Liu Zongyuan

Liu Zongyuan a Chinese writer, poet and statesman of the Tang dynasty, regarded as one of the greatest masters of classical Chinese prose and as a leading figure, with Han Yu, of the movement to revive the plain and vigorous style of the ancient writers. His essays, fables, travel sketches and poems are among the treasures of Chinese literature.

Early Life and the Yongzhen Reform

Liu Zongyuan was born in 773 in Chang'an into a family of scholar-officials of long standing. He was a brilliant student and passed the imperial examination at an early age, in 793, and he rose quickly in the service of the court. He attracted the notice of the leading figures of the capital and was regarded as one of the most promising men of his generation.

In 805 he became associated with a group of reform-minded officials who came to power under the sickly emperor Shunzong and who attempted a sweeping program of administrative reform, aimed at curbing the power of the eunuchs, reducing the burden on the people and reforming the finances. The so-called Yongzhen reform lasted only some months.

When the emperor abdicated and the reaction came, the reformers were driven from power. Liu Zongyuan was banished to a distant provincial post, as was his friend and fellow reformer Liu Yuxi and the other members of the group. The exile, which was intended to be temporary, lasted for the rest of his life and determined the course of his writing.

Exile, Landscape and the Travel Essays

Liu Zongyuan was sent first to Yongzhou in the far south, in what is now Hunan, and lived there for about ten years in obscurity and poor health. Cut off from the centre of power and from his friends, he turned to the study of the classics, to Buddhism and to the exploration of the wild landscape around him.

Out of this experience came the Eight Records of Yongzhou, a set of short prose sketches which are among the most celebrated pieces in Chinese literature. In them he describes mountains, streams, cliffs and pools with remarkable precision and with a meditative intensity, using the landscape as a vehicle for reflection on his own condition and on the order of the world.

These travel essays created a new kind of Chinese nature writing, personal, exact and philosophical. They record not only the appearance of the scenes but the movement of the writer's mind among them, and they made of the remote countryside a subject worthy of the highest art. Later writers looked to them as the model of the genre.

Fables, Polemics and Classical Prose

Liu Zongyuan wrote a large body of prose of many kinds: political essays, letters, prefaces, biographies, memorials and fables. His animal fables, in which the foolishness or greed of the creatures reflects the failings of human society, are witty, pointed and memorable, and they are among the earliest examples of the fable as a serious literary form in Chinese.

As a thinker he was an opponent of superstition and of the superstitious practices of his age, and he wrote forcefully against the belief that natural disasters were punishments sent by heaven. He argued for a rational understanding of the world and for the responsibility of human beings to order their own affairs, and his essays on these themes were influential.

With Han Yu he was the leading theorist and practitioner of the classical prose movement. He held that writing should be clear, purposeful and modelled on the ancient masters, and he demonstrated in his own essays the power and the flexibility of the revived classical style. His prose is admired for its precision, its structure and its moral seriousness.

Poetry and the Later Years

Liu Zongyuan wrote poetry as well as prose, and his verse, though less extensive than his prose, is distinctive. His poems of exile and loneliness, of the southern landscape and of the passage of time, are spare and melancholy, and they have the same exact observation and emotional restraint that mark his essays. He is counted among the notable poets of the mid-Tang.

In 815 he was transferred, with Liu Yuxi and the other exiles, to posts nearer the north, but Liu Zongyuan was sent to Liuzhou in the far south, in what is now Guangxi, an even more remote and unhealthy region. He served there as prefect, governing with care and concern for the welfare of the local people, until his death in 819 at the age of about forty-six.

Despite the disappointments of his career, his years in the south were productive. He continued to write, to correspond with his friends and to study, and his letters and poems of this period record both his sorrow and his continued engagement with the questions of government and of literature that had always occupied him.

Influence and Legacy

Liu Zongyuan's place in Chinese literature is secure and distinguished. He is named among the eight great masters of Tang and Song prose, and his travel essays and fables are regarded as classics of the genre. His collaboration with Han Yu in the classical prose movement reshaped the practice of Chinese writing for centuries to come.

His landscape essays in particular exercised a lasting influence. They helped to establish the tradition of personal nature writing that later Chinese prose writers cultivated, and they gave the remote southern landscapes of his exile a permanent place in the literary imagination of the nation. The places he described became sites of literary pilgrimage.

He is remembered as a writer of integrity and courage, a reformer who suffered for his principles and who turned his exile into art. His name is honoured with that of Han Yu, and the two are studied together as the founders of a movement that renewed the language and the moral purpose of Chinese literature.

References

^[1] ^[2] ^[3] ^[4]

↑ Jo-shui Chen, Liu Tsung-yuan and Intellectual Change in T'ang China, Cambridge University Press, 1992.
↑ Nienhauser, William H., Liu Tsung-yuan, Twayne Publishers, 1973.
↑ Stephen Owen, The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T'ang, Yale University Press, 1981.
↑ David R. Knechtges, The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

[r1-1] Jo-shui Chen, Liu Tsung-yuan and Intellectual Change in T'ang China, Cambridge University Press, 1992.

[r2-2] Nienhauser, William H., Liu Tsung-yuan, Twayne Publishers, 1973.

[r3-3] Stephen Owen, The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T'ang, Yale University Press, 1981.

[r4-4] David R. Knechtges, The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

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