If it were not for the fact that he wrote a poem "Wandering Son" to his mother at the age of 50, and it happened to be repeatedly selected by various anthologies and textbooks in later generations, and was constantly chanted and sung on modern festivals such as Thanksgiving and Mother's Day...
Well, the name Mengjiao probably doesn't have much chance of being written or pronounced.
In fact, even if "Wandering Son" is a household name and almost everyone can recite it, everyone seems to have no desire to understand the poet behind the good poem that he uses to impress his mother every year.
If you live in the contemporary era, Mengjiao is most likely to be the saddest singer of this kind:
The song is red, the person is not red.
Unfortunately, this state of sadness is precisely the norm after the Death of this Tang Dynasty poet.
▲Mengjiao
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In 751, ten years after Emperor Xuanzong of Tang's reign, Mengjiao, a native of Wukang, Huzhou (present-day Deqing County, Zhejiang Province), was born.
Yes, the heavens did not send down any auspicious rui, and his mother Pei Shi did not do anything kind to the dream.
There is only one slightly awkward year.
This means that his childhood and adolescence were basically shrouded in a national civil war called the "Anshi Rebellion".
The passing of the Sheng Tang Dynasty and the turmoil of the country have affected the spirit of entire generations. And Mengjiao's generation of people born before the war is undoubtedly the first generation of tragedy.
What is even more tragic is that when Mengjiao was about 10 years old, his father, who was a small local official (a lieutenant in Kunshan County), suddenly passed away. After experiencing the severe pain of a young widow, Mengjiao's mother, Pei Shi, took on the responsibility of raising three children alone.
Children raised by widowed mothers in history seem to have an excellent tradition of becoming talents, from Mencius down, to Fan Zhongyan, Ouyang Xiu, Hai Rui, and then to Hu Shi and so on. Meng Jiao is also in this sequence of talents. As the child involved, his feelings for a single mother are beyond the comprehension of ordinary people, which is the main reason why he "listens to his mother's words" all his life.
Because he was the eldest son in the family, Meng Jiao was reluctant to work hard with his mother alone, so when his two younger brothers grew up, he went out to roam and seek fame. According to research, MengJiao really went out of town after the age of 30. Before the age of 30, his circle was mainly a poetry meeting organized by the poet monk Kyaukran in Huzhou, which influenced him all his life.
Although he didn't walk much, he thought about it a lot. He faced the sorrows of his home and country, and had great ambitions since he was a child.
He has the ideal of ruling the country and the world:
The heart of a strong man is a sword, shooting bulls for the king.
Chao Si removes the National Chicken, and Twilight thinks of the National Chicken.
He also had confidence in his political talents:
For the water does not enter the sea, Ande floats the sky waves.
For the wood is not in the mountains, Ande Yokozko.
He was even more conceited about his literary talents:
The next pen proves the rise and fall, and the statement is prepared for the wind and bones.
Gao Qiu counts the piano, Chengtan a round of the moon.
He felt that his future was unimpeded:
The road is happy to the end of the river, and the river is connected to the boat.
Boats and cars are unimpeded, and no swimming is allowed anywhere.
However, he can still be so optimistic, only because the blows given to him by reality have not yet come. This child, who grew up suffering from snacks, will later record the tragedies of his person and the times with poor and cold poetry.
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When he was about 40 years old, Meng Jiao entrusted his family and mother to his younger brothers and went to the capital to take the meritorious name.
It is hard to imagine that others are in their teens and twenties who broke into the capital, the Sheng Tang poet Wang Wei was admitted to the jinshi at the age of 21, and the Mengjiao people did not enter Beijing until the age when the hairline was bald and bald. And this may be the manifestation of his filial piety: because he is a filial piety, he is very old to be willing to leave his mother, travel to study and make friends, and increase his knowledge; and because he is a filial piety, he is so old that he still has to listen to his mother's words, seek fame, and enter the career.
The sages said, "Forty is not confused," but this man, who was more than forty years old, arrived in the capital and was confused.
Mengjiao's close friend Han Yu wrote a poem "Meng Sheng Poem", which describes Mengjiao's appearance in the capital Chang'an in 792 AD:
Ride a donkey to Kyokuni, desire and smoke the organ.
Do you know the Heavenly Son's residence, the nine are depressed and deep.
A centurion is guarded, and there is no place to find.
Crystal light shines in unison, and the flag is flying in the air.
Qian Yancha left, and was surprised by his own responsibility.
Look up at the daylight, weeping and weeping.
Shu Lai You Gongqing, Mo Ken low Hua Hairpin.
Forgive the non-Xuanmian clan, and deal with many differences.
The gist is that the Hanshi from Mengjiao, a foreigner from another province, is not young, although he is already a well-known poet, but in the social field of the capital, he behaves badly and does not know how to socialize, and obviously has never seen the world. In Han Yu's view, Meng Jiao was an inferior and proud person, on the one hand, he refused to bow his noble head, and on the other hand, he wept and was sad because he ran into walls everywhere.
In mengjiao, the capital, with the optimistic and confident judgment of the previous two, he wrote poems complaining that he had no way out in Chang'an:
Say as much as Qingyun Road, there are enough to reach.
My horse is also on all fours, and I seem to have no place when I go out.
The first examination, yellow. He wrote poems:
The dawn moon is difficult for the light, and it is difficult for the sad people to be intestines.
……
Abandonment and abandonment are like sword wounds.
The second examination was yellow again. He wrote poems:
Nine times a night, the dream is short and not home.
Twice Chang'an Strange, the air will see tears.
Friends were admitted, he wrote a poem "congratulations", but wrote his own full of complaints, it is estimated that friends are speechless after reading:
Whoever speaks in the shadow of the shadow, the light goes out of the shadow.
Whoever says that the fish and the water are happy, the water exhausts the fish withers the scales.
Once a hater, now a laughing man.
Give it up in the mud and float on the clouds.
Lying wood is easy to become a beetle, and it is difficult to abandon flowers in spring.
He Yan was worried about Fang Jing, and he was extremely worried about Xiao Chen.
Whoever buries the sword knows the qi, and the strings of the box are dusty day by day.
May the king speak high and the wind, and ask Cang Min for Yu.
After Chang'an fell, Mengjiao went to Songshan near the eastern capital Luoyang. According to the historian Yan Gengwang's research, the Songshan area at that time, like the Zhongnan Mountain adjacent to Chang'an, gathered many readers who fished for meritorious names in the name of seclusion, and there were many people, and various famous teacher tutoring classes were also held. MengJiao also went to Songshan to participate in the imperial examination training.
But after the second fall, MengJiao gave up completely and returned to his hometown. Perhaps it was the atmosphere of the capital, the contempt of others, and the cold eyes of society that made this 40-something twice-time student collapse.
He no longer has the great ideal of ruling the country and the world in his early years, and some of them are lamenting the unfair encounters and the cold and warm feelings of human feelings.
He had no interest in fame, but at the age of 46 he entered Beijing three times.
Miraculously, this time he inexplicably passed the jinshi.
Han Yu later said that MengJiao was "a few fifty years old, and began to gather the Beijing division at the order of Lady Zun, and from the entrance examination, he went as soon as he got it." It turned out that this time he entered Beijing because Mengjiao's mother Pei Shi let him go. In the whole world, the only person who can make Meng Jiao change his mind is his mother.
But after winning the Jinshi, Meng Jiao did not linger, "having to go", but left a trace of a poem:
The filth of the past is not enough to boast, and the debauchery of the present is endless.
The spring breeze is proud of the horseshoe disease, and the Chang'an flowers are seen in one day.
MengJiao's "After Dengke" should be second only to his "Wandering Zi Yin" in later generations, but historical poetry critics have been critical of his undisguised ecstasy.
Xin Wenfang, the author of the "Biography of Tang Caizi" and a yuan dynasty man, said according to this poem that Mengjiao was "embarrassed, and his pawn was reduced to a thin eunuch, and the poetry was full of faith", ridiculing That Mengjiao was not atmospheric, and the middle emperor was happy to lose his attitude, and later did not appear in his career, which was already doomed in this poem.
In the Qing Dynasty, poetry critics still said that he "saw all the flowers in one day, gained and lost, and covered a common thing, while Dongye (Mengjiaozi) was not hong, as for this, how despicable."
They despise Mengjiao so much, they don't know how many years this poet who is nearly half a hundred years old has been suppressed, nor do they know that he raised his eyebrows in the text because he realized his mother's long-cherished wish. They lacked a sympathetic understanding of the poet.
The most important thing is that after completing his mother's wish, Mengjiao returned to his hometown and did not linger on fame and prosperity. "See all the Chang'an flowers in one day", in addition to "seeing everything", why not "see through"? If you taste, you taste carefully, you can taste the original intention of the poet, which may go beyond the ecstasy understood by posterity, but has an empty sad meaning.
His life was too difficult, and the more he lived, the harder it became.
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Mengjiao appeared in front of the world again, four years later.
According to his uncle Meng Jian, the 50-year-old Meng Jiao still came out as an official at the behest of his mother.
The official position granted to Mengjiao by the imperial court was liyang county lieutenant. This position is the same as the position that his father had done before his death, and the official is lowly. The main officials of a county in the Tang Dynasty were county orders, county clerks, main bookkeepers, county lieutenants, etc., and the county lieutenants were equivalent to four leaders, responsible for the implementation of specific government affairs, many customary affairs, and cumbersome.
After Meng Jiao took office in Liyang, the first thing he did was to take his mother Pei Shi from his hometown to live with him. The now-well-known "Wandering Zi Yin" was written at this time:
The mother's hand is threaded, and the wanderer's body is clothed.
The seams are tightly sewn, and I am afraid that I will be late.
Whoever says anything will be rewarded with three Chunhui.
Mengjiao's mother is a kind, virtuous, resolute and courageous woman, she not only raised Mengjiao and sacrificed all her maternal love, but also became the spiritual pillar and source of motivation for her son. Meng Jiao was more than half a hundred years old, and he finally had the ability to take his mother to the place where he worked to live together, but how could he repay the three springs with the heart of this inch of grass? This poem is good, just in Mengjiao, in the most simple language, wrote the shocking power of maternal love. Song Changbai, a Qing dynasty, said that Mengjiao's "Wandering Zi Yin" has a full range of words and endless meanings, and it is enough to pass on to the world with Li Sheng's poem "Hoeing The Day when noon".
However, Meng Jiao was not happy to be an official in Liyang. Despite his trembling, "full of springs and fear of drunkenness, and the eunuchs are as solemn as fasting", in the end, he is still not up to the job of dealing with tedious affairs every day. It is said that the county order was angry with him and cut his monthly salary by half, making mengjiao's life even more difficult.
After about four years, Meng Jiao resigned. Meng Jian said: "Dongye (Mengjiao) is a lieutenant with a mother's life, and it is advisable to return with a mother's life." It shows that Meng Jiao's travels and finally became an official were all at the behest of his mother, and his resignation from the official was also the result of his mother's decision. The mother may not be able to bear to see her son so depressed as a county lieutenant, so she advises him not to be good.
After resigning, the 54-year-old Meng Jiao took his family and mother to luoyang, where he spent the last and most tragic decade of his life.
At the age of 56, on the recommendation of Han Yu, Li Ao and other friends, Meng Jiao was engaged in water and land transport and tried to assist in the law. It is very suitable for Mengjiao's leisure, so Mengjiao also has a relatively peaceful life. But only a year later, the ensuing pain of losing a son and the grief of a dead mother almost destroyed Mengjiao's spirit and body in five years.
According to Han Yu, Mengjiao, who was sixty years old, lost three sons in a row, resulting in no queen and a desolate evening scene. Some historians have examined that all four sons of MengJiao died in his lifetime, and the eldest only lived to be more than ten years old. You can imagine how painful Mengjiao is. Seeing that the buds of the apricot trees were knocked down one by one after a severe frost in early spring, he wrote "Nine Songs of Apricot Death" to mourn the early death of his son. I recorded two of them:
The birth month of the child is unknown, and the moon of the child's death begins to shine.
The children and the moon are two times, and the children's life is not long.
How this Ying Ying, also for the hanging cang.
Sweet for the dust of the earth, not for the end of the world.
Here he sees himself in disaster, and the flowers are not harmonious.
The poor old man breaks his heart and embraces the broken heart of the eternal night.
Sound death is even more so, and there is no need to say that death is intended.
The sick man has no children, and is independent of Judean chai.
The previous song says that his son is fighting with the moonlight, so his life is not long. An old poet who has been beaten so hard can only paralyze himself with his destiny. The latter song says that his son is dead, and he, a sick and skinny old man, will have no consequences. In ancient times, Wuhou was definitely the most piercing pain of a person's heart. No wonder many poets in later generations expressed that they did not like to read Mengjiao's poems, because it was too bitter and painful, and people's mood was extremely low after reading.
In 809, on the first month of the first month, when Mengjiao lost his son one after another, his most respected mother in his life, Pei Shi, also died. Since this year, Mengjiao has been at home and mourned, and life has almost fallen into a desperate situation: poverty, hunger, aging, disease, cold, loneliness... At this time, he wrote "Fifteen Songs of Autumn Huai", which is a true portrayal of his life and mental state, which is simply tragic to the extreme, and people can't bear to read it:
Lonely bones are hard to lie down at night, and groaning insects are chirping.
The old weeping is no snot, and the autumn dew is dripping.
Cold dew drops dream break, steep wind comb bone cold.
The sick text is printed on the table, and the intestines are turned to worry.
Autumn solstice is older and poorer, and the broken house has no door.
A moon fell on the bed, and the four walls of the wind entered the clothes.
The old bone is afraid of the autumn moon, and the autumn moon sword edge.
The delicate will not dry, and the cold soul sits on its own condensation.
The old man changes day and night, life and death every day.
Sit with a sip of peace, lie down with Wanjing kong.
In the last four or five years of his life, Mengjiao was basically in a state of despair.
In 814, Zheng Yuqing, the chancellor of the Tang Dynasty, was appointed as an envoy to the Western Province of Shannan, and hired Mengjiao as a staff officer. Mengjiao, who was plagued by old illness, finally perked up a little, took his wife to his post, unfortunately walked to the halfway point, died of a violent illness, and died at the age of 64.
After MengJiao's death, his wife Zheng shi had no money to be buried. Zheng Yuqing paid for his funeral and was responsible for supporting his wife for many years. Han Yu wrote an epitaph saying that after Meng Jiao's death, he was "childless, and he was accompanied by Zheng Shi to sue". MengJiao had no sons, and it was his wife Zheng who came to report the funeral. Jia Dao, a poet who suffered from the same disease as Mengjiao and was called "thin on the cold island in the suburbs" in later generations, wrote the poem "Weeping Mengjiao":
The fame of death is in the past, and it should be passed down through the ages.
The widow is childless, and the house is broken with forest springs.
Tsukasa is close to the hiking trail, and the poem follows the ship.
After the deceased hanged themselves, the sun fell cold.
Although it is a heart-wrenching thing that a man dies and has no heirs, leaving only a widow, your fame is there, and your poetry is there, and it will be passed down through the ages.
However, Jia Dao could not have imagined that Meng Jiao was sad before he died, and he was equally sad after his death.
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In the thousand years after Mengjiao's death, his poetry was mixed, often unpopular, and despised and ridiculed.
Starting from the late Tang Dynasty poet Sikong Tu, Mengjiao's poems were not interesting, and most of the poetry critics of the past generations lacked a good feeling for Mengjiao's poems, and the language of comments was also quite harsh. For example, Yan Yu said that Mengjiao's poems are "insects and grasses" compared to Li and Du; Weng Fanggang said that Mengjiao's poems are "flies in the earthworms"; Su Shi likes open-minded and optimistic people, so he has no feeling for Mengjiao, saying that his poems are "cold insects"; Yuan Haoqing said that Mengjiao is "a poetry prisoner with high heaven and thick ground"...
Many people may not see that Yuan Hao asked Mengjiao to be a "poetry prisoner" to demean him, just as many people do not know that Li He is called a "poetry ghost" is not a positive name. People are accustomed to thinking that a poet with the nickname "Poetry X" must be looked up to, like "Poetry Immortal" and "Poetry Sage", which sounds very high. But in fact, "poetry prisoner" means that MengJiao cannot freely express his poems, either confined to form or words, and is a prisoner state, far from being released from prison. It's like your friend giving him the nickname "Wolverine", which is very powerful, and your nickname is "Big Bad Wolf", which is nothing to be afraid of.
For thousands of years, Mengjiao's poetry has been in such a degraded state. Successive poetry critics have said that his poems are written in personal sorrow, miserable, like a poor worm.
In fact, this is the biggest prejudice and misunderstanding of Mengjiao.
Belinsky said that when the great poet talks about himself, about his "me," he is talking about everyone, about all mankind. Mengjiao's poems that hurt into the bone marrow and write personal sorrows are not the common sorrows of mankind?
He was lonely and did not follow the vulgarity, so God gave him everything that was most painful in life, many times fell into the first place, his career was not smooth, he lost his children and no queen, he was poor and sick, and he was displaced... But how could he not have sung all this into a bitter song, and how could it not be a critique of the social disorder of that era?
Do you know? The calendar year (766-779) that Mengjiao grew up coincided with the embarrassing era of the alternation of the old and new Tang poems. At that time, the great poets of the Sheng Tang Dynasty, such as Wang Wei, Li Bai, Gao Shi, Du Fu, Cen Shan, and others, had already passed away one after another, and the zhongtang's sons Zhang Zhi, Han Yu, Liu Yuxi, Bai Juyi, Liu Zongyuan, Yuan Shu and other talents were born one after another. At that time, the popular poetry came from the "Ten Talents of the Great Calendar", their poetry was gorgeous, but the bones were weak, and the whitewash was too peaceful, and they often gathered under the door of the powerful and threw themselves into their favor, surrounded by gold and jade.
Meng Jiao is not unaware, learning the tune of the ten talents of the Great Calendar, his words are valuable, and he does not have to be bitter all day haha. But he just disdained it, the history books said that he was "poor to the bone, brown hanging knots, not trying to bow his eyebrows to pity", he is such a Gengjie.
He knew that in that era, "all evil poems were official, and good poems were empty of mountains."
He knew to chant bitterly like him, "to live with poetry, from ancient times to no fat".
He also knew his real situation, "I wanted to reach the text, but now I am poor because of the words."
However, he is just not vulgar, "all the customs are round, and they are all learned." He will not be a sleek man, he will not write sleek poetry, he will be a man with edges and corners, and he will write poems with edges and corners.
He sang bitterly, wrote simple, dangerous, and difficult verses, and opened up new poetic schools with a different poetic style. That's his ambition.
His whole life was not good in the officialdom, and his life was a mess, but he had his eternal and unchanging pursuits.
The poems he wrote could not be exchanged for money, could not be promoted, and were not even welcomed by future generations, but at that time, he really influenced a group of people.
Han Yu was 17 years younger than Mengjiao, and although his later official position and literary status were higher than Mengjiao's, he himself had always been very impressed with Mengjiao and was deeply influenced by Mengjiao's poetic style. He once wrote a poem saying, "I wish to be a cloud and Higashino to become a dragon." The four sides went up and down the East Field, although there was no reason to part. With the attitude of "cloud from dragon", he expressed his willingness to follow Meng Jiao and learn from him. At that time, people also generally agreed with the saying of "Mengshi Hanbi", that is, the ancient poetry of Mengjiao was first-class, and the ancient text of Hanyu was first-class.
Under the influence of MengJiao, the poetry circle of the Middle and Tang Dynasties got rid of the mesmerizing sound of the "Ten Talents of the Great Calendar" and developed a new style of poetry. After Mengjiao, Han Yu's boldness, Jia Dao's thinness, and Li He's strange tricks have risen in the poetry world, setting off a climax of Tang poetry after Sheng Tang. The "Han Mengshi School" with Mengjiao and Han Yu as the core is one of the two major poetic schools of the Chinese and Tang Dynasties that are on a par with the "Yuanbai Poetry School" and compete with each other.
In this sense, among these people, the oldest and earliest famous Mengjiao is equivalent to the "Zhongtang Chen Ziang" who summoned and spawned poetic innovation. His position is irreplaceable.
Not only that, the real Mengjiao has never been limited to expressing his personal misery and hardship, as later poetry critics say. The scope of his poetry is actually very wide, because of his personal tragic experience, he has always been in a state of poverty and coldness, so he has always had a deep sympathy and sense of identification with the bottom of society, and has also profoundly observed and exposed the deterioration of social atmosphere. In the words of Wen Yiduo, the characteristics of Mengjiao poetry are first, "realistic", and second, "dare to scold".
To put it more graphically, MengJiao is a sharp version of Du Fu.
He cares for the people at the bottom of society and speaks up for them:
The cold one is willing to burn the anointing of Pihua as a moth.
Hua anointing is separated from Xianluo, and there are thousands of false wounds.
To the end of the ground to die, stepping on the ground for the wandering.
Who is the wanderer, the gentleman is Yu Tao.
Those frozen people, in order to get a moment of warmth, are actually willing to turn into moths and pounce on the lamps and candles of rich and noble families. However, what is even more tragic is that the lamps and candles of the rich and noble families are blocked by the saro, even if you become a moth, you will not be able to get close to the lights if you fly over thousands of times. In the end, he broke his head and bled, fell to the ground and died, and after his death, he was trampled under the feet of the powerful people who were dancing and playing. You see, isn't this Du Fu's "Zhumen wine smells of flesh, and the road has frozen bones"?
He wrote about how many innocent people's lives were taken and how many deserted cities were created during the wars of the Middle and Tang Dynasties:
The spring grass of the two rivers is clear, and the ten years of conquest of the city are fishy.
The rebels killed their children and daughters, and in February and March, the flowers went into silence.
Thousands of miles no one whirlwind, warblers cry swallow language deserted city.
Spring color does not pick the branches next to the tomb, and the red color goes to the spring one by one.
He wrote about the times in which he lived, and the world began to deteriorate, and the hypocrisy, deceit, and thinness of the world made him almost burst into scolding:
There is humanity in the beast, and there is a difference in form and a human being.
There are beast hearts among men, and few people can truly know.
The ancients were like beasts, and all had great sacred virtues.
Today's man looks like a man, and the beast's heart is safe and predictable.
Although laughter may not be harmonious, although crying may not be related.
Face knots verbal sex, stomach thorns.
His life has been sinking, especially many times, and he has suffered from the cold eyes of his neighbors, so he hates such a world style, but he does not want to become that nasty look:
Rich and powerful is acquaintance, no wealth and no power with fellow travelers.
Knowing that everything is like this, he lies in the white clouds in the East Stream.
As Wen Yiduo said, Mengjiao is a poet who truly inherits and carries forward Du Fu's realistic spirit and explores a new path for the development of realistic poetry:
Mengjiao is a bloody and tearful accusation to feudal society with his life's energy and personal experience, and his moving power is of course more than the pure objective description of those generations crying and mourning, it is so tightly gripping that even if people feel unhappy when they read it, no one can deny that it unfolds into a real world full of unevenness and is alive and flesh-and-blood, making people think about what to do.
Suffering out of the poet. This power of criticism of reality is definitely not something that a poet who has been dressed for a lifetime can write. Like Du Fu, Mengjiao was a lifelong wanderer, poor and sick, with a bitter heart, and a life of suffocation, and his poems, which also have the appeal of penetrating time and space, deserve to be paid tribute to future generations. Really, Meng Jiao is a heavily underrated poet.
Writing so much, just want to tell everyone a real Mengjiao. The poet who wrote the Wandering Son' should not be misunderstood, let alone ignored.
I hope that the next time you read "Whoever Says Anything, Repays the Three Chunhuis", you will think of his name, his encounter, his loneliness, his perseverance, his sharpness, and everything about him.
bibliography:
[Tang] Mengjiao: Notes on the Collection of Mengjiao, Notes on Han Quanxin, Zhejiang Ancient Books Publishing House, 2012
[Yuan] Xin Wenfang: The Biography of Tang Caizi, Liaoning Education Publishing House, 1998
Zheng Linchuan's Review: "Wen Yiduo on Classical Literature", Chongqing Publishing House, 1984
Shen Jiazhuang and Jiang An'an, "The Poet's Tragedy and the Tragic Poem: On the Bitter Bard Meng Jiao and His Creation", Journal of Zhejiang University, No. 3, 1992
Fan Xinyang and Gu Jianguo, "Meng Dongye's Early Life Examination", Journal of Jiangxi Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), No. 6, 2007
Jiang Yin, "The Historical Significance of Poetry Created by Mengjiao", Journal of South China Normal University (Social Science Edition), No. 2, 2005