Xu Wei

Portrait of Xu Weis

Xu Wei ( Chinese徐渭, Pinyin Xú Wèi ; zi : 文 長 / 文 长, Wéncháng ; * 1521 ; † 1593 ) was a Chinese painter , poet and playwright from the Ming Dynasty who was famous for his artistic expressiveness .

Life

Xu Wei was born in Shanyin (now Shaoxing , Zhejiang ) in 1521 into the family of a minor official. Xu did not have a happy childhood due to family and financial problems: Xu's father died when he was just a hundred days old. When the family's financial situation deteriorated, Xu's mother, a Miao slave girl, was sold.

Since Xu Wei's older brothers had gradually squandered the remaining possessions of the Xu family, Xu could only marry into his wife's family ( ruzhui入贅) - an extreme loss of status and reputation for Xu. Although he passed the first stage civil servant exams at age 20, Xu failed the provincial civil servant exams eight times. Xu's literary talent was still well known and so Xu got a job as a private assistant ( muliao幕僚) with Hu Zongxian , a high official who fought against pirates on the Chinese east coast. Xu's work was essentially that of a ghostwriter who wrote texts for and on behalf of Hu Zongxian.

After Hu Zongxian was captured in 1565 due to his affiliation with the Yan Song clique and believed to have committed suicide in prison, Xu tried several times in 1566 by piercing his ears and smashing his testicles with a hammer. Xu also killed his third marriage wife in 1566 because he believed she had betrayed him. As a result of the murder, Xu Wei spent seven years in prison. Xu spent the rest of his life painting pictures without achieving any financial success worth mentioning.

The sinologist Martin Huang attributes Xu's mental illness not only to Xu's fear of being thrown into prison himself, but rather to Xu's remorse because - in contrast to other friends and assistants of Hu Zongxian - he did not stand up for him or Hu Zongxian did not show himself up Yan Song had warned. According to Huang, Xu Wei struggled all his life against his own feminization (meaning the assignment of a feminine, subordinate position in the social hierarchy) and tried to achieve a status as a real man.

In his analysis of an autobiographical grave inscription by Xu Weis from 1566, however, the German sinologist Wolfgang Bauer suspects that Xu Wei's apparent madness was a strategy to preserve his own life after the fall of Hu Zongxian. In this epitaph, written by Xu Weis himself, it says:

一旦 爲 少 保 胡 公 羅致 幕府 ， 典 文章 ， 數 赴 而 數 辭 ， 投 筆 出門。 使 折 簡 以 以 招 ， 臥 不起 ， 人 人 爭 愚 而 危 之 ， 而 己 深 以爲 安。 其後 節 愈 折 折 折 折 折 折， 等 布衣 ， 留 者 蓋 兩 期 ， 贈 金 以 數百 計 ， 食魚 而居 廬 ， 人 爭 榮 而 安 之 之 而 而 己 深 以爲 危。 至 是 ， 忽 自 覓 死。 人 謂 渭 文士 ， 且 操潔 ， 可 無 死。 不知 古文 士 以 入 幕 操 潔 而 死者 衆 矣 ， 乃 渭 則 自 死 ， 孰 與 人死 之。 One day, however, the "younger counselor", Mr. Hu [Zongxian], called a meeting of talented scholars in order to [choose] a secretary among them to conduct his correspondence. He made offers to Wei several times, which he also rejected several times. He even threw down his brush and ran out of the house. However, this only induced Mr. Hu to send him a letter in which he [now also in writing] offered him the post. Wei pretended to be dead and uttered no more a peep. Now people [suddenly] outdid each other thinking him stupid and [his refusal] dangerous. But he himself felt deeply safe. Then later, [when he finally took over the post and Mr. Hu], who had remained loyal to him since his humble days, gave him two annual salaries in recognition of his commitment, gave him a few hundred measures of gold and gave him [on the occasion of the Funeral service for his father] at the fish meal and at the ceremony in the straw house [allowed to attend], people excelled in praising it as a splendid achievement for him and a guarantee of safety. But he himself now suddenly felt deeply threatened by the greatest danger. And now, in fact, all of a sudden he has taken death by his neck. People think that a man like Wei, who has always behaved so cleanly [in office], simply shouldn't die. But they do not know that many ancient scholars who accepted secretaries and did their duties properly [in the end] perished anyway. So Wei is about to give himself his death - and with whom will he give himself his death -?

Works

In Xu's artistic works his frustration with his subordinate social position, his modest financial means, his illness and in general the frustration with his life are shown. Aside from pictures and calligraphy, Xu is best known for his four zaju plays, also known as "The Four Screams of the Monkey" ( Sisheng yuan四声 猿). In his plays, women who dress up as men (for example Mulan) often play an important role.

Others

The Qingteng studio and the tomb of Xu Wei ( Chinese青藤 书屋 和 徐渭 墓, Pinyin Qingteng shuwu he Xu Wei mu ) in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province are on the list of monuments of the People's Republic of China .

literature

徐渭 集Xu Wei ji . Zhonghua shuju中華書局 1983.

Wolfgang Bauer: The face of China. The autobiographical self-portrayal in Chinese literature from its beginnings until today. Munich: Hanser 1990, pp. 378-383.

Goodrich / Fang: A Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368-1644. New York: Columbia University Press 1976, pp. 609-612.

Martin W. Huang: The Case of Xu Wei: A Frustrated Hero or a Weeping Widow? In: Ders .: Negotiating Masculinities in Imperial China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 2006, pp. 53-71.

Web links

Commons : Xu Wei  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Martin W. Huang: The Case of Xu Wei: A Frustrated Hero or a Weeping Widow? In: Ders .: Negotiating Masculinities in Imperial China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 2006, pp. 53-71, here: pp. 54f.
2. ↑ Goodrich / Fang: A Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368-1644. New York: Columbia University Press 1976, pp. 609-612.
3. ↑ Martin W. Huang: The Case of Xu Wei: A Frustrated Hero or a Weeping Widow? In: Ders .: Negotiating Masculinities in Imperial China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 2006, pp. 53-71, here: p. 65.
4. ↑ Martin W. Huang: The Case of Xu Wei: A Frustrated Hero or a Weeping Widow? In: Ders .: Negotiating Masculinities in Imperial China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 2006, pp. 53-71, here: pp. 59-63.
5. ↑ Wolfgang Bauer: The face of China. The autobiographical self-portrayal in Chinese literature from its beginnings until today. Munich: Hanser 1990, pp. 378-383, here: p. 380.
6. ↑ 徐渭 集Xu Wei ji . Zhonghua shuju中華書局 1983, p. 639.
7. ↑ Wolfgang Bauer: The face of China. The autobiographical self-portrayal in Chinese literature from its beginnings until today. Munich: Hanser 1990, pp. 378–383, here: p. 381.
8. ↑ Martin W. Huang: The Case of Xu Wei: A Frustrated Hero or a Weeping Widow? In: Ders .: Negotiating Masculinities in Imperial China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 2006, pp. 53-71, here: pp. 66-71.