鱼玄机的一生行迹（844-868）
鱼玄机（844-868），字蕙兰，长安（今西安）人。初为李亿妾，后出家咸宜观为女道士。才情卓绝，与温庭筠等名士交游，诗风清丽而情思深婉。因笞杀侍女绿翘，下狱伏法，年止二十五。《赠邻女》《江陵愁望有寄》传诵千古。
长安（844） · 长安少女
唐武宗会昌四年（844年），鱼玄机出生于长安。她自幼聪慧过人，好读书，善属文，姿容秀美，才名早著于长安坊曲之间，为温庭筠所赏。
长安（李亿）（858） · 李亿之妾
唐宣宗大中十二年（858年）前后，鱼玄机为补阙李亿之妾。李亿对她极为宠爱，但正妻不能容，鱼玄机在李家备受排挤，终因正妻妒恨而出家。
咸宜观（860） · 咸宜观中
唐宣宗大中十四年（860年）前后，鱼玄机被李亿正妻所逐，出家咸宜观为女道士，法号玄机。她在咸宜观中自由交游文士，诗酒唱和，成为长安诗坛一颗耀眼的星。
鄂州（863） · 江陵远游
唐懿宗咸通四年（863年）前后，鱼玄机出游鄂州（今武汉），沿长江东下。她在江汉间流连山水，写下多首纪行诗，对江流的壮阔与远游的孤寂有深切的体验。
江陵（864） · 江陵远游
唐懿宗咸通五年（864年），鱼玄机抵达江陵（今荆州）。她在江陵远眺楚天，怀人思归，写下《江陵愁望有寄》等名篇，表达对远方知音的深切思念。
长安（归来）（865） · 咸宜观中
唐懿宗咸通六年（865年），鱼玄机从江陵返回长安咸宜观。远游归来，她对道观生活有了新的体悟，在咸宜观中继续诗酒交游，与李近仁、温庭筠等往还唱和。
长安（绿翘案）（866） · 长安狱终
唐懿宗咸通七年（866年），鱼玄机因怀疑侍女绿翘与来访之客私通，怒而笞之，绿翘竟毙命于杖下。鱼玄机以杀人罪下京兆府狱，京兆尹温璋审讯定谳，此案震动长安文坛。
长安（伏法）（868） · 长安狱终
唐懿宗咸通九年（868年），鱼玄机伏法弃市于长安，年仅二十五岁。一代才女就此香消玉殒，其诗其人皆成为后世不断的谈资与叹息，唐代女性文学从此失去最耀眼的一颗星。
The Life Journey of Yu Xuanji, the Blazing Star of Xianyi
Yu Xuanji (c. 844-868), of Chang'an, discovered and mentored by Wen Tingyun, was the most gifted woman poet of the late Tang — and the most punished by its arrangements. A concubine at fourteen, expelled by the wife, a Daoist abbess of the Xianyi Convent at sixteen, free and celebrated and lonely: 'A priceless jewel is easy to find; a man with a heart is hard.' At twenty-four she beat her maid Lüqiao to death in a jealous rage and was executed in the marketplace. Forty-nine poems survive.
Timeline of the Journey
- 844 · Chang'an — Born in the capital; brilliant, book-loving, lovely — the child-poet of the wards, noticed and encouraged by Wen Tingyun.
- 858 · Chang'an — Concubine to the official Li Yi: loved, and intolerable to the principal wife — squeezed out of the household within two years.
- 860 · Xianyi Convent — Expelled, she took the Daoist register in the Xianyi Convent, the name Xuanji: a woman alone with the right to receive guests — poets, wine, and the freest years of any Tang woman's life.
- 863 · Ezhou — Down the Yangtze to Ezhou and the river country: the journeys widening, the poems of water and solitude deepening.
- 864 · Jiangling — At Jiangling, gazing south: 'In sickness I watch the clouds and do not see him; my thoughts fly with the crows' — the 'Gazing in Sorrow at Jiangling' poems, love's address from a thousand li.
- 865 · Chang'an — Back to the convent and its round of poetry and wine: Li Jinren, Wen Tingyun, the literary life of the capital at her table.
- 866 · Chang'an — The maid Lüqiao, the jealous fury, the death under the rod: the case before the capital's magistrate Wen Zhang, and the whole literary city watching in horror.
- 868 · Chang'an — Execution in the marketplace at twenty-five. 'One line of cold verse keeps a person warm' — her own epitaph, in effect: the briefest blazing career in Tang letters.
'A priceless jewel is easy to find; a man with a heart is hard to get.' She asked for what the age would not give her — equality in love — and paid the full price: Yu Xuanji's forty-nine poems are the sharpest protest in the Tang corpus.
