Han Yu

Life

Orphaned in childhood, he was raised by his elder brother and sister-in-law; his father was Han Zhongqing, his brother Han Hui, and his paternal relative Han Yunqing. By adulthood he had mastered the Six Classics and the learning of the hundred schools, and was accomplished in prose and poetry; pupils instructed by him came to be called disciples of the Han school. In 792, he passed the jinshi examination. After failing three times in the Ministry of Personnel examinations, he served successively on the staffs of Dong Jin at Xuanwu and Zhang Jianfeng at Xusi as a military-governor aide. In 802 he was appointed Erudite of the Four Gates and in 803 Censor; after memorials concerning the palace-market system and the Guanzhong drought, he was demoted to magistrate of Yangshan. After Shunzong's accession, he opposed the administration of Wang Pi and Wang Shuwen and was transferred to serve as legal adjutant of Jiangling Prefecture; after Xianzong's accession, he was recalled in 806 as a professor at the Directorate of Education. His subsequent offices included the Henan magistracy, Zhifang Yuanwailang, Guozi boshi assigned to the eastern capital, Duguan Yuanwailang, Bibu Langzhong, historian-editor, Kaogong Langzhong, Zhizhigao, Zhongshu Sheren, and Taizi You Shuzi. In 817 he accompanied Pei Du in the campaign against Wu Yuanji of Huai-xi as army commander; after the pacification of Huai-xi, he was promoted to Vice Minister of Punishments. In 819, his memorial against receiving the Buddha's bone led to his demotion as governor of Chaozhou; he was later transferred to Yuanzhou. After Muzong's accession he was recalled as libationer of the Directorate of Education and later served as Vice Minister of War; in 822 he successfully went to Zhenzhou to pacify Wang Tingcou's army, after which he became Vice Minister of Personnel and concurrently governor of the metropolitan region and censor-in-chief. He died in Chang'an in the twelfth month of 824 at the age of fifty-seven; 825 is also given as his year of death, and Wannian as his place of death. He was posthumously granted the title Minister of Rites and received the posthumous name Wen. His family included his father-in-law Lu Yi, the sons Han Chang (韓昶) and Han Zhouqiu (韓州仇), the daughter Han Na (韓挐, 808–819), and the grandson Han Xiang (韓湘).

Thought and literature

Han Yu's intellectual program sought to restore Confucian learning and reject Buddhism and Daoism; he argued that writing should carry the Way and treated the establishment of a Confucian orthodoxy as a scholarly mission. Together with Liu Zongyuan, he championed the ancient-prose movement, and later generations paired them as Han–Liu. He was a friend of Zhang Ji and Yuan Zhen, while his poetry was ranked with that of Meng Jiao. His argumentative prose includes such celebrated pieces as “The Teacher's Statement,” “The Original Way,” “Memorial on Receiving the Buddha's Bone,” “The Entrance Examination Explanation,” “Essay on Sending Poverty Away,” and “Epitaph for Liu Zihou.” His poetry includes works that reflect social reality and criticize contemporary abuses, such as “Fengling Walk” and “The Huashan Goddess,” as well as poems of self-expression and everyday life, including “Autumn Reflections” and “Presented to Liu Shifu.” His poetry was shaped by Li Bai's extraordinary feeling and grand conception and by Du Fu's painstaking craftsmanship; its style is imposing, vigorous, and strange, especially in long poems such as “South Mountain” and “The Fire on Mount Luhun.” His characteristic method was “making prose into poetry”: he brought the syntax and structural methods of classical prose, together with discursive argument, into verse, greatly influencing the prose-like and argumentative tendencies of Song poetry. His prose and poetry achieved major results in both theory and composition, and later critics treated him as a decisive turning point in the history of Tang poetry.

Works and legacy

Li Han, one of his disciples, compiled his surviving writings as the forty-volume Han Yu ji; the forty-volume Changli xiansheng ji, together with an Outer Collection, circulated later, while the Complete Tang Poetry preserves ten volumes of his verse. Other works attributed to him include the Lunyu bijie, Changli zashuo, “Biography of the Strange Daoist,” “Biography of Marquis Xiapi Gehua,” and “Biography of Mao Ying.” His programme of classical prose and its practice became an important part of the ancient-prose movement of the mid-Tang, while his vigorous, startling, prose-like and argumentative poetry exerted a far-reaching influence on poetry of the Song period.