吕温

Lü Wen was a literatus of the Tang dynasty. Publicly available information about his life, official career, and dates of birth and death is limited, so a detailed account is difficult to give. Judging from the three works held in this collection, his writing touches on two areas, classical poetry and Eastern philosophy, and his representative pieces include "Thoughts on Hearing a Song at a Friend's Invitation" and "Inscribed on the Red Bank Bridge at Hezhou." The former begins with hearing a song and describes a friend's invitation, giving rise to reflections; it belongs to the poetry of personal feeling. The latter takes a bridge as its subject and has a travelogue and scenic quality. His poems thus often draw their material from daily social exchanges and journeys. The language is concise and restrained, the feeling implicit, and he is skilled at drawing reflection from concrete scenes, showing the typical manner of literati expression within the Tang poetic tradition. Because the surviving materials and number of works are both limited, his literary standing and influence are hard to assess fully; readers may turn to these poems to appreciate his aims in writing.