"Note on a Calligraphic Screen"

In "Note on a Calligraphic Screen" 书屏记 (900 AD), Sikong Tu 司空图 relates that when his father settled down in Yuxiang, Tu's calligraphy master, Pei Xiu 裴休,  received a present from Li Rong, who was "also famous for his calligraphy in scribbled 草 and clerical 隶 styles." Li Rong's present was a screen 屏, consisting of forty-two panels of calligraphy by Xu Hao 徐浩 (703-782), a great Tang calligrapher. According to Sikong Tu's account, his father so appreciated the masterpiece of Xu Hao that he studied it every morning and so enjoyed it that he even neglected to eat or sleep. Tu might have been exaggerating, but his account indicates his father's enthusiasm for the art.

Sikong Tu's account of Li Rong and Xu Hao's screen is the only information we have of them in Chinese art history. According to Tu, Xu Hao wrote in all styles, including the "eight styles" (bati) and most of the poems he wrote were quotations of five-syllable poems from Wenxuan, an anthology compiled under the patronage of Xiao Tong (501-531). The screen included two lines of a poem 杂诗 written by Wang Can of the Jin 晋 dynasty (265-420):

Winds from the north move the autumn grasses,
Horses at the border have their minds on return.

朔风动秋草,边马有归心

Screen paintings from a Tang tomb, discovered in 1987 and exhibited here at the Xi'an Expo, May 2011 .

Sikong Tu remarked that these two lines, together with some others, which were written in clerical or scribbled styles, were the outstanding portions of the masterpiece 或草或隶，尤为精絶. He also added that on the lower margin of the screen someone noted a very poetic comment on Xu Hao's calligraphy:

Mad beasts gouge stone,
Thirsty horse races to the well.
They can see all the blue sky.

怒猊抉石，渴驥奔泉

The first two lines of this comment have become the most often quoted description of Xu Hao's calligraphy. Unfortunately, the screen was burnt to ashes in 869 by a fire.

-Wong Yoon Wah, Ssuk'ung T'u: Poet-Critic of the T'ang (poetry translations meddled with)