The notion "the more adversity the author has,the better his writing is"is an important subject in Chinese ancient literary criticism.It was first explicitly proposed by Ouyang Xiu of the Song Dynasty.Nevertheless,it could be traced back to Han Yu,Sima Qian and Mencius,and even back to The Zhou Yi(The Book of Changes).In understanding this notion,people tend to put much emphasis on the objective matter of the notion in question.However,its subjective spirit should also be adequately considered.As for objective matter,an author may face two types of adversity:one is lifelong poverty and the other is prosperitythen-poverty.It is the latter that is more likely to inspire the writer to create far-reaching literary works.As for subjective spirit,an author amy suffer greatly,for various reasons,in spiritual life rather than in material life.This is another kind of adversity that is also likely to stimulate the author to produce extremely remarkable works.
