In the seventeenth year of Ming Chongzhen, Li Zicheng invaded Beijing, and the Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide at Jingshan, and a dynasty of more than two hundred years collapsed. Chen Weisong had just turned twenty.
This later leader of the Yang Envy Sect had already begun to shine before the age of twenty. When he was ten years old, he wrote "Praise for the Statue of Yang Zhonglie" on behalf of his grandfather Chen Yuting, who was a stalwart of the Donglin Party in the late Ming Dynasty. When he was more than ten years old, he followed Chen Zhenhui, the father of one of the "Four Princes of the Late Ming Dynasty", to Yixing, Nanjing, Yangzhou and other places, and was able to get acquainted with Huang Zongxi, Chen Zilong, Fang Yizhi, Wu Yingji and other Jiangnan celebrities, and was highly appreciated by celebrities for his poetic talents.
However, he was influenced by the wind of the ming dynasty, and Chen Weisong, like all the famous noble princes at that time, "did not have a silent dress and a good dress, but mostly a feminine and beautiful word", and he was happy in it, not knowing that disaster was coming.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Qin Huai Bayan, who was well known, chen Weisong mostly knew each other, and it is also recorded in the "Collection of Women"
If there were no accidents, Chen Weisong should have spent the life of his Wang Xie's sons and daughters in the rich and elegant Jiangnan Fat Horse Light Qiu, singing and indulging in wine. However, the great change in history has made many people consciously or unconsciously become martyrs of a dynasty.
The following year after the death of the Ming Dynasty, the Qing soldiers marched south to create the tragic Yangzhou Ten Days and Jiading Three Massacres in history, and after the Qing soldiers attacked Chen Weisong's hometown of Yixing, the killing was also extremely cruel, and his wife Chu's family was almost destroyed, and the doors and alleys were depressed.
After that, Chen Weisong's father Chen Zhenhui was buried in the earthen chamber, closed the door, and the teachers Wu Yingji and Chen Zilong all resisted the Qing Dynasty and perished, and many close friends (such as Wu Zhaoqian) were implicated in the Song Cancellation Case, the Tonghai Case, and the Jiangnan Scientific Expedition Case, and their lives and deaths were uncertain. A year ago, it was still the family of Zhong Mingding and the family of poetry and poetry, and in the blink of an eye, the country had been destroyed and the family had perished, and the desolation and shock in it were even worse than the decline of the family and the coolness of the world in "Dream of the Red Chamber".
In his later years, Chen Weisong "drifted north" in Beijing and became acquainted with Cao Yin, who was a teenager who was deeply appreciated by the Kangxi Emperor and became popular. A hundred years later, the Cao Yin family had also fallen. His grandson Cao Xueqin condensed the personal understanding brought about by family decay in "Dream of the Red Chamber", while Chen Weisong could only implicitly and euphemistically contain greater sadness in poetry in that era of white terror, and the only novel works left for posterity were a thin "Collection of Women".
The Now Orphaned "Collection of Women"
This "Collection of Women" plus the notes and commentaries that followed, only has more than 20,000 words, which is indeed not worth mentioning compared with works such as The Contemporary Pu Songling's "Liaozhai Zhiyi". For his part, it was just an after-dinner pastime, "casually."
And it is this casualness that makes this work appear sincere. From the perspective of history, the actual utility of "The Collection of Women" is also far above the tea gossip. Most of these vivid stories are true portrayals of the era, like a small cell in a slice of history, allowing us to see the fate of an era from the fate of a small person. China's history is too long, from the official history books we often can only see the vague outline of history, and this kind of special era of small people's small stories, but let us from the microscopic point of view, into the real history, empathy.
Chen Weisong is in the midst of the drastic changes of the times, whether he likes it or not, he has witnessed the vicissitudes of the Ming and Qing dynasties. When Chen Weisong was young, his father, Together with Gu Gao, Wu Yingji and other Jiangnan celebrities, signed the "Public Disclosure of the Prevention of Chaos in the Capital", and Huang Zongxi, Yang Tingshu and other 140 people signed it. Ruan Dacheng was very frightened and closed the door to thank guests. This famous event of the struggle between the Late Ming Dynasty and the Castration Party is also the main focus of "Peach Blossom Fan", and it was in Chen Weisong's home that Chen Washisong was able to witness it firsthand.
Later, in the history of the Southern Ming Dynasty, he witnessed the love legend of Hou Fangyu and Li Xiangjun, and the "Collection of Women" said, "Ji and Gui de Hou FangYushan, once gave himself to Fangyu. The oath is the most bitter, and the oath still exists in the lake and the sea." He has also witnessed the love tragedy of Mao Xiang and Dong Xiaowan, during the "Eight Years of Rugao" that was attached to Mao Xiang, dong Xiaowan, who had died of illness, was an unavoidable topic, and the "Ying Mei An Memoirs" written by Mao Xiang with blood and tears created a new genre in the history of Chinese literature - the yiyu style. Qin Huai Bayan everyone had a tragic fate, the only one Gu Mei, by marrying the second minister Gong Dingzi to be able to die well, the "Women's Collection" said: "Lady Gu knows the bureau Langba, especially good at painting Lan Hui, Xiao scattered, the path is absolute, and it is a good idea to send it." Zhao Botao's "Old Dreams of Qin Huai: Records of the Prosperity and Decline of the Southern Ming Dynasty" commented on this article: "A little appearance takes the gods, and there is a great stroke of the six dynasties of "The World Speaks New Languages". ”
A history of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Chen Weisong came and went with his feet. A well-known "Peach Blossom Fan", he is hidden in the shadow of the historical drama. A lingering "Shadow Mei An Reminiscence", he only walked through the Shadow Mei An where Dong Xiaowan was buried again and again, sighing silently.
Even for the big event of the Ming Dynasty, Chen Weisong's "Women's Collection" can only be shown through the mouth of a small person:
Chang'an female nun Miaoyin, the old emperor Shi Gongren also. After the destruction of the country, the residents were blessed at the Manjushri Nunnery in the north city. It is similar to the residence of Haichang Xiangguo, and often enters and exits Xiangguo. Talk about the old affairs in the palace, and the events of Jiashen in March, and know very well. On the night of the nineteenth day and night, the emperor summoned the insiders and ordered them to leave the palace to avoid thieves. It was yellow fog and there was no meeting on the other side. The emperor wept and wept, and all six palaces cried. It is also said that the attendants in the palace all use green yarn to protect their hair and apply a slurry on the outside. Since the mourning, the treasure of Xiangyuan has been taken by others. Only a few pieces of green yarn remain, and the old things of Ju Zhaoyang are also there.
On the surface, the article writes about the former dynasty palace girl Miaoyin and her people and their affairs, but borrows the mouth of Miaoyin to restore the real scene of this major historical event of the Jiashen Incident, and the details are described quite evocatively, making people read it like they have experienced it and be shocked and moved. Several light veils here have become "Zhaoyang old objects" with commemorative value, and for Chen Weisong and other groups of remnants, they contain deep emotional connotations. However, due to the sensitivity of the situation, the author just writes about things, and the more he appears to be introverted and painful.
Under the nest, is there a finished egg? The palace women are like this, and the folk women are even more miserable in the war, such as
"The dongting women were disturbed, and they threw themselves into the Hanyang River and flowed to Shouchang. The natives were merciful and paralyzed, and they were clothed in robes, and the oil was tightly packed. The exhibition is regarded as ten poems of the last sentence, and the hearers compete to recite them. ”
"Flowers fly and flowers are full of flowers, and who has pity on the red incense?" "Dream of the Red Chamber" Lin Daiyu's poetic heart, at least can win a few teardrops of Baoyu, and how many nameless women in the vast rivers and lakes, the heart is thinner than the fate of the sky than paper, the tragic trick or invisible consumption, and finally the wind and clouds are scattered, silent, leaving only a few traces. These words and tears are only a few words and tears, and some want to tell but can't tell the story, some of the pain that cannot be explained in words, can only leave endless white in endless time and space.
Chen Weisong's "Collection of Women" was written before he went north, during which time he had been attached to Rugao Maoxiang, and the decline of the family and the difficulties of the enemy made him begin to consider reviving the family style and going north to seek the development of his career.
During the period of attachment to Maoxiang, Chen Weisong was entangled with the pear garden xiaosheng of Maoxiang, and later drifted north with Chen Weisong to Beijing, and the southern cavity was broadcast north, and the style of Jingyi drama changed.
In fact, during the period when "Women's Collection" was written, Chen Weisong's whole mentality was very entangled. Unlike his grandfathers and fathers, who belonged entirely to the people of the Ming Dynasty, he resolutely rejected or even resisted the new dynasty, after all, he was still young, but as a descendant of the remnants, he could not quickly throw himself into the embrace of the new regime like Qian Qianyi and Wu Weiye.
All this doomed him to be able to pour a personal block in poetry, but he could not realize his life ambitions in his career, they could only stand in an awkward posture, wandering among the remnants, courtiers and the qing dynasty upstarts, but they could not find their sense of belonging. Although with the consolidation of qing politics, he later chose to go north to seek fame, but the new regime, out of distrust of the remnants of Jiangnan, could not entrust them with heavy responsibilities, and eventually had to end up in obscurity and depression.
From Chen Weisong's embarrassment, we see the embarrassment of the entire second generation of remnants in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, which cannot be attacked, cannot be defended, cannot be stopped, and wants to say that it is still resting. Chen Weisong wrote about the tragedy of the woman, it is inevitable that the pain of the subjugation of the country and the tragedy of the individual will be reflected in the work, self-yielding primitive, the ancient Chinese literati have a tradition of self-metaphor for "vanilla beauty", keen to associate the personal fate with the women who are also weak, and express their own sorrow through the mouth of women to express their own sorrows in a meandering and subtle way to express the pain of the wrong time and the hatred of not meeting talents. Therefore, in the "Women's Collection", the appreciation of women's character, talent, and sympathy for their fate also has a lot of meaning of borrowing other people's wine glasses to pour their own blocks.
If we look at such seemingly unknown anthologies in Chinese history, we often find that many of these tragedies are not tragedies in the play, but tragedies of fate, tragedies of life, tragedies of groups, and tragedies of the nation. The so-called time is also the situation, the special fate of special people in special periods, sometimes it is really half a point. The destruction of the value of the literati and the destruction of female talent and beauty, as Lu Xun said, "tragedy is to destroy the valuable things of life to show people", this destruction is sometimes a moment of ashes, but more often it is a blunt knife, a knife wears down the most valuable things of people.
A "Collection of Women", in which every female life wants to release the fireworks of poetic life, but most of them are trapped in the spiral of impermanence. In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the literati's heartfelt grief for women's tragedies was not played to the extreme until more than a hundred years later, when the thousand reds in "Dream of the Red Chamber" cried and Wan Yan shared sorrow were brought into play, and only then did they have the tragic power to reach the peak in the history of literature.