Guan-chzhun Lo

Luo Guanzhong (real name Luo Ben or Luo Guan; pen name Huhai sanren, i.e., “the idle man of lakes and seas”) was a Chinese writer of the 14th century, to whom the creation of the classical novels Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin is attributed. The final revision of Water Margin belongs to Shi Nai’an (possibly a pseudonym of Luo Guanzhong himself). Luo took part in the struggle against the Mongol oppressors and wrote songs and dramas. Tradition attributes to him the authorship of several historical and fantastical works, including Dispelling the Curses, later adapted by Feng Menglong. The epic novel Popular Narrative of the History of the Three Kingdoms (“Sanguo zhi tongsu yanyi,” abbreviated as Romance of the Three Kingdoms) is a literary adaptation of the official chronicle and describes the events accompanying the fall of the Han dynasty in 220, the division of China into three mutually struggling kingdoms, and the reunification of the country under the Jin dynasty in 280 (the civil strife in China from 184 to 280, when the country was torn apart by the struggle for power among the three kingdoms: Shu, headed by Liu Bei; Wu, headed by Sun Quan; and Wei, headed by Cao Cao). The very first sentence of the novel became a proverb in China and formulates the work’s central idea, reflecting Chinese cultural views on the cyclical nature of history: “The great forces under Heaven, after long division, are sure to reunite; after long reunification, they are sure to divide again.” The main characters in the book had real historical prototypes. Only a few secondary characters are the product of the author’s imagination. Luo divides his heroes into positive and negative ones, depending on their role in the country’s history. The author of the novel witnessed at first hand the anarchy of the final years of the Mongol Yuan dynasty. He also witnessed the first years of the reign of the new emperor, who founded the Ming dynasty and restored the long-awaited order in the country. The writer opposed the division of Chinese society, preached the idea of voluntary unification of warring political groups,