Nine Songs

Deities float on clouds, travel over water and appear among trees. In 1361 Zhang Wo illustrated the Nine Songs while Chu Huan transcribed the verses beside them. The ancient cycle is associated with rituals of the southern Chinese state of Chu. By the fourteenth century it was read as poetry, viewed in paintings and reinterpreted. This scroll joins eleven sections, alternating text and image.

Near the illustrated sequence’s right edge, long garments billow around figures. Continuous fine lines describe their folds. This ink-drawing technique is called baimiao. With little shading, the artist distinguishes cloth, hands and hairstyles; each line’s direction indicates a figure’s movement.

Paired figures stand on cloud curls. Hems and cloud arcs share curves but leave open intervals between them. Earthly weight almost disappears. The painter makes supernatural movement visible through familiar things: clothing, headdresses and human gestures.

Waves coil beneath a seated figure. Lines become denser than around the floating characters. Their rhythm identifies water even without blue colour. The same material moves between elements through brush pressure, intervals between strokes and the complexity of a contour.

Armed figures crowd among vegetation. Armour, faces and weapons form a much denser drawing. Alongside invocations to deities, the ancient cycle commemorates fallen warriors. The scroll retains that change of subject by allowing the image to become sharper and more restless.

Columns of verse separate the drawings. Reading takes time and interrupts a quick passage along the scroll. Zhang Wo worked within a tradition in which earlier images by Li Gonglin and Zhao Mengfu supplied models for new versions. Transcription and redrawing sustained an ancient text while leaving room for individual brushwork.

Songs associated with addressing spirits became objects of close reading and admiration for line. Their strange journeys, meetings and partings survived. A cultivated fourteenth-century viewer approached the ancient world through two contemporaries’ work. The scroll shows a culture retaining ritual after its role changes, preserving words and images while changing how people encounter them.