Writers › Writer / Poet
Sikong Tu
Late Tang poet and critic who withdrew to the Zhongtiao Mountains and starved himself after the last Tang emperor was murdered; his authorship of the Twenty-four Moods of Poetry is disputed
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 Biaosheng · Nairu Jushi
Sikong Tu, courtesy name Biaosheng, came from Yuxiang in Hezhong and passed the jinshi examination in 869 under the examiner Wang Ning, who admired his writing. He held posts such as vice-director in the Ministry of Rites, fled home when Huang Chao took Chang'an, and later served Emperor Xizong's court in exile as a drafter of edicts. As the dynasty collapsed he retired to the Wangguan Valley in the Zhongtiao Mountains and refused repeated summonses on grounds of illness, including the Later Liang's offer of a ministry. In 908, on hearing that the last Tang emperor had been murdered, he stopped eating and died at seventy-two sui. In his letter to a Mr Li on poetry he argued that a poem's flavour should lie beyond its literal taste, an idea Su Shi quoted in an essay on another poet's collection. The Twenty-four Moods of Poetry (Ershisi shipin), long attributed to him, has been questioned since the 1990s.
Life and times
Dates 837 CE–908 CE