Yu Wuling (810–?) was a Chinese poet of the late Tang dynasty. His birth name was Yu Ye; ''Wuling'' was his

courtesy name A courtesy name (), also known as a style name, is a name bestowed upon one at adulthood in addition to one's given name. This practice is a tradition in the East Asian cultural sphere, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.Ulrich Theo ...

. He attained a ''jinshi'' degree in the

imperial examination The imperial examination (; lit. "subject recommendation") refers to a civil-service examination system in Imperial China, administered for the purpose of selecting candidates for the state bureaucracy. The concept of choosing bureaucrats by ...

, but gave up his position in order to wander around the country. His best-known poem is the

jueju ''Jueju'' (), or Chinese quatrain, is a type of '' jintishi'' ("modern form poetry") that grew popular among Chinese poets in the Tang Dynasty (618–907), although traceable to earlier origins. ''Jueju'' poems are always quatrains; or, more s ...

"Offering Wine", and Book 595 of the ''

Quan Tangshi (''Complete Tang Poems'') is the largest collection of Tang poetry, containing some 49,000 lyric poems by more than twenty-two hundred poets. In 1705, it was commissioned at the direction of the Qing dynasty Kangxi Emperor and published unde ...

'' is devoted to his poetry.

Biography

He was born in 810, in

Duqu Duqu is a collection of computer malware discovered on 1 September 2011, thought by Kaspersky Labs to be related to the Stuxnet worm and to have been created by Unit 8200. Duqu has exploited Microsoft Windows's zero-day vulnerability. The Lab ...

(, in modern-day

Xi'an Xi'an ( , ; ; Chinese: ), frequently spelled as Xian and also known by other names, is the capital of Shaanxi Province. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong Plain, the city is the third most populous city in Western China, after Chongqi ...

Shaanxi Province Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see § Name) is a landlocked province of China. Officially part of Northwest China, it borders the province-level divisions of Shanxi (NE, E), Henan (E), Hubei (SE), Chongqing (S), Sichuan (SW), Gansu (W), ...

). What little is known of his life comes from the ''

Tang Cai Zi Zhuan The ''Tang Cai Zi Zhuan'' () is a Chinese collection of biographies of poets of the Tang Dynasty. Compiler and date It was compiled by the Yuan dynasty figure . Contents It is in ten volumes, and contains biographies of 278 poets. Textual ...

''. The name by which he is usually known, Wuling, was his

, his birth name having been Yu Ye. During the Dachong era (847–859) he attained a ''jinshi'' degree in the

. Unsatisfied with his position, he took up a life of wandering around various parts of the country. After giving up his position at court and travelling around the country, he is supposed to have shown particular fondness for

Dongting Lake Dongting Lake () is a large, shallow lake in northeastern Hunan Province, China. It is a flood basin of the Yangtze River, so its volume depends on the season. The provinces of Hubei and Hunan are named after their location relative to the l ...

and the

Xiang River The Xiang River is the chief river of the Lake Dongting drainage system of the middle Yangtze, the largest river in Hunan Province, China. It is the 2nd largest tributary (after Min River) in terms of surface runoff, the 5th largest tribut ...

. He spent his later years living in seclusion south of

Mount Song Mount Song (, "lofty mountain") is an isolated mountain range in north central China's Henan Province, along the southern bank of the Yellow River. It is known in literary and folk tradition as the central mountain of the Five Great Mountains o ...

. The date of his death is unknown.

Poetry

There is an anthology of his poetry called the ''Yu Wuling Ji'' (). The two primary texts of his poems are found in Book 595 of the eighteenth-century ''

'' and the '' Tangren Wushi Jia Xiaoji'' (), which each order his poems differently. His best-known poem is the

"Offering Wine" (). Ueki et al. speculate, based on a passage in the ''

Song Huiyao ''Song Huiyao Jigao'' ("Song Government Manuscript Compendium") is a Qing dynasty collection of Song dynasty writings on Song government, edited by Xu Song and others who extracted the manuscripts in part from the Ming dynasty ''Yongle Encycloped ...

'' () that records that ''qū zhī'' were offered as tribute from

Srivijaya Srivijaya ( id, Sriwijaya) was a Buddhist thalassocratic empire based on the island of Sumatra (in modern-day Indonesia), which influenced much of Southeast Asia. Srivijaya was an important centre for the expansion of Buddhism from the 7th ...

(), that the "golden flagon" in this poem may also have been a valuable imported item. This, combined with the use of ''mǎn zhuó'' ("brimming") create an atmosphere in the first half of the quatrain of an extravagant banquet. This atmosphere contrasts with that of the last two lines, which carry the implication that one should drink deeply before the blossoms fall, before the time for parting arrives. The final line of this poem has become particularly well-known and is sometimes taken to represent Yu Wuling's view of life.

Masuji Ibuse was a Japanese author. His most notable work is the novel '' Black Rain''. Early life and education Ibuse was born in 1898 to a landowning family in the village of , which is now part of Fukuyama, Hiroshima. Ibuse failed his entrance exam to ...

's Japanese translation of this poem is also famous.

Notes

References

Works cited

* * * * {{cite book , editor-last = Matsuura , editor-first = Tomohisa , editor-link = Tomohisa Matsuura , last1 = Ueki , first1 = Hisayuki , author-link1 = Hisayuki Ueki , last2 = Uno , first2 = Naoto , author-link2 = Naoto Uno , last3 = Matsubara , first3 = Akira , author-link3 = Akira Matsubara , chapter = Shijin to Shi no Shōgai (U Buryō) , pages = 133–134 , title =

Kanshi no Jiten Kanshi may refer to: * Kanshi (poetry) (漢詩), Chinese poetry written by Japanese * Kanshi, Fujian (坎市镇), town in Yongding District, Longyan, Fujian, China * Kanshi, India, town in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India * Kanshi, Mbuji-Mayi Kans ...

, script-title = ja:漢詩の事典 , language = ja , year = 1999 , volume = 1 , location = Tokyo , publisher = Taishūkan Shoten , ref = {{SfnRef, Ueki et al., 1999 , oclc = 41025662

External links

Book 595
of the ''

'' (which collects Yu Wuling's poems) in the

Chinese Text Project The Chinese Text Project (CTP; ) is a digital library project that assembles collections of early Chinese texts. The name of the project in Chinese literally means "The Chinese Philosophical Book Digitization Project", showing its focus on books ...

810 births Year of death unknown Tang dynasty politicians from Shaanxi Tang dynasty poets 9th-century Chinese poets Poets from Shaanxi Politicians from Xi'an Date of death missing Writers from Xi'an