Li Yu Collection (China Family Basic Collection. Volume of Master's Selected Works)

Author: Li Yu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Li Yu (937–978), originally named Congjia, styled Chongguang, and known as Zhongyin, was the sixth son of the Middle Emperor of Southern Tang. He was from Xuzhou. In the late years of the establishment of the Song Dynasty (961), he ascended the throne in Jinling, ruling for fifteen years and was known as Li Houzhu. When he ascended the throne, Southern Tang had already recognized the legitimacy of the Song Dynasty and was living in relative peace in the southern part of Jiangnan. In the seventh year of Kaibao (974), Emperor Taizu of Song repeatedly sent messengers to invite him to the north, but he refused to go. In October of the same year, the Song army launched a southward attack on Jinling. The next November, the city fell, and the emperor, stripped bare, surrendered and was captured to Bianjing. He was enfeoffed as Weiming Hou. After Emperor Taizong ascended the throne, he was further enfeoffed as the Marquis of Longxi. On the Qixi Festival (the seventh day of the seventh month) in the third year of Taiping Xingguo (978), which was his forty-second birthday, Emperor Taizong, resenting his line "The former land cannot bear to look back upon under the moonlight," ordered someone to poison him with qianji medicine during a banquet. He was posthumously enfeoffed as the King of Wu and buried on Mount Mangshan in Luoyang.
In the early period, the style of Li Yu's poetry was elegant and sentimental, still influenced by the "Huajian" school. After the fall of his country, during his life of soft imprisonment where "he only wiped his face with tears day and night," he composed a series of tragic and moving poems, making the ex-king a "Southern King" on the poetic stage of all time (as described by Shen Xiong in "Modern and Ancient Ci Poetry"). This is precisely "when the country suffers, the poet benefits; when the world changes, the words become profound." These later poems are desolate and heroic, with profound and far-reaching imagery, laying the groundwork for the "heroic" school of Su Shi and Xin Qiji in the history of poetry. As Wang Guowei noted in "On Human Ci," "It was not until Li Houzhu that the scope of ci poetry broadened and the sentiments deepened." As for the clarity of his language and the harmony of his rhymes, they were unparalleled.
Li Yu originally had a collected works, but it is now lost. Only thirty-eight of his poems survive, with a few of the early ones possibly written by others. Among these, twenty or so are already included in the works of Xiao Fu and others, which I have now proofread and supplemented, generally arranged in chronological order of composition. Li Yu had a thirty-volume collected works, but most of it is now lost. During the Jiaqing era of the Qing Dynasty, Dong Gao and others compiled the "Complete Works of Tang and Song," which included seven of Li Yu's essays. This book follows the same annotations. The appendices at the end of this book mainly include biographies of Li Yu from historical records, comments on his poems by predecessors, and the famous ci poems of his father, Li Jing, as well as the author's own "Chronicle of Li Yu," "On Li Yu's Ci," and "On Li Yu's Poetry," to help readers better understand Li Yu the person and his works. "Profound Quotes" are highlighted in the main text for easy reference.