Dai Shulun

Life

As a young man he studied under Xiao Yingshi and quickly acquired a reputation for talent; when the An Lushan troubles began, he took refuge in Poyang, Jiangxi. At the beginning of the Dali era, Liu Yan recommended him for appointment as Proofreader in the Palace Library, and he entered Liu’s salt-and-iron transport office; he later served as Erudite of the Guangwen Academy and Investigating Censor in Residence, then held transport posts in Hunan early in Dali and in Henan at its end.

In the first year of Jianzhong (780) he became magistrate of Dongyang; in Jianzhong’s fourth year he entered the Jiangxi military headquarters of Li Gao, serving variously as panguan or congshi, and moved from Assistant Judicial Director to Palace Censor, later holding the offices of Vice Director in the Ministry of Rites and Investigating Censor. In the first year of Xingyuan (784) he acted as prefect of Fuzhou, although another account places the office at Linchuan; when Li Gao campaigned against Li Xilie, Dai remained to manage the headquarters. Annual irrigation disputes led him to devise an equal-water system, benefiting the whole prefecture. The following year he was enfeoffed as the Baron of Qiaoxian.

In the second year of Zhenyuan (786) he resigned and returned home. In the fourth year (788) he was recalled as prefect of Rongzhou, military commissioner of Rongguan, and concurrently Censor-in-Chief; the same period is also associated with prefectures of Puning, from the fourth to the fifth year, and Yun’an, in the fifth year, and later generations called him “Dai Rongzhou.” In the fifth year (789), one account says illness led to his replacement and death on the northward journey; another says he memorialized for permission to become a Daoist and died soon afterward. His age at death is given as fifty-eight, and his burial place was Jintan.

His father was 戴眘用, who died in 754; his fathers-in-law were 韋采 and 崔殷; his sons 戴郅 and 戴邡 both died in 828. Figures associated with him through gift poems and prose include 陸羽, 包佶, 司空曙, 朱放, 李嘉祐, 孟郊, and 劉禹錫.

Literary achievement

Dai Shulun was known for accomplished poetry and prose. He wrote a treatise on poetry and compiled an anthology of Tang poetry, both now lost. 《女耕田行》 continued Du Fu’s tradition and anticipated the New Yuefu poets; his regulated poems such as 《除夜宿石頭驛》 and 《客夜與故人偶集》 conveyed deep feeling in plain language, while the quatrains 《過三閭廟》 and 《關山月》 merged emotion with scene and remained suggestive. The subjects, styles, and techniques of his poetry trace the transition of Tang poetry from its high period toward the middle Tang, prompting Hu Yinglin to say that Dai Shulun was especially important in the beginnings of late-Tang poetry.

One assessment describes him as gentle and graceful in manner, giving his full attention to people regardless of merit; it praises his ability to depict things and events, but finds his poetic force somewhat soft. Other assessments call his poetic inspiration far-reaching and each composition striking, praise his disciplined diction and painstaking study of the ancient tradition, yet criticize his hurried tonal movement, insufficiently fused energy, and the burden imposed by metre. A further line of criticism repeats the charge of slightness and weakness but still regards him as outstanding in an age when poetic standards were declining, and says that his emergence slightly altered the tonal manner of Dali pentasyllabic verse.

His poetics used the image of warm sunlight at Lantian and jade emitting mist to explain the subtlety of poetic resemblance; later critics, by contrast, called his Rongzhou-style ancient verse slack and soft and some of his writing plain and shallow. Other criticism traced his poetry to Shen Yue, likened his seven-character ancient poems to moonlit woodland sounds and bright-sky clouds, compared the yuefu piece 《巫山高》 to Li He, and praised his regulated verse for its expansive language and lingering emotion.

Works and transmission

Traditional catalogues list 《述稿》 in ten scrolls, 《書狀》 in one, and a poetry scroll, all now lost; Ming editors assembled a two-scroll poetry collection, also known as 《戴叔倫集》. 《全唐詩》 preserves two scrolls of poems attributed to him, but some duplicate poems by Fang Gan and others, while many pieces by later writers—including Wang Anshi, Zhou Ruichen, Ding Henian, Liu Song, Zhang Yining, Wang Guangyang, and Liu Ji—were also included. 《全唐詩續拾》 adds one poem, two fragmentary lines, and four titled entries. A collated edition by Jiang Yin is available, and one ci lyric, 《調笑令·邊草》, survives.