Gu Kuang

Life

Gu Kuang passed the presented-scholar examination in 757, during the second year of the Zhide era. Early in his career he sought appointment as administrator of the Xinting Monitorate, located on the coast at Yanguan, that is, Haiyan; he later served under the Salt and Iron Transport Commissioner, worked around Yongjia in 773 and 774, visited Jiangxi in the tenth year of the Dali era, and was involved in salt business at Wenzhou during the Dali era. His offices also included supervising salt, wine, and commercial taxation in Hangzhou and Wenzhou.

From 781 to 786, he served as a bureau judge in the staff of Han Huang, military governor of Zhenhai; after entering the court, he became an assistant judicial officer of the Court of Judicial Review, and his offices also included governor of Runzhou. In 787, when Liu Hun was directing the government, he recommended Gu as a palace-library collator, elsewhere styled Secretary Lang; after Li Mi entered the government, Gu was promoted to a court writer, also given as Assistant Writer, with the latter appointment dated to 788.

Gu was closely associated with Li Mi and also moved in Liu Hun’s circle; he studied under Li Mi and received from him a method of breath cultivation. After Li Mi’s death, Gu wrote “Ode to the Seagull,” mocking the powerful, and incurred their strong enmity. In 789 he was further pushed aside, impeached by the censorate, and demoted to military assistant for household administration at Raozhou.

After the demotion, Gu moved away with his entire family, lived in seclusion on Mount Mao, and called himself Huayang Shanren. On the way he passed through Suzhou, Hangzhou, Muzhou, and Xinzhou, exchanging poems with such local prefects as Wei Yingwu, Fang Rufu, Wei Zan, and Liu Taizhen. He returned to Suzhou in the tenth year of the Zhenyuan era and settled at Mount Mao, while continuing to travel to Huzhou, Yangzhou, Xuanzhou, Jiaxing, Changshu, and other places.

His son was Gu Feixiong, who died in 854; Liu Taizhen was his maternal aunt’s son, born in 725 and dying in 792; Gu Mingjun and Gu Youzhong are listed as lineal descendants.

Literature and art

Gu excelled in songs and poetry, painted landscapes, and was skilled in prose. He held that poetry should engage the passage between order and disorder and the flourishing of royal transformation, rather than merely pursue ornate literary style.

His Thirteen Chapters on Supplementing and Transmitting the Ancient Songs was regarded as a precursor of Bai Juyi’s New Yuefu. His poetry includes many expansive and strange pieces; his song poems are marked by vigorous momentum and often seek effect through startling, unexpected language.

Critical assessments of his poetry diverged. Some placed it above the poetry of Yuan and Bai and found in it something of High-Tang force, while also praising the unusual interest of his yuefu songs; others judged his talent insufficient and his disputation excessive, finding bone but little elegance in his work, calling the diction of the Supplementing the Missing poems incomplete, and even dismissing his songs as simply outside the rules.

When Bai Juyi was fifteen or sixteen, he brought a manuscript to Gu Kuang. After reading it, Gu received him at the gate and declared that literature had seemed to have ended, but had now been recovered in Bai. Gu’s Supplementing the Missing poems were regarded as a precursor of Bai’s New Yuefu; in a classification of poets, Bai was designated the “Master of Broad Moral Instruction,” while Gu was placed in the “ascending hall” rank.

Works

Gu’s works include Huayang ji, Gu Kuang ji, and Huaping. A Ming printed edition of Huayang ji contains two volumes of poetry and fu and one volume of prose. The original twenty-volume Gu Kuang ji was lost; later editors produced a three-volume Gu Huayang ji, and a four-volume Gu Buweng shiji also circulated.

Huaping, in one volume, is lost. The Complete Tang Poems preserves four volumes of his verse, later supplements add four poems and two fragments, and the Complete Tang Prose preserves three volumes of his writings. He also wrote lyrics such as “Zhu Zhi,” and Wang Qixing and Zhang Hong produced Gu Kuang shizhu.