Writers › Writer / Poet
Lu Ji
Western Jin poet and critic, grandson of the Wu general Lu Xun, who wrote the Rhapsody on Literature and was executed after a lost battle in the War of the Eight Princes
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 Shiheng
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Lu Ji, courtesy name Shiheng, came from Huating near Wu; his grandfather Lu Xun and father Lu Kang were leading ministers of the Wu state. After Wu fell in 280 he studied at home for nearly ten years and wrote On the Fall of a State (Bianwang lun). Late in the Taikang era he and his brother Lu Yun went to Luoyang, where Zhang Hua said the real prize of conquering Wu was these two talents. In the War of the Eight Princes he joined Sima Ying, Prince of Chengdu, who in 303 sent him against Sima Yi, Prince of Changsha. After a heavy defeat at Luyuan, the eunuch Meng Jiu and Lu Zhi accused him of disloyalty, and he was executed in his forty-third year, lamenting that he would never again hear the cranes of Huating. His Rhapsody on Literature (Wenfu) treats composition and genre, Zhong Rong's Grading of Poets ranks him in the top class, and the Pingfu Letter in the Palace Museum is attributed to his hand.
Life and times
Dates 261 CE–303 CE