Writers › Writer / Poet
Song Yu
Late Warring States poet of Chu who, the Shiji says, followed Qu Yuan in writing fu, and to whom Wang Yi assigned the Nine Changes in the Songs of Chu
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.
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Little is known of Song Yu, a native of Chu in the late Warring States period. The Shiji's biography of Qu Yuan says that after Qu Yuan's death Chu produced Song Yu, Tang Le and Jing Cha, who loved fine words and were known for their fu but copied Qu Yuan's eloquence without daring to remonstrate. In the Eastern Han, Wang Yi's commentary on the Songs of Chu (Chuci) assigned to him the Nine Changes and the Summons of the Soul and called him Qu Yuan's disciple. The History of the Han lists sixteen fu under his name, and the Selections of Refined Literature (Wenxuan) includes the Wind, the Gaotang, the Goddess and other pieces in his name, mostly framed as talks with King Xiang of Chu, their authorship long debated. The saying that the loftier the tune, the fewer join in comes from his Reply to the King of Chu. His dates and fate are unrecorded. Du Fu wrote of understanding Song Yu's grief at autumn's falling leaves.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; Chu, late Warring States