Liu Zongyuan (773-819), named Zihou, had a bumpy and depressed career. He was demoted to Yongzhou and then transferred to Liuzhou. Because he was relegated and "lived in the mountains and rivers", he naturally loved landscape poetry, and placed his sorrow, resentment, and nobility in the fresh and elegant or cold and rhyming poetic environment. His landscape poetry was learned from Tao Yuanming and Xie Lingyun. The landscapes in his paintings have a special style. The two works "The Fisherman" and "Jiang Xue" can be called the best.
Thousands of birds have disappeared, and thousands of people have disappeared. A man with a coir raincoat in a lone boat, fishing alone in the snow in the cold river.
——"Jiang Xue"
This was written by Liu Zongyuan after he was demoted to Yongzhou. In the vast snow, there is a small boat and a person fishing in the snow, which is strange, natural and transcendent. In the painting full of desolate and distant scenery, the poet incorporates a strong subjective will - a fisherman who is not afraid of loneliness and cold, and sits quietly. In the poem, we can vaguely see the poet's noble and transcendent personality and his resentment of being relegated to a remote place. This is exactly the description of the poet's self-image.
The "Fisherman" embodies the meticulous simplicity, elegance and naturalness of Liu Zongyuan's poems:
The fisherman stays near the western rock at night, and at dawn he absorbs the clear water and burns the bamboo. When the cigarettes are sold out and no one is seen at sunrise, the mountains and rivers are green. Looking back at the middle stream under the sky, unintentional clouds are chasing each other on the rocks.
Behind the tranquility and comfort, there is also the infinite loneliness and the poet's aloof character.