Bai Juyi (772–846) was a Tang poet, prose writer, and literary theorist, and a representative poet of the social-realist tradition of the middle Tang. His courtesy name was Letian; in later life he used the sobriquets Xiangshan Jushi and Zuiyin Xiansheng, ranked twenty-second in his family, received the posthumous name Wen, and was later called Bai Wengong.
Life
Accounts differ over his native place and birthplace: he is described as a native of Xiagui in Huazhou (modern Weinan, Shaanxi), with Taiyuan as his ancestral commandery; elsewhere he is said to have been born in Xinzheng, while Gong County and Taigu also appear in the traditions. His forebears were said to have come from Kucha and to have received the surname Bai during the Han. His father was Bai Jigeng and his mother Chen; his ancestors included Bai Huang, Bai Wen, and Bai Jian. His younger brothers were Bai Xingjian and Bai Youmei; his wife was Yang, and his children included Bai Jinluan and Bai Aluo, with Bai Jingshou recorded as his heir.
He was intelligent in childhood and, amid the wars at the end of the Jianzhong era, lived for a time at Fuli before moving through the Wu-Yue region. He passed the jinshi examination in the sixteenth year of Zhenyuan (800; one notice gives 860), and also passed the Shu-pan Bacui and the examination for men of talent and uprightness able to speak frankly; in the nineteenth year of Zhenyuan he passed the Shu-pan Bacui examination and was appointed a proofreader in the Secretariat. In the early Yuanhe era he became a commandant at Zhouzhi, then a Collation Officer of the Jixian Academy and a Hanlin Academician; as a remonstrating official he served as Left Reminder and in the Jingzhao household administration, repeatedly urging the reform of abuses and composing the Qinzhong Yin and New Yuefu. He left office during mourning for his mother and afterward became Grand Master of the Heir Apparent's Household.
After the assassination of Wu Yuanheng, Bai Juyi submitted a memorial calling for the arrest of the killers and was demoted to military adjutant of Jiangzhou for speaking beyond his office; he was later transferred to serve as governor of Zhongzhou. Recalled to Chang'an in the fifteenth year of Yuanhe, he held the posts of Director of the Palace Office, Director of Guests, Drafter of Edicts, and Academician of the Secretariat. In the second year of Changqing (822) he became governor of Hangzhou, where he built a dike on Qiantang Lake and irrigated a thousand qing of fields; after serving as Junior Supervisor of the Heir Apparent in the eastern capital, he became governor of Suzhou in 825 and was associated with water conservancy and relief for the poor. He later served as Palace Library Director and Vice Minister of Justice, moved to Luoyang as a palace attendant in 829, and held the offices of Henan Intendant and Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent in eastern-capital service. He retired in 842 as Minister of Justice; the records also show the titles Jinyang County Male and Marquis of the Founding State, and a posthumous appointment as a Vice Censor, with the left and right versions both found. In his later years he lived in Luoyang, followed Buddhism and studied under the monk Ruman, took pleasure in poetry and wine, and died and was buried in the Luoyang area at Longmen Mountain.
Literary achievement and thought
Bai Juyi excelled in poetry and prose and was also known for literary theory. His thought drew on Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, but the Confucian ideal of “benefiting the world when successful and cultivating oneself when thwarted” remained dominant. His poetics may be summed up as the principle that prose should be written for its time and songs for the affairs of the age; his early allegorical poems, written with a resolve to benefit the world, put that principle into practice. During the Yuanhe era he promoted the New Yuefu, using poetry to denounce abuses and reflect popular suffering; the fifty poems of the New Yuefu are marked by clear themes and pointed diction, unite narrative with argument, and depart from the conventional restraint of “resentment without anger.” His “Yuanhe style” included long ballads such as “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” and “The Lute Song,” long regulated verse, poems exchanged by rhyme, and short poems on passing scenes; “Spring Excursion at Qiantang Lake” and “To Liu Nineteen” likewise display descriptive economy or emotion contained in landscape, while his diction is direct, fluent, accessible, and formally varied.
Bai Juyi was closely associated with Yuan Zhen and was known together with him as Yuan-Bai, while his poetic style was called the Yuan-Bai style; in later life he exchanged poems with Liu Yuxi, forming the pairing Liu-Bai. This accessible poetic manner had a lasting influence, and officials in the Renzong era were already said to admire the “Bai Letian style.”
Works and transmission
His representative works include “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow,” “The Lute Song,” “The Charcoal Seller,” the Qinzhong Yin, the New Yuefu, and the “Letter to Yuan Jiu.” His collected writings are associated with a seventy-five-chapter self-edited Bai shi wenji, of which five chapters were lost in the early Song, and there is also a tradition that Yuan Zhen edited his writings into the Bai shi Changqing ji; the seventy-one-chapter Bai shi Changqing ji, also called the Bai Xiangshan ji, circulated later. The Complete Tang Poems preserves thirty-nine scrolls of his poetry. Other titles associated with him include Bai Kong liutie, Liu-Bai changhe ji, Ruluo ji, Sanjiao lunheng, Taihu shiji, Pipa fuzhuan, Zuiyin xiansheng zhuan, and Changhen gezhuan.
References
- CBDB Bai Juyi (32227)
- 搜韵 白居易 (18804)
- Wikidata Bai Juyi (Q313324)
- 法鼓佛教人名规范数据库 白居易 (A004029)