Song dynasty’s prose master renamed himself Old Drunkard
Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) sat at the centre of the Eight Masters of Tang and Song, revived Classical Prose for the exams, and still signed himself Zuiweng—the Old Toper. Histories, cí lyrics, and the pavilion essay that bears his nickname made him the age’s defining scholar-official.
Born in Sichuan to a poor Luling (Jishui) lineage, he lost his father at three; his literate mother taught him with reeds—origin of the later chengyu praising maternal dedication—and he largely taught himself, haunted by Han Yu’s prose. He passed the jinshi on his third try in 1030, aged twenty-two, and judged at Luoyang before rising as a Kaifeng collator allied to reformer Fan Zhongyan. Defence of Fan brought demotion; after Liao and Xi Xia threats returned Fan to favour, Ouyang catalogued the Imperial Library (1041) and, in 1043, helped push the Qingli Reforms—exam integrity, less favouritism, better pay—until the emperor reversed them and sent him to the provinces.
He rejoined the centre in the 1050s, mourning his mother after 1052, then headed the New Book of Tang (completed 1060) while ambassador to the Liao and jinshi examiner. By the early 1060s he stacked titles: assistant chief councillor, Hanlin academician, military and revenue posts. Around Shenzong’s rise in 1067 sexual slanders he denied still damaged him; as Shandong magistrate he refused Wang Anshi’s farm-loan reforms he had once patronised. Allowed to retire in 1071, he died in 1072 at Fuyang, Anhui—Wang Anshi himself eulogising him as the greatest literary figure of the age.
Prose like Zuiwengting Ji married travel lyric to public joy among Chuzhou’s hills. Privately he wrote the Historical Records of the Five Dynasties, unique among the Twenty-Four Histories as one man’s unofficial book. His cí cycle West Lake Is Good helped make the form serious poetry; a Ming anecdote has him compressing a horse-kills-dog street scene into six razor characters. Even opponents conceded the style.
Source: Ouyang Xiu
