In the poetry of the Tang Dynasty, many literati not only maintained a good relationship on the surface, traveled with each other, sang and harmonized with each other, and when they broke up, they also had to fold willow poems and leave behind one masterpiece after another, but in fact, they also supported each other, and rarely did things that sought each other. For example, when Li Bai was implicated in the rebellion of Li Lin, the Yong King, many literati rushed to save each other, which allowed him to escape.
However, in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, the relationship between the literati became relatively delicate. This is not only related to the Niu-Li party struggle, but also inseparable from the Yuan Shu and Bai Juyi advocating the Xinlefu movement. This retro movement in the literary world has artificially attacked many genres and created a psychological gap between poets. In addition, there is a poem, which is also like the butterfly effect, which has brought about great changes in the poetry circle of the Tang Dynasty. This is Bai Juyi's "No Zhi Shi":
Seventy and to the faithful, the ritual law has a clear text. What is a covetous person who does not hear what he says? Poor eighty or ninety, teeth dropped eyes faint. Chao Lu covets fame and fortune, and the sunset worries about his descendants. Hanging crown Gu Cuixuan, hanging car pity Zhu Wheel. Jin Zhang's waist was invincible, and he entered the king's gate. Who doesn't love riches? Who doesn't love Jun'en? Old age must be told of old age, and the name is retired. When young, they scorn each other, and in their later years, they follow each other. Who is the Sage Han Er shu, who is he? Lonely East Gate Road, no one follows the dust.
Many documents directly record the treatment of the Tang Dynasty after retirement, in fact, because of the successive wars after the Middle and Late Tang Dynasties, the national treasury deficit was huge, and in actual operation, the officials' zhishi were all "unless there is a special edict, and the case is not given to the servants". As for the stable supply of half salary, that was a matter for the Song Dynasty. In the middle and late Tang Dynasty, unless the emperor was kind to a very small number of courtiers, there was no Feng Lu.
More importantly, after retirement, it lost a huge amount of power, which also breeds the idea of "power-loving" for officials. Although the imperial court had a rule of seventy to the emperor, some officials refused to leave. Bai Juyi's poem satirizes these officials. The poem was written in the fifth year of Yuan He, and Bai Juyi had just been transferred from Zuo Shiyi to the Army of the Household Department of Jingzhao Province. According to his rank, the direct object of this poem should be Du You, a 76-year-old old prime minister in the imperial court, and books such as "Supplement to the History of the State" and "Yaoshan Tang Even Jun" also support this view.
At that time, Bai Juyi was young and vigorous, and even the emperor dared to criticize, but he did not name names, and we do not know what kind of rebuttal Du You made. However, two years after the poem was circulated, Du You took the post of Taibao and died of illness soon after. Most of Du You's sons were incompetent, but he had a grandson who later became famous.
This person was Du Mu, who was only ten years old when he died. Bai Juyi's poem obviously had a huge impact on his life. We can see from later poetry collections that Du Mu and Bai Juyi had no interaction at all, and there was never a work of harmony among the Literati of the Tang Dynasty. Not only that, Du Mu was also quite hostile to Bai Juyi.
In the atmosphere of the Tang Dynasty, it was natural to pay respect to the predecessors as a junior. However, Du Mu made a rather rare voice of contempt to Bai Juyi. In the "Dedication to Poetry Revelation", he directly stated his attitude: A certain painstaking heart is a poem, the original is high, not beautiful, not involved in customs, not the present and not the ancient, in the middle.
Among them, "custom" obviously refers to the simple and easy-to-understand "yuan and body" advocated by Yuan Shu, Bai Juyi and others. What is even more exaggerated is that in his epitaph to his friend Li Jie, instead of his deceased friend, he also directly criticized Bai Juyi instead of himself:
Pain from the Yuan and has come, there are Yuan, white poets, bright and not easy, not Zhuang Shiya people, mostly destroyed by it, flowing in the folk, neglecting the screen wall, sons, fathers, daughters, mothers, oral professors, obscenities, cold winter and summer heat, into people's muscles and bones, can not be removed.
This almost caused a polemic and invective battle in the poetry circles of the middle and late Tang Dynasties, and Du Mu's status as a rising star challenged Bai Juyi, who was the "great master of enlightenment", and the relationship between Tang poets became delicate and chaotic. Yuan Shu and Bai Juyi were iron comrades-in-arms, and they joined forces to suppress a poet named Zhang Hu and denigrate him in every way, while Du Mu highly praised Zhang Hu, directly writing "Eyelashes grow in front of the eyes, what is more to ask for outside the body?" Whoever is like Zhang Gongzi, a thousand poems light ten thousand households."
Li Shangyin is also a descendant of the poetry world, and Bai Juyi admires Li Shangyin very much, and even jokes that he will be his son in the next life. The relationship between Du Mu and Li Shangyin is also very friendly, which makes it difficult for Li Shangyin to be a person at both ends, so he has to choose to pretend to be deaf and dumb, and does not dare to choose a side. Li Shangyin was like this, not to mention other poets, it can also be said that the good atmosphere of the poets of the Tang Dynasty began to be destroyed in this era.