Kou Zhun, the famous minister of the Northern Song Dynasty, was a civil and military all-rounder with a straightforward temperament, poetry and good literature, and outstanding political talent.
Zhao Guangyi, Taizong of the Song Dynasty, once compared him with Wei Zheng, a minister of the Tang Dynasty, and praised him. Especially in the "Tanyuan Alliance", Kou Zhun has made immortal achievements.
However, perhaps because he lived in wealth since he was a child, Kou Zhun became more and more extravagant after becoming an official, and Sima Guang personally certified him as "extravagant for a while".
Legend has it that Kou Zhun never used oil lamps in his home, and even in places like kitchens and toilets, candles must be lit all night.
Today's poems are related to his extravagant life.
"Tiaoxi Yuyin Cong Later Collection" records such a story:
The public from the prime minister's house out of the north gate of the town, there are good singers to the court, the public takes the golden bell to drink alone, so that the song is a few rungs, the bundle of public gifts, the singer is not satisfied. The peach peeps from the inside, and it is set up as the second chapter of the poem.
"North Gate" is the Daimyo Mansion, in the Northern Song Dynasty, it was a veritable "Heshuo Town".
In 1004 AD, Empress Dowager Xiao of Liao State and Liao Shengzong led 200,000 troops south. Kou Zhun was serving as the prime minister at that time, and Song Zhenzong asked him, "Today, the captives are galloping, and the Tianxiong army is really an important town. ”
In order to make the courtiers realize that the road of peace is not advisable, Kou Zhun recommended Wang Qinruo, the main force of the main and deputy prime minister of the main and faction. Sure enough, after Wang Qinruo arrived at the Daimyo, in the face of the pressure of the Liao army, he only dared to retreat in the city and close his door to practice fasting and chanting for help.
The Liao army fought all the way to the city of Shanzhou (now Puyang, Henan) on the bank of the Yellow River, directly threatening the national capital Kaifeng.
In order to defend this strategic location, in 1006 AD, Kou Zhun personally "knew that the Tianxiong army guarded the Daimyo's mansion" to defend the Liao soldiers from moving south.
After Kou Zhun came to the Daimyo, in addition to developing agricultural production, recuperation, pacifying the people, and actively preparing for war, he still did not give up the luxury of wine and beauty.
One day, a well-known local singer came to perform, and after singing a few songs, Kou Zhun rewarded her with a bouquet of luxurious colored silk, but the singer thought that the reward was too little, showing dissatisfaction.
Kou Zhun was still pouring himself a drink, thinking about what to reward, when the curtain in the inner room was suddenly lifted.
His concubine, Peach of the Eye, came out from behind the curtain and presented him with two poems. The poem "Two Songs of Cheng Kougong":
Chapter 1
A song and a bunch of silk, the beauty is still too light.
I don't know that under the Weaver Girl's window, she has been woven several times.
Second
Wind Strength Clothes One Hand Repeatedly. The dark window rolls the degree of cold shuttle.
The days are short, and the days are not full, how like a song of the enchantress.
蒨, the same as "茜 (qiàn). Madder is a perennial herb with yellowish-red roots that extract dyes, so madder is also often used to refer to crimson color.
The word "peach" is already extremely fresh, coupled with the brightness of "the peach is dying, scorching its bloom", which shows that this is a bright and beautiful pleasing girl.
However, her status is extremely low.
During the Northern Song Dynasty, the source of concubines was mainly through transactions, and buying concubines needed to go through four procedures: matchmaking, bargaining, contracting, and payment, which was the so-called "concubine trading".
Although "concubine" has the word concubine, her status is lower than that of concubine, almost similar to that of a maid. Not only can it be sold at will, but it is also often used to entertain guests, and even given to guests.
The most famous concubine in the Song Dynasty was Wang Chaoyun, who accompanied Su Shi to degrade Huangzhou, she was originally a singer in Qiantang, and she became Su Shi's maid at the age of 12. Wang Chaoyun's life was only 34 years, but he accompanied Su Shi for 22 years, "a hard life, thousands of miles to follow", and finally died of the plague.
However, this does not mean that Su Shi is very affectionate, he has a group of wives and concubines throughout his life, and he gave away all the other concubines except Chaoyun before going to Huangzhou.
Xin Qiji also gave away concubines many times, and there were as many as three poems just by writing lyrics to sing about sending concubines. At that time, society even gave this behavior the nickname of "piano player".
Get back to business.
Although the peach has a low status, she is not a woman who only knows how to bow low and be small, flattering and flattering, but has her own thoughts and personality.
In these two poems, she contrasts the singer with the weaver girl, tactfully and courageously revealing the injustice of society.
"A song and a bunch of silk, the beauty is still too light. I don't know that under the Weaver Girl's window, she has been woven several times. ”
The singer sings a song and gets a bouquet of ayara in return, but she still thinks it's too little.
But I don't know how many times does the woman who weaves Ayara under the night window have to wave the shuttle to weave this bundle of Ayaluo?
"Firefly window", the allusion comes from the story of Che Yin in "Jin Shu, Volume 83, Che Yin's Biography", which holds fireflies in a bag and uses fireflies to illuminate the book and read at night. Later generations often use the window as a metaphor for diligent study and hard study, but the peach is used here to describe the hard work of the weaver girl who works day and night and works diligently to weave silk.
"The wind is strong and one-handed repeatedly. The dark window rolls the degree of cold shuttle. The days are short, and the days are not full, how like a song of the enchantress. ”
The north wind is cold, the cold is pressing, and the woman who weaves silk for others all year round only has thin clothes on her body.
Because it was too cold, she kept breathing at her frozen hands, trying to make her hands more flexible so that the warp and weft would not be confused.
She sat under the dark window, and kept throwing the shuttle silk, the cold shuttle in her hand like a piece of ice.
The days of Layue were short, and the light soon dimmed, but she didn't have the silver money to light the lamp and weave cloth, so she couldn't even weave a foot of silk a day.
With such hard work, where can a singer sing a song easily and gain more?
These two poems are for the voice of the Weaver Girl, and also for the ordinary people who have the same low status as the Weaver Girl and try their best to survive, which is quite like the "Xin Yuefu" poem advocated by Bai Juyi that reflects the suffering of the people's livelihood.
Her tone was sad and complaining, ostensibly saying that the singer was disdainful of the colored silk, but in fact, she was not euphemistically satirizing the prime minister who casually took out the colored silk to reward the singer?
In fact, in Kou Zhun's eyes, the value of a piece of colored silk is indeed not worth mentioning, and he does not care about the hard work of the people.
He followed the original rhyme of the second poem and wrote a poem "Harmony Peach", and replied bluntly:
What will be the end of the fame? The unbearable situation is like a shuttle.
Everything in the world is asked, and listen to the song in front of the bottle.
Prime Minister Kou Zhun felt that the world was in a hurry, and fame and fortune were gone in a blink of an eye, so it was better to abandon everything in the world, cherish fine wine and songs, and live a chic and comfortable life.
The ideas reflected in this poem are the most commonly chanted by ancient literati, and cannot be blindly denied.
However, compared with the peaches that are both brave and compassionate, there is a little bit of "why not eat minced meat".
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