On “A Love Letter for Li Zi’an”

Yu Xuanji (c. 840–c. 868) is one of the most famous female poets in premodern literature, though less than a century after she died she was slandered—condemned for being a courtesan and, in a semi-legendary account, was said to have been decapitated at the age of twenty-eight for allegedly strangling her maid to death. At any rate, her poems are stunning, combining late Tang lushness with a rare frankness. Nearly fifty of her poems remain.

Yu was raised in Chang’an, the Tang capital, and at sixteen she became the concubine, or secondary wife, of a recent imperial examination graduate named Li Yi. She was a poet as well as a concubine, however, and some stories say that the famous poet Wen Tingyun (812–870) met Yu while she was doing laundry and took responsibility for her education. Yu separated from Li Yi after only three years, when he took up an important position at court and was closer to his wife—and, presumably, her jealousy. Yu entered a Daoist nunnery, and her poetry of this period reflects her hopes for spiritual transcendence, but eventually she returned to Chang’an; scholar Jia Jinhua says that while there “she gave free rein to her romantic nature, aware of the freedom her status as a Daoist nun and ‘semi-immortal’ accorded her but conscious also of the double-edged nature of that freedom.”

Her story is fascinating, but her poetry is even more so. As Jia writes, “she did not, as many other female poets did, try to imitate the voice of male poets or use the conventional women’s voice constructed by the male tradition; instead she spoke in a straightforward, truthful manner, creating her own distinctive voice to express her genuine feelings of love, joy, leisure, sorrow, lament, regret, and dissatisfaction.”