Cen Shen was a poet in the Tang Dynasty.
Cen Shen (718-769), a native of Jiangling, Jingzhou (now Jiangling County, Hubei Province) or Jiyang, Nanyang (now Nanyang City, Henan Province), was a poet of the Tang Dynasty, and was also called "Gao Cen" with Gao Shi. .
Cen Shen was born in a bureaucratic family. Because of his intelligence and precociousness, he studied at the age of five and studied literature at the age of nine. In the third year of Tianbao (744), Cen Shen passed the imperial examination. After three years of guarding, he was awarded the title of "You Nei" to lead the army. Cao joined the army. He later served in the frontier fortress twice. He first served as the secretary of the shogunate of Anxi Jiedushi Gao Xianzhi, and later in the last years of Tianbao he was appointed as the northwest of Anxi. Ting Jiedushi was granted the title of Changqing shogunate judge.
During the reign of Emperor Daizong of the Tang Dynasty, Cen Shen served as the governor of Jiazhou (today's Leshan City, Sichuan), and his old name was "Cen Jiazhou". In the autumn and winter of the fourth year of the Dali calendar (769), Cen Shen died in Chengdu at the age of about fifty-two (51 years old).
Characteristics of Cen Shen's poetry
Cen Shen's poetry is characterized by the heroism of generous service to the country and the optimism of not fearing hardship, which is consistent with Gao Shi. The difference is that he describes more of the colorful life at the frontier and lacks the sympathy for the soldiers in Gao Shi's poems. This is mainly because his background and early experiences are different from Gao Shi's.
Cen Shen's poems are full of romantic characteristics: majestic momentum, rich imagination, magnificent colors, and unrestrained enthusiasm. His curious thoughts and character give his frontier poems a unique artistic charm.
His poems are quite rich and diverse in form, but he is best at seven-character songs. Sometimes there are two sentences in one sentence, sometimes three or four sentences in one sentence, constantly jumping and leaping, and the images are full everywhere. In his famous poems such as "A Night Gathering with the Judges in Liangzhou Pavilion", we can also see that he also paid great attention to learning from folk songs.