Wang Wei was a teenager and had a heart for the landscape in middle age, but in his later years he fell into deep remorse.
Today, we are more familiar with Wang Wei as a "poetic Buddha", how should we look at the little mentioned "out-of-control" Wang Wei?
Forced to be an official "facade"
On June 19, 756, an Army of An Lushan occupied Chang'an. When the rebels captured the undefended Chang'an, the 55-year-old Wang Wei became a prisoner. At this time, Wang Wei's poetry was famous all over the world, and there was a vague atmosphere of the first person in the poetry circle of the Tang Dynasty. In the anthology of Sheng Tang poems compiled by Shiren YinPan, "The Collection of Heroic Spirits of Heyue", Wang Weishi selected 15 poems, Li Bai selected 13 poems, Du Fu's poems were not selected, and Wang Wei's transcendent status in the Sheng Tang poetry circle can be seen.
After Wang Wei was captured, in order to avoid the embarrassment of taking up a "pseudo-post", he once "took medicine to get diarrhea" and tried to pretend that he had lost his voice and could not speak. However, perhaps because Wang Wei was really famous, An Lushan did not want to let him go, and specially sent someone to take him to Luoyang, the capital of the Yan Dynasty, and detain him at Pushi Temple. I don't know what tough means An Lushan used, in short, he forced Wang Wei to become an official of the Yan Dynasty.
Wang Wei became a man of disarray. Later, he recalled bitterly: "When the thief forced Wen Luo, the soldiers took Over hetong, worshiped The Minister Shaanzhou, and urged the Minister to go to the Road." The horse arrived, the long siege was closed, there was no time to exert force, and the city was reverted to the city... The subject was frightened, self-hatred and cowardice, and although there was no plan to get out, why should he not cut himself? And the knots are fierce, stealing the toilet. ("Table of Assassination History for Xue Envoy Jun Xie Wuzhou")
Wang Wei's "Fusheng Teaching Sutra Diagram"
Wang Wei is not "alone". As the An Shi rebels roared in, many Tang officials were either forced or voluntarily surrendered to An Lushan. With the exception of Yin Da Xixun of Henan and Ge Shuhan of Wenwu, who was forced to surrender, the others either lost faith in the faltering Tang regime or wanted to use An Lushan's new dynasty to realize their career ideals. And An Lushan did not remember the old evils and opened his arms to these "former colleagues", and even appointed Da Xixun and others as the prime minister of the Yan Dynasty.
Compared with those former dynasty dignitaries who soared in the Yan Dynasty, Wang Wei's so-called "falling water" is more symbolic. When Wang Wei was captured, he was only a middle-level official, and in the Yan Dynasty, he was still the one who gave the matter, and there was no substantial "contribution" to the An Shi regime, let alone any aid and abetting abuse and playing for the tiger, and An Lushan was likely to use this great poet to make a façade for the new dynasty.
However, Wang Wei was still out of control after all. There are not many records in the history books about Wang Wei's obscure time, except for a poem. At a large banquet held by An Lushan in Ningbi Pond, when the music of the old Tang Palace sounded, a court musician named Lei Haiqing smashed the instrument and wept in the west to Chang'an to show that he did not forget the old lord. An Lushan was furious and ordered his men to tie Lei Haiqing to the palace pillars and dismember him for public display.
His friend Pei Di brought this news to Wang Wei, who in his grief and anger did not forget the heart of the Tang Room with a song "Ning bi chi": "Ten thousand sad households are born of wild smoke, when will the hundred officials be more in the sky?" In the autumn locust leaves falling into the empty palace, the head of the condensed bi pond plays the orchestra. Later, it became a crucial poem in Wang Wei's life.
Escaped with a poem
Wang Wei's career as a "second minister" lasted only more than a year.
In September and October of the second year of De 's reign ( 757 ) , the Tang army , after winning the great victory at Xiangji Temple , restored both Chang'an and Luoyang. On October 23, Emperor Suzong of Tang and Li Heng were still in Chang'an.
On the day that Li Heng returned to Chang'an, YuShizhong gathered the rebels together and ordered them to take off their crowns, hats, shoes and socks, and stand barefoot in front of the main hall of the Daming Palace, hanyuan hall, and ask them to sin against the Son of Heaven.
Two days later, more than three hundred rebel officials were escorted from Luoyang back to Chang'an, and Wang Wei was probably among them. Cui Ji had the men stage another demonstration ceremony and then throw them into prison. Cui Qi believes: "All the officials who have fallen into thieves, who have betrayed the country and obeyed the hypocrisy, should all be executed." Li Heng originally wanted to approve this plan, but Li Da, the patriarch, stood up and directly advised: "The thieves have trapped the two capitals, the Tianzi has toured the south, and the people have escaped." All of these are relatives of His Majesty or descendants of Xun, and all of them are now executed for treason, fearing the way of benevolence and forgiveness. And Hebei is not at peace, and there are still many thieves in the group, if they are wide, they will open up the road of self-renewal; if they are cursed, they are firmly on the side of the heart of the thief. To some extent, Li Dan's leniency theory is closer to the mainstream view of the emperor and the chancellor of the Tang Dynasty than cui Qi's strictness: in the context of the afterglow of the scholar society since the Wei and Jin dynasties, the "loyalty" of the subject to the king is not an infinite responsibility. After several deliberations, Li Heng finally chose the "leniency theory". The new plan convicts the group of false officials who have lost control of their lives in six grades, and screens them in detail, "the heaviest punishment is imposed on the city, the second is given to commit suicide, the second heavy rod is one hundred, and the second is third-class and degraded."
Wang Wei's "Snow Creek Map"
Wang Wei, who was about to be degraded, escaped the disaster for probably two reasons. The first is that his younger brother Wang Jin "cut himself to atone for his brother's sins"; the second is because of the poem "NingbiChi", the thoughts of the homeland and the pain of the subjugation of the country in the poem became wang Wei's most direct evidence of mitigating guilt. There is also a more similar version of Ye Shi: in the early stage of screening, Wang Wei was imprisoned in Xuanyang with Zheng Qian and Zhang Tong. Prime Minister Cui Yuan saw that the three people were good at painting, so they let them paint on the walls of their own house, and the three of them took this opportunity to ask Cui Yuan to save each other, and finally achieved their wishes.
For Wang Wei's encounter at this time, Du Fu once expressed deep sympathy in the poem: "Zhongyun has been famous for a long time, and now it is broad and deep. The joint transmission of the Yu letter is no better than Chen Lin. One illness is clear, three years of solitary heart. Poor sorrow should be done, try to recite the white head chant. ”
The landscape wiped unevenness in the heart of remorse
After the catastrophe, Wang Wei actually ushered in a turnaround in his career.
In the summer of the first year of the first century (760), less than three years after Wang Wei's "anyway", Wang Wei was promoted to Shangshu Right Cheng (尚書右丞), which was the highest official rank in his lifetime, and the last position he held, and it was also the origin of Wang Wei's famous name of "Wang Youcheng" in the history of literature.
Before the Anshi Rebellion, his career may have been Wang Wei Nianzi, but after experiencing the changes in the world, his heart was already full of Buddhist sense of escapism: "The middle age is quite good, and the late family is Nanshan. Every time you come and go, you will know yourself. Walk to the end of the water and sit and watch the clouds rise. Occasionally valued Lin Shuo, talking and laughing without repayment. ("The End of the South Farewell")
In his later years, Wang Wei often lived in seclusion in Lantian Andichuan, but neither the landscape nor the Buddhist scriptures could soothe his deep remorse. As the scholar Huang Xiaodan said in the book "Fourteen Poets": "In his later articles, he repeatedly reflected on why he could not commit suicide and martyrdom, and the degree of self-deprecation and self-abuse made people unbearable to read." In the "Table of Assassination History for Xue Envoy Jun Xie Wuzhou", Wang Wei even has such a self-defilement as "life is not beneficial to a dime, and death is different from rotten rats".
A facsimile of Wang Wei's "Chuan Chuan Tu"
In the spring of the second year of the First Yuan Dynasty (761), Wang Wei, the right hand of Shangshu, submitted to Emperor Suzong Li Heng's "Table of Reprimands and Recommendation for Brothers", requesting that all his official positions be stripped of his official positions and returned to the countryside in exchange for his younger brother Wang Jin's ability to return Chang'an from Shuzhong. More than three years ago, it was his brother's "self-cutting punishment department attendant" that Wang Wei was able to exonerate. In the short "Table of Responsibility and Recommendation of Brothers", Wang Wei still did not forget to torture himself repeatedly: "He is not a traitor, he cannot kill himself, he is responsible for the country to steal his life, so that to this day" "The subject is trapped in the thief, and the minister is delayed, and the loyalty of the subject is not as good as that of the brother Yiye" "Gu Chen's false official Hua Province, while the brother is far away from Fangzhou, the outside is ashamed of the sage, the inner shame is more righteous, the heart is painful, and the day is the year."
This may be a premonition of Wang Wei. A few months after the above table, that is, in July of the second year of the first century, Wang Wei died at the age of 60. There is a theory among Japanese scholars that Wang Wei died of remorse and self-blame, or at least an early death.
Before his death, Wang Wei made a will and donated his work to a Buddhist temple to fulfill his wish as a Buddhist layman. On the last day of his life, Wang Wei was still writing letters to bid farewell to his younger brother Wang Jin and other relatives. It is said that he put down his pen as soon as he finished writing the letter and died, the so-called "stopping the pen and dissolving".
Wang Jin was on his way back to Chang'an at this time. When Wang Wei died, Wang Jin had reached Fengxiang, but he did not see his brother for the last time. Two years later (763), Wang Jin dedicated his compilation of Wang Wei's poems to Emperor Li Yu of the Tang Dynasty, which is what we can now see as the Collected Works of Wang Youcheng .
Wang Wei was buried west of the Yuanchuan River. The place where his soul was attached during his lifetime, where he and his friend Pei Di left behind twenty poems of the "Yuanchuan Collection". In the famous poem "The Book of Mountains and Pei Xiucaidi", Wang Wei wrote down the most beautiful sentences of his life: "When the spring is waiting, the grass and trees are hairy, the spring mountains can be hoped, the light carp comes out of the water, the white gulls straighten their wings, the dew wet Qinggao, the Mai Long Chao Chi, Si Zhi is not far away, if you can swim from me?" ”
These beauties can help us forget the regrets of the last five years of Wang Wei's life.
Xinhua News Agency photo