai said, “Among all literature genres, poetry is the most interesting one.” Here, his love for poetry is glimpsed. He also mentioned in Appreciation of Comic Art, “As an ancient saying goes that poets tell complicate things with terse verse. I think it can be used as a guideline for my favorite comics.” Feng Zikai has been influenced by classical literature since childhood. Later, when he studied in Japan, he admired Takehisa Yumeji’s works. Both of these contributed to his creation of “ancient poems and new paintings”. As he said, “I think only a few ancient poems are totally interesting from beginning to end. What I love is always only a verse or even a sentence in a piece.” “Whenever I read a great sentence, only recitation can’t satisfy me, so I will paint a picture for it.”
Feng Zikai is outspoken in his pursuit of the literary nature of painting. He said, “I like to ‘shake hands’ with painting and literature, just as I like to shake hands with my friends. From now on, I will call my works as ‘poetic paintings’ .” In fact, he wanted to use the artistic conception of ancient poems to demonstrate modern people’s life. In addition, he made artistic creativity through drawing cartoons in the form of traditional Chinese ink painting. This kind of art, which is a continuation of traditional culture and an innovation of painting, is actually the origin of the “new literati painting.”
