Personal data:
Du Fu (about 645-708) was born in Xiangyang, Xiangzhou (now Xiangyang, Hubei). Because his ancestors once lived in Chang 'an, Jingzhao, they were also called "Jingzhao people" in Biography of the Tang Dynasty. He made great contributions to the development of Tang poetry.
For modern people, the name Du Fu may be a little strange, but everyone knows his grandson, that is, Du Fu, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty who is known as a "poet saint". The grandfather of "poet sage" naturally didn't come for nothing. Du is conceited about his talent, but in others' eyes, what he can boast is not talent, but breath. This left a deep impression on his history books, but also brought a tragic color to his life.
The verdict is "shame to death" Su Weidao.
Du was born into a noble family with pure blood. The popular slang at that time was "Dewey south of the city, go to Wu Tianchi", which shows the prestige of his family. Du Yu, the most famous ancestor of the Du family, is not only a famous scholar who has made great contributions to the seal of Hou, but also a great scholar who annotated Zuo Zhuan in Thirteen Classics. It goes without saying that the family's excellent genes and rich environment have had an impact on Du. He was familiar with Confucian classics since he was a child and became famous at a young age. In the Book of the Old Tang Dynasty, he said that he was "elegant in five-character poems and wrote a good book".
In the first year of Xianheng (670), Du, a 26-year-old middle school champion, was assigned to Hebei (now Fenyang City, Shanxi Province) as a county captain. About 10 years later, he was called to serve in North Korea because of his poetic title. At that time, Du, together with Song, Shen Quanqi and Yan, was hired as a straight bachelor (the official in charge of proofreading books when he first joined the cabinet, ranking below the bachelor).
According to official regulations, only the prime minister and the bachelor can accompany the emperor to dinner. At that time, there were only 24 bachelors who could enjoy this honor, and Du quickly became one of them. As a formal civil servant and court poet, although he only took advantage of Mandarin, he was highly respected by people at that time because he could be around the emperor.
However, Du is more famous not for his poems to please the emperor, but for his outspoken.
During the reign of Wu Zetian, Du served as school supervisor in the official department. According to the assessment system of the Tang Dynasty, both central and local officials should write a "declaration" every year, that is, write a work report and submit it to the official department, detailing the merits and demerits of the past year and showing their political achievements. The official department should organize calligraphy evaluation by Kao Gong Lang Zhong and Yuan Wailang as the basis for the evaluation and promotion of officials. An important function of school examiners is to write comments on these debriefing reports.
With Du's literary talent, this little thing is natural. After a while, one day, he put down his pen and sighed, "The taste will die." The flavor he said refers to Su Weidao, then assistant minister of Tianguan, who was the second-in-command of the official department at that time, equivalent to the executive deputy minister of the Central Committee today. Hearing this, the colleagues around him were shocked and quickly asked, "What's the matter? What's wrong? " Du smiled and said, "He was ashamed to death when he saw my verdict." In other words, Su Weidao will be ashamed to death if he sees the judgment I wrote!
Originally, people referred to Du Yu, Li Qiao, Cui Rong and Su Weidao as "four friends of articles", but Du had quite a problem with this. Of these four people, he only respects Cui Rong, but he doesn't catch a cold about those two people, especially Su Weidao, who is a little dismissive. At this time, if there is an opportunity, of course, we should vent it well.
Fortunately, Su Weidao is very strong. After Du read the verdict, he disagreed. Later, he not only wrote the famous sentence "The flaming trees and silver flowers are combined, and the stars and bridges are locked" ("The fifteenth night of the first month"), but even served as prime minister twice. For Du's rude remarks, there is no record in the history books that Su Weidao retaliated against him, but it is really hard to appreciate him. After staying in the official department for many years, Du was not promoted, but transferred from the capital. After several changes, he was "tired" as Luoyang County Cheng.
Sitting in the small yamen in Luoyang County, overlooking the magnificent palace in Beijing, Du lamented that "I will live for one trillion years, and I will pay more attention to the nine cities" (In addition to the night). However, life's setbacks did not knock down Du's self-confidence. Once, he said contemptuously to people, "My article is good, Song became an official, and my pen is Wang Xizhi's North." Translated, if I write an article, Qu Yuan and Song Yu only deserve to help me; If I play calligraphy, Wang Xizhi will take northern clothes when he meets me. His words made people speechless, and later generations summed up an idiom: Ya Qu Qu.
At the beginning, his parents may have realized that Du might delay his life, so they named him "Shen Yan", expecting him to "be careful what he says and does not get into trouble because of his words, but it backfired. Du not only didn't have "Shen Yan", but also "never stopped talking". Just because he thinks too highly of himself doesn't mean that everyone agrees with him. History books give him the evaluation: pity his birthday.
The bloody case shocked Wu Zetian.
Being arrogant and quick-talking, friends may think it is a kind of frank performance, but being nice in officialdom is not that simple. In the second year of victory (699), Du was demoted to Jizhou (now Ji 'an City, Jiangxi Province) to join the army for offending the powerful minister of the DPRK. After learning this news, Song, a poet who is still sick, wrote a poem for him as a farewell: "When you are sick, you will never be able to travel thousands of miles. I can't go to the river bridge to see it off. The trees by the river are close to the feelings of parting. You lost your official position just because you have been to Sunchuhe River and Miluo River to pay tribute to the ship. Unfortunately, Longquan Sword lives in Fengcheng. " Du doesn't have many friends, but Song is one. They were demoted at the same time, which means they are in the same boat.
In principle, Du should learn from his mistakes and keep his mouth shut, so as not to stay in one place all the time. However, a leopard cannot change his spots, and it is even more difficult to accommodate him as a great god in this small place of Ji 'an. It's just that he has no culture and no taste. What he particularly dislikes is collusion between local officials and businessmen and graft. With his temper, he couldn't help saying sarcastic words, so he soon offended his colleagues.
There was a manager named Guo Rene who hated Du and went to Sima Zhoujitong to frame him. Zhou Jitong had long been displeased with Du, so these people colluded with each other and arrested him. Then Luo Zhi was accused and wanted to kill him as soon as possible. In the face of this unexpected trouble, Du was extremely disappointed. He didn't expect that he was a brilliant scholar, but he died at the hands of these little people. Just when he was pessimistic and disappointed, a man launched a shocking plan to save him. This man is his second son Du Bin.
Du Tianzi is intelligent, "reciting thousands of words every day, especially calligraphy." He is still a dutiful son. When he was 8 years old, his mother died unfortunately. He was very sad. "Every time he cried, there was blood in his tears", so he was valued by people at that time. After his mother died, Du and Du lived together and ran around with his father. He was only 13 years old when he came to Jizhou. Seeing his father's innocent injustice, Xiao Du was filled with indignation. Thinking of his father's flogging in prison, he was heartbroken and didn't want to eat or drink all day. He hated his father's persecutor, but in his early years, when he had no recourse, he had the idea of risking his life for revenge.
Du He went to SiMaFu every day to see the situation inside, patiently looking for opportunities. One day, Zhou Jitong held a big banquet in the mansion and invited many guests. People come and go in the house, and Du takes advantage of chaos to enter. At the beginning of the banquet, Zhou Jitong was sitting in the chief, and everyone pushed a cup for a change, which was very noisy. Du also looked at the opportunity and quietly approached Zhou Jitong who was drinking his glass. Taking this opportunity, he suddenly pulled out a dagger from his sleeve and stabbed him several times. During the dinner, there was a sudden chaos, and the officers and men of the government guard rushed to the scene. Du was not timid and still refused to let go, and finally fell in a pool of blood.
Zhou Jitong was carried into the back room and groaned in bed. He was dying of injury. When he heard that it was Du 13-year-old son who assassinated him, he couldn't help but sigh: "I didn't expect such a filial son, and Guo Ruoyi made me so miserable!" And then died of excessive blood loss.
This incident caused a sensation, and Du's grievances were taken seriously. He was released from prison, only removed from his official position. Du put away his son's bones and returned to Luoyang, the eastern capital. Deeply saddened by the tragic death of his son, he wrote a eulogy of blood and tears. Su Xian was deeply moved by Du Bin's filial piety and personally wrote an epitaph for Du Bin, praising him for "making a name for himself, striving all his life, standing there until death do us part". Under the auspices of, Du's unjust case was completely rehabilitated.
The Tang Dynasty attached great importance to the rule of filial piety, and alarmed Wu Zetian to save his father from being killed. Wu Zetian wrote to Du. Above the imperial court, Wu Zetian expressed her condolences to Du, announced that she would reuse him, and then asked him, "Are you happy?" Du, who has always been eloquent, did not know how to answer at this time. Is he happy that his son's death brought him today? I'm afraid it's more sad and happy, and I want to cry without tears. He can only dance and thank the emperor with body language. Wu Zetian asked him to write another ode to joy, and Du wrote it at once. Wu Zetian appreciated it very much and gave him the position of Zuo Lang. Soon he was promoted to be a member of the Food Department.
However, every cloud has a good side, at the cost of his son's misery. At this time, does he regret that he has no "judgment"?
Look down on everyone until I die
Du Shenyan thinks highly of herself. Is there any real talent and learning? Objectively speaking, the level of Du Fu's five-character poems in the early Tang Dynasty was still quite high.
Hu Yinglin, a literary critic in the Ming Dynasty, said in his poem: "Du Bi is the author of the Five Laws in the Early Tang Dynasty." There were many people who wrote five-character poems in Sui and Tang Dynasties. Du's contribution is that he makes the syntactic structure of poetry more subtle and complex, with duality. For example, his masterpiece "A Visit to Early Spring in Jinling Lucheng": "Only a wanderer can come, and it is always shocking by new beauty. The bright sun on the sea is about to rise, and Jiangnan in the south of the Yangtze River is reviving. Warm spring urges warblers to sing, and duckweed in the clear sun is dark in color. Suddenly an old song is filled, thinking about it. " This poem, with distinct rhyme, flat and harmonious, and neat antithesis, is a mature regular poem, which can be called the cornerstone of the stylistic completion of modern poetry in the early Tang Dynasty, and Hu Yinglin is known as "the first of the five laws in the early Tang Dynasty".
Wang Fuzhi, a scholar in Qing Dynasty, also fully affirmed Du's contribution. He said: "Poetry in the early Tang Dynasty must be simple and smooth!" This means that when Du of the Tang Dynasty arrived, poetry became neat, rigorous and fluent. However, compared with the development of regular poetry, his greater contribution lies in his influence on Du Fu, another genius of Du Family.
Du Fu was not taught by his grandfather himself. He was born four years after Du Shenyan's death, but Du Fu's admiration for his grandfather is beyond words. He said in "The Form of Carving Fu" that his grandfather "wrote it in the Zhongzong Dynasty and looked up at the bookstore, so his deceased bachelor followed it today." In Du Fu's poems, we can see many traces of learning and imitating Du Shenyan. For example, in the chorus with Song, Du Fu once wrote that "the fog is light and the wind is purple and long", and Du Fu interpreted it as: "The flowers in the forest are wet and the rain is rouge, and the water is long and green." In Du Fu's "Spring in Beijing", there is a sentence that "it's sunny in Los Angeles, and the spring scenery will be returned to people next year". In "Two Poems of Qujiang", Du Fu turned it into "a scenery where news flows, and it will not be rewarded for the time being". Du Fu's poetic attainments deeply influenced him. No wonder Du Fu once said proudly on his son's birthday, "Poetry is my family's business, and it has been passed down from generation to generation."
This is how Ye Jiaying, a modern poet, views the inheritance relationship between Du Shenyan and Du Fu's grandparents and grandchildren. She said: "The appearance of a thing and the achievement of a genius are often promoted by various opportunities and factors. Du Fu became one of the most important writers in the Tang Dynasty, which I think is closely related to his family studies. " This statement is extremely pertinent.
Because of this, behind Du's optimism, he does have something to be proud of. This kind of pride, like the arrogance of the nobility, melts in the blood and makes him look down on everyone until his death.
In the second year of Jinglong (708), Du's life came to an end. During his illness, his friends Song and Wu Ping came to visit him. Seeing that he was dying, he was very sad and asked him what he wanted to leave. Du Shen Yan sighed and said with regret, "God made me suffer so much. What can I say? " ! However, as long as I live, you can't stand out for a day. Now that I'm going to die, you should be happy. Unfortunately, no one with real talent and learning can replace me! "
Du just left, and before he died, he didn't forget to play with a black humor, which made his friends look at each other and didn't know what to say.
Although Du always offends people when he speaks, his friends admire him from the bottom of their hearts. After his death, Song personally wrote a beautifully worded article for Du, and compared him with the "four outstanding figures in the early Tang Dynasty", praising him as "extremely clever, excellent in literary talent, handsome in speech, and knowledgeable in current affairs". When he missed friendship, he couldn't help but burst into tears: "I like to cherish your territory, hate it, and miss you more." Another good friend, Wu Pingyi, paid a special visit to the emperor and asked him to hold a grand funeral for Du in recognition of his contribution.
Some people say that Du is a bit like an "old urchin" in Jin Yong's novels. He is a strange and crazy person. He is a little old and inexperienced. Crazy poetry is ok, and it is often a stroke of genius; But if you are crazy, your words will be "toxic", and it is easy to hurt others and yourself. This is what Du Shen Yan warned us.