Wheel-Rim River : The Mountain Poems and Paintings

A breathtaking presentation of artistic and spiritual collaboration in the classical Chinese traditions of landscape poetry and painting—with 40 full-color artworks.

The quintessential poet of solitude of the middle Tang dynasty, Wang Wei spent much of his time in seclusion at his retreat property at Wheel-Rim River in the Whole-South Mountains, near present-day Xian, China. One autumn, his friend and fellow poet P’ei Ti came to visit him, and the two spent the season wandering the mountains and composing what would become the most celebrated poetic collaboration in the classical Chinese tradition: the Wheel-Rim River sequence. In this cycle of twenty encounters with the mountain wilderness, Wang and P’ei composed pairs of poems inspired by the landscape. Over time, this renowned series of poems inspired numerous painters to capture the very same landscapes, and so the region of the Wheel-Rim River became a fixture of the Chinese artistic tradition.   

In this striking translation of the Wheel-Rim River sequence, David Hinton joins the twenty poetic collaborations with beautiful, full-color details from two different landscape scrolls that the poems inspired. Hinton’s commentary situates these literary and visual masterpieces within the context of Taoist and Chan Buddhist thought, illuminating how the artists’ meditative engagement with the natural world reflects the mysterious creativity through which the cosmos unfurls. Through this lens, the collaboration between Wang and P’ei emerges as a remarkable testament to the transformative potential of artistic and spiritual friendship.