Mount Tanshan's Poet Master, Liu Yuxi

Author: Zhou Xiancai
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-10-01
Features: This book annotates over 200 poems out of more than 800. A selected passage from Letter to Du the Minister is included as the first chapter to help readers understand the author's domestic circumstances. Regarding Inscription of the Humble Abode, although it is not included in the collection, it is widely known and has been passed down without fading. Therefore, it is annotated based on Selected Writings Through Dynasties. When annotating famous works for modern use, common methods include collation and annotation, textual criticism, and annotation and verification. However, the poetic and prose section of this book is titled Annotations. This is because collation and annotation imply correction, textual criticism involves comparing different editions to make corrections, and annotation and verification imply proof and evidence. This book adopts annotations to rely on a single edition, providing textual notes to help readers understand the historical background of the author's time and the meaning of the poems. As for the base text, it is the Collected Works of Liu Biyuan, a 30-volume main collection and 10-volume supplementary collection published by the Renhé Zhu family in the Guangxu year of the Qing dynasty (1905). In other works such as Ten Thousand Tang Poems and Complete Tang Poems, references like "sometimes written as" beneath certain characters are merely for reference and have not been adopted. Throughout his life, Liu Yuxi, despite his turbulent career, was widely connected due to his achievements and status as a statesman, thinker, and literary figure. His poems are filled with exchanges and responses. However, in the titles, only the other party's official position is mentioned, with names rarely included. Similar to today's official circles, where titles like "Secretary ×" or "Director ×" are used instead of names, this poses a certain challenge for annotations. As the saying goes, "One only regrets not having read enough when the time comes." The small annotations in this book rely on The Two Tang Histories, Dictionary of Chinese Names, as well as the collected works of Bai, Liu, Han, and Li (Shangyin) for verification. Regarding Tang-era place names, Historical Atlas of China·Tang Volume and the 1971 map of the People's Republic of China are used for reference. The meanings of the poems and prose are also checked against the collected works of Bai, Liu, Han, and Li, among others. This is because at official banquets, there were often multiple guests, and the poems composed during the gathering were frequently written by several poets.