The Book of Rites on Gong records: "Xia Zi lost his son and lost his wisdom." Later generations therefore used "bereavement pain" to describe the extreme sadness of bereavement. In the third year of Yuanhe (808), Meng Jiao's son died unfortunately, and Han Yu wrote "Meng Dongye lost his son" to comfort him. The preface said: "Dongye gave birth to three sons in a row, but they were gone in a few days." How old you are, how sad it is to think about it. His friend Changli Han Yu is afraid of his injury and pushes his life as a metaphor. " The main idea of this poem is to enlighten Meng Jiao with the truth that "there is no child, and the fortunes are irreversible". The argument is rather reluctant, but the sentence describing Meng Jiao's grief is quite touching: "I don't know when it started, tears fell on the edge of the spring. The earth is sad for it and has been uneasy for a long time. " Unexpectedly, eleven years later, Han Yu himself suffered bereavement, and it was more profound than Meng Jiao. In the 14th year of Yuanhe (8 19), in the first month, Tang Xianzong sent envoys to welcome Buddha bones into the palace to worship, and all the people in Chang 'an went to worship. Han Yu resolutely went to the table to remonstrate, and his words were fierce. Xianzong was furious and should be punished as a capital crime. Thanks to the rescue of Pei Du, Cui Qun and other ministers, Han Yucai was saved from death and was demoted as the secretariat of Chaozhou. On the 14th day of the first month, after receiving the imperial edict, Han Yu said goodbye to his family and hurried on his way. Han Yu's four famous ladies, twelve years old, are ill in bed at this time, and their father and daughter are in tears. Han Yu knew it was death, but the woman stared at her father but couldn't cry. After Han Yu left Chang 'an, the court forced Han Yu's family to move to Chaozhou, and the whole family hurried on their way. Tired roads and poor diet really add insult to injury to this seriously ill woman. On February 2nd, the whole family went to Tiefeng Station in the south of Shangzhou. The girl finally fell ill and was hastily buried at the foot of the mountain next to the post station. At the end of the following year, Han Yu returned to Beijing, passing Fenggang, and went to the tomb of the actress. He wrote, "Last year, the assistant minister of punishments was sent down to Chaozhou for crimes and was appointed one by one. After that, the family was also expelled. The daughter died and the burial building is at the foot of the mountain next to Fenggang. He returned to the DPRK with kindness, passed his tomb, and left an inscription on the column beam: "Count vines and bind wooden coffins, and bury barren hills and bones with grass. It is a disease to panic into the body and mind, and it is difficult to help people all the way. Turn around the grave three times, and there is only one dish. I feel guilty for your innocence, and I am ashamed of my tears for a hundred years. "Necklace couplets have caused misunderstandings of future generations. A Qing Zhu Yizun called the former sentence "to make good use of things, to use them with taste" and said: "The next sentence is irrelevant. I don't know what the use of the word' only smell' is." (See Poems of Han Changli's Years, the same below.) According to the previous sentence, it is contained in the Book of Rites: "The son of Yanling was in harmony, and the eldest son died and was buried between Bo and Bo. ..... If it is sealed, the left side will be exposed, and the right side will be sealed and numbered. Kong explained the last sentence and said, "Its right side blocked it, and at the same time, it cried three times around the grave. "This is a famous allusion of the ancient father crying, and its background is a foreign country. On the trip, Han Shi used this allusion very accurately. Zhu Yizun was puzzled by the word "only smell" in Chinese poetry. Xu Zhen pointed out: "The more you bury a woman, the more you will do it. After the funeral, people will do it artificially. So the last sentence said "countless" and I was anxious to read it. This sentence is' only smell', which is called legend. "It means that the previous sentence is written by Han Yu's personal experience, and the latter sentence is written by hearsay. This seems reasonable, but there are also misunderstandings. Only Wang Younan noticed the words in Han Yu's "I want to go south, and my family will be punished" and "The more I do, the more I will be punished, so I won't be forced to leave Beijing", thus pointing out that the word "since" is Korean. ..... So there are two lines in this poem:' Turn three times in front of the grave and sacrifice only one plate of food.' "In other words, the plot written in the two sentences of the Necklace was not experienced by Han Yu personally, but learned from his family, especially his wife Lu. Lu is the mother of Nu Wa. As a family member of a sinner, she buried Nu Wa in exile. Of course, she can only "bury barren hills". Therefore, the main body of "around the grave" and "sacrifice" is Lu, and the main body of "only smell" is Han Yu himself. Lushi led his family south to Shaozhou, got the care of the secretariat of Alina Zhang, and asked them to stay in Shaozhou, so as not to "gather poison in evil streams, and lightning is often fierce." "Crocodiles are bigger than boats, and their teeth dare not kill Nong" (Dragon Officer). Han Yu himself arrived in Chaozhou on April 25th. It is estimated that he received a letter from Lu shortly after that and learned that Nuwa had passed away. Anyway, it is impossible for Han Yubei to return to Shaozhou to reunite with his family in the first month of the fifteenth year of Yuanhe (820).
This helps us to understand the creative background of Han Yu's poems about crying women. As a father, Han Yu was not with her when she moved south in a hurry when she was ill, when she was afraid that she could not get sick, and when she died in a post station to bury the barren hills. In addition, the direct cause of Nu Wa's tragedy is that Han was demoted. If Han Yu had turned a deaf ear to the absurd behavior of catering to the Buddha's bones like those "ministers who protect his wife all his life" (Sima Qian's letter of reply), the prostitute could have rested at home and been taken care of by her father. How could she die at the age of twelve? Of course, we should pay high tribute to Han Yu, who has the courage to speak out and make selfless contributions. Han Yu's outspoken remonstrance is a noble character of a court official and a vivid embodiment of the gentleman spirit advocated by Confucianism. But as a father, Han Yu really owes his daughter too much. The ancients often said that "loyalty and filial piety can't be satisfactory", but sometimes "loyalty" and "kindness" can't be satisfactory. Fan Pang in the Eastern Han Dynasty and Xia Wanchun in the late Ming Dynasty belong to the former category, while Han Yu belongs to the latter category. On the way to the south, Han Yu said in his heart to "admit defeat and cherish his old age." What was his mood when he said goodbye? In the third year of Changqing (823), that is, four years after Nu Wa's death, Han Yu sent someone to bury Nu Wa's remains in Han's ancestral home in Heyang, and wrote "Sacrificing Nu Wa", in which tears welled up: "You were seriously ill that year, and it was worthwhile for me to go south. The yellow ones are scattered, which worries you. I looked at your face and knew I was dead. You can't cry when you look at my face. I'm going to the south, and so is my family. Help you go to Yu and walk until dusk. Snow and cold weather will hurt your muscles. You can't feel at ease when you are in trouble. Not eating and drinking makes you thirsty and hungry. His fate was not to die in a poor mountain. Fire and water are incompatible, and parents are guilty. You are not here because of me! " Reading this article against the poem of a crying girl, the grief and guilt of a loving father jumped to the page. The phrase "a hundred years of shame and tears dry up" is by no means empty talk. One year after his daughter was buried in Heyang, Han Yu died in Chang 'an, and the feeling of shame and pain really lasted for a lifetime. If the deceased knew, father and daughter should cry under the spring!
Compared with other people's crying poems, Han Yu's poems are sad because of its unique writing background. Look at Meng Jiao's "Apricot Mourning": "Little Flower Milk Powder, you are wearing baby clothes. If you don't pick it up, you will return to China sadly. " Su Shi was born on September 27th last year in Huangzhou, posthumous title. Until July 28th this year, he died in Jinling, and wrote two "crying" poems: "Love will still be the blade, cutting this aging intestine. You know you have to outsmart yourself before you get hurt. "True" Cai Ersheng was born on April 16th last year, died at the age of 40, and was buried at the foot of Gardenia Mountain "says:" There are five pieces of wood skin attached to the root of the mountain, and the third piece is covered on the left. Yesterday, at this moment, I was in my arms, looking back at the grave of dal. "The crying sons in the three poems died before they were adults. The three poets who were fathers were extremely sad, but the reason can only be attributed to fate. As Meng Jiao said in his poem, "Everything is difficult at the beginning", a poet as a father has no psychological burden of guilt. Zheng has traces of learning from Han, but he has no regrets. Although there is a sentence in Su Shi's poem, "I was taken away suddenly, and I was tired by my bad karma", it is still difficult to attribute the loss of my son's mother to illusory karma. We might as well speculate that if her daughter died of illness under normal circumstances, Han Yu may not be able to comfort herself with "having children but not daughters" as Meng Dongye said in "Lonely Lost", because, as Su Shi said, "Tibetan medicine is like a hill, and more help is needed in the face of illness. "No matter how enlightened a person is, he will find it difficult to solve the pain of bereavement, but he is likely to write one. It is a special life experience that makes Han Yu, a tough guy with a heart of stone, finally shed bitter tears, thus writing this poem of crying women, which is both painful and shameful, adding a masterpiece of love and words to this ancient poem of crying children. We might as well borrow the words of our neighbor Chen Yan to comment: "There is no sadness in the world, and there is no such sad poem. It's been a hundred years. Who wants this? On the Millennium, it is inseparable from this poem! " (The Essence of Song Poetry, Volume III)
(Author: College of Literature, Nanjing University)