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 ( zh, s=字, p=zì, l=character), also known as a style name, is an additional name bestowed upon individuals at adulthood, complementing their given name. This tradition is prevalent in the East Asian cultural sphere, particula ...

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

imperial examination The imperial examination was a civil service examination system in History of China#Imperial China, Imperial China administered for the purpose of selecting candidates for the Civil service#China, state bureaucracy. The concept of choosing bureau ...

, 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 sp ...

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

Quan Tangshi ''Complete Tang Poems'' (or ') 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 un ...

'' 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. The Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security ( CrySyS Lab) of the ...

(, in modern-day

Xi'an Xi'an is the list of capitals in China, capital of the Chinese province of Shaanxi. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong plain, the city is the third-most populous city in Western China after Chongqing and Chengdu, as well as the most populou ...

Shaanxi Province Shaanxi is a province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to the west. Shaanxi ...

). What little is known of his life comes from the '' Tang Cai Zi Zhuan''. 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 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 second-largest tributary (after the Min River) in terms of surface runoff, the fifth-largest ...

. 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 of ...

. 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 Tang Chinese or ''Tangren'' and variants may refer to the following: *The people of the Tang dynasty of medieval China *Middle Chinese, the reconstructed prestige dialect of Tang China *Han Chinese The Han Chinese, alternatively the Han ...

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

Srivijaya Srivijaya (), also spelled Sri Vijaya, was a Hinduism, Hindu-Buddhism, Buddhist thalassocracy, thalassocratic empire based on the island of Sumatra (in modern-day Indonesia) that influenced much of Southeast Asia. Srivijaya was an important ...

(), 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 novel ''Black Rain (novel), Black Rain,'' about the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bombing of Hiroshima, was awarded the Noma Prize and the Order of Culture, Order of Cultural Merit. Early life and educat ...

'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 , 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 government officials Tang dynasty poets 9th-century Chinese poets Poets from Shaanxi Politicians from Xi'an Date of death unknown Writers from Xi'an