Chén Zǐ’áng 陳子昂 (661–702)
Zì Bóyù 伯玉. Native of Zǐzhōu 梓州 Shèhóng 射洪 (modern Shèhóng in central Sìchuān). The Wǔzhōu 武周-period poet conventionally credited (from Lú Cángyòng 盧藏用’s contemporary preface onward) with the decisive fùgǔ 復古 (“return to antiquity”) break from the late-Liù-cháo / early-Táng jǐngyún tǐ 景雲體 ornamental tradition.
The son of a wealthy local clan with hereditary contact with Daoist alchemical circles. By his own account in the Chén shì bié zhuàn 陳氏別傳 (drafted by Lú Cángyòng) he could not read until suì 18, when an episode in his county school changed him; thereafter he read the Classics and the philosophers obsessively for several years. Jìnshì of Wénmíng 1 (684); his bold opening memorial against Gāozōng’s funeral cortège returning to Chángān (he argued for Luòyáng) brought him to Wǔhòu’s notice and earned him the Líntái zhèngzì 麟臺正字 (“Mìshūshěng Drafter”) position. Later Yòu shíyí 右拾遺 (“Right Reminder,” the title that gives his collection KR4c0008 its name).
His career was effectively destroyed in 696 when, as staff officer to Jiànān jùnwáng 建安郡王 Wǔ Yōuyí 武攸宜 (Wǔhòu’s nephew) on the Khitan campaign, his repeated petitions to be given command of the vanguard angered Wǔ Yōuyí, who demoted him to jūncáo 軍曹 (records office). It was during this campaign that he composed his most famous quatrain, Dēng Yōuzhōu tái gē 登幽州臺歌, on the platform built by Yān Zhāowáng 燕昭王 to recruit Yuè Yì 樂毅. He resigned to nurse his elderly father in 698, became implicated in a local feud with the Shèhóng magistrate Duàn Jiǎn 段簡 (who had been bribed to harass the wealthy Chén family), and died in prison in 702 at age 42, possibly murdered.
His extant collection is the Chén Shíyí jí / Chén Bóyù wén jí KR4c0008 in 10 juǎn, edited at his death by Lú Cángyòng and printed in the WYG form preserved here. The 38–39-poem Gǎn yù 感遇 cycle is his programmatic statement and the foundational text of the High-Táng fùgǔ 復古 program. CBDB records 661–702 (cbdbId 31322); the catalog meta’s 656–695 is the older Wén Yīduō figure, displaced by the modern scholarly consensus and not followed here.