In the twelfth year of Tang Dezong's reign (796), the 46-year-old Meng Jiao was on the list when he participated in the imperial examination for the third time, and finally fulfilled his long-cherished wish of seeking a career for half a lifetime.
According to the tradition that The Tang Dynasty Xinke Jinshi can travel around the Imperial City and nominate the Wild Goose Pagoda after the list is released, Mengjiao, who has already had a slight frost on his sideburns and is miserable for half a lifetime, can finally leave his name in Chang'an City in the blossoms of flowers, and this is the most proud day in his life for Mengjiao, who has been lonely and nameless for half a lifetime.
Mengjiao has its own lonely coldness in Mengjiao, Su Shi once subtly summarized it as "suburban cold island thin", the implication is that the poetic style of the two people in Mengjiao Jia Island is very close, both swords take the side, Jane is lonely, obscure and desolate, people can't bear to read.
However, on the day of Zhenyuan's twelfth year of release, MengJiao, who was overjoyed, wrote one of the rarest bright poems in his life- "After Dengke": "In the past, the dirty was not exaggerated, and the debauchery of the present dynasty is endless." The spring breeze is proud of the horseshoe disease, and the Chang'an flowers are seen in one day. "There is no need to mention the poverty of the past, and from then on I will be rewarded with great ambition and soar for nine days."
But "seeing all the Chang'an flowers in one day" is only a day's joy, the next life encounter is not as beautiful as Meng Jiao imagined, even if he gets a meritorious name, he still maintains the difficult life before the age of 46, with his pure heart to serve the country, under the impermanence of fate, and finally become a lifelong bitter poet prisoner. (MengJiaowai Poetry Prisoner)
In the first half of his life, there was no trace to be found, there was no history to say, and the middle-aged Fang got a meritorious name, and then although he occasionally entered the official field, he was lost to the people, and since then, he hastily survived and rolled into the smoke and dust of history. The temple is too high, the rivers and lakes are too far away, this is not only the life of Mengjiao, but also a brief history of the life of a typical Tang Dynasty Hanshi.
If you are lucky enough to enter the circle of friends of Tang Dynasty poets, you will see such a phenomenon: the strength of the students of the cold door and the children of the eunuchs is very different in the skill of the examination. For example, although Liu Zongyuan and others did not have a smooth career later, they were in the tang dynasty of "fifty jinshi few" in their twenties; and Han Yu, who was as powerful as the head of the eight masters of the Tang and Song dynasties, lost three times in a row, and Bowen Hongzike was three times without luck, if it were not for the help of nobles, I was afraid that he would have nowhere to find it.
Under the poisonous influence of the door valve system, the quota of those who entered the door valve system has basically been fixed, and the children of the family are easily lifted, and the han disciples are repeatedly famous and fallen to the sun mountain. There are very few Han shi in the list, and it is rare that they can achieve fame like Han Yu after winning the list, and the vast majority of the Han disciples who have won the list, like Mengjiao's life script, wander back and forth between the temple and the rivers and lakes, and spend their lives.
In the tenth year of Tang Xuanzong Tianbao (751), when the music of the Prosperous Tang Dynasty was close to the finale, Mengjiao stepped on the last silhouette of The Tang Dynasty and fell to the ground, and just four years later, in the fourteenth year of Tang Tianbao (755), Yuyang Fei agitated to break the neon dress feather song, so that the Anshi Rebellion of the Tang Dynasty from prosperity to decline broke out, so that the military disasters were everywhere, and the flames formed the childhood memories of the Mengjiao generation.
Regarding the first half of Mengjiao's life, there are only a few words left in the history books. Father Meng Tingyue is just an insignificant sesame official, the meager salary is struggling to support this impoverished family, the rumors of war and chaos from time to time in the distance, the embarrassing family situation that parents are trying their best to do their best, and from a young age, gray and dark have become the main color of Mengjiao's life.
With the sudden death of his father, the Meng family, which was already surviving, fell into an even worse desperate situation, Meng Jiao became lonely by nature, refused to go to places with many people, more often, he wanted to be a transparent person who no one could remember, so he sat there quietly and dealt with the world in his own way.
Everything is inferior, but the reading is high. This is the most reasonable saying that has been regarded as a guideline by readers of all dynasties, even if it is as bad as the Meng family, Meng Mu also teaches by example, and always advises Meng Jiao not to waste his studies.
The accurate history is no longer available, and I don't know when Mengjiao began to hide away from Song Mountain, ignoring the things outside the window with both ears and reading only the books of the sages. Relying on a high school to reverse the decline of the family was the only choice for the students at that time, and it was also the most helpless and difficult way to succeed.
The New Book of Tang and the Biography of Mengjiao says: Shaoyin Songshan, Sexual Introduction, Less Harmony. This means that Mengjiao has a lonely personality and is not good at interacting with people. And under the unspoken rules of the examination hall before that examination, the candidates must enter Beijing first, lobby the dignitaries and nobles, and get the favor of the nobles first, MengJiao can also find the reason for repeated failures.
In those years of escaping from the world, Mengjiao had experienced the rebellion in the town of Duqi Fan in Henan, and had seen the tragedies of the human world where corpses were strewn across the wilderness and displaced; he had also followed the footsteps of the tea fairy Lu Yu, sent love between the landscape and the countryside, forgetting the sorrows of life; he also floated in the Central Plains and Jiangnan, and spent poetry with Wei Yingwu in Gusu and also enjoyed the southern scenery of smoke and rain.
If Meng Jiao had read his life script in advance, he would have lingered in his life before the age of 41, not how moist he lived before the age of 41, but at least he still had freedom. After the age of 41, MengJiao had nothing but mediocrity and poverty.
In the eighth year of Tang Dezong's reign (792), the 42-year-old Meng Jiao finally returned to the trajectory of a normal reader's life, and he set out for Chang'an to participate in the imperial examination, and then fell off the list without suspense. However, this time entering Beijing to go to the examination is not without gains, and what is more important than the first in the examination is that MengJiao got to know his own Bole and confidant - Han Yu.
Unlike the later image of Han Wengong in the "Decline of the Eight Dynasties of Wenqi", Han Yu in the eighth year of Zhenyuan was still just a new branch jinshi who had passed the examination four times before winning the first place. In the words of the Old Book of Tang and the Biography of Mengjiao: Sexual isolation and widowhood, Han Yue saw that he had forgotten it. Xu is from the same humble origin, and Xu is a similar life situation (MengJiao lost his father since childhood, and Han Yu is also an orphan), but these two people who are seventeen years apart have become friends with Mo Rebellion.
Han Yue understood mengjiao's "fang quan gentleman clumsy, shame learn little man Ming" of the high integrity, but also understand Mengjiao 's "thinking of the people under the sea, begging for mussels in the moon" ambition is difficult to reward, so Han Yue said in the later "Send Meng Dongye Order": Everything must not be peaceful and sound. Because behind Meng Jiao's lifelong bitter groaning, in addition to the suffering of his original family, there was also his accusation and criticism of the unfairness of the imperial examination system at that time.
When the inner perseverance and the setbacks of reality collide with each other, MengJiao's poetry also enters the realm of strange coldness.
In the ninth year of Zhen yuan, Mengjiao fell to the first place for the second time, and he fled back to his hometown like a lost dog, in addition to accompanying his widowed mother, he plunged into the lonely and cold poetry circle that belonged to him, reciting his five-word poems over and over again. Mengjiao is a great talent, otherwise future generations would not have designated him as one of the "Real Tang People Who Opened the Song Tune", which means that Mengjiao is one of the founders of the Song Dynasty.
Even MengJiao himself could not understand why he failed the list twice, and the paranoid he even wrote down the extreme remarks of "pain when the film is dead, shame for many years" after the second time he fell off the list (suicide is only a temporary humiliation, but living is a long shame).
The more you crave something, the more you can't accept the reality that you can't afford to have. From this moment on, Meng Jiao was completely caught in the fate of "poetry prisoner" and could not get out of it all his life.
After three years of silence, the 46-year-old Meng Jiao finally embarked on the journey north to take the exam for the third time at the urging of his mother. In this year, Han Yu, who was highly regarded by him, had already become the observer of Xuanwu Jiedushi, and under his influence, the nobles in Chang'an City began to seriously look at Mengjiao, a silent and speechless wood who only knew muffled poetry.
Just give him a name. I don't know which high-ranking official and nobleman had great compassion, and Mengjiao, who had long been desperate for the imperial examination, finally took the exam at the third time, and the long-cherished wish that was unresolved was fulfilled, and the joy in Mengjiao's heart was self-evident.
At the age of 46, the Tang Dynasty was not young at that time, but MengJiao, who had rekindled his fighting spirit in his heart, was still full of expectations waiting for the imperial court to give him an official position that could show his skills and fulfill his dream of ruling the country together.
The few political beings who had already experienced another four years of ups and downs, mengjiao, who dreamed of being able to make a grand achievement, finally waited for the appointment of the imperial court, Liyang Wei, and then although he participated in the quan election and was promoted to Liyang County lieutenant in the eighteenth year of Zhenyuan, the fire in Mengjiao's heart had also been quietly extinguished in the quiet waiting.
In Han Yu's words: The Battle of Higashino was held in Gangnam, and there are those who are not relieved. The original intention of being a lieutenant of Liyang County and Mengjiao is far from the original intention. His father, Meng Tingyue, ended his life with a small official like a lieutenant of Kunshan County. And when the 51-year-old MengJiao was appointed to a similar official position (Liyang County Lieutenant), I think Mengjiao must have thought of his father's dying hardships and desolation.
The father who died early was once the only hope of the Meng family, and it was also the nightmare of Meng Jiao's life, if he could not even support his family as a county lieutenant, then what was the use of hard reading in this life?
When the light in his heart completely returned to darkness, Meng Jiao became a dereliction of duty, only knowing how to send love to the landscape and the corpse vegetarian food as an official. Then, Meng Jiao was dismissed from his official position for dereliction of duty, and half of his life fell into a cycle of increasing embarrassment.
But the impermanent fate is not ready to let him go, the elderly mother died unexpectedly, the three children died early one after another, and the more they reached the end of their lives, the more fate tortured Mengjiao. He lost his father at an early age, lost his son in his old age, was trapped all his life, had nothing to rely on, and the tears of Mengjiao in his twilight years had long since flowed, and he could only look at the empty and broken house sadly, and chant the confession poem of "Sick and without children, independent and juggled firewood".
In the ninth year of Tang Xianzong's reign (814), under the recommendation of Xingyuan Yin Zheng Yuqing, Mengjiao received the last order of his life, the staff officer of the Xingyuan Army, to try Dali to comment.
This was the last struggle of the 64-year-old Mengjiao, and it was also the highest official position he had obtained in the years of his life, for which Mengjiao, who had been ill for a long time, hurriedly set off from Luoyang with his wife and halfway to Fuxiang County, Henan, and Mengjiao, who was full of heroism and had turned into a decaying bone in the long waiting years, suddenly died violently, and finally failed to complete the gorgeous counterattack of this life.
After Meng Jiao's death, he had no long belongings and was destitute, and everything behind him ended hastily with the support of his friend Han Yu and others. When he was young, he was burdened by his meritorious name, and only after half a lifetime did he get an official and a half post, and then the eunuch sea floated and sank, depressed, and finally died without a name.
The temple is too high, because Mengjiao does not have Han Yu's situation, and there is no courage and courage for Han Yue to dare to be the first in the world; the rivers and lakes are too far away, because Mengjiao does not have Meng Haoran's open-mindedness, let alone Meng Haoran's confidence and consciousness. And it is also between this temple and the ups and downs of the rivers and lakes that Mengjiao is like a prisoner in a strange circle.
This is a Mengjiao-style tragedy.
It is also a typical Tang Dynasty Hanshi who does not know what to say, nor does he know where to start his life.