Yang Juyuan

Life

In the fifth year of the Zhenyuan era (789), he passed the jinshi examination and was appointed a proofreader. He first served on Zhang Hongjing’s Hezhong staff; in 811, the sixth year of Yuanhe, he served as an Investigating Censor and as an aide to the Hezhong military commissioner. After entering the court, he became Mishulang in 814, then Taichang boshi and Yubu yuanwailang, served as Shaoyin of Fengxiang, and was recalled in 821, the first year of Changqing, as Guozijian siye.

In 824, the fourth year of Changqing, he retired as Hezhong Shaoyin and returned home. Accounts of his final years differ: one says that he retired at seventy and was thereafter retained as Hezhong Shaoyin with his emoluments continued; another places him in the Taihe era as a non-officiating Hezhong Shaoyin whose stipend was paid for life; a further account says that he later retired as Guozi jijiu.

Poetry and associations

Yang was accomplished in poetry. He recited morning and evening without pause; in old age he was said to shake his head, which people attributed to his reciting, and some accounts say that he became ill in old age. He first became known for the couplet “Three strokes dream of Yizhou, one arrow takes Liaocheng” in “Presented to the Prefect of Lu Mingzhou.” During Yuanhe and Changqing, his poetry made him known; Han Yu, Zhang Ji, Yuan Zhen, and Bai Juyi valued him, and he exchanged poems with Bai Juyi, Yuan Zhen, Liu Yuxi, and Zhang Ji, while remaining especially close to Linghu Chu and Li Fengji.

Critics described his poetic diction as avoiding novelty, his regulated verse as practical, and his workmanship as deep. Although he initially studied poetry with Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi, his verse was unlike theirs and was praised instead for being fresh, lucid, and rigorous.

Critics called him gifted and learned, deliberate in his use of tonal patterning, highly wrought in long poems, and limpid in quatrains. They also described his seven-character verse as level, distant, deep, and fine, praised his mastery of regulated verse, and some ranked him as the foremost stylist of the mid-Tang.

One system of poetic classification placed him among the ten “inner-chamber” poets in the “pure, extraordinary, refined, and correct” category headed by Li Yi. Another appraisal grouped him with Li Shangyin, Li Dong, and Lu Guimeng, observing that his shorter regulated poems retained earlier norms; he was also praised for the lingering emotional quality of his poetry.

Works

His collected poems, 《楊巨源詩》, formed a one-volume collection; one volume of poems survives, with three supplementary poems, five fragments, and one title. Three other works are also attributed to him: 《李綦吹笛記》 in one scroll, 《紅線傳》, and 《崑崙奴傳》 in one scroll.