Xu Xuan

Life

Able to compose at the age of ten, Xu Xuan was ranked with Han Xizai in his youth, giving rise to the pairing “Han and Xu”; with his younger brother Xu Kai he was known as the “Two Xus,” also called the “Larger and Smaller Xus.” He first served Wu as 校書郎 and later entered Southern Tang service.

Under the Southern Tang ruler Li Jing, he was provisionally appointed 知制誥, but Song Qiqiu falsely accused him, leading to his demotion to 司戶 at Taizhou. He was recalled as 祠部郎中 and 知制誥, sent to supervise the tuntian administration of Chuzhou, then exiled to Shuzhou for mishandling the arrangements and transferred to Raozhou; later recalled as 知制誥, he became 中書舍人. Under the Later Lord Li Yu, he held 禮部侍郎, 尚書右丞 (also recorded as 尚書左丞), 兵部侍郎, 翰林學士, 御史大夫, and 吏部尚書, and he also held the post of 太子右諭德.

After Southern Tang fell, he followed Li Yu into Song service and became 太子率更令. In the early Taiping Xingguo era he served directly in the Hanlin Academy and later held 給事中; in 983, he was appointed 右散騎常侍 and promoted to 左散騎常侍. In the second year of Chunhua (991), because of the false accusation brought by the Luzhou nun Dao'an, he was demoted to 靜難軍行軍司馬. His year of death is variously given as 991 or 992; another account places his death in the third year of Chunhua at Binzhou, at the age of seventy-six.

His recorded friends included Liu Shi, Liu Xiong, Meng Binyu, Gao Shen, and Li Zhong; Li Zhi once studied under him.

Scholarship and calligraphy

Learned and versatile, Xu Xuan excelled in poetry and prose, wrote in an elegant manner, and composed with notable speed; he was especially accomplished in philology, favored Li Si's small seal script, and was also skilled in clerical script and bafen. By imperial command he collated Shuowen jiezi with Ju Zhongzheng and others, adding 19 characters to the main text and a further 402 after it; the resulting recension became known as the “Great Xu edition.”

His calligraphic works included 篆書千文 and 成武王廟碑, and he also copied 嶧山銘 and 大鉦銘碑. Feng Yansi said that Xu's prose achieved the highest refinement without pursuing strange expressions, and that his poetry was expansive and vigorous, with the tonal style of the Yuanhe era; his poetry was also judged “fluid and facile, but lacking in profound alertness.” His poetry was plain and direct, close to the manner of Bai Juyi, while his prose inherited the parallel style of the late Tang but had an independent and refined form.

Works

His writings included 徐鉉集, 徐公文集, and 騎省集. The thirty-volume 徐公文集, also called 騎省集, survives as a thirty-volume 騎省集, compiled by his son-in-law Wu Shu.

稽神錄 is described in versions of twenty and six volumes; one account attributes it to his retainer Kuai Liang. 質論, also called 質疑論, is described as comprising several dozen pieces or volumes, and he coauthored the ten-volume 江南錄 with Tang Yue. Other attributed works include 圍棋義例 and 稽神錄校補, in two volumes.

The surviving poetry is counted as six or seven juan; two ci poems, two supplemented poems, and several lines are also preserved. He wrote a tomb inscription for Li Yu, whose wording was considered appropriate, and the inscription was included in 宋文鑑.