Writers › Writer / Poet
Su Xun
Northern Song essayist from Meishan, father of Su Shi and Su Zhe, who began serious study at twenty-seven and won fame when Ouyang Xiu presented his essays to the court
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Zi Mingyun · Hao Laoquan
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Su Xun, courtesy name Mingyun, came from Meishan in Meizhou (in modern Sichuan). The History of the Song (Songshi) says he began to study in earnest only at twenty-seven, failed the jinshi and a special examination, then burned his drafts and immersed himself in the classics. In the Zhihe and Jiayou reigns he took his sons Su Shi and Su Zhe to the capital, where Ouyang Xiu presented twenty-two of his essays to the court and officials passed them eagerly around. Declining a test at the Secretariat, he was made a collator in the Imperial Library and, as registrar of Wen'an county, compiled with Yao Pi the hundred-chapter ritual code Taichang yingeli. He died in 1066, aged fifty-eight, just after it was submitted, and at Su Shi's request received a posthumous rank. His collected writings, the Jiayou ji, include the essay On the Six States. Ouyang Xiu wrote his epitaph, and Mao Kun of the Ming included him among the eight prose masters of Tang and Song.
Life and times
Dates 1009 CE–1066 CE