Jiang Shufeng, a professor at Yangzhou University, once commented that Zheng Banqiao was a "poet and painter". In fact, his achievements run through two categories: literature and art. He is good at poetry, ci, qu, Wen, calligraphy, painting, couplets and seal cutting, and is known as the literary and artistic garden of the Qing Dynasty. He is the most influential of the Eight Eccentrics in Yangzhou. He is listed as one of the "Three Highs in Chuyang", "Seven Children in Yongjia" and "Three Sages in Weixian" respectively, and is known as the master of Banqiao School.
There are more than 100 poems 1000, more than 100 songs 10, more than 0 couplets 100, more than 0 letters 100, and hundreds of prefaces, postscripts, inscriptions and banners in Zheng Xie. It can be said that he is a versatile writer. His poems are fresh and fluent, straightforward and free-spirited, and rarely use allusions, describing the sufferings of ordinary people's lives and the ugliness of corrupt officials, with the styles of Shaoling and Weng Fang. For example, the trip to escape, the trip home and the trip home are the true portrayal of the post-disaster situation in Wei County. Fierce officials and vicious lynchings exposed the cruelty and tyranny of cruel officials; The famous "Ya Zhai Lie Listening to Xiao" is suspected to be the voice of the people's sufferings. Some small officials in Caozhou County always care about their feelings. "("Painting Bamboo in Weixian County ") expresses Zheng Banqiao's thoughts and feelings closely related to the people. His words are graceful and unconstrained, which is quite "close to Pai Cheng". Graceful words, such as He Xinlang Xu Qingteng cursive scroll, etc. Generous and desolate, boastful, "singing after drunkenness, crying wildly. "Sanqu is mainly composed of 10 Taoist songs. It is written in Huangguan style, revealing the sinister world through the coat of birth, spreading widely and being regarded as the highest achievement of Taoist style. The couplets are simple and natural, with lofty artistic conception, rich philosophy and life interest, and become the big couplets of the Qing Dynasty. " Letters from Home also narrates family affairs, probes into the way of governing the country, comments on literary creation schools, exchanges ideas on poetry and calligraphy, and expresses one's feelings directly, each of which has a certain position in the history of prose in the Qing Dynasty.
Zheng Xie has more than 65,438+0,000 paintings, which is one of the most ancient painters in China.
Zheng Xie generally does not paint figures, landscapes, flowers and birds, but mainly orchids, bamboos and stones, as well as pines, chrysanthemums and plums. The bamboo he painted was thin and straight, dripping with ink, wet and dry; Lan Xiujin is solid and interesting. Stone is gorgeous, elegant, ugly, wet and changeable. All these constitute Zheng Xie's overall painting style, which is vigorous and lively.
Zheng Xie painted bamboos in middle schools since childhood, with shadows of the sun and the moon, paper windows and whitewashed walls, claiming to be "self-taught". When I first came to Yangzhou to sell paintings, my eyes were wide open, and I realized that it was only similar in shape before, far less than Shi Tao's spirit likeness. After visiting Lushan Mountain during Yongzheng period, I realized the mystery of Badashan people's freehand brushwork. Starting from learning from nature, Zheng Xie inherited and carried forward the fine traditions of Shi Tao and Badashan who dared to innovate and didn't stick to the rules, formed his own unique style and expanded the expressive techniques of literati painting.
Zheng Xie put forward many brilliant painting theories based on his own painting practice. For example, he put forward the theories of "no ambition", "learning three and throwing seven", "not setting an example" and "being big before being small" and so on. These are the important development of painting theory from Gu Kaizhi to Shi Tao, and still have guiding significance for painting creators.
Zheng Xie's calligraphy is unique. He divided his calligraphy into six and a half books, which people called "Banqiao style". This calligraphy style is dominated by eight points, which combines the methods of opening, writing, cursive, seal cutting and drawing Zhu Lan. Fang Bi, round pen, thirsty pen and squatting pen can change freely, and the center, flank and edge are just right. In the structure of characters, it focuses on the horizontal direction, mostly flat, radiating from the center of gravity to four directions, unique and novel, endless. In terms of layout, there is a seamless and natural sense of integrity. In a picture, although the large, small, square, round and irregular shapes are ever-changing, they are arranged in an orderly way, and the air cushion is coherent from beginning to end.
Over the years, people have spoken highly of Banqiao calligraphy. Jin Nong, a contemporary, said: "The Banqiao of Zheng Jinshi in Xinghua is romantic and elegant, and the theme is crazy grass and ancient brush, and each word is also wonderful." Deng Tuo, a close friend, said, "It was not only popular at that time, but has been popular for 200 years. I have been studying the old school for a long time, and Dong Xin and Banqiao used official pens. However, it is strange to lose it. " Yang Shoujing said: "Banqiao began to write models, and the winter heart was divided into two parts. They were not bound by their predecessors and found their own way. However, after school, I am a teacher or a demon. " Kang, although he didn't like Banqiao's "strangeness", saw his innovation in traditional calligraphy after all, as Zheng Xie himself said: "A brand-new way, an outstanding master."
Like painting theory, Zheng Xie's book theory is full of insights. From Cai Yong, Zhong You and Wang Xizhi to Zhao Mengfu and Dong Qichang's calligraphy, Zheng Xie has made comments. In the early Qing Dynasty, calligraphers paid more attention to books than monuments, and the rulers advocated the style of Wu, Ming and Fang Ting, which bound the calligraphers' artistic personality. Zheng Xie traced back to the source, learned from others' strengths, attached importance to Han steles, and made bold innovations, which brought new vitality to the book world.
Zheng Xie's achievements in the field of literature and art are not only reflected in the creation and theory of poetry, calligraphy and painting, but also in his combination of the three. This combination is manifested in both micro and macro aspects.
Microscopically, Zheng Xie painted with books, with books, with poems and with poems. He put the "close button of the book" into the painting, and with a wave of his pen, he made the orchid branches and bamboo leaves resemble the vertical skimming method in cursive script, and the exquisite calligraphy pen was integrated with the skill of drawing orchid bamboo. In addition, the calligraphy image is realized from various images of nature, and the vertical and horizontal points are often like bamboo branches and orchids, which makes calligraphy works have the aesthetic feeling of painting. As Jiang Shiquan, a poet in the Qing Dynasty, said, "Banqiao writes words like orchids, and the waves are simple and graceful. Banqiao wrote the character Lanru. Show your leaves and flowers. Don't write in a unique way, and don't praise calligraphy and painting. Tang Tang has different attitudes, and ordinary people laugh at Banqiao. " Zheng Xie's poems are full of pictures, such as one of the seven sentences in Xinghua to Gaoyou: "A hundred and sixty miles of lotus fields, thousands of fish and ducks. The boat can't hold on, and the red powder is pitiful. " A few strokes paint a beautiful, dynamic and vibrant water town landscape. Green lotus leaves, red lotus flowers, white fish scales and brown ducks are so cleverly matched that they can't be amazing! There are also poems in his paintings. We looked at Zheng Xie's indomitable pillars and orchids fluttering in the wind, as if we heard a song "Song Zhengqi".
Macroscopically, Zheng Xie often unified poems, books and paintings with seals on a piece of paper. For example, when he was 70 years old, he painted a picture of bamboo and stone. A huge stone stands tall, and several thin bamboos almost burst the picture. A poem was inscribed in the blank in the upper right corner: "Seventy old people draw bamboo stones, and the stones are straighter and the bamboo is straighter. But I know that this old pen is extraordinary. It stands on a wall thousands of miles away. Guiwei, thank you. " Press the names of both parties. In the lower right margin of the picture frame, the side of "singing and blowing ancient Yangzhou" was put. The old man has been wandering all his life, not bowing to all kinds of evil forces, still as firm as a rock, as strong as bamboo, and as noble as an orchid. Poetry is inclined, big or small, or above the peaks, replaced by law; Or bamboo poles, so that the painting is connected into a whole; Or in orchids, flowers are more numerous and leaves are more lush. Although Zheng Xie didn't create the first poem of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, it is rare as the beauty of Zheng Xie, and the beauty lies in the high unity of various arts. If this poem is not engraved on the stone map of Zhu Lan, but on the map of scenery and beautiful women, it must be out of proportion. If you use Yan, Liu's body or Jin Nong's "lacquer book" instead of "six-and-a-half-minute brush strokes", no matter how good the painting or the words are, it will be very uncoordinated. In Zheng Xie's works, poetry, painting, book and seal have reached a perfect unity.
The core of Zheng Xie's artistic achievements is the word "strange". The so-called strangeness means being different, that is, rebelling against tradition. To express it with a pair of couplets written by Zheng Banqiao to Gao Han, it means "bring forth the new and be different" ("simplify by deleting the complex, bring forth the new and be different"). Strange in literature and art, and strange in political thought; The strangeness in political thought is manifested in resistance to feudal orthodoxy, sympathy for working people and strong demand for personality liberation.
When Zheng Xie visited Beijing in his early years, he liked to speak loudly and make comments, and was called a "madman". He believes that people at the bottom, such as Zanghuo, maids, Yutai and jujube pears, are also descendants of the Yellow Emperor Yao Shun and should be equated with wealthy families. He shouted, "Does the maharaja have a ball?" Zhu Cheng's Neo-Confucianism is regarded as authentic political thought by the rulers, and Zheng Xie thinks that "it is only used in leisure time, so there is no need to be busy". When he was an official in Shandong, he publicly exposed the darkness of the officialdom and opened a warehouse for relief in the year of famine. In the end, he was dismissed on trumped-up charges because he did not conform to the current situation. In his later years, he painted a picture of Cang Shi and wrote a poem: "Old bones are cold and thick, and tall and straight as Mount Tai. Even if there is a Qin emperor in the future, I dare not whip him to Haimen. " It fully shows his unswerving spirit of fighting feudal orthodoxy to the end.
Compared with predecessors, Zheng Xie's people-oriented thought has gone further. He said: "the weaver girl is the source of clothes; Petunia is the foundation of food. " He added: "It is convenient for Jia people to move their utensils without luck, but it is inconvenient for scholars to be alone among the people. No wonder they came last among the four. "This theory belittles intellectuals too much, but it is commendable to attach so much importance to the social role of farmers, workers and businessmen. So he said, "whenever I paint blue, bamboo and stone, it is to comfort the working people all over the world, not to enjoy them." "
Zheng Xie rebelled against tradition and strongly advocated free development according to his own nature. He once talked about keeping birds in cages, tying dragonflies and tying crabs with strings, criticized the practice of "compromising the nature of things to suit my nature" and put forward that "the nature of all things is precious." Both his splash-ink and the freehand brushwork of Zhu Lanshi's paintings focus on expressing his personality, thoughts and feelings. Calligraphy is more difficult to change and innovate, but in the hands of Zheng Xie, Liu Shu was almost washed away. In the poem, it is even more straightforward, and it is proposed that "tireless in the past, gas and meaning are born together." Here, generate shows the spark of early democratic thought. As a writer and artist, Zheng Xie should occupy a place in the history of China's thoughts.