Wang Wei’s Deer Park

By Scott Horton

Li Cheng, Temple in the Mountains (scroll painting, 10th cen.)

So Lone seem the hills; there is no one in sight there.

But whence is the echo of voices I hear?

The rays of the sunset pierce slanting the forest,

And in their reflection green mosses appear.

–Wang Wei (王维), Deer Park Hermitage from the Wang River Collection (ca. 750CE)(W.J.B. Fletcher transl., 1919)

Read fifteen further translations of Deer Park Hermitage here.

Read Eliot Weinberger and Octavio Paz, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, an extended essay on Deer Park Hermitage and its translators.

Listen to “Das Abschied” in Gustav Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde,” inspired by the poetry of Wang Wei.