Writers › Writer / Poet
Pan Yue
Western Jin poet known for his looks, his rhapsodies and the elegies for his wife, who courted the powerful Jia Mi and was executed with his clan after Sima Lun's coup
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 Anren · Pan An · Pan An Ren
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Pan Yue, courtesy name Anren, came from Zhongmou in Xingyang and was known locally as a child prodigy. He praised Emperor Wu's ploughing of the sacred field in a rhapsody, but envy of his talent kept him unpromoted for ten years; he later governed Heyang, Huai and Chang'an, writing his Rhapsody on the Westward Journey on the road to Chang'an. His biography in the History of Jin (Jinshu) says he was so handsome that women crowded round him in the street and filled his carriage with fruit. In the Yuankang years he attached himself to Jia Mi, heading his circle of twenty-four friends and bowing to the dust of his carriage. After his wife's death he wrote three Poems Mourning the Departed, and the word daowang came to mean mourning a wife. In 300, under Sima Lun's regime, Sun Xiu accused him of treason and had him executed with his mother and brothers. Zhong Rong's Grades of Poets (Shipin) placed him in the top rank.
Life and times
Dates 247 CE–300 CE