Writers › Writer / Poet
Wang Yisun
Late Song lyricist from Kuaiji, master of the object poem, whose Huawai ji Zhou Ji recommended as the starting point for learning to write song lyrics
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 Shengyu · Hao Bishan · Zhong Xian · Yusi Shanren
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Wang Yisun, courtesy name Shengyu, sobriquet Bishan, came from Kuaiji. In the first years after the fall of the Song he joined Zhou Mi, Zhang Yan, Tang Jue and others in a poetry society that wrote on set objects, ambergris, white lotus, water shield, cicada and crab, and their pieces were collected as the *Yuefu buti*. Early in the Yuan he served as instructor at the Qingyuan circuit school and kept up an exchange of lyrics with Zhou Mi and Zhang Yan. He excelled at the object poem, using a cicada or a new moon to carry his own fortunes and grief for the lost dynasty. His collection, *Huawai ji*, also called *Bishan yuefu*, holds some sixty lyrics. The Qing critic Zhou Ji advised students to begin with Wang Yisun and then move back through Wu Wenying and Xin Qiji to Zhou Bangyan.
Life and times
Dates c. 1240 CE–c. 1290 CE