In the fourteenth year of Song Ningzong Jiading (1221), the 68-year-old Jiang Kui died of illness in hunger and cold, and the leading great lyricist of the last year of the Southern Song Dynasty ended with such a dismal ending, which made people feel a lot of emotions. Lifelong white clothes, wandering rivers and lakes, poor and destitute, it is no exaggeration to use these three words to sum up Jiang Fu's life.
In the last years of the empire when the building was about to fall, neither the descendants of the gentry nor the nobles, nor the meritorious name, Jiang Fu's tragic life can actually be imagined. However, the strange thing is that he has lived at the bottom of society all his life, but the poems and songs he writes are all Yangchun white snow, even those high-ranking officials and dignitaries are also full of praise.
Jiang Fu was an idol of that era, from Fan Chengda, who was the Great Xianggong of Zaifu, down to the geisha of the Qin Lou Chu Pavilion, everyone pulled him because of Jiang Fu's poetry and song, so that this penniless "poor acid student" could not starve to death on the streets during his lifelong wandering.
But the life of relying on people can never last long, and when the good man can no longer help for various reasons, Jiang Fu has to return to a state of extreme poverty. Such a drastic change in life has been staged many times in Jiang Kui's life, and the cycle has been repeated, and finally let him die of loneliness after experiencing the cold and warm of life, and even the things behind him need to rely on friends to help.
And when we put aside the heavy fog of history and come to Jiang Kui's side, we will find that such an all-rounder who is known as Su Shi, who is known as Su Shi, has an all-round artistic talent who is endowed with piano, chess, calligraphy, painting, poetry and song, and has used his life to show the truth of the life of the low-level literati of the two Song Dynasties for future generations.
Compared with the well-known lyricists of the Two Song Dynasties, Jiang Kui's reputation today is not very large, and people can't even read his name when they mention him again, except for the extremely difficult to recite but stipulated as one of the necessary poems for middle school students, "Yangzhou Slow Huaizuo Mingdu", everyone knows nothing about Jiang Kui's story.
But this is not Jiang Fu's loneliness, but our sadness.
Born in the twenty-fourth year (1154) of Emperor Gaozong of Song's Reign Shaoxing, Jiang Fu was miserable, and although he was also a family of official eunuchs, the highest official position only achieved hanyang Zhixian's father, Jiang Hao, who left nothing but a brief hope for Xiao Jiang Fu. There are almost no records of Jiang Hao in the history books, we only know that he was a scholar in Shaoxing for eighteen years, and when Jiang Fu was not long after his personnel, he died in Hanyang Zhi County, giving his son Jiang Fu a faltering starting point in life.
From the sudden death of his father, Jiang Fu could only rely on his family relatives to barely survive, so that the low-level life of the people's eyes gave Jiang Fu a sensitive personality and artistic endowments that would shine in the future. Like the vast majority of readers, diligent and diligent reading in order to seek the first place in the dynasty is also Jiang Kui's ideal of life. Therefore, from the moment he was eligible to participate in the imperial examination, Jiang Fu has been running all the way to the examination room, and has spent ten years just to make a name for himself.
However, four scientific expeditions in ten years ended in failure, and this conceited and talented Jiang Fu fell into a long-term self-doubt, he did not want to be trapped in his hometown of Raozhou anymore, and began his lifelong detention in the jianghu. From the moment he walked out of Raozhou alone, Jiang Fu gradually drifted away from his hometown and never went back.
In fact, to be fair, Jiang Kui did not lack the help of nobles, and in his days of wandering in the rivers and lakes, he could always meet the nobles who pulled him aside, some people solved his livelihood, some people solved his lifelong affairs, and some people made him famous in the world, but unfortunately, among these nobles, there were indeed many officials to participate in the government affairs of the current dynasty, but none of them solved the problem of establishment for Jiang Kui. And Jiang Kui also lived like a pilgrim throughout his life, living by the support of the master's family, and his daily life was to chant the wind and make the moon, fill in the words, and write a masterpiece that was called "extremely exquisite in words" by later generations, so as to get the recognition of the world.
The first nobleman Jiang Fu met was xiao Dezao, and at this time, Song Ci had already entered a stage of prosperity like the Song Empire. Those famous lexicons have long been ancient, and the once star-studded lexicon talents have withered, and only the "four great poets of the Southern Song Dynasty" are worth mentioning- You Yuan, Yang Wanli, Fan Chengda, and Lu You.
However, Fang Hui, a famous poet of the Yuan Dynasty, believed that if Xiao Dezao had not died early, his fame and achievements would not have been below Yang Wanli, and future generations would also see Xiao Dezao's position in the literary world.
Jiang Fu was just thirty years old when he met Xiao Dezao, and looking at the frustrated young man in front of him, Xiao Dezao, in addition to being envious of his talent, was the heartache of his living in the rivers and lakes and being helpless. After that, Xiao Dezao always took Jiang Fu with him, not only giving him his niece Xu, but also taking care of Jiang Fu's living. For a long time after that, Jiang Fu, who ran into walls everywhere, finally had a stable state of life.
Xiao Dezao is like an elder who leads the way, he guides Jiang Kui, who is wandering in the rivers and lakes, back to the right path, so that he is no longer like a wandering prodigal son, but has the opportunity to make friends with the big men in the world of words, and gradually became well known to people at that time. It can be said that Xiao Dezao is the re-creation benefactor of Jiang Fu, and this kindness of "sending charcoal in the snow" has made Jiang Fu remember for a lifetime, and has served around Xiao Dezao for a long time.
In the fourteenth year of Song Xiaozong Chunxi (1187), when Jiang Kui was passing through Hangzhou with Xiao Dezao who was going to Huzhou to take up his post, he met Yang Wanli, a great poet who had written the famous sentence "The lotus leaves are infinitely blue, and the lotus flowers are different from the red of the day" was shocked after seeing Jiang Kui's poems, because Jiang Fu "works for everything for the text", and every poem he writes will use classics and rhymes to the extreme, and the details are all intriguing ingenuity.
Yang Wanli was also very attentive to Jiang Kui, and he even wrote a letter to Fan Chengda, who had been a political minister (prime minister), to Amway Jiang Kui, a wizard. Who is Fan Chengda? As an official, he was the most central figure in the political arena of the Southern Song Dynasty, and his protégés were all over the world; for Wen, he was a member of the "Four Great Poets of the Southern Song Dynasty", and he was a proper literary elite. Fan Chengda spoke highly of Jiang Kui's poetry, and he praised Jiang Kui's poems for being the charm of Wei and Jin characters. Such an evaluation can already be called incomparable.
"Carrying backwards" is an ancient beauty talk, and many of the pearls of the sea who were born poor were famous all over the world by the promotion of big figures, and eventually they were able to leave their names in history. But this iron law has failed in Jiang Kui, even if there are such big people as Xiao Dezao, Yang Wanli, and Fan Chengda as endorsements, he is still the tepid old look, relying on the support of others, living trembling.
In fact, the Time of Huzhou, which is attached to Xiao Dezao, can be regarded as a rare stable life in Jiang Kui's life, with no worries about food and clothing, and can also travel around leisurely, from Suzhou and Hangzhou to Jianghuai, this time of roaming the rivers and lakes gave Jiang Fu supreme creative inspiration, and in his few surviving works, the poems written from this time account for a large proportion.
What is more worth mentioning is that several confidants with red faces who appeared during this time brought enough tenderness and joy to Jiang Kui. In the first year of the reign of Emperor Guangzong of Song (1190), Jiang Kui traveled to Jianghuai and met his confidant, the Liu sisters, while living on the banks of the Chiyuan Bridge in Hefei.
In the last days of the war and chaos, the shy talents in the pocket met the singers and prostitute sisters who fell into the wind and dust, and Jiang Fu, who was good at words and good music, composed a large number of movements for the Liu sisters who were good at dancing and playing the piano, which was passed down as a good story at that time. In a sense, this dream love of "golden wind and jade dew meeting" also brought rare spiritual comfort to the people who were afraid of life at that time.
Jiang Fu had traveled back and forth to Hefei several times for the Liu sisters, he had dreamed of Liu's daughter at night when he was sailing on the river, and when he woke up, he was lost, and the former red pink lady had been separated from each other, but Jiang Fu's mind was full of the good looks of the red face and confidant, so he wrote a famous article "Ta Sha Xing Yan Yan Light":
The swallow is light, the warbler is delicate, and it is clear and clear to Hua Xu. Night long fight for thin affection? Early spring is stained with acacia.
Don't write after the book, don't be the hour needle and thread, and go far away from the soul. Huainan Haoyue cold thousand mountains, the return of the dark unattended.
The more there is no future, the more romantic, with the military disaster raging to Hefei, the Chi lan bridge broken, the Liu sisters also disappeared into the smoke of history like a surprise. Some people say that they fled to a foreign land, and some people say that they committed suicide in martyrdom, no matter what kind of ending, Jiang Kui and Liu's daughter have become a trick.
In the three years from the first year of Shao Xi (1190) to the third year of Shao Xi (1193), Jiang Kui not only met such wonderful people as the Liu sisters, but also met the Fan family singer named "Xiaohong" when he visited Fan Chengda, who returned to Suzhou.
Judging from the moral standards of later generations, Jiang Kui, who already has a wife, is undoubtedly a scumbag, Shao Xi is still recalling the missing Liu woman in the second year, Shao Xi was fascinated by the Xiaohong who was proficient in music in three years, and also wrote the famous sentence "The most delicate rhyme of his own new words, Xiaohong sings my flute low", which has been passed down as a good story by later generations.
However, the patriarchal society established under the feudal system gave Jiang Kui such freedom that he could find another confidant after marrying his wife, and became a beautiful talk for the literati class at that time and even in later generations. If this is the case for a lifetime, I think Jiang Kui's life is not miserable, after all, in the chaotic world, people who can still do "beauty in their arms, food and clothing without worry" are already envious of others.
Thinking about it carefully, most of Jiang Fu's poems are Yangchun White Snow, although it is too far away from the toiling people, but it is very open among the eunuch class, coupled with Jiang Fu's personality charm, which makes him mix well for a while, even if such a situation is completely dependent on others.
Under the promotion of Xiao Dezao and others, Jiang Fu went in and out of the house of the dignitaries of the Daguan and met his true love fan Zhang Jian in the fourth year of Shaoxi (1193). Zhang Jian was born in the Zhong Ming Ding food family, and his ancestors were Zhang Jun, one of the famous "Four Generals of the Southern Song Dynasty" (along with Yue Fei, Han Shizhong, and Liu Guangshi), and although Zhang Jian's generation no longer fought on the battlefield, the wealth accumulated by several generations was enough for Zhang's descendants to laugh at life.
When the rich fans met the poor idol, Zhang Jian, who loved Jiang Fu to the extreme, learned that the idol had several scientific expeditions but found nothing, and made a crazy move to buy an official for him. After all, Jiang Kui is Jiang Kui, who has been high for a lifetime, he rejected Zhang Jian's love, and all the interactions between him and Zhang Jian are only related to Fengyue, and filling in words and writing poems is their daily life.
Zhang Jian was the person who helped Jiang Kui the most after Xiao Dezao, and as Xiao Dezao was taken away by his nephew to be raised, Jiang Jian, who had lost his dependence, moved to Hangzhou to join Zhang Jian. The eight words of "ten years of getting along, love is very flesh and blood" are Jiang Kui's evaluation of the friendship between the two, as an outsider, but can get Zhang Shi so kindly for more than ten years, such a friendship even after a thousand years of time is also moving.
Jiang Fu was miserable because he had spent his whole life not getting half a name; but Jiang Fu was also very lucky, because he had received help from many people back and forth by relying on his talent. But Jiang Kui, who has been sending people to the fence, has never given up, and he still tirelessly prepares for the imperial examination and continues the ideal of "the spring wind is proud of the horseshoe disease, and the Chang'an flowers are seen in one day".
In the third year of the Reign of Emperor Ningzong of Song (1197), when Jiang Kui was closest to the list of Keju, the Southern Song Dynasty at that time was vigorously soliciting liturgical music classics from the people to make up for the lack of music classics in the court after the Jingkang Rebellion, and Jiang Kui, as a genius of music theory, just in time to present the "Great Music Discussion" and "Qinse Ancient and Modern Talks", and two years later presented the "Twelve Chapters of the Song of the Holy Song".
The music ceremony was great, and the emperor was very happy, and the happy result was that Jiang Fu, who was already forty-five years old, got the opportunity to go to the Ceremonial Department to take the entrance examination. At that moment, Jiang Fu must have been full of hope, after all, this kind of tailor-made exam will not fall off the list no matter how it is viewed.
But what makes people fall through the glasses is that Jiang Fu is on the list.
This time, the failure of the list was a big blow to Jiang Kui, because after that, he completely gave up the idea of the imperial examination. What made Jiang Kui even more desperate was that Zhang Jian died of illness just a few years later, and Jiang Kui, who was like a duckweed, was completely trapped in the situation of poverty and illness.
The year after his death, a fire in Hangzhou destroyed thousands of houses, and Jiang Kui's life's real estate, books, and savings were burned in the fire.
By the time I wrote this, I couldn't go on any longer. Where should a penniless old man go? No one knows how Jiang Fu survived the last ten years of his life, but this great talent with lofty ideals can only be burdened by his livelihood all day long, which is another sense of humiliation for Jiang Fu.
In the fourteenth year of Song Ningzong Jiading (1221), the sixty-five-year-old Jiang Kui died in poverty and illness, and the property left behind could not even be done after his own death, and under the donations of relatives and friends, this great talent was buried outside the Qiantang Gate in Hangzhou, and it ended hastily, which made people sigh.
Just like no one knows how Jiang Kui spent the last ten years, posterity said that the status of readers in the Southern Song Dynasty was very high, but they did not know that low-level readers such as Jiang Kui still lived a miserable life.
And this is not just the story of Jiang Kui alone, but the life record of the low-level literati of the two Song Dynasties.