Collection of Liu Yuxi -- Basic Collection of Chinese Family Bookshelves

Author: Zhao Juan, Jiang Jianyun
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-06-01
Features: Liu Yuxi was a renowned litterateur, thinker, and statesman in the mid-Tang Dynasty. As a litterateur, Liu Yuxi composed over 800 poems in his lifetime, earning the title "Poetry Brush"; he also wrote hundreds of articles. Liu Zongyuan praised him as "subtle and rich, with an endless flavor that becomes more profound with each reading" (from Liu Yuxi's "Warning to His Nephew Wei Shi"). His poetry collection was highly regarded by the Ming Dynasty scholar Yang Shen, who wrote: "After the Yuanhe era, there are few poetry collections as remarkable as Liu Yuxi's. His poems have been selected and are widely celebrated, numbering no less than a hundred" (from Sheng'an Poetry Notes, Volume 1). As a thinker, his philosophical ideas are reflected in his three essays, "The Theory of Heaven," where he proposed the important viewpoint of "Heaven and humans mutually dominate and complement each other," demonstrating the fighting spirit of a materialist and atheistic thinker. However, Liu Yuxi was not a successful statesman. The works of Liu Yuxi that we annotate in this volume are primarily based on Complete Tang Poems, while his prose is sourced from the popular Qing Dynasty collection Liu Binguo's Collected Works from Zhu's Jieyi Tengyu Series. We cross-referenced Complete Tang Prose and Qu Tuoyuan's Proofread Collection of Liu Yuxi's Works, translating and adopting the best versions. The works are generally arranged in chronological order. Due to the constraints of the series' format and page limits, we have selectively annotated over 80 poems and more than 20 prose pieces from Liu Yuxi's Collection.