Author: Jin Manlou
In modern history, Gong Zizhen is a celebrity, and his writings such as "I advise Tiangong to shake things up again and demote talents in an eclectic manner" and "Falling red is not a merciless thing, turning into spring mud is more protective of flowers" and the like are all famous poems in "Miscellaneous Poems" and are widely circulated.
Gong Zizhen was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, into a family of eunuchs, and his grandfather Gong Yushen and his brother Gong Jingsheng were both Qianlong Thirty-four Years (1769) Jinshi, the former of whom served as a cabinet secretary and military aircraft; the latter served as a bureaucrat, Wailang, and the prefect of Chuxiong, Yunnan, who was a clean and honest official and had a good political reputation in the local area.
Gong Zizhen's father Gong Lizheng succeeded Gong Jing as an heir at an early age, and he entered the army in the first year of Jiaqing (1796), and later entered the military aircraft department as Zhang Jing, and soon transferred to the prefect of Huizhou and Anqing, and the official was appointed to Su Songtai Military Preparation Road and Jiangsu As an envoy.
Gong Zizhen (龚自珍), courtesy name Xuanren (璱人), was born in Qianlong 57 (1792), the daughter of the famous scribe Duan Yujie, and the author of "Green Hua Yin Xie Poetry Grass". At the age of 12, Gong Zizhen learned the art of phonology and rhyme from his maternal grandfather Duan Yujie.
After the age of 16, Gong Zizhen went to Beijing, and it is said that he often traveled to Fayuan Temple with his uncle Duan Yuli (Zi Hetai), and the monk jokingly called it "one ape and one crane".
At the age of 25, Gong Li was serving as Su Songtai's military reserve, and Gong Zizhen took office with his father. During this period, Gong Zizhen consulted Wang Yisun of Suzhou with a volume of poems, who pointed out with concern: "The words of the poems when they hurt, the words of scolding, and the eyes involved", so "the mouth does not choose words, and the movement is with the world", I am afraid that the future is very unfavorable. However, Gong Zizhen was unmoved.
Under the suggestions of many famous teachers, Gong Zizhen was quite smooth in the early days of the imperial examination, and he was selected in the township examination in the twenty-third year of Jiaqing (1818) at the age of 26. Afterwards, he donated to the Cabinet Zhongshu and the National History Museum to compile and proofread, in order to familiarize himself with the cabinet archives, understand the system of the dynasty's canon, and study the geography of the northwest.
However, from the step of lifting people to entering the army, Gong Zizhen walked extremely difficult. In the ninth year of Daoguang (1829), after six examinations, Gong Zizhen finally passed the entrance examination at the age of 37 and fulfilled his wish.
The reason why Gong Zizhen is trapped in the examination is said to have a great relationship with his calligraphy. Gong Zizhen's uncle Gong Shouzheng once warned the family's sons Yun: "Where the examination paper is poor, the handwriting should be beautiful, the ink should be thick, and the dot painting should be flat and correct, then there is no one who does not enter the examination." ”
Obviously, Gong Zizhen did not remember his uncle's teachings, among which Jin Shi was unable to be elected as a Shu Jishi of Hanlin Yuan because "the Kai Fa is not medium-range, and it is not listed as superior".
In this regard, Gong Zizhen has always been grumpy, and he once said regretfully:
Yu is not good at studying books, and he must not aspire to the eunuch sea of the present, and he will spend his whole life. Recalling a kind of situation when I was a child, why not beg for a school master, learn this early, and have no difficulties in my life, but I can win or lose!
To this end, Shi Ren also made up a paragraph, saying, "(Gong Zizhen) is not good at writing in his life, so he cannot enter Hanlin." If he became a gongshi and changed his official cao, he was greatly hated, and he wrote the "New Book of Ganlu" to stab the ruler. All his daughters, his daughters-in-law, his concubines, his favorite concubines, the Books of the Academy. If a guest speaks of a certain Hanlin, Ding'an will say, 'Today's Hanlin, Judas Daoye?' None of the women of my family are indispensable to the Hanlin. 'With its work calligraphy also. ”
It can be seen from the above that Gong Zizhen ridiculed the "pavilion style" that Hanlin officials were good at, and Gong Zizhen was not bad at calligraphy, but only because he was "good at ancient" and studied the Six Dynasties Book, so he "was not allowed to enter Hanlin and could not enter the military plane."
Of course, Gong Zizhen's failure to enter the Hanlin Academy may be related to his age, his inability to join the military plane as Zhang Jing or because he is not rigorous enough. In general, perhaps because of his personality, Gong Zizhen was born on the right path, and he successively served as the chief of the Zongren Mansion and the chief of the ceremonial department, but the officials were idle and far from being ambitious.
In fact, Gong Zizhen is famous for his poetry rather than for his official xianda, but his famous poems are mostly uneven. For example, if the last five attempts were unsuccessful, he wrote the poem "Autumn Heart" to satirize the scientific expedition:
Autumn hearts are like the tide of the sea, but there are autumn souls that cannot be moved. Desert tulips in the arms, pavilions ancient jade as the waist.
The sword of the people in the northwest of the air is cold, and the sound fills several places in the southeast. Fighting big stars rot countless times, long days and months fall into the forest.
Another example is the poem "History of Yong", which is used to ridicule those foxes who tend to be powerful and powerful, and the talents who occupy the official field:
Fifteen southeastern states of gold powder, Wan Zhong enmity belongs to celebrities. The prison pot foxes are all counted, and the tuan fan is in the upstream.
Avoiding the prison of words, he wrote books for rice sorghum. Tian Heng's five hundred people are safe, will they return to the ranks?
In the "Miscellaneous Poems of The Self-Hai", "Kyushu is angry and thunderous, and Wan Maqi is sad." I advise Tiangong to shake things up and demote talents in an eclectic manner. "I'm afraid it's also a manifestation of this sentiment."
During his tenure as an official in Beijing, Gong Zizhen was involved in a feud, the so-called "lilac case". Gong Zizhen has a poem in the "Miscellaneous Poems of Self-Hai":
The empty mountain disciples leaned on and wandered, dreaming of the spring in Langyuan in the west of the city. A ride to pass the note zhu di late, Linfeng handed over and the man in black.
At the end of the chapter, Gong Zizhen and Self-Notes: Remembering the Lilac Flower of Taiping Lake inside Xuanwu Gate.
According to later interpretations, the "Taiping Lake inside Xuanwu Gate" here refers to the mansion of Belle Yi painting; and the so-called "lilac flower" and "silk dress man" are The side fu Jin Gu Taiqing of Yi painting.
Yi Yi was Qianlong's great-grandson and zongfu caizi, whose side Fu Jin Gu Taiqing was originally surnamed Xilin Jueluoshi, a Manchurian blue flag man, both of whom could write poetry and good literature, and were very close to the Beijing Chinese people.
In particular, it is worth mentioning that Gu Taiqing is versatile and has been writing all his life, and his creations have involved poetry, words, novels, and paintings, especially the name of the word Shilin. In his later years, he also wrote a sequel novel "Dream shadow of the Red Chamber" under the name of "Yuncha Waishi", which can be called the first female novelist in the history of Chinese novels.
Because Gong Zizhen served in the Zongren Mansion and was famous, it was only natural that he would join the literary circle of Yi Hui and his wife. However, it is said that Gong Zizhen and Gu Taiqing had an affair, but it was first proposed by Mao Heting at the end of the Qing Dynasty, which said:
Taiping Street on the shore of Taiping Lake, Nangu Spring Deep Burial Night. People are allure surnames pouring into the country, and lilacs have a low wandering.
In this regard, there are those who agree with it, those who oppose it, and those who debunk rumors. In addition to the liveliness of the literary world, the novelist Zeng Pu also fictionalized this matter and wrote it into the third and fourth times in "Evil Sea Flower", and the "Lilac Case" was all over the world.
What's more, under the writer's pen, Gong Zizhen actually disclosed his secret affair with Gu Taiqing in a literati collection, and even planned to propose to Gu. Yi Yi's son was furious and expelled Gu Taiqing from the house, but also poisoned Gong Zizhen.
Afterwards, Gu Taiqing sent servants to secretly inform Gong Zizhen, who fled Beijing in a hurry, but was eventually poisoned to death in Danyang.
The novelist's statement of Yanshi may not be convincing, but the amount of information it reveals is quite large. However, it is certain that Yi Yi and Gu Taiqing have a strong relationship, and although they gave birth to four sons and three daughters in their lives for The Side Fujin, this is enough to prove it. After the death of Yi Yi and his wife, they were buried in the family garden, and the so-called claim that Gu Taiqing was expelled from the palace was not credible.
According to Mao Heting, "Taiqing is not forbidden, but behind Taisu," he is not allowed to be tolerated by his sister-in-law and his concubine." From the Taiping Street Residence, zaizhao and zaichu's second son, Shuwen and Yiwen's two daughters went out to live in the horse breeding camp. ”
Logically speaking, Gong Zizhen is only 7 years older than Gu Taiqing, one is a talented person in the world, one is a famous talented woman, and the real love between the two may not be true (after all, the status of the two is very different), but Gong Zizhen may have admiration, and it is difficult to say.
In the nineteenth year of Daoguang (1839), Gong Zizhen resigned from the government and returned to his hometown. According to his record in the "Miscellaneous Poems of the Sea": "Yu did not take his dependents with his servants, hired two cars alone, and carried one car by himself, and one car collected hundreds of volumes out of the capital." ”
Gong Zizhen left Beijing in such a hurry, which inevitably caused various speculations from later generations, and the so-called "Gu Taiqing was expelled from the palace and secretly told Gong Zizhen to avoid disaster" may have been derived from here, right?
There are various explanations for this matter, some saying that Gong Zizhen offended the military minister Mu Zhang'a because he vigorously fought in the Guangdong opium case, and because he was afraid that the other side would poison his hands, thirty-six plans were taken as the top plan; some people believed that it was mainly because Gong Zizhen's father Gong Shouzheng was going to become an official in the ceremonial department, and Gong Zizhen had to recuse himself as usual, so he simply resigned and returned to China because his parents were old.
It is worth mentioning that when Lin Zexu was ordered to go to Guangdong to ban smoking, Gong Zizhen once offered advice to Lin Zexu and expressed his willingness to go south to Guangdong with him and contribute to the smoking ban. However, for various reasons, the trip was not possible.
On the way back to the south, Gong Zizhen compiled the poems of the past years into three hundred and fifteen poems of "Self-Hai Miscellaneous Poems", which rose to fame and were recited for a while. After returning to Hangzhou, Gong Zizhen taught at the Yunyang Academy in the local area and danyang, and died in Danyang in the twenty-first year of Daoguang (1841) at the age of 50.
There are also many legends about Gong Zizhen's death. For example, novelists say that Gong was stabbed to death by the assassins sent by Yi Yi's son, and it is also said that Gong Zizhen met the famous prostitute Lingxiu in Huaishang on his way south, and was poisoned by Lingzhen because of his broken feelings; it is also said that Lingzhen had another love, Gong Zizhen tried to poison her with medicine, and did not want to be poisoned by her.
Mao Heting said in the "Gossip of the Evil Sea Flower": "Ding'an died, or yun was poisoned by his servants, and had an ambiguity with his concubines (that is, the lingzhen referred to above), and was not a Manchurian." ”
Judging from the instructions on the Gong Zizhen Memorial Hall in Hangzhou, Gong Zizhen ate unclean food while drinking alcohol and suddenly fell ill and died. However, from the above account, it can be seen that Gong Zizhen actually has a lot of hobbies.
Or to put it this way, he was all five poisons except opium. Moreover, Gong Zizhen is famous for his love of gambling, and what is even more obscure is that his old man must lose every bet, and he once "poured out his family assets with Bo".
Perhaps because his people were too unscrupulous, Liang Dingfen, a bibliophile of the former Dynasty Qingliu and the late Puyi Emperor, never collected the writings of Yuan Ming and Gong Zizhen, on the grounds that Yuan Ming was shameless and Gong Zizhen was extremely bad. Liang Dingfen also warned the students that neither of their books should be read and should be discarded. [1] Of course, this is also a family statement.
Excerpt from Jin Manlou: "Perusing the Seventy Years of the Late Qing Dynasty", Chinese Publishing House, 2021.
[1] Xu Xinfu's Chronicle of the Guangdong Collection: When Liang Dingfen was in charge of teaching Fenghu Academy in Huizhou, he had compiled the Fenghu Books collection of Guangnan Qunshu, but he was deeply disgusted with Yuan Ming and Gong Zizhen, and qiyun: "Yuan Mingzhi's primitive behavior is shameless, he offends famous teachers, obscene books and proverbs, he is poisonous in the sea, there are groups of three or five, and the thieves in clothes and crowns have become an incorrigible atmosphere." Gong Zizhen's heart was bad, he had a rebellious son, and he was in turmoil. Although the text is not the same as China. All these two people's writings shall never be collected, in order to show their jealousy and evil intentions, and they will be angry and guarded! If there is a violation, it is not my disciple. ”