Potted Calamus and Pleasure Rock
作者
張琪
｜
典藏者
The Walters Art Museum
"Some rocks are strange and eccentric, formed by nature's cuts, some grasses are young and tender, green from winter to summer" begins Zhangqi's [Chang Ch'i's] long poem. The large rock and the planter must be imagined sitting "before a clear window on an uncluttered desk." The rest of the poem is devoted to the praise of the "divine sprouts" of the calamus growing in the planter. Its leaves are hung over doorways at the time of the annual dragonboat festival, and its dried rootlets have numerous medicinal uses. The seals Zhangqi [Chang Ch'i] impressed upon his painting suggest something of his character. They read, "Having no worldly desires" and "Mountain master of vegetable roots."
