Meng Haoran was born in Xiangyang. In his early years, he lived as a recluse in Lumen Mountain. He spent every day in the countryside watching the servants doing mulberry fields, reading, writing poems, fishing, and drinking when he had nothing to do. , Pao Niu, often compare themselves to Jiang Ziya who fished on the Wei River and Zhuge Kongming who plowed Nanyang.
He lived in seclusion until he was forty years old. He could no longer live in seclusion because he found that he could not become Jiang Shang and Kong Ming, and no King Wen or Liu Bei came to invite him. So in AD 730, the eighteenth year of the Kaiyuan year of the Tang Dynasty, Meng Haoran left Lumen Mountain to apply for the Jinshi examination but failed, and then went around Chang'an to write poems and make friends with famous people, and he became famous for a while.
Meng Haoran often made friends with officials' children in the Imperial Academy, wrote poems and chanted them, and had close contacts with Wang Wei, Zhang Jiuling and other important officials in the court. A poet in the literary world of the Tang Dynasty was probably an official in the officialdom. Chanting was a fashion, and almost everyone with good family background loved to sing two poems.
Meng Haoran's opportunity finally came. One day he was a guest at Wang Wei's home and talked about poetry. Emperor Li Longji suddenly arrived. Meng Haoran avoided it, but Wang Wei told the emperor that Meng Haoran was at his home. Li Longji was very happy and said to Wang Wei: "I have heard of this person, so I can come and see him."
Meng Haoran paid homage to the emperor and recited a poem with great expectations: I will write a letter from the Northern Palace, and return to my hut in the Southern Mountains. . If you don't know your talent, you will abandon it. If you are sick, your friends will be sparse. Gray hair makes you grow old, and green hair makes you grow old. I will never sleep with sorrow, and the window will be empty at night under the pine moon.
As soon as he read the third sentence, "Unable to understand the master's abandonment," Li Longji became displeased. After he finished reciting, he asked: "If you don't seek an official career, why did you come to Chang'an to take the imperial examination?" A man who once lived in seclusion, why should I abandon you, but how can I boast of my reputation and slander me with poetry?" Then he walked away, and Meng Haoran traveled to Chang'an in hopes of hearing about it, but in vain.
You can imagine that Meng Haoran was depressed. He left Chang'an and went to the south of the Yangtze River to express his love for the mountains and rivers. He wrote many poems to show that he was indifferent to his feelings. He did not admire vanity and power and only wanted to keep himself clean. On the one hand, he wrote it for others to read. , on the other hand, I am comforting myself. He spent money like water and indulged in sex and entertainment for more than a year, and his utilitarianism had to fade away.
Although he claims to be forgetful, he cannot forget it deep down in his heart. When Meng Haoran was composing a poem on the Qingyi River, he came up with the phrase "a stone encounters a Rakshasa obstacle", alluding to Chang'an's frustration when encountering the emperor but not being able to reuse it. It corresponds to the indifferent feelings of the next sentence "Mountain Park Jingting Pavilion".
What’s interesting is that when Meng Haoran mentioned the past when he offended the emperor in person and was released, he felt regret deep in his heart, but on the surface he was very proud. It seems that he has done something extraordinary and is just waiting for others to praise him. This is a complex and contradictory mental entanglement.
Leaving aside what happened to Li Longji, Meng Haoran’s experience can be regarded as self-inflicted. Meng Haoran's landscape poems are quite good, better than Kong Ming's poems, but he thinks he is Zhuge Liang when he lives in seclusion in the countryside, but it is impossible for some legendary visiting sage to come down from the sky to invite him. He is not originally.
This kind of self-reliance is a naive delusion. It is not only the naivety of literati, but also the hidden delusion of most people in the world. Those who have no self-proclaimed achievements but think they are talented will mostly lament that their talents are not recognized.
Meng Haoran's official career was not going well. He claimed that he did not admire fame and fame, which was a self-comfort statement. The true meaning of seclusion was not in this. Such an encounter may also be an opportunity to understand the indifferent mood, but judging from Meng Haoran's performance, it is obvious that he has not truly realized it yet.