? A hard life
Li Shangyin (A.D. 8 13-858), a native of Yuxi, was born in Hanoi, Huaizhou (now Qinyang). He was born in a declining aristocratic family and is said to be the descendant of the famous British duke Li Shixun. His grandfather xing zhou joined the army, Li Fu moved to Xingyang, and his father Lisi was ordered by Jia Jun. Li Shangyin was born in Huojia County. In 823 AD, his father died in Zhejiang, and 9-year-old Xiao Shangyin returned to his hometown with his mother. Since then, he has been raised and taught by his mother and uncle, "teaching classics personally and teaching articles".
Li Shangyin's lonely and unfortunate experience caused his sentimental character, and at the same time prompted him to seek to revitalize his family business through the imperial examination, and gained a high degree of literary and artistic accomplishment in "hanging his head and biting his head", which created his persistent pursuit spirit.
Li Shangyin was intelligent and studious, and showed outstanding literary genius when he was a teenager. At the age of 65,438+06, he was famous for writing two articles, On Talent and On Sacredness, and was praised by Yang He. In 830 AD (the fourth year of Daiwa), Li Shangyin, aged 18, was appointed as a shogunate inspector by Ling Huchu because of his outstanding talent, and he embarked on a bumpy career.
Linghu Chu attaches great importance to Li Shangyin, often gives him some important official documents, and often arranges his children to study with Li Shangyin. Even when he was training in Bianzhou (now Kaifeng) and Xingyuan (now Hanzhong), he insisted on letting Li Shangyin accompany him and continued to appoint him as the governor. Besides, Ling Huchu, who is good at writing, personally taught him how to write essays and chapters. This period is the most ambitious and beautiful time in Li Shangyin's life.
However, Li Shangyin was depressed in the two imperial examinations in 833 (the seventh year of Daiwa) and 835 (the ninth year of Daiwa), so he had to return home depressed. During this period, he was employed by Cui Rong, the secretariat of Huazhou (now hua county, Shaanxi). I also went to Jiyuan Wu Wang to cultivate immortality, and my mood was very low. Later, under the strong recommendation of Ling Huchu and Ling, Li Shangyin was admitted to the world in 837 (the second year of his career), but he still didn't get an official position. Soon, Gu Chu died in Sichuan, and Li Shangyin was very sad. He and his family escorted the coffin back to Chang 'an to repay Hu Ling and his son for their care and training.
In 838 A.D. (three years as an official), Li Shangyin took the macro-word exam that he had already accepted, was removed from the list, and was discouraged again. Fortunately, Jingyuan's frugality made Wang Maoyuan appreciate his talent. Not only warmly invited him to work in the shogunate, but also married his favorite little daughter. No one expected that Li Shangyin's marriage got him into a quagmire. It turned out that he was inadvertently involved in the famous clique struggle in history-"Niu Li Party Struggle".
And his son belong to the Niu Party, while Yuan belongs to the Li Party. They are sworn enemies. In the view of Niu Party, Li Shangyin's behavior is "ungrateful", which is despised by Confucianism, and Li Party is not at ease with him. In this way, Li Shangyin wandered in the whirlpool of fierce struggle between the Niu Party and the Li Party, and lived an embarrassing and difficult life. What is even more frightening is that Ling Huxuan, the son of Ling Huchu, has been in office for a long time. In the meantime, Li Shangyin wrote many poems and articles to explain to Ling that he didn't want to cling to either side's position, but he never got it. Fortunately, out of the friendship of that year, Ling Huxuan didn't pursue it too much, and arranged a job for him as Dr. imperial academy of Liu Pin.
In 84 1 year, Li Yan ascended the throne. Li Deyu, the leader of the Li Party, was the prime minister, and the Li Party tried its best to drive away the Niu Party. Li Shangyin's situation has improved slightly. However, only six years later, after Li Chen ascended the throne, the situation of factional struggle was fundamentally reversed. Fortunately, Li Shangyin was hired by Zheng Ya, who was demoted to the secretariat of Guangxi, and became the envoy and secretary of his shogunate, leaving Chang 'an, an eventful place.
From his official career in 830 (the fourth year of Daiwa) to his death in 858 (the twelfth year of Dazhong), he spent 20 years wandering around the shogunate in the past 30 years, living a wandering life of running around, running around and living without a fixed place.
In fact, Li Shangyin has no intention of participating in factional struggle at all. He has no prejudice and compares himself to "Song Qing", detached from the clique. The poem "Four-year-old bad grass is the way, cold pine is very healthy" expresses his aversion to factional fighting and integrity. "Yongyi Jianghu is white-haired and wants to go back to heaven and earth and board a boat. I don't know what a rotten mouse tastes like, but I guess he hasn't stopped. "It can be seen that his political ambition of" returning to heaven "has reversed Gan Kun's resentment of serving the country.
Li Shangyin was repeatedly hit by his cronies all his life, with a bumpy career and long-term dependence on others. Coupled with the pain of losing his wife at noon and homesickness, he suffered great mental pain. He was exposed to Buddhism. In 853 A.D. (the seventh year of Dazhong), he donated money to build five stone walls next to Yi Hui Jingshe in Pingshan, carved Bibi in the Lotus Sutra with gold, and personally wrote an inscription for the stone tablet of the Fourth Hall of Jingshe South Temple.
Wonderful poem
Li Shangyin is well-read, loyal to the monarch and patriotic, and anti-Gankun, all of which are shown in his poems. Among its existing more than 600 poems, 100 is about politics and metallurgy. He praised Liu Bang and Li Shimin, as well as Sean and Zhuge Liang. He opposed the separatist regime and eunuch dictatorship; He sympathized with the view of "not learning from Confucius", and thought that writing articles did not need to quote classics, and he was willing to live under the ancients. Unfortunately, he was "unlucky" and "never opened his mind all his life", so he could not give full play to his talents.
Li Shangyin's life has been ups and downs among lower-level officials, depressed and frustrated, unable to display his talents. However, his bumpy experience and deep contact with the lower classes. This provided him with an endless source of creation, and thus formed the unique style of his poetry, which can also be regarded as "every dark cloud has a silver lining."
As a poet who cares about the fate of the country and the sufferings of the people, he turned his passion into a burning poem and criticized the corrupt politics of the Tang Dynasty. For example, the famous poem "A Hundred Rhymes in the Western Suburbs" boldly describes the suburbs of Beijing with a simple description: "Agricultural tools abandon the roadside, hungry cows die, and empty docks. When Yi Yi crossed the village, there was no room in ten rooms. " Desolate and dilapidated scenes and the poor life of farmers. Then, with the help of the villagers, he strongly condemned those in power who brought disasters to the country and the people, and boldly exposed the separatist rebellion in the buffer region, the tyranny of officials, the arrogance of the rulers and the sufferings of the people. After the "change of nectar", Li Shangyin wrote two poems, Doubt, Re-feeling and Qujiang, with extraordinary courage, angrily attacking the eunuch's tyranny and killing innocent people, showing his anxiety about the fate of the Tang Dynasty and sympathy for the people.
Li Shangyin's epics have always been admired. These epics borrowed historical themes. He took advantage of the topic to satirize the arrogance and ignorance of feudal rulers. Such as "Sui Palace" with the theme of exposing the debauchery and shameless of Emperor Yang Di; For example, Jia Sheng and Yao Chi satirized the rulers' ignorance of talents and their blind pursuit of immortality. ? For example, Longtan sharply exposed the ugly behavior of Li Longji occupying his daughter-in-law in the Tang Dynasty. Li Shangyin mercilessly attacked the emperor of this dynasty, showing his fearless fighting spirit.
On the other hand, Li Shangyin, full of romantic spirit, is also a master of writing love poems. In recent years, some people even think that he is "the standard-bearer of love poems" and "the originator of obscure poems". Objectively speaking, there are indeed many sentimental love poems in Li Shangyin's existing poems. They are beautifully written, exquisite and elegant, with profound feelings and hazy artistic conception, which makes people sigh and can't put it down.
We must see that his love poems are not only records of love, but also colorful poems devoted to lovesickness and lovelorn. In fact, most of Li Shangyin's love poems are untitled poems, almost all of which are allegorical poems with profound meanings. He directly inherited the fine tradition of Chu Ci. Like Qu Yuan, he used "vanilla" and "beauty" to compare beautiful people and beautiful things, and used the gains and losses of love to compare political advance and retreat. Of course. We don't know. Which poems are twists and turns alluding to politics, and which are pure love-hate inner loneliness. For example, this untitled song: "Last night's star, last night's wind, is in the west of the studio and east of the cinnamon room. Without Cai Feng's wings, it is impossible to be Qi Fei in fly with me; The heart is like a soul, and the feelings are the same. Send a hook for spring wine every once in a while, where we roll dice in groups under the crimson lamp. Until a drum beat, alas, called me to perform my duties, I mounted my horse and flew away like a cut-off aquatic plant. " This implicit and spoony lyric poem is really tortuous and obscure. If it's bright and dark, I want to say.
Generally speaking, the artistic achievements of Li Shangyin's poems are very high. His seven laws are well-selected, well-organized, deeply emotional, harmonious in sound and rhyme, and his diction and sentence formation have reached a perfect height. Rhetoric methods often use artistic techniques such as suggestion, contrast or symbol, innuendo, etc., to create a hazy artistic conception and bizarre purport, giving people a unique aesthetic feeling and artistic enjoyment. Many poems are deeply loved by people because of their vivid colors and novel language. But sometimes, too much pursuit of rhetoric and too much attention to allusions give people a sense of obscurity.
Besides. Li Shangyin's quatrains are also very good. Some of them are ingenious and rich in meaning, and often express a profound and important theme, such as Jia Sheng and Qi Gong Ci.