Li Shangyin’s love:
Portrait of Li Shangyin Li Shangyin’s love life has attracted the attention of many researchers, partly because Li Shangyin’s poems represented by "Untitled" show a kind of confusion. And the delicate and tactful feelings can easily be regarded as the expression of rich love experience.
There are far more speculations about Li Shangyin’s love than there is actual evidence, but this does not prevent people from talking about it, and even trying to figure out and analyze his poems like reading detective novels, hoping that Discover tangible credentials. The following women are believed to have had emotional entanglements with Li Shangyin:
Liu Zhi. The name of Willow Branch appears in a group of poems ("Five Poems on Willow Branch") written by Li Shangyin in the first year of Kaicheng (836). He also wrote a long preface to this group of poems, telling the story of Willow Branch: she is the daughter of a wealthy businessman in Luoyang, lively, lovely, cheerful and generous. By chance, she heard Li Shangyin's poem ("Yantai Poetry"). 》), I fell in love with him, so I took the initiative to date him. But Li Shangyin missed the appointment. He later learned that Willow Branch was taken as a concubine by a powerful man. The two never met again. If Li Shangyin hadn't made it up, this fruitless relationship might have been his first love.
Song Huayang. Li Shangyin once practiced Taoism in Yuyang Mountain in his youth, so some people speculated that he had an affair with a female Taoist priest during this period. In poems such as "Repost to Song Huayang Sisters on a Moonlit Night" and "To Huayang Song Zhenzhen and to Mr. Liu in the Qing Capital", Li Shangyin mentioned the name of "Song Huayang", so Song Huayang was considered to be Li Shangyin's lover. There is also an exaggerated statement: Li Shangyin once fell in love with two sisters, Song Huayang, at the same time. Su Xuelin maximized the imagination of this story in "Yuxi Poetry Mystery"[5].
Jinse. Li Shangyin has a famous poem "Jin Se". Liu Xun mentioned in "Zhongshan Poetry Talk" that some people speculate that "Jin Se" is a servant of Linghu's Chu family. When Li Shangyin was studying at Linghu's family, he had a close relationship with She fell in love, but it didn't work out.
Lotus. According to folklore, before he married Wang, he had a lover named "Lotus", and the two were very affectionate. One month before he went to Beijing to take the exam, He Hua suddenly fell seriously ill, and Li Shangyin spent his last days with He Hua. This tragedy caused a great blow to him. In his later poems, he often used lotus as the theme, which was also his nostalgia for his old love.
Wang. Wang is the wife of Li Shangyin. However, some people infer from Li Shangyin's "A Letter to Commemorate His Little Niece" ("Kuang Wu has not married yet, but Yinxu has not yet been established") that Wang is Li Shangyin's remarried wife. If this view is true, Li Shangyin should have had a first wife, but there is almost no information about this. Li Shangyin had a very good relationship with Wang. After Wang's death, he wrote mourning poems such as "Song in the House", with sincere emotions and deep meaning. The most famous among them is the one he wrote when he left home for an official tour in Shu. "After mourning his grief, he went to Eastern Shu to open up and encountered snow at Sanguan." "Dream of an old mandarin machine." There is also speculation that "Jin Se" was also written in memory of his deceased wife, using the broken strings as a metaphor for his wife's death.
For the study of Li Shangyin's love life, Su Xuelin's "A Study of Li Yishan's Love Deeds" (1927) is the most famous. This book was reprinted in 1947 and renamed "Yuxi Poetry Mysteries". Su Xuelin's research inherited the achievements of Cheng Mengxing, Feng Hao and others, broadening and enriching the content of this field. For example, through her research, most people accepted Li Shangyin's love experience with a female Taoist priest. However, Su Xuelin's guesses and reasoning were almost unrestrained, and thus he constructed several bizarre romances, including one where he had an affair with a palace maid.