Emperors have never been soft on intellectuals who refused to cooperate. There are those who curse women, those who humiliate, those who are exiled, those who behead them, those who curse the Ten Tribes, and those who behead them. However, the way to cut the waist of a weak literati into eight paragraphs was only conceived and done by Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty. This is how the great Ming Dynasty poet Gao Qi died.
Gao Qi (1336-1374), also spelled Jidi, was a native of Changzhou County (present-day Suzhou), a poet of the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties. Gao Qi was born into a rich family, his parents died in his childhood, he was vigilant by nature, he read books and recited them for a long time, he did not forget, he was particularly good at history, he loved poetry, and ten people such as Zhang Yu, Xu Ben, Song Ke, wang Xing, etc. often exchanged poetry together, known as "Beiguo Ten Talents". At the same time, he was also known as the "Four Masters of Wuzhong" with Yang Ji, Zhang Yu and Xu Ben, also known as the "Four Masters of the Early Ming Dynasty". Although he is also a "ten talents" and although he is tied for the "four masters", Gao Qi's literary achievements are far more than others.
Flipping through the "History of Chinese Literature" edited by Mr. Yuan Xingpei, his comprehensive evaluation of Gao Qi is "the lone bard who lyrics the era and personal destiny", and the word "lonely" can be described as a three-point and pertinent, which just shows the poet's character and interest that does not coincide with the world, and the ideal disillusionment of "uselessness" as a spiritual philosophy under the strife and suppression of power, which analyzes the mainstream ideas of Gao Qi's poetry from the perspective of realism, and studies the internal and external factors of his personal decline and death. Further reflection on the relationship between the times and the scribes undoubtedly plays an auxiliary role.
Gao Qi's lonely chant under the chaotic world is in line with the Confucian idea of "benevolence and love for the people", and judging from the success or failure of his life, there is the shadow of Tao Yuanming's "Mr. Wuliu", and more is the immersion of "the drunkard's intention is not in the wine". The poet takes the spiritual and philosophical belief that "uselessness" makes meritorious contributions to his virtue, and shouts that "uselessness can be idle and avoid disasters", but the essence of the concept lies in "no small use but great use", which is inevitably detrimental. The principle of self-cultivation of "the poor are good for themselves, and the attainment is good for the whole world" has been enshrined by the Confucians and scholars of all generations, and there are many people who are eager to follow, but there are very few who can really meet the source between the two poles of "poorness" and cross the line. Many times, how to balance the inclination between ideals and reality has become a topic that can hardly be hidden in front of those feudal literati doctors who are poor and poor. Gao Qi chose to retire, so there was no discomfort with the word "poor", but "being alone" was in vain, and his gambling psychology became more and more serious. In the sixth year of Hongwu (1373), Gao Qi, Wei Guan, and others angered Zhu Yuanzhang with the words "Tiger Standing on the Dragon Disk" in the "Liang Wen of the County", which finally triggered another catastrophe in the history of the literal prison. All of this is a thing of the past, but the poet's fault of not knowing the world and the tragedy is enough to be thought-provoking. Nanjing was beheaded by the waist, and gao Qi did not die immediately after being beheaded by the waist, he crouched on the ground with the strength of his half-cut body, dipped his hands in his own blood, and wrote three bright red and dazzling "miserable" words in a row, expressing his strong contempt for the peasant emperor in front of him who had been a cowherd and a monk. It is not just a criminal case in the ordinary sense, but a political event. This is Zhu Yuanzhang's clear, cold, high-pressure warning to the scholars who continued the free and vigorous life and creative way of life and creation at the end of the Yuan Dynasty. The unprecedented harsh despotism made the whole society full of hostility and became a zombie society (Zhao Yuan), and it was the tragedy of Gao Qi's being beheaded that effectively accelerated the transformation of the style of the early Ming Dynasty.
Some scholars have biased the root cause of Gao Qi's personal tragedy to the persecution of the feudal autocracy of the Zhu Ming Dynasty, which is inevitably a bit general and hasty. Zhu Yuanzhang's weight of the poet is obvious to all, Taizu heard Gao Qicai's name, extended to be a guest, and rewarded the first, which can be described as the emperor's grace. However, Gao Qi, who adhered to Wu Chinese's unfettered style and suspicious nature, did not appreciate it, and psychologically could not overcome the gap between Zhu Yuanzhang's indiscriminate killing of Wu Zhongzi, and was afraid of disaster and personal trouble. On the other hand, according to the "Biography of Ming Shi Gao Qiben", "Qi tasted the poetry, there was some irony, and the emperor did not send it." "There is an old saying: only villains and women are difficult to raise, and the arrogant Gao Qi deliberately or unintentionally satirizes and ridicules others behind his back, which is an act of disloyalty and injustice. The poet has the determination to join the world, but he does not have the ability to enter the world. For a founding monarch of great talent, nothing seems to be more in tune with the psychological needs of the time than a stable rule. The eldest husband does something and does not do something, the person who becomes a big thing is informal, Zhu Yuanzhang killed Gao Qi, if defined as the sadness of the poet, it is better to say that it is the great luck of the times. Of course, this is not absolutely true!
The changes in the shi xi are caused by the "changes in the world" also! Zhu Hongwu's killing addiction is not only killing, but also killing. In addition to the various physical annihilations of those heroes who helped him fight the world, he was also particularly keen on torturing and killing literati in the form of cats and mice. None of the "four masters of the early Ming Dynasty" Gao Qi, Yang Ji, Zhang Yu, and Xu Ben were spared death; Yang Ji was inexplicably punished for hard labor and finally died in the work station; Zhang Yu was tied up and thrown into the Yangtze River to feed the fish, and the bones of his body did not exist; Xu Ben was imprisoned and killed because he treated the army in a timely manner; Gao Qi was cut into eight pieces by his waist and died a tragic death. Zhu Yuanzhang hated Wu Zhong, regarded Suzhou as a key place, set up a Commander of Suzhou Wei, and sent his henchmen to garrison heavy troops here, but his suspicious heart disease was not cured. In the 31 years since Zhu Ju was on the throne, the prefect of Suzhou had changed 30 people, and his vigilance against Suzhou officials had reached the point of neuroses.
The death of Gao Qi in the seventh year of Hongwu (1373 AD) opened the prelude to the many literary disasters in Jiangnan in the early Ming Dynasty. The frequent introduction of an authoritarian system with complicated names, and the occurrence of cultural and party disasters such as epileptic seizures, have become a conspicuous sign that the terrifying emperor Zhu Yuanzhang focused on centralizing power and developed it to the peak. One after another, these huge cases, which are almost breathless, not only landed on the ground with tens of thousands of heads, but also the weak fate of the relatives and children of the deceased was even more tragic. The high-pressure political environment and brutal and inhumane spiritual terror constituted by this and other authoritarian policies have irreversibly destroyed the life and mentality of the literati of the early Ming Dynasty who were accustomed to the idle life of the Yuan Dynasty, and have far-reaching harm to the deconstruction and reorganization of the scholarly style, spiritual space, and even world outlook and values. Using terrorism as a guide, the early Ming Dynasty vigorously promoted theoretical thought and "innovatively" politicized Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, and thoroughly transformed the people from the "depths of their souls." Through the intervention of the rulers, ideological culture was incorporated into the political and ideological system in order to achieve the goal of fundamentally controlling the subjects spiritually. As a result, the scholars not only did not dare to make mistakes in their speeches, but also examined themselves ideologically to eliminate the root causes of the disaster. In this way, the independent personality of the scholar was gradually replaced by the officially defined standard, and the basis for the survival and survival of the scholar for more than a thousand years was profoundly changed and subverted. The turn in the mentality and morale of the literati in the early Ming Dynasty not only smeared the literary, social, and political development ecology of the early Ming Dynasty and the evolution pattern of later generations, but also plunged a fatal knife deep into the heart and lungs in the spiritual power of the intellectual class and then into society and culture. A jaw-dropping one-man rule that, because of a deep distrust of its subjects, under the greatest scrutiny of society with a vast secret police force, began.