On Lu Chi's Life and The Dating of His Wen Fu

It has been the traditional belief that Lu Chi's 陸機 (261-303) Wen Fu 文賦, one of the most important works in medieval Chinese literary criticism, was written when the author was twenty years of age. The belief has been a mistake, founded on a line of Tu Fu's 杜甫 poem, Tsui Kê Hsing 醉歌行, Closer examination shows that the circumstances under which Tu Fu wrote the poem cannot be expected to warrant historical accuracy; and that the biographical data of Lu Chi available at Tu Fu's time could have been too casually read. Now by meticulous documentary analysis, it is proved that the Wen Fu was written when Lu Chi was forty, in the year 300 A. D. The forty-three years of Lu Chi's life, divided into two distinctly varied periods, coincided with two phases of medieval Chinese history in rapid conflux and transition during one man's life-time. His was a life-time that spanned between the twilight of the last of the heroic, war-ridden "Three Kingdoms, " and the temporary flare of a unified and expanded Chin empire. First, as an active, last defender of his native Kingdom of Wu and then as an "expatriate" in Lo Yang to rise very high as a literary man and a military commander, Lu Chi was in each case closely identified with the troubled times. The exact dating of the Wen Fu is therefore not a pure matter of chronological accuracy, but it helps to explain the background of the work in the author's personal life and milieu when it was written. Lu Chi's psychological attitudes are traced here in a biographical sketch. His earlier works which show the development of his views and visions on life, hence on literature too, are introduced. A group of his other writings contemporaneous with the Wen Fu are presented and analysed, both for a comparison of their qualities, and for their most important bearing upon the dating of the great work in question. An appendix summarizes discussions with another scholar, Professor Lu Ch'in-li 逯欽立, on the intricate problems and methods of dating the Wen Fu