Yang Du (1834-1894), also spelled Gong Tong, Yi Zi Yali, Bei Shu Qin Ru, Qiu Mei, Bei Bei Qu, or Qiu Lu Dao Ren, Lü Xiang Zhenyi, Late Dong Du Old Man, a native of Xiangning County, Shanxi Province, was a historian, calligrapher, epigrapher and poet of China's late Qing dynasty civilization.
Born in a scholarly family, Yang Du inherited his family's education at an early age, and from the age of eleven, he took deep roots in the examination of the source of knowledge and the discussion of learning. In his youth, Yang Du was tireless in learning and eager to learn, and he had made friends with famous people at that time, and his reputation gradually rose. In 1864, he was admitted to the Tongzhi Jiazi (1864), but when he was promoted to the rank of jinshi, he suffered repeated defeats. He has a passion for meritorious service, but there is nowhere to stretch. When his life was frustrated and his journey was difficult, after a painful struggle, he made a rational choice and focused his attention on writing books.
Calligraphy achievements
Yang Du "is not unique in the beauty of the article, but also in the seal of the essence". He comes from a scholarly family, has the good teachings of his father, and has been very fond of calligraphy since he was a child, practicing every day, making his calligraphy outstanding, coupled with his gambling hundreds of families, profound knowledge has laid a solid foundation for his calligraphy achievements. He wrote very well on the main, grass, subordinate, and lines, especially in the seal and the eight points, and had a high degree of achievement. At the same time, he was very good at stone drum writing, and he also liked zhong dingwen and the style of the seal books of previous dynasties. Yang Du can learn and absorb their essence, integrate and penetrate, not out of the ordinary, their own style.
1. Appreciation of "Ji Yi Ying Stele Character Association"
The Ji Yi Ying Stele Character Association is a masterpiece of Yang Du's inheritance and is now in the Shanxi Provincial Museum. This is a paper and a book, with a height of 164 cm and a width of 37.5 cm. Upper link: stacking rules and regulations to perform rituals; lower link: Nine Classics Twenty Shi Ji Gu as a text. The upper joint paragraph is: Zi Yu three brothers Lord Ya genus, the lower joint paragraph is: 虬麋杨笃乙瑛 inscription.
This association is based on the characters in the "Yi Ying Stele", one of the "Three Steles of the Confucius Temple" of the Eastern Han Dynasty. He Shaoji, a Qing dynasty man, said that he "crossed the air and went out quickly, and after opening a convincing door, he was solemn and at ease." Throughout this link, the pen is both square and round, the knot is graceful and harmonious, the character posture is open left and right, the horizontal is strong, and the rules are strict and the rules are consistent. The whole work is full of elegance and simplicity in the middle of the flat, and there is a majestic and ancient atmosphere in the symmetry of flesh and bones, which goes deep into the tang of the "Yi Ying Monument", which is depressed and calm, and follows the height of the temple. Although it is a collection of characters, it resurrects the ancient stele with more prominent emotions and interest, and the immortal Chinese characters are used as the calligraphy endorsement of the ancient people. This link is not limited to the general guidelines of the book, but allows the strokes to be naturally retracted and undulated, and the knots are also naturally laid according to the changes in the complexity and simplicity of the characters. The middle palace tightened, and the center of gravity moved upwards, just like a young woman with a fat crown, a simple dress with clear sleeves, wanting to stop doing something, looking forward to seeing each other. "Nine", "History", and "Literature" are all things. Skimming with the pen stretches freely, the foothold has its own posture and knows how to hide in the void, or pedal with long feet, or implicitly sheathed, or change direction, pointing more. "Heavy", "rule", "line" is also. The ink is also another feature of this work, between heavy and light, thick and light, wet and dry, full and jerky, aggregation and dispersion, indicating the grand desolation, dynamic and static ups and downs.
The "Ji Yi Ying Stele Character Association" has exquisite calligraphy, rigorous calligraphy, gorgeous and dignified, natural high ancient flying, and is honored as "the first axis of the late Qing Dynasty Lishu".
2. Appreciation of "Everything Without Showing Couplets"
"There is Deng Shiru in the seal book, and there is Mencius in Judea Confucianism", which is no different from most seal makers, and Yang Du's seal book shu zun "sets the great seal into the great seal" Deng Shiru is the style. In this league, Yang Du has reversed the normal state of the seal family in the ink color, and has done his best to change things. Each word presents a thick and light, heavy and light, this dry succession gives people a sense of movement of the natural rhythm, but also makes the viewer's spirit suddenly lift, removing the disadvantages of dullness and sluggishness. In the structure, it also shows changes, taking the momentum with vertical length, tightening up and down, rewriting the tradition of flat and uniform seal with the force of the pen, lifting and pressing the upside down change is obvious, paving straight, wrapping the front and turning, in order to seek roundness and full advance.
Throughout this connection, the charm is smooth, meticulous and full, rounded, steep and vigorous, tough and powerful, not only deng shi ru seal law, but also deeply familiar with the magic of Shi Li's vertical and horizontal opening. It can be seen that Mr. Yang Du has a unique ingenuity, and this work is worthy of being a classic in the book world.
3. In addition to the above two couplets, Yang Du's surviving works also include "With the Three Books" (Lishu, ink, paper), "Shuxia Xiaozheng" four screens (small seal, ink, paper), "Ascending To the Heights of the Words" (楹聯, Seal Book, Jinci Hanxiangguan) and other works.
Shanxi Xiuzhi generation of masters
Yang Du's career is full of ups and downs, and he has repeatedly failed. In 1877, he was made a Confucian instructor in Fanzhi County. During this decade, first the "Xinzhi of Xining County", then the compilation of the "Chronicle of Weizhou" and the compilation of the "Chronicle of Daizhou", from then on, Yang Du's cultivation of Zhi was famous and famous. Since then, he has made an indissoluble relationship with Fang Zhi, and he has come to hire his cultivators one after another. During his lifetime, he mainly wrote "Shanxi Tongzhi " ( Guangxu ) " " Weizhou Zhi " Dai Zhou Zhi " , " Xining Xinzhi " , " Fanzhi County Chronicle " , " Huguan County Continuation Zhi " , " Changzi County Chronicle " Lucheng County Chronicle " , " Licheng County Chronicle " , " Tunliu County Chronicle " Tianzhen County Chronicle " , " Changzhi County Chronicle " , xiang repaired " Wutai County Chronicle " , a total of thirteen works , creating a record for the largest number of individual cultivation zhi in China's history. Among them, his last grand work, "Shanxi Tongzhi", was resolutely compiled at the juncture when Tongzhi had undergone several changes and several pauses. During the more than 6,000 days and nights of the Zhishu cultivation, he once sighed and said: "If the Zhishu is not successful, and the Three Jins literature is cut off by me, is the sin not greater?" It is this high sense of historical responsibility that makes him regard cultivation as more important than life, holding a book with illness, and every day there is a new progress, and when the book is completed, Yang Du will die of illness due to overwork.
"Shanxi Tongzhi" is the source of his life energy, becoming the best in the Tongzhi of the same generation, and is highly praised by Zhang Zhidong, Liang Qichao and so on. The style of the book is rigorous, the examination is exquisite, the writing is concise, and the trade-offs are appropriate. Although he did not have a monograph on Fang Zhi theory like Zhang Xuecheng, his long-term practice and arduous exploration made him reach the point of pure fire in the compilation of Fang Zhi. Many of his ideas are of great positive significance. For example, he emphasized practicality, and he paid attention to "imitating scenery, interface buildings, and irrelevant politicians"; attached importance to drawing, believing that "history is not a map, and geographical records must not be maps"; he drew squares on the maps of historical territories, mountains and rivers, cities, towns, and towns, and marked them with special symbols, which were rare in the old chronicles of the past; he replaced the previous barren Hoshino theory with scientific longitude and latitude dials; he attached importance to the golden stone, with the length of his own golden stone, and carefully examined and revised to make up for the deficiencies in the history books, so that he preserved a large number of extremely useful materials in the chronicles he compiled.
Golden Stone Achievement
Together with Fu Qingjue and Zhang Shizhou, Yang Du was known as the third master of the mountain right, and he had a deep academic foundation and a preference for epigraphy, so his achievements were quite high. At the beginning of the Tongzhi year, he examined, explained and identified the bells unearthed in Ronghe County on the basis of the "Zhou Li" and "Shuowen Jiezi", and because of the solid evidence, he was once famous in the capital, "directly driving Zhang (Zhidong), Wu (Dacheng) and other princes." Pan (Zu Yin) Gong Zhi Shake... Mr. Hu is often referred to as Mr. Zhang Shizhou Shuoru by Nguyen Van Tat. The theory of the times is that Pan Gonggu pushed the grandeur of the award, and Mr. Literature can be deserved." The l2 volume of the "Shanxi Tongzhi" "Records of the Golden Stone of the Right Side of the Mountain" was personally verified by him. He also has a deep study of Oracle. For example, the word "fate" in the oracle bone, after combining the Warring States cloth coin "Xiangyuan Cloth" and the oracle bone, he believes that "fate" is the provincial text of Xiang. It was also found that "Fate" was a small princely state during the Yin Shang dynasty, and the country had contacts with the "Tang" state and the "Chang" state. "Tang" is the current Yicheng, while "Chang" is the current Changzi County. These two places were also two small princely states during the Time of the Yin Merchants. Therefore, Yang Du was also called the "paleographer" of the Qing Dynasty by posterity.
Poetic achievements
Yang Du's poems "Qiu Mei Poetry Banknote" and "Qiu Mei Poetry Continuation Banknote" are included in the "Autumn Mei Remains Collection", including 216 of his remaining poems. Writers and hot land are always lips and teeth dependent, the sense of desolate life, the path of obedience, ambition, worry about the country and the people are doomed to Yang Du's poetic style is full of strong realism. Compared with the number of zhishu that have been cultivated, Yang Du's surviving poetry is much less, but in the literary circles of the same era, his poetry has a non-negligible role in the artistry of both ideological and artistic aspects. The seven ancient poems and seven-word poems that he is good at inherit the realist creative techniques of Du Fu and Bai Juyi, and they are written for events, have feelings, and care about current politics and people's livelihood.
Anecdotes
1. "In the middle of the year of Guangxu (1882), when LingDeTang was moved to Taiyuan Province, Yang Du wrote the plaque on the second door in the form of a Miao seal, and in July, Zhang Zhidong went to Lingde Hall to evaluate the students, and after the car entered the lobby, he suddenly ordered to stop the car and then get off the car to watch the inscription. All the subordinates and students gathered in the lecture hall to stand and wait for a long time, and only then did he slowly come to the lecture, and after the roll call and handing in the papers, he looked at the subordinates and said that today he had not only inspected the high texts of the students, but also had been able to observe the exquisite calligraphy.
2. In the nineteenth year of Guangxu, Li Hongzhang's seventieth birthday was crowned by Yang Dudaijin's shou order and calligraphy among the congratulatory associations of high-ranking officials in various provinces.
3. Yang Du's lifelong cultivation, "full of books and ancient ink, virtual hall gods and ghosts accompanied by lonely lamps" is his own true portrayal.
4. In addition to poetry, Yang Du is not only good at "three rites", the history of the classics, fine gold stones, and gong calligraphy, but also has deep achievements in academic research such as geography, catalogs, zhuzi, arithmetic, seal records, and phonology. In addition to Fang Zhi, he wrote a lot in his lifetime, but unfortunately most of them were not in the world. Twenty years after his death, after The Japanese scholar came to China, he "went thousands of miles away, personally built his door, and bought his inches of ink for thousands of dollars without obtaining it." From this, it can be imagined that Yang Du's influence is far away.
(Source: Mu Feng Tingyu 666 West of the Mountains)