Text/Xu Liutang
(Author's Note: This article does not involve the introduction or discussion of Chen Laolian's specific works, nor does it have any story content about Chen Laolian and women, and those who want to pay attention to such information can skip it directly.) ）
Old Lotus has no empathy to empathize with, and the more water WuShan dyes are not light. In the next life, I don't know where to go, but the Buddha is willing to give birth again. ("Missing title")
Poor children have to buy autumn light, a piece of pig liver to drink grass. Intent on forgetting the chaos, Chongyang did not see Chongyang. ("Chrysanthemums Are Not Seen in September")
Chen Laolian's two poems, I first saw in the accompanying pictures of the book "Commentaries on The Biography of Painters of Past Dynasties and Ming", the original picture is a scroll of books, and the two seven poems in the picture are written together, making people think that they are a seven laws. Later, I saw the album "Sixteen Views of Hermitage" painted by Chen Shi, and Lao Lian inscribed three poems as paintings, and these two poems were in between. These eight verses of the poem Lao Lian are re-titled, just like pork liver with wine, and their taste is quite chewable.
The afterlife is nowhere to go
In the book "The Collected Works of Chen Hongshou", Chen Chuanxi introduced Lao Lian's life with several subtitles: a young man with a famous birth, a brilliant teenager, a middle-aged man who was bumpy and frustrated, and an invisibly reclusive old age. Just like using the words "birth, suffering, and death" to summarize human history, it almost outlines the life of Lao Lian's "high open and low walk".
Chen Laolian was born in the twenty-sixth year of the Ming Dynasty and sat in the ninth year of the Reign of Qing Shun. Ancient and modern meditators have been practicing Buddhism, and there have been people who have passed away on their knees. Is such a dying state a kind of control over one's own life, or is it a kind of cultivation that goes straight to the other shore? Thoughtless. Lao Lian's death was forced by the inferior gentleman Lu Ziyu? Or was he killed by the descending Qingming general Tian Xiong? To this day, there is no conclusive evidence. But in itself, the answer seems to stem from the deep confusion of "not knowing where to go in the next life" and the full expectation of "Buddha's willingness to promise another life" and "Buddha's willingness to come back to life"
Although the first half of Chen Laolian's life was not satisfactory, she had a wonderful life. I have always believed that the first evil of the examination lies in the fact that the appetite of the reader is too high. If Chen Laolian, like Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, and Dong Qichang, had no intention of pursuing a career and was devoted to painting and calligraphy, or like Qiu Ying, who specialized in selling paintings, perhaps his life would not be full of sorrows. In turn, the first goodness of the imperial examination lies in the creation of a group of scholars and doctors who take the life of the people as their own responsibility. Emperor Daming did not give Chen Laolian the opportunity to show his political talents, but provided him with a series of situations in which the dynasty was prosperous, declining, chaotic, and dying, constantly hitting his heart, making him move from frivolity to gravity, from indulgence to focusing on the people who were in chaos like himself.
The Daming River and Mountains were not broken in the hands of Chen Laolian, Chen Laolian's teachers Liu Zongzhou and Zodiac Zhou, although they wanted to fulfill their responsibilities at the time of national disaster, the book business was powerless to return to heaven. Liu Zongzhou went on a hunger strike and martyrdom, Zodiac Zhou generously died, and Chen Laolian stole his life from the beginning to the end, and has always been in a state of self-reproach that "Confucians cannot martyr the community". In the end, even a straw could instantly crush his will to survive.
As a "scholar," Chen Laolian has his own remarkable side; but as a Danqing hand wandering on the edge of politics, he also has another side of "indisputable."
A disturbing event that forgets the desire to wear
A year before his death, Lao Lian painted forty-two paintings in one go for zhou Lianggong, a former friend of Mo Rebellion. Zhou Lianggong prepared to commit suicide after Li Zicheng broke the light, and was saved by his family. However, in the following year, he surrendered to the dorgon camp, and then swung his sword at the anti-Qing rebels, and the second minister did a good job.
In May of the seventh year of Shunzhi, Zhou Lianggong passed by the West Lake on the way to the hajj and met with Lao Lian. In the text left by the two, the "important" meeting passed by, presumably between a half-pulled head and a bald head, except for a polite greeting, there was not much warmth. When the two met, Lao Lian did not agree to paint Zhou, but afterwards drew a volume of "Tao Yuanming's Truth" and entrusted him to transfer it to Zhou Lianggong. Did Zhou Lianggong "meet" Lao Lian for the friendship between the two, or did he "meet" Lao Lian for the sake of painting? The issue is about his character. In the autumn of the following year, on the way back to Fujian, Zhou Lianggong met with Chen Laolian again. This time, Lao Lian happily agreed to paint him, and one painting was forty-two.
"Or pick yellow leaf vegetables with Shaoxing deep black brew, or make Xiao Shuqing lean on the column song, but do not count the orders to stop." Or crawling with one hand or scratching his feet with two fingers, or staring at the silent, or holding a stubborn child, playing with the mouth, and being quiet for half a moment..." Zhou Lianggong recorded Lao Lian's various behaviors before painting at that time in "Lai Gu Tang Calligraphy and Painting Trek". Old Lian was a scruffy ghost, and his friends knew it. Zhou Lianggong wrote Lao Lian's "unbearable", was he trying to explain Lao Lian's painting state of "undressing"? Zhou Lianggong is well aware of the "rules" of asking Lao Lian to paint, so there will be a singer and prostitute Xiao Shuqing here. Is Lao Lian's head scratching and kicking into the "creative state", or is it tangled in the heart? Hard. In short, Zhou Lianggong painstakingly arranged this familiar life scene "before the national change" for Lao Lian, which is very good for Lao Lian's way.
Among these paintings that have survived to this day are the "Source Map", "Su Wu Li Ling Story Map", etc., and "Tao Yuanming's Ancient Picture Volume" can also be counted among them. For the "Return to xi tu scroll", the current introduction text is that Lao Lian borrowed Tao Yuanming's story to persuade Zhou Lianggong to turn back to the shore and resign his official and return to hiding. However, in my opinion, this is not necessarily the case. Lao Lian's painting and the "Su Wu Li Ling Story Map", "Provenance Map" and so on, just like Ji Kang's "Book of Renunciation with Shan Juyuan", are "renunciation paintings". The story of Li Ling seeing Su Wu needless to say, Chen Laolian and Zhou Lianggong, who is Li Ling and who is Su Wu, everyone knows it. As for the various plots depicted in "The Return to the Xi Scroll", they are actually similar to Chen Laolian's life in the mountains. What Lao Lian had to say was one sentence: You take your Yangguan Road, and I cross my canoe bridge. The reason why Lao Lian concentrated on painting forty-two paintings for Zhou Lianggong is that this is equivalent to writing a "Forty-Two Chapters Sutra" for Zhou Lianggong, asking him to put down his butcher knife and become a Buddha. Lao Lian was not painting this time, but made a big article.
Lao Lian's article obviously did not play a role, and Zhou Lianggong still wore his top to show off the market. And this "friend meeting" in the chaos undoubtedly gave Lao Lian another stab. It is not easy to steal life, it is even more difficult to "forget", and in reality, there are still such and such rotten things that will collide with the long-unhealed wounds on Lao Lian's body from time to time.
Old Lotus has nothing to empathize with
Old Lotus is a talent who has been wiped out by red dust. Do talents have the ability to go through heaven and earth? not necessarily. Lao Lian was born in a family of official eunuchs and pursued fame and righteousness, and he thought so and did so. Helplessly, the talent and fame of painting made him deviate from his career, and his life was defined as a painter. According to Yu Ren, you are in the art; when the old lotus shows her face, it is all manifested in the "swimming in the art".
When he was forty-three years old, Lao Lian went to the capital to seek fame. Unexpectedly, the imperial court valued his painting skills and recruited him to become a court painter. This matter is placed on today's North Drift, which undoubtedly touched the grand prize - entering the National Academy of Painting, but also with the compilation. Lao Lian did not think so, helping to copy the emperor's portrait, by the way to see the palace paintings can be, as a full-time painter does not do. A year later, his brother Chen Hongshi died, and Lao Lian put on the family assets to "enter the Prison of the State of Thieves", hoping to correct his career. At this time, Li Zicheng's army was approaching the Beijing Division, and at that time, many Beijing officials had left beijing by various reasons, and Lao Lian had to return to his hometown.
"I hate my home in my life, and I swim in every wave." Lao Lian lost her father at the age of nine, lost her mother at the age of eighteen, and began to learn to write poetry and cursive at the age of twenty-one, and at the same time became addicted to alcohol. These three skills, combined with good painting, became a set of sharp weapons for his future travels and lives. Lao Lian's original level of life was not low, although it was not very generous, but her relatives and friends were all high-class. Helplessly, he was active and strange by nature, and did not follow the step-by-step path of the disciples. Although I am still doing my job, I have not relaxed myself by reading idle books, writing poetry, painting, playing, drinking, making friends, and so on.
People think that Lao Lian is a madman, which is a kind of elegant name, and Lao Lian himself also regards the predecessor madman Xu Wei as a model. Perhaps, Lao Lian's father and Xu Wei's deep friendship has laid an unusual life situation for him.
In the second year of Shunzhi, Yangzhou fell. Shi Kefa was martyred, and Ni Yuanlu, Zhu Yuan, Liu Zongzhou, Qi Biaojia, and other loyal and righteous men committed suicide in Shaoxing one after another, and among these people, Lao Lian's teachers and friends were many. At this time, Lao Lian was busy borrowing seeds for his dog lion slave. Did you borrow any seeds? I don't know, but the dog is lost. Lao Lian also wrote a "Lost Dog" for this purpose, which was incorporated into the "Baolun Tang Collection" of the few articles. At the end of "Lost Dogs", Lao Lian wrote: "Yu Drama! Let this dog sit in the favor of the emperor, that is, the lord worships Yi Tong, the food is raw, and the day after tomorrow there is still a scourge of killing to enjoy the soldiers, and Ande belongs to my cloth and makes the Confucian sigh? Although there are sentences in the text that allude to the ugly state of Zhou Lianggong's generation, Lao Lian seems to be dead to the small court of the Southern Ming Dynasty and even the Ming Dynasty. Like Huang Daozhou, who knew that he could not do anything, Lao Lian could not learn it; like Zhou Lianggong, he climbed the new dynasty, and Lao Lian was ashamed to do it; like Qi Biaojia, he committed suicide and martyred the country, and he could not make up his mind for a while.
Another of his best friends, Zhang Dai, also took refuge in the mountains. Zhang Gongzi's mountain life can be described as heaven and earth, and there is a hard day without a meal. He secretly gave birth in order to complete the Book of Stone Kui, just as Shi Qian accepted the palace punishment in order to complete the "History". However, Lao Lian was unwilling to be a scholar because he was not a scholar, was unwilling to be a painter, believed in Buddhism and could not abstain from drinking and keeping his vows, stole his life and was unwilling to live, and could only wander between the mountains and forests of the city. The loftiness of ideals and the survival of the city servants made him really have no interest in anything, and the mourning was greater than the death of the heart.
A piece of pork liver drinking grass
The flowers and birds of the old lotus are painted as delicate and rich as filigree enamel cloisonné, and the landscape is indifferent in The Xiao Shu. The strange characters he writes are actually his strange lives. Painting was originally a pleasant activity of the literati, but it became the shackles of Lao Lian's life.
In the mountain pass, under the hut, on a case made of several wooden planks, in a magnetic disk with residual paint, there was a sliced brine pork liver...
(The cover image originates from the Internet, and if there is infringement, it must be deleted.) ）