Early life
Meng Jiao was born in Wu Kang, Huzhou in the tenth year of Tang Tianbao (75 1). His father, Meng Tingyun, was a small official and served as a county commandant in Kunshan. Born in a poor family, Meng Jiao was withdrawn from childhood and rarely interacted with others. In his youth, he lived in seclusion in Songshan, Henan Province, but the beginning and end time and specific situation of this experience can not be verified.
From the first year of Jianzhong (780) to the sixth year of Zhenyuan (790), that is, Meng Jiao was in his thirties and forties. At that time, he witnessed the changes in Henan Province, wrote poems for Lu Yu's newly opened mountain house in Shangrao, Xinzhou, and later sang with the poet Wei in Suzhou. From the Central Plains to the south of the Yangtze River, my whereabouts are uncertain, and there is no other occupation to describe except writing poems.
middle-aged man
In the seventh year of Zhenyuan (79 1), Meng Jiao was forty-one. He paid tribute to Jinshi in his hometown Huzhou alone, so he went to Beijing to try Jinshi.
Zhenyuan eight years (792), the first. It was probably in this exam that he got to know Li Guan and Han Yu. According to the legend of Old Tang Book, Meng Jiao was "lonely, and Han Yu thought he was carried away". Both of them have an unconventional personality, which is the cornerstone of their engagement. Meng Jiao is seventeen years older than Han Yu, and his ability to write poetry is equivalent to that of Bill Han. However, his fate was bumpy and his career was numerous (ji m: n). Therefore, he won the praise of Han Yu and became a famous poet of this genre. In the ninth year of Zhenyuan, Meng Jiao took the exam for Jinshi and won the first place again.
In the 12th year of Zhenyuan (796), Meng Jiao was 46 years old. She came to take the exam for the third time at her mother's behest, only to get the first place in the Jinshi exam, and then returned to the East to comfort her mother. In the thirteenth year of Zhenyuan, he lived in Bianzhou. In the fifteenth year of Zhenyuan, he met his friend Li Ao in Suzhou and then crossed the mountains and rivers.
In the 16th year of Zhenyuan (800), Meng Jiao was a captain in Liyang. At the beginning of Yuan Hechu, he was engaged in land and water transportation in Henan, trying to understand Lolita and settled in Luoyang.
In the seventeenth year of Zhenyuan (80 1), Meng Jiao was 51 years old. At the behest of his mother, he was elected as the county commandant of Liyang (now Jiangsu). In the eighteenth year of Zhenyuan, Han Yu wrote "Preface to Send Meng Dongye", saying: "The battle of Dongye is also in the south of the Yangtze River, and some people will not release it." Being a county captain is very contrary to his wishes, so he can't perform the duties of a county captain. Not far from Liyang City, there is a place called Tou Jin Se (Lai), and there is also Ping Ling City, where there is a beautiful forest to disperse fog and water at the foot of the mountain. Meng Jiao often went swimming, sat by the water, wandered around and wrote poems, leaving Cao Wu deserted. So the county magistrate reported to the superior, asked someone to be a county captain for him, and gave half of his salary to that person at the same time. Meng Jiao was so poor.
In the twentieth year of Zhenyuan (804), Meng Jiao resigned as the commandant of Liyang.
Old age life
In the first year of Yuanhe in Tang Xianzong (806), Yinzheng Yuqing in Henan was appointed as a water and land transport worker in Yujiao, trying to help Lang Lang. Since then, Meng Jiao has settled in Lidefang. Only in this way can his life become richer and he can avoid hunger and cold. However, he soon suffered the loss of his son.
In the 9th year of Yuanhe (8 14), Zheng Yuqing played Xing Yuanyin and Meng Jiao as Xing's staff officer, trying to comment on Dali. Meng Jiao was ordered to set out from Luoyang. On August 25th (AD 865438+1September 4th), he died of a sudden illness in Ganxiang County, Henan Province, at the age of 64.
Literary achievements
Poetry content
From the content point of view, Meng Jiao's poems are beyond the narrow range of themes in Dali and Zhenyuan periods. Of course, the main theme of his poems is the resentment of the middle and lower literati against poverty and hardship, which is determined by his repeated trials and tribulations, hard career and the loss of children in middle age. But he can still see some broader social life through his personal destiny and reflect these lives with poetry. Some of them expose and criticize the ugly phenomena in social interpersonal relationships, while others sharply reveal the inequality between the rich and the poor. For example, The Poem of the Weaver Girl describes the abnormal phenomenon of the Weaver Girl's "how to weave a quilt and wear a blue silk dress" by comparing it with "the frost blows through the wall and the pain can't escape". He often has profound psychological experience in writing such poems. For example, the phrase "A cold man would rather be a moth and burn him to death" in Folk Songs of Cold People is beyond the reach of ordinary people who describe people's sufferings. It should be said that after Du Fu, Meng Jiao once again profoundly exposed the contradiction between the rich and the poor and the disparity between bitterness and happiness in society with his poems. There are also some poems by Meng Jiao, which describe the ordinary love of human relations, such as the love between husband and wife in love, the love between father and son in Apricot Wounds, and the love between mother and son in Wandering Son. These themes have long been ignored by poets.
Poetic thinking
Meng Jiao took over the banner of retro in the hands of Yuanjie School and continued to publicize his retro thoughts in social and political thoughts. He preached benevolence and morality, praised Yao and Shun's ancient style, criticized the understatement and rebellion against the prevailing wind, and showed a heroic attitude everywhere, taking an uncooperative attitude towards the prevailing wind: "I am ashamed to learn, and I am willing to unite with the ancient peasants." Most of the bureaucrats and friends he made, such as Zheng Yuqing, were morally conservative. He flaunts that "being a gentleman's talent is always a gentleman's knowledge", and its main connotation lies in his unwillingness to associate with the times and customs, but only seeking a friend who is retro and keeps the Tao. His thoughts and actions of defending Tao and doing good deeds are similar to those advocated by Han Yu, and his life principle is the practice of Han Yu's Tao in social life. Meng Jiao not only cherishes the ancient road in his life, but also aims to carry forward this "Tao" in his creation. His creative purposes of "reinforcing the morals" and "proving the rise and fall" are in line with Chen's principle of "ruling chaos and regulating the stream of irony for the ancients" and Bai Juyi's principle of "all articles are empty and every sentence must be regulated" ... The creative theory of "only singing about people's livelihood and looking forward to Tianzi Anemarrhena" is consistent with "writing articles in time and writing poems for things". Therefore, although Meng Jiao didn't directly participate in Han Yu's ancient prose movement, and didn't pre-empt politics with outspoken and satirical poems under the distinct literary principles like Bai Juyi, he went along the road of restoring ancient ways, rectifying the rules of dynasties, and revitalizing the poetry world from beginning to end, and restoring ancient ways was his spiritual weapon to fight for Guizhou on this road. He is an outstanding representative of retro trend of thought. Therefore, in the middle Tang Dynasty, when the retro style was very strong, he got praise that could not be obtained later.
Characteristics of poetry
First, be simple and dignified, and avoid familiarity and customs. Meng Jiao's poetry is different from the prevailing superficial style at that time. It has the characteristics of simplicity and solemnity, and creates fresh artistic effects in the simple nature. Meng Jiao once drew a line "Night at Wangluo Bridge" and "The ice falls in Tianjin Bridge, and the stranger in Luoyang walks off. It has always been known for its concise brushwork. "Tour Nanshan" and "Nanshan fills the heavens and the earth, and the sun and the moon are born on stones. The sun stays in the peak night, and the deep valley is unclear. In the sentence structure, Meng Jiao avoids being gentle and elegant, breaks away from convention, and strives to be vigorous and vigorous in Gu Zhuo, taking ancient Chinese syntax as his poem. Different from the habit of five-character poems, Meng's poems have four sentences, such as "hiding a thousand words to find water, producing eighteen monks" (the first of two hermits in Huainan Yue) and "grinding a stone to embed a book, making the book shine forever" (the fourth of ten poems about hanging Lu), which changes the traditional expression of poetry and gives people a fresh artistic feeling.
Second, it is dangerous and difficult. Think hard and sing hard. Meng Jiao's poems are tough in wording, and he is used to using harsh words such as death, cutting, burning, bone, recording, folding, breaking and saving to create a peculiar artistic feeling. This aspect is related to his depression and depression. In Interpretation of Night Feeling, he said that he "reads at night and talks about ghosts and gods. How not to be idle, the heart is the enemy. " To write poetry hard, we must deliberately seek new words and expressions, and use strange words and cold images that are rare in past poems; The psychological oppression and injustice make the new language expressions he pursues mostly have cold, lonely and withered colors and meanings, so as to portray his inner sadness as deeply as possible and shock people's hearts. In these poems, he carefully chose penetrating verbs such as "cut", "comb", "seal" and "brush".
Third, the family is deep and magnificent. Meng Jiao is not a lifelong poet, and his poems are not all hard words. Han Yu saw his "soft and redundant" side and loved his "vulgar and quite modern" poems. Many of Meng Jiao's poems are quaint, and they express deep feelings in plain poetic language, making them fresh and elegant. He not only has poems with distant feelings, but also works with the spirit of "bravely crossing the sea".
Meng Jiao's pathos poems have received different praises, while his quaint poems have received more consistent praise. Xu believes that "it is really thankless to look at the complete works in the suburbs;" However, although the language of the readers is cut and the body is very simple, so the upper one can't copy its words and the lower one can't add its sentences. This biography says that his poems are reasonable and trustworthy. " Affirm the unique charm of "Dongye has the old saying five, which can be used both ways and euphemistically". Many of Meng Jiao's poems are written with shallow feelings. Ode to a Wanderer has aroused readers' strong sense of * * * with plain language, and Ode to the Letter will be given to Wan Li. Books reach the soul, but they are empty. "It touches people's hearts with psychological details. Lienvcao, Unfortunate Concubine, Downward Pond and Qu Fu Pian are full of fables. ..... The fundus in this public chest is so great that Wu has to praise its hunger and cold. "
Corresponding to deep affection, Meng's poems also have the characteristics of imposing manner. He used hard words such as "swing", "vibration" and "lock" to embody the broad atmosphere of mountains and buildings, and wrote the buildings and mountains high into the sky, spanning between heaven and earth. "The ridge is a cliff, and it is unexpected." The buildings in Root Carving are full of clouds, and the wings of the temple are flying dangerously ("Climbing the Huayan Temple Building and Looking at the Zhongnan Mountain as a Gift to the Lin School Book Brothers") and "Nanshan fills the heavens and the earth, and the sun and the moon are born on the stone" ("Traveling to the Zhongnan Mountain") depict the majestic momentum and reflect our own smallness. When Meng Jiao expresses the artistic conception of wind blowing and water whistling, he often uses "vibrating empty mountains" and "swinging heaven and earth" to describe the scope and depth.
Personality assessment
In the Tang Dynasty, people thought that Meng's poems were a kind of "Yuanhe style", "Yuanhe has fallen" and "learning is too exciting for Meng Jiao" (supplemented by Li Zhao's Tang Shi). At the end of the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Wei wrote a picture of the poet's subject and object, and regarded it as a "lonely and bitter owner". Song Dynasty poets Mei and Xie Ao, Qing Dynasty poets Hu Tianyou, Jiang Kun and Xu Chengyao were all influenced by him. After Han Yu and Li Guan, there are also some related works, such as Xiu, Huang Tingjian, Fei Zhou, Pan Deyu, Liu Xizai, Chen Yan, Qian Zhenqian and Xia Jingguan. There are Su Shi, Wei Tai, Yan Yu, Yuan Haowen and Wang Kaiyun who hold derogatory views. Both he and Jia Dao are famous for their bitter songs. Su Shi called it "thinness on an isolated island" (Yu Wen in Sacrifice to Liu Zi), and later commentators took Meng Jiao and Jia Dao as the representatives of bitter poets. Yuan Haowen even ridiculed him as a "poet prisoner" ("Thirty Poems"). The current Biography of Meng Dongye's Poems is 10, which was compiled and published by the Northern Song Dynasty. Huang Pilie Shu in the Northern Song Dynasty is no longer visible. Lv Xinyuan's shadow copy of the chicken bone pavilion in Song Dynasty belongs to Japan today. There are two popular books: Ji Gu Library Book and Xiaomin Zhu Mo Book. Four series of Ming Hong in Ye Tibetan were photocopied in Hangzhou. 1959, People's Literature Publishing House published Hua Chen's Revision of Meng Dongye's Poems, with Meng Jiao's chronicle and memorial collection. Annotations include Chen Yanjie's Meng Dongye's Poems and Xia Jingguan's Selected Poems and Comments on Meng Jiao. For deeds, please refer to Mr. Han Yu's Epitaph, Biographies of the Old and New Books of the Tang Dynasty, Chronicle of Mr. Meng Dongye in Xia Jingguan and Chronicle of Tang Meng Jiao in Huachen.
commemorate
Shortly after Meng Jiao's death, the Yi people established the Meng Jiao Temple, which is located at the intersection of Chunhui Street and the railway in Wu Kang Town, Deqing County, west 10 meter.
It was destroyed by the continuous chaos in the late Tang Dynasty. During Ding Jing's reign in the Southern Song Dynasty (1260- 1264), the Wu Kang magistrate was delighted with the portrait of Meng Jiao collected in the ancestral home of Shu Yuexiang, a scholar, so he rebuilt the ancestral temple to worship Meng Jiao. In the 16th year of Yuan Dynasty (1356), it was destroyed by chaos. In the 11th year of Qing Qianlong (1746), the temple was moved back to its original site, changed to Shanmen Temple and later became Mencius Temple. During the Japanese invasion of China, Wu Kang was set on fire three times by the brutal "Three Lights Policy", the city and suburbs were razed to the ground, and all the houses around the Temple of Mencius were reduced to ashes. However, for fear of Meng Jiao's fame and gods, the Japanese invaders did not dare to set fire to the temple and use force, which made it miraculously preserved. It was destroyed when the Cultural Revolution "broke the four capitals". The Meng Temple we see today was rebuilt for the fourth time in 1998.
Walking into the temple, a resplendent statue, 3.2 meters high, is Meng Jiao. The horizontal couplet above the statue is "Yao Zhen Qian Qiu", which means that Mr. Dongye's spirit will last forever, and the vertical couplet is "a famous poem expresses the feelings of mother and son in the world, and a huge poem is sung all over the world."