阮籍

Ruǎn Jí 阮籍

Ruǎn Jí 阮籍 (210–263 CE; CBDB id 29615, dates confirmed from Lìdài rénwù niánlì tōngpǔ, RM, p. 518), zì Sìzōng 嗣宗, was a native of Chénliú 陳留 (modern Henan). He was the son of Ruǎn Yù 阮瑀 (?–212 CE), one of the Jiàn’ān qīzǐ 建安七子. He is the most celebrated member of the Zhúlín qīxián 竹林七賢 (Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove), the group of scholar-eccentrics who gathered in the bamboo grove of Shānjùnyuán 山君源 (near modern Jiaozuo, Henan) in the 240s–260s and who cultivated the Neo-Daoist (xuánxué 玄學) philosophy of naturalness and disengagement. His biography is in Jìn shū 晉書 (juǎn 49).

Ruan Ji held a succession of official posts under the Wèi and under the Sīmǎ 司馬 regents, including posts as General of the Cavalry (bùbīng xiàowèi 步兵校尉), a post particularly associated with him because of his famous discovery of a well-stocked wine cellar in the barracks. His political position was one of studied ambiguity: he never openly committed himself to or against the Sīmǎ seizure of power, using drunkenness, silence, and deliberate eccentricity to avoid fatal entanglement. He famously conducted himself in a manner designed to transgress Confucian propriety (weeping at the death of a stranger; not keeping formal mourning; staring at beautiful women) while remaining personally harmless.

His 82 〈詠懷詩〉 (Poems Expressing My Feelings) — beginning with the famous “夜中不能寐，起坐彈鳴琴” (At midnight, unable to sleep, I rise and pluck the singing zither) — are the definitive body of Wèi lyric verse. Their deliberate obliqueness and use of Daoist and mythological imagery to express political anxiety and existential loneliness set the tone for the yǒnghuái 詠懷 tradition of contemplative poetry. Zhōng Róng 鍾嶸 in the Shī pǐn 詩品 placed him in the upper grade. He was also the author of the 〈大人先生傳〉 (Biography of the Great Man), a prose rhapsody celebrating radical Daoist non-conformism. A jíyìběn of his collected works is in the Kānripo corpus as KR4b0096.