劉楨

Liú Zhēn 劉楨

Liú Zhēn 劉楨 (?–217 CE), zì Gōnggàn 公幹, was a native of Dōngpíng 東平 (modern Shandong). He was one of the Jiàn’ān qīzǐ 建安七子 (Seven Masters of the Jiàn’ān Era). His biography appears in Sān guó zhì (Wèishū, juǎn 21).

Liu Zhen served on the staff of Cáo Cāo 曹操 as a secretarial aide (cóngshì 從事). He was closely connected with Cáo Pī 曹丕 and the literary circle of the Cáo court. An anecdote in Shì shuō xīn yǔ 世說新語 records that he famously stared directly at Cáo Pī’s wife Lady Zhēn 甄氏 at a banquet, breaching court decorum, for which he was demoted to forced labor. He died in the epidemic of 217 CE that also carried off Wáng Càn 王粲, Yīng Yáng 應瑒, Xú Gān 徐幹, and Chén Lín 陳琳. Cáo Pī’s 〈與吳質書〉 mourns his loss alongside the others.

Liu Zhen is particularly celebrated for his five-character shi 詩, especially the series of poems addressed to his cousin (〈贈從弟〉), which use the image of the pine tree enduring winter to celebrate moral steadfastness. Zhōng Róng 鍾嶸 in the Shī pǐn 詩品 placed him in the upper grade and praised his verse for its heroic, unadorned strength, comparable in spirit to lifting a bronze tripod. The CBDB local dump contains multiple persons named 劉楨, none of which can be confidently matched to the Jiàn’ān poet; no CBDB id assigned here. A jíyìběn reconstruction of his collected works is in the Kānripo corpus as KR4b0091.