Huaisu's family in Changsha has developed a strong interest in Buddhism since childhood, and in addition to practicing, he is keen on the art of calligraphy. However, his calligraphy skills were limited due to his inability to witness the masterpieces of his predecessors.
So, he took books and tin rods and traveled west to the capital, visited the celebrities of the time, experienced all kinds of different things, and read a large number of lost books and slips.
These experiences broadened his horizons and opened his mind without any doubts. ”
Master Huaisu's masterpiece "Self-Narrative Post" begins, known as "cursive gods". The full post ends with 7With a length of 5 meters, 126 lines and 698 characters, it records in detail the life and cursive experience of Master Huaisu, as well as the praise of contemporaries such as Yan Zhenqing, Zhang Wei, and Dai Shulun.
Nowadays, it seems that this is a self-made business card of Master Huaisu, and the original intention of writing this long "business card" originated from a trip of several years.
Huaisu, a native of Hunan, entered the temple as a monk at the age of 10 or so, and loved calligraphy since childhood. To practice, he planted large plantain groves and replaced paper with plantain leaves. Huaisu used countless pens, and he once buried these pens together in one place and named them "pen mounds".
Despite his status as a monk, he was free and uninhibited and an excellent drinker. When he was often drunk, the walls, barriers, and utensils of the temple became the place where he wrote, so he was revered as a "drunken monk" and "mad monk".
These titles aptly reflect his artistic pursuits, as cursive is his favorite style of calligraphy. The people of the Tang Dynasty were extremely enthusiastic about regular script and line script, while cursive script was regarded as a manifestation of wildness and was neglected.
However, Waisu wanted to use his innovative spirit in the world of cursive. It is said that when he was 22 years old, he met Li Bai, who was nearly sixty years old. Two young people who also don't like to be bound by rules seem to see their own shadows in each other.
Li Bai wrote a poem "Cursive Song Xing" for Huaisu: "The young master is called Huaisu, and the cursive writing is unique in the world. The ink pool flew out of the Beiming fish, and the pen killed the ...... of the rabbits in the middle mountainsThe poem depicts Huaisu's unique talent and influence in the field of cursive writing, as well as his innovative spirit.
Huaisu, source: movie stills, although Li Bai praised Huaisu for "being alone in the cursive world", Huaisu knew that he still had a long way to go. He realized that he needed to go out of Hunan and go to Chang'an and Luoyang, the famous capitals of the world at that time, to visit contemporary masters and observe the famous posts.
At the age of 32, Huaisu decided to walk to Chang'an and embark on a journey that would affect the thousand-year-old history of calligraphy. At this time, the Anshi Rebellion had been basically pacified, and Huaisu visited famous teachers in Chang'an, saw many rare "posthumous articles", and also made friends with many celebrities and ministers.
He lived in Chang'an for about five years, received a basket of poems in cursive praising him, and then he left Chang'an for Luoyang. Huaisu's most admired ** master Zhang Xu was active in Luoyang all the year round before his death, but he had been dead for more than ten years at this time.
However, fortunately, Huaisu met Zhang Xu's ** Yan Zhenqing in Luoyang. The two hit it off at first sight, Yan Zhenqing asked Huaisu the secret of writing cursive, and Huaisu said: "I often understand cursive penmanship from the changes of the clouds in the sky. ”
After hearing this, Yan Zhenqing said that he had never heard of this theory, and it seemed that Zhang Xu did have a successor.
In Luoyang, Huaisu completed the preface that Yan Zhenqing wrote for his cursive collection, and five years later, he expressed his achievements in cursive writing in the Self-Narrative Post. This post is divided into three parts, the beginning part briefly describes his life, and the main part copies Yan Zhenqing's preface word for word, and praises himself through Yan Zhenqing's mouth.
The third part includes Zhang Wei, Qian Qi, Dai Shulun and other people's evaluations of their cursive writing, such as Zhang Wei praised his cursive writing as running like a snake, and Qian Qi said that he was wild and uninhibited.
Although Wai Su humbly said at the end of the post that these comments would only make him more humble, he actually rejoiced in these compliments, so he took the trouble to transcribe them word by word.
If the end of "Autobiography" were written by someone else, it is estimated that people will be regarded as narcissist, but Huaisu ends in this style, which just shows his uninhibited wildness.
Whether it's his personality or his cursive handwriting, it's always been this style, so why not praise yourself? If he doesn't even dare to praise himself, how can he be worthy of being called "Zhang Dian Su Crazy" with Zhang Xu?
In this self-praising "Self-Narrative Post", Huaisu is written throughout, with vertical and horizontal strokes, echoing up and down, all in one go. The penmanship of the whole post is thin and strong, flying naturally, and the beauty of the rhythm of cursive is vividly displayed between the dragon and the snake.
The more he writes, the more he exerts himself, until he reaches a state of unconcealed drunkenness.
With its unique style and artistic charm, Huaisu's "Self-Narrative Post" has won the reputation of "the world's first cursive script". Among them, people and words, things and self are integrated, reaching a state of selflessness.
This kind of superb skill allowed Huaisu to finally accept Li Bai's praise for him back then: "Cursive writing is unique in the world."