Solitary Journey of a Recluse

遂作山中士　 道遙謝世緣　 撫松忘夕日　 坐石聽清泉　 詩妙欲無語　 琴音非有絃　 翛然得真契　 寧必問神仙 And so I have become a mountain-dwelling scholar, Wandering freely, having renounced worldly karma. Caressing a pine tree, I forget the westering sun, Sitting on a rock, listen to the pure stream. I want my poems so subtle that they lack words, My lute playing so fine it is as if I used no strings. Joyfully I have grasped true integration: What need to query the spirits and immortals? The vast majority of Kodōjin’s paintings are oriented vertically (i.e., hanging scrolls), but on rare occasions he worked in horizontal formats, including wide compositions that would have been framed. This format was inspired by the horizontal handscroll; Kodōjin mostly employed these for calligraphy works that featured the names of a room or a building and hung over doorways or under eaves. Landscape paintings in this format are unusual, and Solitary Journey of a Recluse is the largest known horizontal landscape painting by Kodōjin.