Sekiheki　赤壁

KEY WORD :　 art history / paintings

Ch: Chibi. Lit. Red Cliff. A painting subject of a peak in Hubei 湖北 Province featured in the prose-poem The Red Cliff Ode (Ch: Chibifu, Jp: Sekihekifu 赤壁賦) by the Northern Song poet Su Dongpo (1036-1101, Jp: *So Touba 蘇東坡, also known as Su Shi, Jp: So Shoku 蘇軾). The first part of the prose-poem describes a trip in the autumn of 1082 during which Su and a group of friends take a boat to the base of the Red Cliff, happily drinking wine and reciting poetry until one man begins to think sadly of the famous battle there, recounted in The History of The Three Kingdoms (Ch: Sanguozhi, Jp: SANGOKUSHI 三国志). Su then counsels his friend on the evanescence of human life and the eternity of nature. The second part of the prose-poem takes place three months later when Su and his friends have another nocturnal drinking party at the Red Cliff. When his friends decline his suggestion to climb the cliff, So alone climbs to the top. At first exhilarated, he shouts out into the night, then feeling small and afraid, he hurries down to rejoin his friends. The "Red Cliff" was a favorite pictorial subject in the Southern Song Academy. The earliest extant version is a handscroll by Qiao Zhongchang (Jp: Kyou Chuujou 喬仲常) in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. The theme was painted many times by later Chinese artists, notably the Suzhou 蘇州 painters of the Ming dynasty, and in Japan by Southern school *nanga 南画 painters of the Edo period.

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