The romantic and uninhibited "poet immortal" Li Bai
Li Bai (701-762), known as Taibai, was known as Qinglian Jushi and "Immortal", a great romantic poet in mainland China, known as "Poet Immortal".
When Li Bai was born, his mother dreamed of Taibai Xing, so she named Li Bai. Li Bai read poetry at the age of ten, and at the age of fifteen, he was highly respected by local celebrities for his poetry. At that time, the governor of Yizhou (now most of Sichuan Province) saw that Li Bai was talking well, so he boldly asserted: "This young man is a genius, as long as he is willing to work hard, he will definitely become a person like Sima Xiangru in the future!" ”
The young Li Bai is particularly fond of swordsmanship, and is more willing to be a ranger who values wealth and righteousness. Since then, he has traveled all over the world, met Meng Haoran and other poets, and sang to each other.
In 742, Li Bai came to the capital city of Chang'an and met the great poet He Zhizhang in the Ziji Palace. After tasting Li Bai's "Shu Dao Difficulty", He Zhizhang exclaimed: "Could it be that you are too white star to descend to earth, and the immortal is in the world!" Subsequently, Li Bai was recommended to Tang Xuanzong.
Soon, Li Bai entered the palace to meet the emperor, and Xuanzong personally reconciled the soup for him, and arranged for him to work in the Hanlin Academy, specially accompanying him and writing poems for entertainment.
Li Bai loves to drink, and every time Xuanzong summons him into the palace, he is drunk, but he can write magnificent articles in an instant. Once, Li Bai was drunk in the main hall and asked Xuanzong's most favored eunuch Gao Lishi to take off his boots for him. Gao Lishi felt humiliated and said bad things about Li Bai in front of Yang Guifei. Whenever Xuanzong wanted to seal the official for Li Bai, Yang Guifei tried her best to stop it. Li Bai knew that the people around Xuanzong couldn't tolerate him, so he asked to resign, and Xuanzong gave him money to return it.
In the summer of 744, two of the greatest poets in the history of Chinese literature, Li Bai and Du Fu, met in the eastern capital of Luoyang. The two formed a deep friendship and agreed that the next time they met, they would visit the Taoist immortals together. In the autumn, Li Bai and Du Fu met in the Liang and Song Dynasty (now Kaifeng City and Shangqiu City, Henan Province) as scheduled, and tasted poems and papers with Gao Shi, chatting about major events, reflecting the broad-mindedness of worrying about the country and the people. After the separation, Li Bai officially entered the Tao in Ziji Palace. In the autumn of the following year, Li Bai and Du Fu met for the third time in Donglu (in present-day Shandong Province), and they searched for the reclusive Gaoshi together, visited the writers, and did not break up until winter. After that, they never met, but they often reconciled in poetry, continuing this friendship.
Li Bai likes to make friends, and friends are all over the world. When he was living at his uncle Li Yangbing's house, his friend Wang Lun wrote to him and said, "Does Mr. like to play? I have ten miles of peach blossoms here. Does Mr. like to drink? I have 10,000 taverns here. Li Bai happily went, but he never saw the peach blossoms and wine mentioned in the letter.
Wang Lun entertained Li Bai with the peach blossom pool water made into fine wine, and jokingly said to him: "The so-called peach blossom is the name of the pond ten miles away, not really ten miles of peach blossoms." The so-called Wanjia is the surname of the owner of the tavern here, and there are not really tens of thousands of taverns. Li Bai laughed heartily, and in order to repay his friend's kindness, he wrote the poem "Gift to Wang Lun".
Li Bai's uninhibited time lasted until the Anshi Rebellion broke out. At that time, the fifty-seven-year-old Li Bai was recruited to the shogunate by Xuanzong's son, Yongwang Li Luan. Subsequently, Li inspected Jiangdong without authorization, and was surrounded and suppressed by Suzong in the name of conspiracy and rebellion, and finally died in defeat. Li Bai was sentenced to death as Li's comrade because he wrote a song "Song of the East Tour of the Yongwang". Fortunately, Li Bai had helped the famous general Guo Ziyi in his early years, and this time Li Bai was convicted, Guo Ziyi would rather exchange his official position for his safety, and Li Bai was sentenced to exile in Yelang (now Tongzi County, Guizhou Province).
In 759, the imperial court granted an amnesty, and Li Bai regained his freedom, but his health deteriorated. Three years later, Li Bai entrusted his life's poems to Li Yangbing and died, ending his romantic and legendary life. Li Yangbing lived up to the trust and finally compiled the 20-volume "Caotang Collection", leaving a valuable wealth for the history of mainland literature.
The "Old Tang Book" believes that he died of excessive drinking, some historians believe that he died of illness, and folklore believes that Li Bai jumped into the lake to catch the moon after being drunk and died, which is very in line with the public's reverie about him. Li Bai's poems are full of magical artistic conception and magnificent imagination, just like Du Fu's sentence "The pen falls into a storm, and the poem becomes a weeping ghost and god", which has had a profound impact on later generations.
The "poetic Buddha" Wang Wei who is comfortable and complacent
Wang Wei (701-761), whose ancestral home was Qi County, Taiyuan Prefecture (now Qi County, Shanxi Province), was born in Puzhou, Hedong Province (now Yongji City, Shanxi Province). Tang Dynasty poet and painter.
Wang Wei was brilliant and erudite since childhood, and was known for his poetry when he was young. At the age of fifteen, he left home and first arrived in the capital, and soon became the darling of the princes and nobles. Wang Wei wandered alone in Chang'an and Luoyang, and during the Double Ninth Festival, he thought that his hometown had the custom of climbing high, and he missed his relatives very much, so he wrote the famous sentence of "thinking of his relatives every festival", when he was 17 years old.
Wang Wei has a high talent for painting and is proficient in music. Once, a friend got a precious "Musical Picture", and he was very curious about the content of the painting, and said casually: "It's a pity, I don't know what kind of music the person in this painting plays." After reading it, Wang Wei blurted out: "This is the first beat of the third stack of "Neon Clothes and Feather Song". "People with good deeds specially found musicians to play, and it was exactly the same as what Wang Wei said, so I admired him.
Wang Wei was a twenty-one-year-old high school jinshi, and it was at the height of Tang Xuanzong's Kaiyuan era. Wang Wei has held many positions, but he has not been in office for a long time, living a half-hidden life while engaging in creation. Later, the rebel general An Lushan captured Chang'an, Wang Wei didn't have time to escape, because his reputation was too great, so he took medicine to make himself get dysentery, and lied about being sick in order to escape An Lushan's attention. An Lushan had long heard of Wang Wei's talent and forced him to take up a false position. In the meantime, Wang Wei happened to hear the music from the banquet of An Lushan Palace, remembered the grand scene in the palace in the prosperous era of the Kaiyuan Dynasty, and felt sad in his heart, so he wrote a poem to express the grief of the country.
Later, Tang Xuanzong's son, Tang Suzong, quelled the An Lushan Rebellion, and Wang Wei was arrested along with other officials who were caught in the traitor and awaited punishment. In the end, because Wang Wei created that poem and became a "life amulet", Su Zong did not convict Wang Wei because of his brother's meritorious role in quelling the rebellion and interceding for his brother.
Since then, Wang Wei, who has believed in Buddhism, has become more and more obsessed with Buddhism, participating in Zen and enlightenment every day, usually wearing only plain clothes, eating vegetarian food, and once lived in seclusion in Zhongnan Mountain. Therefore, most of his poems depict landscapes and pastorals, sing praises of secluded life, and are full of the ethereal style of "painting in poetry, poetry in painting", creating an indifferent artistic conception of "Zen in poetry", which is unique in the poetry world. Wang Wei inherited and developed the tradition pioneered by Xie Lingyun, absorbed Tao Yuanming's artistic style, and pushed the landscape idyll to a new height, and was jointly called "Wang Meng" with Meng Haoran. Wang Wei also started a new tradition of literati painting. Before him, painting assumed the missionary function of "educating and helping others", and since then, it has begun to reflect the inner feelings and mental state of the painter. As a result, Wang Wei is regarded as the "originator of the Southern Sect" of landscape painting.
Before his death, Wang Wei left several letters to his younger brother and close friends, advising them to believe in Buddhism and cultivate their minds, and passed away peacefully after putting down his pen. His mind has long surpassed the worldly feelings, and this self-satisfaction of not being shocked by humiliation has made him enjoy the reputation of "Poetry Buddha".
This article is excerpted from "Twenty-four Histories Read Now, Language and History Are Progressing" - the ninth volume of "New Tang Dynasty Book", which is officially authorized to be released, welcome to continue to pay attention.