Ma Zhiyuan
Template:Short description Template:Family name hatnote Template:Chinese
Ma Zhiyuan (Template:Zh, Template:Circa 1250–1321), courtesy name Dongli (Template:Zh), Chinese dramatist, playwright, and poet during the Yuan dynasty.<ref name="CiHai">Cihai: Page 1132-1133.</ref>
Among his achievements is the development and popularizing of the sanqu (Template:Lang) lyric type of Classical Chinese poetry forms. The poem "Autumn Thoughts" (Template:Lang) is the most widely known of his sanqu poems.<ref name="CiHai"/>
His sanqu poems were collected in the book "Dongli Yuefu" (Template:Zh), where there were 104 single sanqu (Xiaoling 小令) and 17 song suites (Taoshu 套數).
Works
Poems
Ma Zhiyuan's sanqu poem "Autumn Thoughts" (Template:Lang), composed to the metric pattern Tianjingsha (Template:Lang), uses ten images in twenty-two monosyllables to preamble a state of emotion, and is considered as the penultimateTemplate:Citation needed piece in Chinese poetry to convey the typical Chinese male literati's melancholy during late autumn:
- Template:Lang Autumn Thoughts
- Template:Lang Over old trees wreathed with rotten vines fly evening crows;
- Template:Lang Under a small bridge near a cottage a stream flows;
- Template:Lang On ancient road in the west wind a lean horse goes.
- Template:Lang Westward declines the sun; Far, far from home is the heartbroken one.
Plays
Only seven of his 15 plays are extant, of which four have been translated into English:<ref name="CiHai"/>
- Autumn in Han Palace, Template:Lang (Full title: Breaking a Troubling Dream: A Lone Goose in Autumn over the Palaces of Han, Template:Lang). This play tells the story of Han Emperor Yuandi and Wang Zhaojun, and is considered the best example of Yuan theatre.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
- The Yellow-Millet Dream, Template:Lang (Full title: On the Road to Handan, Awakening from a Dream Dreamt While Cooking Millet, Template:Lang)
- Yueyang Tower, Template:Lang (Full title: Lü Dongbin Gets Drunk Three Times in Yueyang Tower, Template:Lang)
- Tears on the Blue Gown, Template:Lang (Full title: The Overseer of Jiangzhou: Tears on the Blue Gown, Template:Lang)
- Template:Lang (Full title: Template:Lang)
- Template:Lang (Full title: Template:Lang)
- Template:Lang (Full title: Template:Lang)
See also
Notes
References
- Ci hai bian ji wei yuan hui (Template:Lang. Ci hai (Template:Lang). Shanghai: Shanghai ci shu chu ban she (Template:Lang), 1979.