I am born to be useful, and I will come back when all the money is gone", is his self-confidence; "Ann can crush the brow and bend the waist of the magnate, so that I can't be happy", is his pride; "If you spit it out, it's half a shengtang" is an admiration for his talent.
He has left behind not only artistic treasures for future generations, but also many unsolved mysteries for future generations: why is his poetic talent so outstanding? Born in the Tang Dynasty of the Li clan, why did he not study for the rest of his life? Where was he born? Who were his ancestors?
Li Bai (701~762), also known as Taibai , was a Qinglian resident.
There is a beautiful legend about Li Bai's name: after Taibai Venus made a mistake, he was sent down by the Jade Emperor to mortal dust, he roamed to the beautiful scenery, beautiful mountains and rivers of Qinglian Township, attracted by the beauty of this place, he decided to reincarnate here.
It just so happened that a beautiful and dignified woman was in the river, and he turned into a carp and jumped into the bamboo basket of the woman, who was the wife of Li Ke, who had just moved here from the Western Regions, that is, Li Bai's mother.
She was very happy to see the carp burrowed into her basket and brought it home to cook with her husband, and soon after, Lee became pregnant.
One night, she had a strange dream, dreaming of a golden light in the sky, and the white star fell from the sky and fell into her arms impartially.
Shortly after waking up from the dream, she suddenly suffered from pain and gave birth to a white and fat son. Li Shi informed Li Ke of the dream scene, and Li Ke named his son Li Bai, the word Taibai.
What is puzzling is why the legend gave Li Bai a reincarnation of "Taibai Venus" instead of the reincarnation of "Wenqu Star".
According to common sense, the "Wenqu Star" is the symbol of the literati and inkers.
Some people speculate that Taibai Venus Chengxian was previously named Li Changgeng, and he had the same surname as Li Bai.
In addition, taibai star and Wenqu star are called "tongue and pen double perfection" in the immortal world, and being able to speak the Tao is also the basis of a good article.
Such a legend undoubtedly cast a veil of mystery over Li Bai's life, and also made his already unclear family background even more confusing.
The mystery of Li Bai's life
The reason why Li Bai's life is of concern is that there are different historical accounts about the place of his birth, and the other is because his ancestors had an entangled relationship with the Li Tang family.
For Li Bai's birthplace, there is no detailed record in the historical records, and among the many theories, the more influential ones are roughly the following: Shu Said. It was the Ming dynasty scholar Yang Shen who explicitly raised this view. He based on the "Qinglian Township of Li Baisheng's Reputation for Zhangming (present-day Jiangyou, Sichuan)" in the Chengdu Ancient and Modern Chronicles, and there are many legends of Li Bai when he was born in Shudi.
Xiyu said. The biggest proponent of this view is Chen Yinke. He believes that the reason why Li Bai's father was called Li Ke was because "the name of the people in the Western Regions is not familiar with Huaxia, so they are called Hu Ke." From Li Bai's naming of his son "Bo Bird" and the style of his poetry, it can be seen that he was not shallow in Turkification.
In addition to these two, some scholars believe that Li Bai was born in the city of Shanye in Central Asia Minor (present-day Tokmok in Kyrgyzstan). In the "Fan Stele", it is mentioned that Li Baizu was "difficult at the end of the Sui Dynasty, and a room was channeled into broken leaves", and Li Bai was also born in broken leaf city.
So far, there are relatively many people who prefer That Li Bai to be born in Shu land, because Li Bai's name as a Qinglian resident shows that he has a deep attachment and love for Qinglian. But some people say that Li Bai may have lived in Qinglian, and it is not known where his ancestral home is.
The ancestral home is undecided, and Li Bai's ancestors have naturally become the object of people's comments and speculations.
Some scholars believe that Li Bai was the ninth grandson of Li Guang, the sixteenth grandson of the former general Li Guang of the Western Han Dynasty.
Some scholars believe that Li Bai's ancestors were Li Hun, who had made great contributions to Yang Jian's fight against the world.
However, the most dramatic claim is that Li Bai is a descendant of Li Jiancheng or Li Yuanji.
This statement is entirely based on Li Bai's experience of not entering the career, and there is no historical basis.
Li Bai's four marriages
Li Bai has been married four times in his life, or has had four married lives.
Judging from the literature, the general situation is as follows: Li Bai's first and fourth marriages are relatively formal, and the middle two paragraphs seem to be just cohabitation; The objects of the first and fourth marriages are all women with a history, their ancestors have all been prime ministers, and they are all prime ministers with a great weight, and the middle two marriages, the former only knows her surname Liu, the latter only knows that she is a Shandong woman, and the surname is not left; Li Bai's first and fourth marriages are not the common form of male marriage and female marriage, but are "female marriage and male marriage" - Li Bai is a door-to-door son-in-law, as the saying goes, "inverted door".
In the four periods of married life, Li Bai has certainly got a lot of happiness, but there are also many troubles.
Li Bai first married at the age of twenty-seven, to Xu Shi of Anlu (in present-day Hubei Province).
The Xu clan was from the Gaomen Wang clan, and his grandfather Xu Yuanshi once served as a left chancellor.
Xu Shao's father, Xu Shao, was even more so, and he crossed the window with Li Yuan, the emperor of Tang Gaozu, and was later given the title of Duke of Anlu County.
Xu Yuanshi was belittled for killing his younger son Xu Naturally while hunting, and was belittled for his crime.
However, in the past hundred years, the Xu family has always been full of hairpins and is quite prosperous.
Li Bai got married this time, and the intermediary was a deputy county official surnamed Meng.
Li Bai lived with this Lady Xu for about ten years and had a son and a daughter.
The daughter's name was Pingyang, and her son's nickname was Mingyuenu, and he later changed his name to Bo Bird. Li Bai later moved with his children to Donglu (present-day Jining, Shandong), and Xu's figure no longer appears in the poems.
Some people think that Xu Shi died of illness, and some people think that the marriage has changed, and there is no conclusion. I am inclined to the statement that Xu shi died of illness.
During his first marriage, Li Bai lived a similar life of seclusion for most of his time.
He lived in The Peach Blossom Rock of Baizhao Mountain in Anlu, built a stone house, and reclaimed the mountain fields.
In addition to farming, he reads every day, and often calls on friends to write poems and drink together.
It should be said that the days are quite moist. It is estimated that in the first half of the period, the relationship between husband and wife is still OK.
In the second half of the period, Li Bai suddenly left home frequently, sometimes to find opportunities to become an official, sometimes to find places of interest and historical sites.
Reasonably imagine that the relationship between Li Bai and his wife may have changed.
In this marriage, what bothers Li Bai the most is the matter of entering the trouble.
It has always been considered a disgraceful thing in the Chinese cultural tradition. Even though he was a Hu person, the traditional concept was relatively weak, but, from Li Bai's heart, it was obviously reluctant.
This disturbing thought is revealed in some of his poems. For example, in the poem "Young People's Journey", "It is better to cover the in-laws and even the imperial city than to be self-possessed", and the poems in the poem "Sending the Body to the World, Long Screaming and Seeking Heroism" in the poem "The Young Man", "The Rich and the Noble Take Themselves, The Meritorious Service and the Spring Glory" and other verses, it is not difficult to taste Li Bai's distressed mood.
After Xu's death, Li Bai moved to Donglu with his children. Most of Li Bai's family settled in Shandong.
This is probably the origin of du fu and others later calling Li Bai a Shandong person.
Soon after arriving in Shandong, a cousin of Li Bai named Li Xian (who was then serving as the governor of Yanzhou), helped Li Bai marry a woman surnamed Liu.
This woman surnamed Liu, not a romantic person, she is not interested in Li Bai's poetry at all, Li Bai only knows how to drink and write poetry all day, talks loudly and does not know how to earn money to support her family, so that she can live a life of eating and drinking, and soon feel dissatisfied and even disgusted, and the relationship between the two finally ended in divorce.
In this period of married life with Liu Shi, Li Bai is undoubtedly very depressed. His lofty ideals, his poetry, wine, landscape and water pleasures, must have been subjected to countless falls, ridicule and scolding by Liu Shi - later he compared Liu Shi to the wife of Zhu Maichen of the Han Chinese in his poems, which is enough to prove it.
During this period, Li Bai's pain was also revealed many times in the psalms. In the poems "The Lu people re-weave, the machine sings the curtains", "Raise the whip to visit the future, and get the laughter of Wen Shangweng" and other verses in "May Donglu Xing Answer Wen Shangweng" can be seen that Li Bai's unrealistic words and deeds have been ridiculed by the Lu people.
The last four sentences of the poem "Nanling Bei Children Enter beijing" say, "Will the foolish woman buy the courtiers lightly, and Yu yi resigns from the family to enter Qin." Yang Tian laughed and went out, my generation is a basil person!" Obviously, after divorcing Liu Shi, Li Bai's depressed mood was released.
In Li Bai's third marriage, the woman was only a concubine and did not straighten out.
This woman turned out to be a neighbor of Li Bai's, and it may be that Li Bai saw her posture and then tried to find a way to take her as a concubine.
Li Bai has a poem "Yong Lin Female East Window Under the Sea Pomegranate", which is dedicated to expressing the poet's admiration for this woman. The poem is as follows:
Under the east window of Lu Nu, the sea grenade is rare in the world.
Coral reflects green water, not enough to be more radiant.
The fragrance is with the wind, and the sunset is good for the birds to return.
May it be the southeast branch, and hold up the robes low.
Climbing and folding for no reason, leading to the golden door.
Judging from this poem, Li Bai is likely to have gone through a process of crush, bitter love, and pursuit.
If this marriage is understood as Li Bai's free love, it is not impossible. The reason why she was a concubine instead of marrying the main chamber may be that the woman next door was just an ordinary people's daughter, and according to Tang law, Li Bai, who belonged to the scholar class, could not marry her as a wife.
The whereabouts of this concubine, who did not even have a surname left, whether she had been living with Li Bai, or whether she had divorced or died prematurely, it was not known.
All we know is that she bore Li Bai a son, named Po Li.
Li Bai's last wife was the granddaughter of the former chancellor Zong Chuke, and they married in Song prefecture (in the area of present-day Shangqiu, Henan), which was supposed to be before Tianbao's twelfth year (753), when Li Bai was about fifty years old.
Today, we can see a lot of li bai's poetic letters to this Zong wife and the poems he wrote to himself in his place, only in the fourteen years of Tianbao, there are "Qiupu Sending Inside", "Self-Generation Internal Gift", "Qiupu Feeling Master Sent Inside", etc., the poems are full of nostalgia.
It is not difficult to imagine from this that Zong Shi is a woman who knows dali and Li Bai is quite affectionate with her.
Zong Shi basically grew old with Li Baikai. During the Anshi Rebellion, the two were separated from each other and gathered less.
Li Bai was imprisoned for having been from Li Xuan, the Yong King, and convicted of treason. In the meantime, the Zong clan used their family connections to try to rescue them.
After Li Bai was pardoned and returned, the two reunited. When Li Bai was 61 years old, he personally sent Zong Shi to Lushan to visit nuns.
Zong Shi, like Li Bai, was an avid Taoist believer, and both of them longed to become immortals, and once they were feathered, they could be described as like-minded.
Comparatively speaking, Li Bai and Zong Shi's ten years together should be relatively harmonious.
Li Bai's poetic name has been passed down through the ages, and the wonderful poems have given future generations unlimited enjoyment of beauty, but he is really a most incompetent husband and father in terms of raising a family and taking care of his wife and children.