Youth|beauty|affection|shortness
Zhu Huijun|Imperial Poetry 50 Lectures No. 17:
Woe and blessing for the Bodhisattva Emperor
After painting the elderly Emperor Wu of Liang, I had mixed feelings. But when he saw Lao Xiao Yan, he took off his dragon robe and changed into a robe, but he didn't feel any relief, but he had a sad face. This old man, known as the "Bodhisattva Emperor", has really lost his attachment to Hongchen?
He has been an emperor for 25 years, and he is already 63 years old, but he ran to Tongtai Temple in 527 to become a monk, which is absolutely unprecedented! The court blew up, and he probably didn't put it down, so he returned to the palace three days later. Two years later, he went to Tongtai Temple and stayed for 12 days. Due to the early death of the crown prince in 546, his soul was devastated, and he was also superstitious to the point of madness, and even gave up his life twice in succession. The ministers donated 300 million yuan one after another, so they could "coax" him back to the palace. Even so, his mind was mainly on Buddhist matters, repairing temples, studying Buddhist scriptures, and taking the lead in fasting. As a result, Buddhists, who did not ban eating meat, can only be vegetarian from now on!
We have respect for those who have faith; For those believers who have gone mad, we must be vigilant.
So, what is the inner world of this "Bodhisattva Emperor"? Let's take a peek at the speculation from his poems. There are still more than 80 existing poems by Xiao Yan, and literary historians divide them into four categories according to their content and subject matter: romance poems, poems about Zen and enlightenment, poems about banquets and gifts, and poems about things.
What has a certain value is Xiao Yan's romance poems, which are mainly concentrated in the new Yuefu poems, also known as mimic Yuefu poems, and the number accounts for almost half of all his poems. When he was still stationed in Xiangyang, he was very fond of local folk songs, and many of his poems such as "Fangshu", "Thoughtful", and "Lingaotai" were created at this time. Even after becoming emperor, Xiao Yan's interest in Yuefu poetry remained unchanged. Like most Yuefu folk songs, Xiao Yan's Yuefu is also a love song, mainly sung by women.
These poems depict the woman's longing for love, the bitter state of parting lovesickness, lingering feelings, beautiful style, easy language, and strong Jiangnan folk song flavor. For example, "a year of leakage is about to end, and thousands of miles of people have not returned." Jun Zhi is inherent, and concubines are helpless. ("Midnight Song at Four O'Clock, Winter Song"); Grass and trees are not fragrant, flowers and leaves of a hundred colors. Send a message to my old lover, know my heart. ("Xiangyang Copper Hoof Song") and so on. Zheng Zhenduo believes that "Xiao Yanxin's Yuefu words are the most delicate and cute".
Xiao Yan's seven-character poems also deserve special attention. Xiao Yan has more than ten Yuefu poems written in the genre of seven-character songs, such as "Song of Dongfei Shrike", "Song of Water in the River", "Jiangnan Lane" and so on. The creation of seven-character poetry began with Emperor Wen of Wei, Cao Pi, whose Yan Ge Xing is the oldest and most complete literati seven-character poem in existence. Since then, Song, Qi Shi, Bao Zhao, Tang Huilin, Shi Baoyue and others have also produced such works, but the impact is not great. In Xiao Yan, the seven-word poem has been further developed. Although Cao Pi's "Yan Ge Xing" is a pioneering work, the whole poem rhymes sentence by sentence, which inevitably seems monotonous and lacks the taste of tactful arias. Xiao Yan's seven-character poems are flat and rhyme interchangeable, with ups and downs, which is quite original. Subsequently, imitators arose, and his sons Xiao Gang (Emperor Jianwen of Liang), Xiao Yi (Emperor Yuan of Liang), ministers Shen Yue, Wu Jun, etc., all created seven-character poems. By the time of the Chen Dynasty, the sentence structure and structure of the seven-character poems had become more perfect, and the rhythm had become more harmonious and colorful. Later, Li Bai, Du Fu, Gao Shi and others in the Tang Dynasty creatively used this style of poetry to write many poems of different styles, and the seven-character style poems were more mature. The pioneering work of Xiao Yan and others cannot be erased.
Among Xiao Yan's seven-character poems, "Dongfei Berao" can be said to live up to its reputation:
East Flying Berao West Feiyan, Huanggu Weaver Girl met each other.
Whose daughter lives in the door, and she is glamorous in the photos.
The south window and the north are hung with bright light, and the curtain is fragrant.
The daughter is fifteen or sixteen years old, and her face is as beautiful as jade.
The three springs have been twilight from the wind, leaving the pity with whom.
The poem depicts a man's affection for a young girl. Lingering and compassionate, not embellishment. The first two sentences compare the eagle (i.e., the shrike) from the east to the west with the swallow, and the morning glory (i.e., Huanggu) across the river with the weaver girl, expressing the melancholy of seeing each other often but not being close to each other. Then he directly describes the beauty of the girl who lives opposite the door: the smiling face and the black hair reflect the whole Luli. The daughter was radiant, and whether she stood in the south window or under the north window, it seemed that a bright little sun hung there, and even the naro tent and the embroidered curtain made of fine silk were overflowing with the fragrance of fat powder. The girl was only fifteen or sixteen years old, and her face was like jade, and she was a peerless beauty. In the end, this leads to infinite sighs about the girl's home. This poem has a long-term influence, and there are many people who sing harmony later: from Xiao Yan's son Liang Jianwen Emperor Xiao Gang, down to Li Qiao and Zhang Cambodia in the Tang Dynasty, only "Yuefu Poetry Collection" has collected as many as ten poems with the same name and title. But when it comes to attainments, there is no sense of being on top of the other, and most of them are not as affectionate, gentle and simple and generous as Xiao Yan's poem.
"Song of Water in the River" is another style, which depicts the beautiful and honest image of Mo Chou in a strong and colorful way by trying to describe the noble state:
The water in the river flows eastward, and Luoyang's daughter is not worried.
Mo Chou thirteen can weave Qi, fourteen pick Sang Nan Motou.
Fifteen married to the wife of the Lu family, and sixteen gave birth to the character Ahou.
Lu Jialan's room is a beam, and there are tulips and Suhexiang.
There are twelve rows of gold hairpins on the head and five articles of silk shoes under the feet.
The coral hanging mirror is rotten and shiny, and the flat-headed slave is in the box.
What do you hope for in life, and hate to marry the king of the owner.
In China, Mochou Nu is also a very famous girl, comparable to Luo Fu and Hua Mulan. Mo Chou Nu made her first appearance in the Southern Dynasty Yuefu, and since then she has frequently appeared in poetry and folklore, and her influence is extremely far-reaching. But there are at least three versions of this "Mochou Girl": one refers to Shicheng Mochou, Shicheng is in present-day Zhongxiang, Hubei, and the Southern Dynasty "Book of Song" has a record of this Mochou. Later, "Old Tang Dynasty Book Music Zhi II" narrated: ""Mo Chou Le" comes from "Stone City Music". There is a woman in Shicheng whose name is Mo Chou and is good at singing ballads...... So Song Yun: 'Where is Mo Chou? Mochou Stone City West. The boat hit two oars, urging Mo Chou to come. This Mo Chou girl is amazing, she is rumored to be a singer and dancer of Chu at the end of the Warring States Period, recording and singing ancient famous songs including "Yangchun White Snow", "Xia Riba People", "Yang'a", "Pickled Dew", "Cai Wei Song" and so on. There may have been such a woman in Chu back then, but most of her deeds are legends. The second refers to Mo Chou, the wife of Luoyang Lu, who is the heroine of Xiao Yan's poem. The third is Jinling Mochou, in fact, it was not recorded until the Song Dynasty. However, because there is Mochou Lake in Jinling, it is more well-known to the world. If you trace back to the source, Luoyang Mochou is more credible. From the perspective of literary tradition, the saying that "there are many beautiful women in Luoyang" also originated in the Liang Dynasty of the Southern Dynasty, which should have a lot to do with Xiao Yan's poem.
Xiao Yan's poem has a total of fourteen sentences, but twelve sentences are used to describe the incomparably rich living environment of Mochou Nu, which is simply enviable and sighs at the wealth of life. However, just when the reader may have a delusion and misunderstanding, the poem suddenly takes a sharp turn, and the theme is pointed out with the sentence "hate not to marry the king of the owner". "Dongjia Wang", Tang Shangguanyi, Yuan Zhen, Li Shangyin, Han Yi, etc. all refer to the "Dongjia Wang" as Wang Chang (Dongping Xiangsanqi) in his poems. Yuan Zhi made it even more clear in "Zheng" that "Mo Chou loves Wang Chang privately". But their understanding is actually wrong, it should refer to the commoner surnamed Wang in the east, that is, Wang Lang in the east. With Xiao Yan's dignity, it is really rare to have this kind of understanding. The whole poem is rich and colorful, but also subtle, the style is bright, the rhyme is flexible, and the duality is also neat, it is indeed a masterpiece. Hu Yinglin, a famous literary critic of the Ming Dynasty, commented in his "Poetry and Internal Edition": "The ancient tune is in the fine words, and there is no one who can match it after the Jin Dynasty." Of course, this evaluation is a bit exaggerated, but there are really not many that can be compared to it in later generations.
Judging from these poems, Xiao Yan is obviously a person with a rich heart and delicate emotions, and generally belongs to a generous, benevolent, forbearant and generous person. This can understand his later obsession with Buddhism. However, it is really arrogant to use the wealth of the country to satisfy one's spiritual beliefs and to be too arrogant to one's relatives. As for starving to death in Taicheng, I have a different view from previous dynasties, maybe this is Lao Xiao Yan's "Nirvana"!
For the poems of the Qi Liang period, the evaluation of later generations is not high, and most of them think that they "mock the wind and the moon, make flowers and plants", "have less wind and clouds, and have more children's love". Qi Liang poets did lack the lofty ideals of Kuang Shi to save the world, and also lacked a serious sense of social responsibility, so it was rare to find works that reflected social reality and words and aspirations, and what filled the literary world at that time was a large number of landscapes, poems and even erotic poems. However, if it is fair to say that the "Wind and Snow" is well written, it is much better than the clumsy "Wind and Clouds".
Xiao Yan's poems, in terms of subject matter, content, and style, all embody the characteristics of Qi Liang's poetry without exception. However, because of its sincerity and sincerity, and with a strong flavor of folk songs, it still occupies a place in the history of Chinese poetry.
Under the influence and advocacy of Xiao Yan, the cultural undertakings of the Liang Dynasty reached the most prosperous stage since the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Li Yanshou, the author of "Southern History", commented: "Since Jiangzuo, it has been more than 200 years old, and the cultural relics are prosperous and beautiful. This assessment is more appropriate.
Writer's Archive
Zhu Huijun, born in July 1961, is from Hunan. The first generation of the Republic of China Master of Arts, senior editor, famous literary critic.
From February 2000 to February 2014, he successively served as the deputy editor-in-chief of China Art Newspaper and China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Publishing House. He has successively served as the operation and management officer of the commune, the head of the Party School Office of the County Party Committee, the deputy director of the editorial department of "Literature and Art Study", and the director of the Periodicals Division and the Propaganda Department of the Research Office of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles. He has also served as the president and editor-in-chief of the magazine "Chinese Literary and Artist".
He is the author of more than 10 books, including "The Theory of the Subject of Artistic Creation" (1988); He has published more than 1,000 articles. He has won more than 100 awards. Among them, "Following the Footsteps of Marxism-Leninism: Scientific Interpretation of Literature and Art and China's Contribution" (2018, 2019) is a national key book publishing planning project of the 13th Five-Year Plan and a project funded by the National Publishing Fund.
He has successively lectured on "Marxist-Leninist Literature" at the Lu Xun Academy of Literature of the Chinese Writers Association and the Chinese Writers Century Forum; He served as a judge of the "Lu Xun Literature Award", "Golden Eagle Award", "China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Literary and Art Criticism Award" and so on.