Po Chü-i

Bai Juyi, also
spelled Bo Juyi, Wade-Giles romanization Pai Chü-i
or Po Chü-i, courtesy name (zi) Letian, literary
name (hao) Xiangshan Jushi (b. 772, Xinzheng, Henan
province, China—d. 846, Luoyang, Henan province),
Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty (618–907) who used
his elegantly simple verse to protest the social
evils of his day, including corruption and
militarism.
Bai Juyi began
composing poetry at age five. Because of his
father’s death in 794 and straitened family
circumstances, Bai did not take the official
examinations for the bureaucracy until the late age
of 28. He passed them and also did extremely well at
another examination he took two years later. As a
result, he was given a minor post at the palace
library, as was another successful examination
candidate and poet, Yuan Zhen. They shared views on
the need for both literary and political reform, and
their lifelong friendship became perhaps the most
famous in Chinese history. In 807 Bai became a
member of the prestigious Hanlin Academy in Chang’an,
the capital, and he rose steadily in official life,
except for his banishment in 814 to a minor post at
Jiujiang, which arose from the slander of rival
courtiers. He assumed the important posts of
governor of Zhongzhou (818), Hangzhou (822), and,
later, Suzhou. In 829 he became mayor of Luoyang,
the eastern capital, but he retired from that post
in 842 because of illness.
Bai was the
informal leader of a group of poets who rejected the
courtly style of the time and emphasized the
didactic function of literature, believing that
every literary work should contain a fitting moral
and a well-defined social purpose. He considered his
most important contributions to be his satirical and
allegorical ballads and his “new yuefu,” which
usually took the form of free verse based on old
folk ballads. The most prolific of the Tang poets,
Bai aimed for simplicity in his writing, and—like Du
Fu, a great Tang poet of the preceding generation
whom Bai greatly admired—he was deeply concerned
with the social problems of the time; he deplored
the dissolute and decadent lifestyles of corrupt
officials and sympathized with the sufferings of the
poor. Many of Bai’s poems are quoted in the Japanese
classic The Tale of Genji.