Writers › Writer / Poet
Li Shen
Tang poet and chief minister from Wuxi, credited with the quatrains on the peasants' toil and with the new yuefu ballads that Yuan Zhen answered
Mural of Pity for the Peasants, Two Poems, a work by this person.
A farmer hoes the grain beneath the fierce midday sun as sweat falls into the soil. A plain bowl of rice beside the field makes visible the labor behind each meal.
Also known as Zi Gongchui · Shi Wensu
Li Shen, courtesy name Gongchui, had family roots in Bozhou but grew up in Wuxi in Runzhou. He passed the metropolitan examination early in the Yuanhe reign and became an instructor at the Directorate of Education. When Li Qi, military governor of Zhenhai, rebelled and ordered him to draft a memorial, he feigned terror and spoiled sheet after sheet without writing a word, and was jailed until Li Qi fell. Under Emperor Muzong he served as a Hanlin academician with Li Deyu and Yuan Zhen, the trio called the Three Talents, until Li Fengji had him demoted to Duanzhou. Early in the Huichang reign Emperor Wuzong made him chief minister; he later governed Huainan, died in office in the sixth Huichang year and received the posthumous name Wensu. His twenty New Ballads on New Themes are lost, but Yuan Zhen's twelve replies survive. Fan Shu's Yunxi youyi says he first won notice by showing Lu Wen his Old-Style Poems, the quatrains later known as Pity the Peasants.
Life and times
Dates 772 CE–846 CE