A Research Into Jiang Kui's Friends Making And Writing

Jiang Kui was a famous literatus of the Southern Song Dynasty. Many of his poems, poetics, calligraphic works and calligraphic theories came down. Jiang Kui was also a true civillian literati. He had never been an official all his life. And all his life he lived unstably, but he treasured friendship deeply. According to historical data, he made friends with more than one hundred people, the majority of whom were literati and scholar-bureaucrats. There were three reasons why Jiang Kui made friends with them. Firstly, they were all literati who valued friendship. Secondly, Jiang Kui was intended to seek for solutions to saving the nation. Thirdly, he was forced to do so out of poorness. Poem writing was capital of his friend making, and his writing style was affected deeply by his friends.Among Jiang Kui's literary friends, Xiao De-zao, Yang Wan-li, Fan Cheng-da and Xin Qi-ji affected his tendency of writing and taste greatly and obviously. Xiao De-zao's calligraphy, Yang Wan-li's lifestyle, Fan Cheng-da's mildness and Xin Qi-ji's bold and unconstrained character acted on learned, proud Jiang Kui jointly and formed his unique tendency of taste. Zhang Jian influenced Jiang Kui indirectly. Among Jiang Kui's friends, he was the most rich one, who had an eminent family. He helped Jiang Kui a lot in life and was Jiang Kui's true friend who seemed to be his blood brother.Jiang Kui was a person who wanted to save the nation. His unstable life was the result of unfruitful seeking for being officials. On the other hand, life moistened art. Jiang Kui formed his unique "elegance"and "partition". He achieved elegance of poems, and apart from "bold and unconstrained" and "graceful and restrained", he formed his own writing style. At the same time, he formed the style of "partition". But it was "partition" in name, not in essence. In fact, it was real trueness and pureness.