At the age of seven, I studied under Wei Shuo, a female calligrapher. Wang Xizhi had been copying Shu Wei until he was twelve years old. Although he is already excellent, he always feels dissatisfied. He often listened to the stories of diligent calligraphers in past dynasties, admired the calligraphy of Zhang Zhi, the "sage of grass" in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and decided to encourage himself with Zhang Zhi's "Linchi" story.
In order to practice calligraphy, wherever he went, he would climb mountains and turn over ancient stone carvings and accumulate a lot of calligraphy materials. In his study, in the yard, near the gate and even outside the toilet, he will put stools, pens, ink, paper and inkstones. Whenever he thinks of a well-structured word, he immediately writes it down on paper. When he practiced calligraphy, he thought hard and forgot to eat and sleep.
He believes that raising geese can not only cultivate sentiment, but also understand the truth of calligraphy writing and processing from a certain attitude of geese. One morning, Wang Xizhi and his son Wang Xianzhi took a boat tour of Shaoxing. When they arrived at a village, they saw a flock of white geese standing on the shore. Seeing this, Wang Xizhi fell in love with these geese and wanted to buy them home. Wang Xizhi asked a nearby Taoist to sell him the goose. The Taoist priest said: "If there is a suitable army need, please write me a Taoist health and self-cultivation Huang Ting Jing!" " "Wang Xizhi really wants to meet the requirements of Taoist priests. This is the story of Wang Xizhi exchanging a book for a white goose.
It is said that on one occasion, he wrote on a board and showed it to the sculptor. The sculptor cut the board with a knife and found that his handwriting had been scratched on the board three times. This is the origin of the idiom "cut to the chase".
His best calligraphy work is Preface to Lanting Collection. This is his middle-aged work. There was a custom in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Every year on the third day of the third lunar month, people will go to the river to play a play to eliminate ominous things. On March 3rd, the 9th year of Yonghe, Wang Xizhi took a group of 41-year-old writers to the Lanting River to set the date. They wrote poems while drinking. After writing this poem, they collected it and compiled it into a book called Lanting. It was suggested that Wang Xizhi make a prelude. At this time, Wang Xizhi was drunk. Taking advantage of the strong wine, he picked up the squirrel beard brush and began to write on cocoon paper.
This preface is the later famous Preface to Lanting Collection. This article is a draft with 28 lines and 324 words. Described the scene of literati appealing to both refined and popular tastes at that time. That writer is in high spirits. It is said that he will never write a book again. There are more than twenty "records" written in different ways. Mi Fei called it "the best running script in the world" in Song Dynasty. According to legend, Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty, collected the Preface to Lanting before his death and was buried in Zhaoling after his death. What's left is a copy of another. What people see now is a preface to Lanting Collection. Wang Xizhi's calligraphy works are very rich. In addition to Preface to Lanting Collection, there are also famous posts about women's posts, seventeen posts, two thank-you posts, phoenix chrysanthemum post, tie Ayi, Shelley Qing post, full moon, Huang Tingjing and so on. The main features of his calligraphy are gentleness, euphemistic style, obvious plum blossoms in autumn, and Wang Xizhi's calligraphy is very beautiful.