Furtherreading
Other info : Career
Retiring to South Hill
After returning home to the family estate in Shi'ning (Shangyu), where he spent considerable time attending to the previously undeveloped or cultivated South Hill, which may also be known as "South Mountain". Here he went on long exploratory expeditions, accompanied by dozens of servants, who often had to hack a way through the more densely vegetated areas: Xie Lingyun is also famed for having invented and used a type of wooden boots with spikes which he could remove or adjust depending on whether he was on level ground or on an up or down slope. His poems from this period made it to the capital city where they were popularly read, and the poems from his Shi'ning period remain among his long lasting accomplishments. Some of the descriptions of and names for the locations of poetic occasions on his estate can be seen to be directly influential on the forty poems of the Wangchuan ji (also known as the Wang or Wheel River Collection) written by Wang Wei and Pei Di, in regards to Wang Wei's Tang Dynasty retirement estate atLantian, south of the contemporary capital Chang'an (modern Xi'an in Shaanxi province).
Back in office, exile, and death
Meanwhile the political changes went on unabated, and Xie once again became enmeshed in them. In 426, the new sovereign summoned him to court, where he spent two years with no real duty or power, but rather as a token to display loyalty: he then left for two years, but came back in 430 to defend himself against charges placed by his local prefect. In 431, he was relegated to what is nowFuzhou in Jiangxi, then the next year further exiled to Guangzhou, he was then sentenced to death on a pretext, in 433, at which point he wrote his final poem, lamenting that his death was not to be on one of his beloved hilltops; and, then was executed.
Poetry
Xie Lingyun has been considered a nature or landscape poet focusing on the "mountain and streams", in contrast to the "field and garden" landscape poetry. His poetry is allusive and complex, with possible Buddhist influence.
Formal technique
Further information: Fu (poetry) and Shi (poetry)
Xie was influenced by a tradition of fu-style poetry, or literature. The Fu tradition often included eloquent descriptions of the beauties of nature; indeed, Xie himself wrote his renowned "Fu on returning to the Mountains" in this style: however, Xie's breakthrough was to distill the essence of this type of Fu and adapt and compress it into the shi more purely poetic form.
Influence
Hailed as the progenitor of the Chinese landscape poetry genre (Shanshui poetry), the reputation of Xie Lingyun as a great poet remains secure, as it has for over a thousand years. The Wangchuan ji by Wang Wei and Pei Di which describes the landscape features of Wang's estate near Chang'an particularly shows the influence of Xie Lingyun's poetry describing the landscape features of his estate near West Lake.
