Miscellaneous Remarks on Calligraphy

Text and textual basis: Fu Shan, “Miscellaneous Remarks on Calligraphy.” This translation follows the sequence of nineteen remarks in the Chinese Wikisource transcription; the paragraph numbers are editorial and permit comparison with the Modern Chinese version. Obvious corruptions are emended only where necessary, while unresolved readings are identified in the notes. The closing “A chance note from the fifth month of the yimao year” dates only the final remark, not the compilation as a whole.

Translation note: Technical vocabulary for script types, brushwork, and classical aesthetics is translated contextually rather than forced into modern typeface categories.

1　In writing small regular script, one must exert great force. Plant the brush against the paper as though bracing an iron staff weighing a thousand jin against the ground.¹ If you suppose that small characters require no weight of force—that they may be completed by flitting here and there, dotting and embellishing—then you are talking in your sleep about this art. Copy the Huangting jing several thousand times over; then work with a round-tipped brush and the strength of a fragrant elephant, move the wrist with utter concentration, and have shoulder and back convey the force of sinew and bone. Only after this force has long been welling up from the right Tianzhu may one speak of the transformations between the unorthodox and the orthodox.²

2　In small regular script, the zoubo—the sweeping stroke associated with 辵/辶—is not difficult; the leluo, the checked settling of the stroke, is especially difficult. It is difficult to cut into stone as well. Those who write model calligraphy and those who engrave it alike commonly let this pass.³

3　Writing characters consists simply in not letting oneself run riot. Stroke by stroke, line by line: make them even and secure. If the structure will pass, what could fail to work? Jingguang loved calligraphy and preserved several sheets by Wu Bafu; all had been written in moments of apprehensive diligence and care. Alas, he is dead. Jingguang studied this brush method closely and became the blue that surpasses the indigo.⁴

4　There are no ingenious tricks in writing characters; there is only upright awkwardness. Carry uprightness to its extreme and the marvelous is born: in the end, this is no more than “great skill appears clumsy.” If you do not believe it, then, just as the brush descends, first conceive an intention: “I shall make this character assume such-and-such a configuration.” Once the character is complete, its structure will be utterly at odds with your intention. From this too one may know that the natural seam within it cannot be fabricated. “Ability lies in a practiced hand”—a homely saying has disclosed the Way. Before the age of forty, Wang Duo strained every sinew to contrive his characters; after forty, they fell into measure without intention, and he thereby became a master.

5　The Jin is the Jin; the Six Dynasties, the Six Dynasties; the Tang, the Tang; the Song, the Song; the Yuan, the Yuan. Of late, perfectly good brush methods have been written to ruin by a single house: Jin that is not Jin, Six Dynasties that are not Six Dynasties, Tang that is not Tang, Song and Yuan that are neither Song nor Yuan. And still it glitters and preens in its prettiness, imagining itself the grand culmination of them all. Anyone with eyes sees at a glance its taste for the inner apartments.

6　Tang Lin remarks: “This is said of Dong Wenmin,” that is, Dong Qichang.⁵

7　I once detested Zhao Ziang. Holding the man cheap, I came to hate his calligraphy. Recently, however, I have looked at it closely, and it does not deserve wholesale condemnation. Its consummate ingratiation and lissome grace are naturally a low manner; yet its moist elegance and rounded fluency still belong to the orthodox lineage. It arose through a slight internal transformation of the Lanting. That it rises or falls with its age also follows the fortunes of qi: literary composition is not alone in this.

8　I know full well calligraphy’s finest realm. When at first I want it to be thus but cannot make it thus, this is because mind and hand, paper and brush—subject and object—are mutually at odds. To intend it thus and be able to make it thus: that is craft. Not to intend it thus and yet have it become thus: that is Heaven. Each line has the Heaven of that line; each character has the Heaven of that character. Spirit arrives and the brush arrives: Heaven. The brush does not arrive, yet spirit arrives: Heaven. Arrival and non-arrival—nothing is not Heaven. What more can I say? It is, after all, difficult to speak of.

9　If regular script does not come from seal script, clerical script, and bafen, it is merely a slave’s posture and not worth looking at. Old Suo Jing already grasped this principle; look at the Jijiu zhang and it becomes abundantly clear. What are called seal, clerical, and bafen scripts must not be considered only in their outward forms: everything turns on the liveliness of the brush as it moves, turns, and folds. Vulgar characters are laid out entirely by human exertion, and precisely through such arranging and settling they lose the marvel of nature’s own workings. Examine how the brush descends in ancient seal and clerical script: one cannot tell at all how the forms were laid out. They seem greatly scattered and disordered, yet in the end one could not rearrange them on their behalf. Unless writing reaches transformation, its wonder does not appear; yet how could transformation be easily attained? Unless one enters through correctness, one cannot emerge in transformation. If only one can enter correctly, the debased air of maidservant and rustic vulgarity will disappear of itself. Yet an unpracticed brush is unresponsive, while one must also shun irreverent overfamiliarity; practiced facility itself verges upon such overfamiliarity. “Let the intention be upright and the body straight”: calligraphy communicates with archery. As for Yuanyang’s shooting—even Old Zhong, in the end, did not know it. This is the Way of avoiding overfamiliarity, and one must understand it.⁶

10　At eight or nine I was already copying Yuanchang, Zhong You, but I did not resemble him. As I grew somewhat older, there was the Huangting jing, the Cao E Stele, the Essay on Yue Yi, the Eulogy on Dongfang Shuo, the Thirteen Lines of the Rhapsody on the Goddess of the Luo, and, farther down, the Essay on Dispelling Error: there was nothing I did not copy, yet not one copy came close. Finally I wrote after Duke Lu’s Family Temple Stele and gained a little of its disjointedness. Then, tracing the current upstream, I copied the Dispute over Seating, rather wishing to resemble it; advancing once more, I copied the Lanting. Although I did not obtain its spirit and expression, I gradually began to know the broad outlines of this art. In old age I can no longer write small regular script. Yet with the Huangting, I sharpen my sense of its minutiae day after day; just as I am about to set down the brush, it is once again a thousand li away.⁷

11　Characters differ from literary composition in this: if a single stroke in a character does not resemble the ancients, it does not constitute a character; but if literary composition serves merely as a printing block for the ancients, ought it still to be called composition? The transformations and adjustments within this cannot be exhaustively told. It is hardest of all to discuss them with vulgar scholars.

12　What have written characters to do with human affairs? And yet I fear precisely that they may carry a servile and vulgar air. Only when one can be free of servile and vulgar habits may one speak of a bearing and aspiration that rise day by day—and not in characters alone.

13　If, in writing regular script, one does not understand the transformations of seal and clerical script, then however far one writes into the marvelous realm, the result remains a vulgar pattern. Everything immeasurable in Zhong You and Wang Xizhi was obtained from this very matter. This old man has truly seen through its ground; it is only that my disciplined practice has not reached perfect purity. Hence I cannot yet have heart and hand answer one another at will. But when I happen to fall into accord, there are places where I do not fall short of the ancients by the slightest fraction. And when my seal or clerical script comes off to my satisfaction, it is truly enough to make one cry out in astonishment: one feels that ancient and zhou script, regular, running, cursive, and clerical script are fundamentally without difference.⁸

14　In regular and running script, nothing surpasses the Lanting; next below it comes the Shengjiao xu. Neither survives in a good exemplar. Yet if one must first obtain a good exemplar before taking up the practice of copying, would this Way not all but come to an end? Recent students of calligraphy mostly devote themselves to the Shengjiao, but every one of them is a maidservant impersonating her mistress. Beside the Lanting, the Shengjiao is already only a colt beneath the carriage shafts; how much more so those who build a house beneath a house—slaves twice enslaved? Zhao Ziang was adept at feeling his way into this principle and grasped its meaning. Yet he put too much running script into regular script, wholly unaware that the Lanting puts much regular script into its running script. Of the single record known as the Lanting, the Dingwu version is one of those most relished by the world; in my view, however, nothing surpasses the Tang copy on silk. This may be said to one who understands, but it is difficult to discuss with someone outside the gate. If judged by gross departures from the model, even Zijing, Wang Xianzhi, should not be studied—how much less anyone else. That the school of Mi Dian, Mi Fu, came into being was Zijing’s crime; that the school of the present day came into being is the Mi family’s crime. No: this is not the creators’ crime, but the fault of those who study them. Anyone with serious purpose will certainly not fall into this evil road. These are my reckless remarks; yet they have also received the assent of farsighted and discerning colleagues. I would not dare force others to agree with me.⁹

15　In all things Heaven prevails; Heaven cannot be deceived. Man is wholly of Heaven. Yet if one has not trained through the human and deceives oneself by invoking Heaven, Heaven cannot be fabricated out of empty air. The human is Heaven’s agent. Draw it forth through diligence, and Heaven is not buried deep. The single Way of writing characters already contains this clue. Accumulate months and years, and you will know it for yourself.¹⁰

16　Blear-eyed and impetuous fellows call sheer coarseness “heroic amplitude.” Coarseness is not amplitude. If it is truly heroic, it cannot be coarse. Tell me: in Master Mao, the Lord of the Secretariat—the writing brush—do we prize its coarseness, or do we choose it for its long, sharp point? If coarseness were what mattered, what difficulty would there be in twisting sheep or ox hair into brushes as thick as a finger, an arm, or a belly? Would those not serve perfectly well? Why then select hairs from a rabbit’s spine, a civet’s back, or a rat’s whiskers?¹¹

17　What is inconceivable in Han clerical script is simply its hardness and awkwardness. Originally it had no intention of calculated layout or measured fitting. In all the components—their left and right sides, breadth and narrowness, openness and density—the hand proceeds wherever it will: one unbroken current of nature’s workings. The presently circulating Shenglin Liang Hu Stele looks like an object cast in a brick mould and is utterly without savor. I do not know who traced and reproduced it. It is detestable in the extreme.¹²

18　Those who do not know the origins of seal and zhou script, yet discourse on the study of characters and the art of calligraphy, are all asleep. They merely furnish the enlightened with a laugh.

19　Literary composition is a minor craft and has no exalted standing beside the Way; how much less this business of writing characters—what has it to do with the Way? My family has practiced it for six or seven generations in unbroken succession, yet none of them was made its servant for other people. Only with me began the misery of having to attend to vulgar creatures. They repeatedly force me to write before their very faces, imagining that this way they obtain the genuine article. Of the things I produce facing such people, not one is worth looking at. Resentment and vexation are already lodged within me, utterly violating the marvelous, self-achieved accord of mind and hand. How could outsiders possibly know the truth of it? Yet there is also an untransmitted secret here. Pretenders to understanding repeatedly claim that they can distinguish my calligraphy from my son’s; I can only cover my mouth at them. Broadly speaking, they take the work with heavy ink and an unbridled brush, filled with black, branching tangles, to be the father’s; work with light ink and a graceful brush, bright and lovely between the lines, they take to be the son’s. Whenever I hear their judgments, they are merely peddling their folly. Over the past two or three years, the brush that stood in for mine in fact most often came from my nephew Ren. People would immediately declare that it was genuinely my writing. They know of the son but not the nephew, who thus repeatedly saved me labor. Alas! Ren abruptly left me a year ago. Whenever I now receive a commission and take up the brush, my heart aches with grief. How could I ransom back this younger Ruan of mine? A chance note from the fifth month of the yimao year.¹³

Footnotes

1. Wikisource records a variant between 金 and 斤 in “千金／斤鐵杖.” The idiomatic and semantically cogent reading is “a thousand-jin iron staff.” ↩

2. The transmitted punctuation around “寫黃庭經數千過了，用圓鋒筆、香象力” is unstable. “Fragrant elephant” is a Buddhist figure for prodigious strength. “Right Tianzhu” probably denotes the Tianzhu region at the nape and shoulder, but the precise anatomical reference is not secure. ↩

3. 走波 has a strong variant 辵波, supporting its interpretation as a sweeping stroke associated with the 辵/辶 component. 勒 names a controlled horizontal stroke, but 勒落 and the final syntax remain uncertain; the translation therefore avoids assigning them an excessively precise operation. ↩

4. Jingguang and Wu Bafu cannot be securely identified. 蘭 in 青於蘭 is an evident error for 藍, from the saying “blue comes from indigo and surpasses it.” The identity of the person whose death is lamented is grammatically probable rather than certain. ↩

5. Dong Wenmin is Dong Qichang, whose posthumous name was Wenmin. “Tang Lin remarks” is a later editorial interjection, not part of Fu Shan’s own argument; Tang Lin’s identity remains uncertain. ↩

6. “Yuanyang’s shooting” and “Old Zhong” appear to be a private or textually damaged allusion and cannot presently be identified. The preceding phrase “intention upright, body straight” invokes classical discourse on ritual archery. ↩

7. Wikisource reads 朔, 曰, and 裁. The translation follows the contextually persuasive readings 溯, 日, and 纔: “trace upstream,” “daily,” and “just as.” The latter two remain conjectural. ↩

8. 阿堵 is a colloquial expression meaning “this very thing,” here the principle of transformation from seal and clerical scripts. Fu Shan’s claim that the scripts are “fundamentally without difference” concerns a shared principle of brushwork, not literal identity of historical forms. ↩

9. The Shengjiao xu is the text assembled by the Tang monk Huairen from characters attributed to Wang Xizhi. “Dingwu” denotes the celebrated Dingwu recension of the Lanting; “the Tang copy on silk” denotes a version traditionally regarded as a Tang tracing on silk. 抹索 is treated as a vernacular form close to 摸索, “to feel or grope one’s way into.” ↩

10. Wikisource’s “凡事天勝天，不可期人，純天矣” is syntactically incoherent. The translation follows an independently attested reading: “凡事天勝，天不可欺。人純天矣。” The passage expressly rejects invoking naturalness as a substitute for training. ↩

11. Wikisource reads 卯君中書 and 亦屬其銳而長. The wordplay and the allusion to Han Yu’s Biography of Mao Ying indicate 毛君／中書君, “Master Mao, Lord of the Secretariat,” a personification of the brush; 亦取其銳而長, “or choose it for being sharp and long,” is the probable underlying reading. ↩

12. Another witness reads 墼模, “brick mould,” clarifying Wikisource’s shorter 模. The title 聖林梁鵠碑 likely denotes a stele attributed to Liang Hu in the Confucian sacred precinct, but the exact transmitted exemplar is not certain. ↩

13. Fu Ren was Fu Shan’s nephew and sometimes wrote in his stead. “Younger Ruan” is an affectionate learned designation for a nephew, invoking Ruan Xian as Ruan Ji’s nephew. The yimao year is 1675; the date belongs to this final remark, not necessarily to the preceding eighteen remarks or to the later compilation as a whole. ↩

原文與校讀：清·傅山，〈書法散論〉。本頁依維基文庫錄文所列十九則的次序翻譯；段落編號為譯者所加，便於中英對讀。對明顯訛脫只作最低限度的校讀，凡仍有疑義者均見註。篇末「乙卯五月偶記」只標明末則的寫作時間，並非整份彙編的成文日期。

翻譯說明：本頁為現代漢語譯文。中文裡首次出現的關鍵書學與美學術語，附以英文 ruby；書體、筆法及古典美學概念均按本文語境翻譯，不以現代字體分類強行等同。

一　寫小楷small regular script，必須用大力；要把筆直直拄在紙上，像拿一根重達千斤的鐵杖拄地一樣。¹ 若說小字不必用重力，可以輕飄飄地點綴幾筆便成，那便是在這門技藝上說夢話。把《黃庭經》寫過幾千遍；全用圓鋒rounded brush tip，使出香象般的力量，竭盡心力運轉手腕，由肩背輸送筋骨之力。久久之後，力量從右側天柱湧起，然後才可以談奇與正unorthodox and orthodox的變化。²

二　寫小楷，辵部的波勢並不難，勒筆的收束落下卻尤其難；刻在石上也難。因此，那些寫法書的、勒石的，往往都把這一處隨便擱過。³

三　寫字只在於不放肆。一筆一畫，平平穩穩，結構過得去，有什麼行不通的？靜光喜愛書法，收存了武拔甫的幾紙字；這些都是兢兢業業、謹慎書寫時的作品。可惜他已經死了。靜光頗能學這種筆法，而且青出於藍。⁴

四　寫字沒有什麼奇巧，只有正與拙uprightness and awkwardness。正到了極處，奇便從中生出；歸根到底，也不過是大巧若拙罷了。若不相信，只須在落筆前先萌生一個念頭：「我要把這個字寫成怎樣的一種勢。」等字寫成，結構卻與原意全然乖違；由此也可以知道，其中的天倪natural seam是造作不來的。「手熟便能」這句近常之言，已把道理說破。王鐸四十歲以前的字極力造作；四十歲以後無意而合拍，於是成為大家。⁵

五　晉就是晉，六朝就是六朝，唐就是唐，宋就是宋，元就是元。本來好好的筆法，近來卻被一家寫壞了：晉不像晉，六朝不像六朝，唐不像唐，宋元也不像宋元；還光鮮姣好，自以為集其大成。有眼力的人一看，便窺見這不過是他內室一家的好尚。

六　唐林說：這一段是在說董文敏，也就是董其昌。⁶

七　我極不喜歡趙子昂；因為鄙薄他的人品，便連他的字也厭惡。近來細看，卻也不可過分非議：那熟媚綽約，自然是一種賤態；但潤秀圓轉，還屬於正脈orthodox lineage。大抵是從《蘭亭序》內部稍稍變化，才走到這一步。書法隨時代而有高下，也出於氣運historical configuration of qi；不只是文章才這樣。⁷

八　我非常清楚書法的佳境。只是，起初想寫成這樣，卻寫不成這樣，是因為心與手、紙與筆，主與客彼此乖違。預期如此而能夠如此，是工craft；不預期如此而竟能如此，是天Heaven。一行有一行的天，一字有一字的天。神spirit到了而筆也到了，是天；筆不到而神到了，也是天。到與不到，沒有不是天。我還能再說什麼？這原本就是難以言說的。⁸

九　楷書regular script若不是從篆、隸、八分seal, clerical, and bafen scripts而來，便只是一副奴才相，不值得看。老索靖早已得到這層意思；一看《急就章》，便大為明白。所謂篆、隸、八分，不只是說它們的形貌，全要從運筆brush movement轉折的活潑處看。俗字全憑人力擺列，天機nature’s workings自然之妙，竟就在安頓安排之中失掉了。試看那些古篆古隸，一落筆，渾像不知道該怎樣布置，彷彿散亂得很；可到最後，任何一處又都不能替它整理更動。寫字不到變化處，便看不出妙；然而，變化又哪裡容易達到？不從正路進，便不能變化而出。只要能從正路進，自然沒有婢賤野俗之氣。然而筆不熟便不靈，同時又忌諱褻慢facile overfamiliarity；可是熟了，又接近褻慢。志要正，身體要直，書法與射箭相通。至於「元陽之射」，鍾老竟然不懂；這便是不褻之道，不能不知道。⁹

十　我八九歲便臨鍾元常，臨得不像。年歲稍長，像《黃庭經》《曹娥碑》《樂毅論》《東方朔畫像贊》《洛神賦十三行》，下至《破邪論序》，沒有一種不臨，卻沒有一種臨得相近。最後寫顏魯公《家廟碑》，才略微得到它的支離之態。又上溯去臨《爭座位帖》，很想寫得像它；再進而臨《蘭亭序》，雖然得不到它的神情，卻漸漸想要明白這門技藝的大概了。老來不能寫小楷；可是對《黃庭經》，即使日日砥礪其精微，才想下筆，又已相去千里。¹⁰

十一　字與文章不同：字若有一筆不像古人，便不成其為字；文章若只替古人做一塊印板，又能把它叫作文章嗎？其中的機變說也說不完，最難同俗士談論。

十二　字又同人事有什麼關係？偏偏就怕它帶著奴氣、俗氣。若能沒有奴俗習氣，才可以同他談風度志趣日益上進；這不只關乎字。

十三　楷書若不懂篆隸的變化，任憑你寫到妙境，終究還是俗格。鍾繇、王羲之不可測度的地方，全從這裡得來。老夫確確實實把這一層看穿了，只是工夫不能純粹到家，所以不能得心應手。若偶然相合，也有絲毫不遜於古人的地方。至於篆隸寫得意時，實在足以令人驚歎；便覺得古文、籀文、真書、行書、草書、隸書ancient, zhou, regular, running, cursive, and clerical scripts，本來沒有差別。¹¹

十四　真書與行書，沒有超過《蘭亭序》的；再下一等，就是《聖教序》。兩者都沒有善本。若一定要找到善本才肯臨池copying practice，這條路豈不幾乎斷絕？近來學書的人多在《聖教序》上用功，卻全是婢女扮作夫人。《聖教序》比起《蘭亭序》，已經是轅下的小駒；何況再在屋下架屋，做一重又一重的奴僕？趙子昂善於摸索，懂得這一層意思；但他的楷書中行意太多，哪裡知道《蘭亭序》卻是行書中楷意很多。即就《蘭亭序》這一帖來說，世間膾炙人口的是定武本；照我看，沒有超過唐人臨寫的絹本。這話可以同懂的人說，卻難以同門外漢說。若從大處的乖離來論，連王子敬都不可學，何況其他人？開出米顛一路，是子敬之罪；開出今日一路，是米家之罪。其實這不是創作者的罪，是學他們的人的過錯。有志者決不會墮入這條惡道。這是我的妄談；但也曾得到有眼光、有見識的同道贊許。我不敢強迫別人與我相同。¹²

十五　凡事以天為勝；天不可欺。人原本純然是天。不在人事上學習，卻拿「天」來自欺；天是不能懸在半空、憑空造出來的。人是天的使者；勤勉地把它引發出來，天便不再深藏。寫字這一道，便具備這番端倪；積月累年，自然會知道。¹³

十六　那些眼光混沌、性情躁進的人，把粗叫作豪heroic amplitude。粗並不是豪；果真豪，必然不粗。且說，毛君做了中書君——也就是毛筆——人們喜歡它，難道是喜歡它粗？還是取它尖銳而修長？若只求粗，把羊毛、牛毛束成像手指、手臂、肚腹那麼粗，又有何難？難道會不能用嗎？又何必挑選兔脊、狸背、鼠鬚上的毫毛？¹⁴

十七　漢隸不可思議的地方，只是硬拙hard awkwardness，起初全沒有刻意布置、處處安頓妥當的意思。凡是偏旁左右的寬窄疏密，都信手寫去，一派天機。如今流行的聖林梁鵠碑，像磚模裡壓出的東西，毫無風味；不知是誰翻摹的，實在可厭至極。¹⁵

十八　不知道篆籀的源流，卻談字學、書法，全都是在夢中說話；只供真正明白的人一笑。

十九　文章只是小技，在道the Way面前尚且不算尊貴，何況這寫字，於道又算得上什麼？我們家做這件事，已經一連六七代；可是從前的人都不受人役使，到我才開始苦於應酬世俗人物。每逢人家逼我當面書寫，便以為拿到了真跡；其實那時我對著人寫的，沒有一幅值得看。況且心中早已有了忿懣，大大違反心與手相互造就、適意而成的妙處；真正的內情，外人哪裡知道？然而，其中也自有不傳之秘。有人硬充懂行，動不動便說能分辨我父子的書法，我只好為他掩口而笑。大抵他們把墨重筆放、滿紙墨黑而枝杈縱橫的認作父，把墨輕筆秀、行間明媚的認作子。每聽到這番議論，正是在兜售自己的愚痴罷了。兩三年來，代我落筆的，其實多是侄兒傅仁；人們卻總說真是我的字。他們只知道兒子，不知道侄兒；侄兒往往替我省去勞苦。可悲啊！傅仁徑直離我而去，已經一年了。每次接受請託、拿起筆來，便心酸痛楚；要怎樣才能贖回我這個小阮呢？乙卯年五月偶記。¹⁶

Footnotes

1. 維基文庫在「千金／斤鐵杖」處留有異文；按重量語境及通行引文，當作「千斤鐵杖」。此處只校正訛字，不改變譬喻。 ↩

2. 《黃庭經》為傳世小楷名跡，舊題王羲之書，今本來源與作者歸屬歷來有爭議。「香象力」借佛典中香象的巨力，形容力量由肩臂貫注腕端；「右天柱」大概指頸項至肩背的天柱部位，確切解剖所指未定。 ↩

3. 「辵波」別本作「走波」，疑指辵部波磔一類的行筆。「勒」是受控的橫向筆勢；「勒落」以下疑有訛脫，故譯文只依上下文作最低限度的理解，不強定某一精細筆法。 ↩

4. 靜光、武拔甫的事跡未能確考，原句中死者所指亦只屬語法上較可能的判斷。「青於藍」用《荀子·勸學》「青，取之於藍，而青於藍」之意；底本「蘭」校作「藍」。 ↩

5. 「天倪」本《莊子》語，此處指不由意匠強造、而從純熟實踐中自然呈露的分際與紋理。「四十年前／後」指王鐸四十歲以前與以後，不是相隔四十年。 ↩

6. 董文敏即董其昌，諡文敏。「唐林曰」是後來夾入的評語，不是傅山正文；唐林的確切身分未詳。 ↩

7. 趙子昂即趙孟頫。傅山以宋室後裔仕元為失節，故其人物評價直接介入書法判斷；譯文保留這一歷史性的價值判斷，而不把它改寫成中立的藝術史結論。 ↩

8. 「工」與「天」不是技術與無技術的簡單對立。「天」指技法深熟後不由意造而自至的境界；下文第十五則又明說，人力與長期學習正是引出「天」的途徑。 ↩

9. 老索即西晉書家索靖；《急就章》原為漢代史游所作的識字課本，後以章草書本著名。「元陽之射而鍾老竟不知」所指人物與掌故未詳，原文也可能另有訛脫。 ↩

10. 本則列舉的，是鍾繇、王羲之、王獻之、虞世南與顏真卿傳統中的著名法帖。底本「朔」「曰」「裁」分別依文義校讀為「溯」「日」「纔」；後二字仍屬審慎推定。 ↩

11. 「阿堵」是六朝以來的口語，意即「這個」，所指正是楷書中仍可見的篆隸轉變之理。傅山說諸體「本無差別」，是主張它們共享用筆原理，不是說字形在歷史上全然相同。 ↩

12. 《聖教序》指懷仁集王羲之字而成的《集王聖教序》；「臨池」是長期臨寫法帖的慣稱。「定武」指《蘭亭序》著名的定武刻本系統；「唐臨絹本」則指傳為唐人臨寫於絹上的版本。「抹索」依近於「摸索」的俗寫理解。 ↩

13. 維基文庫本作「凡事天勝天，不可期人，純天矣」，句法不通；此處依別本引文校作「凡事天勝，天不可欺。人純天矣」。這一段恰好反對不經學習便以「天然」自飾。 ↩

14. 底本作「卯君中書」與「亦屬其銳而長」；典故與語義均指向「毛君／中書君」與「亦取其銳而長」。「中書君」出自韓愈《毛穎傳》，後成為毛筆的雅稱；後一校讀仍屬推定。「混目冒躁」本身也可能有訛字。 ↩

15. 別本作「如墼模中物」；「墼模」即製磚之模。傅山是在批評這一流傳碑本過分均整、近於模製，而不是把一切「拙」都當作可取。參見相關校引。 ↩

16. 傅仁是傅山之侄，曾代他應人求書。「小阮」借阮籍、阮咸叔侄之典泛稱侄兒；「乙卯」為康熙十四年，即 1675 年。這個日期在句法上只管末則，不應倒推為前十八則或整個後來彙編的統一寫作日期。 ↩