蘭亭集序 Lantin Story

In Yonghe's ninth spring, at Lan Pavilion's serene scene,
Sages young and old convened, by mountains and bamboo green.
Streams mirrored the gathering, cups flowed in nature's embrace,
No music needed for hearts to race, in this tranquil place.
The sky clear, the breeze light, the cosmos vast, the earth bright,
A feast for senses, a delight, in nature's pure sight.
Men's meetings, brief as a glance, thoughts held close or set free,
Paths may differ, but in joy's dance, we find unity.
Moments of joy, swiftly fleeting, youth unaware of its flight,
Tired journeys, hearts retreating, to change they alight.
What once was, now past, yet stirs the soul deep within,
Life's short span, to the end we spin, as the ancients have been.
Mourning the past, feeling kinship with tales of old,
Life and death, a play bold, a dream in time's fold.
Future eyes will look back, as we do now, with a sigh,
Thus I write, our moments high, as worlds go by.
0:00
The Lantingji Xu was written in the running (or semi-cursive) style on a cocoon paper with a weasel-whisker brush. It consists of 324 characters in 28 columns. The script of the Lantingji Xu was often celebrated as the high point of the running style in the history of Chinese calligraphy. The improvisational work demonstrated Wang's extraordinary calligraphy skill with the elegant and fluent strokes in a coherent spirit throughout the entire preface. The character Zhi (“之”) also appeared 20 times but was never written the same way.
Not only the aesthetic form of the manuscript is highly appreciated but also the transcendent sentiments expressed in the preface about life and death is a timeless classic. The preface starts off with a delightful description of the pleasant surroundings and the joyful ceremony, but carries on to reveal melancholy feelings towards how the transient delights brought by the vast universe would soon turn into retrospection. Wang reckoned the same emotion would be shared by the ancestors and his future generations even though the world and circumstances would be different. Scholars who study Wang, refer to his ideology expressed in the preface as a fusion of the Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism