Wang Changling

Life

In the fifteenth year of the Kaiyuan era (727), he passed the jinshi examination and was appointed a proofreader in the Secretariat Library; in the twenty-second year he passed the Boxue Hongci examination and became commandant of Sishui County. After being exiled to Lingnan for an unspecified matter, he returned north under amnesty in the twenty-seventh year; in the twenty-eighth year he became assistant magistrate of Jiangning, although another account places him as Jiangning county commandant in the winter of that year. He was later demoted to commandant of Longbiao County, reportedly because of what one account called “不護細行.”

When the An Lushan rebellion began, Changling fled through the Jianghuai region and headed north toward home. Passing through Haozhou, also written Bozhou, he offended its governor Lüqiu Xiao and was killed; the governor’s name also appears as 閭曉丘, 閭皇曉, and 閭邱曉.

Associations and poetry

Changling was a close friend of Wang Zhihuan and Xin Jian; he exchanged poems and writings with Zhang Jiuling, Wang Wei, and Meng Haoran, while Li Bai sent him a poem from afar after his demotion to Longbiao.

Wang Changling was a skilled poet, particularly accomplished in the seven-character quatrain; his poems often treated frontier campaigns, palace and women’s-chamber laments, and farewells, combining lucid force with rich grace, and frontier pieces such as “Chusai” and “Congjunxing” were especially well known. In the Kaiyuan and Tianbao eras he was already regarded as an outstanding poet; Yin Fan considered him an heir to the poetic force of Cao, Liu, Lu, and Xie and called his work a “high achievement of revival.” Later criticism often set his seven-character quatrains beside Li Bai’s, calling both “divine works” while emphasizing Wang’s melancholy depth, far-reaching allusion, implicitness, and suggestive imagery.

During a visit to Jiangxia, he wrote “Seeing Someone Off to Return to Jiangxia,” using the Yellow Crane Tower to express the poignancy of parting between friends.

Works and transmission

A five-fascicle Wang Changling Collection was eventually lost; he was also credited with the two-fascicle Poetry Standards and the one-fascicle Secret of Poetry, although the surviving versions were often suspected not to be original. Later editions included a two-fascicle Wang Changling Collection and a three-fascicle Wang Changling Poetry Collection, while the Complete Tang Poems arranged his poetry in four fascicles.

The Complete Tang Poems Supplement and Continuation added four poems and four lines, and Li Yunyi later produced Wang Changling’s Poetry Notes.