Which dynasty did the poet Gong Zizhen belong to (2)

Gong Zizhen's information and comments

At the time of Jiaqing and Daoguang, the corruption of feudal politics made social contradictions accumulate continuously, and the conflict between old and new ideas became increasingly fierce. Gong Zizhen, a genius, made a penetrating and shocking voice with a proud attitude in the literary world of this period, pushing the literature in the middle of Qing Dynasty to a more conscious and resistant height. Gong Zizhen, who died in 1841, had little to do with the drastic changes caused by the Raven War, but it was a natural thing. On the eve of the crow * War, his exposure of social malpractice and his reflection on social crisis mainly focused on the universal spiritual weakness and personality degeneration in the literati caused by feudal autocracy, and he took personality liberation and personality perfection as the premise of social development. This is the logical development of the whole literature in the mid-Qing Dynasty, and it is also the logical development of the progressive trend of thought that has experienced many twists and turns since Yuan and Ming Dynasties, which should be noted first.

Gong Zizhen (1792-1841) was born in Renhe, Zhejiang (now Hangzhou). In the ninth year of Daoguang (1829), he was a scholar and was in charge of the official ceremony department.

He resigned at the age of 48 and returned to the south. Two years later, he died suddenly in Yunyang Academy in Danyang. When he was young, he received philology from his grandfather and famous scholar Duan Yucai. At 28, he turned to Liu Fenglu to learn from the Spring and Autumn Ram of Jinwen School, and he often used it to "scorn current politics and despise autocracy" (Liang Qichao's Academic Introduction to Qing Dynasty). He is knowledgeable, well versed in history, philosophers, phonology and epigraphy, studied the history and geography of northwest China, loved Tiantai Buddhism in his later years, and was famous for his poems, words and essays. He was both a keen and profound thinker and a writer full of passion and imagination. He is the author of Ding Heng's Collected Works, etc. Today, he has The Complete Works of Gong Zizhen.

Gong Zizhen, a junior official, was concerned about world affairs. He was the first person in Qing Dynasty to discuss current affairs on the basis of personal thinking from the standpoint of independent scholars, which was an important reason why he was respected by future generations. Some of these words are suggestions about actual government affairs. For example, the proposal of setting up a province in the western regions advocates that immigrants should settle in Xinjiang to develop the western economy and consolidate the border defense; The book "A Talk on Trading in Southeast China" has been lost, but it is definitely related to banning crow's trade. From the perspective of the title of the article combined with the preface he wrote to Lin Zexu, Gong Zizhen did not know enough about the significance of developing normal Chinese and foreign trade, but he clearly saw the great danger of crow's invasion to China. All these reflect his political foresight. But more importantly, those works show his in-depth thinking on social issues and expose the fundamental drawbacks of feudal politics, such as "On the occasion of B and C", "Conception of Pregnancy at the Time of Rengui", "On Ancient History", "On Ming and Liang", "Respect for Secrecy" and "On Private Affairs".

In philosophy, Gong Zizhen raised the subjectivity of self to an unprecedented height. The so-called "heaven and earth are created by human beings, created by people themselves, not by saints", and "the slaughter of people is not extreme, so they call themselves me" ("The conception of pregnancy is the first when I am unmarried"), which regards "I" as the only, fundamental and metaplastic will force in the universe, and it is equal to "God" in religion. This idealistic thought provides a philosophical basis for safeguarding the self-worth of specific individuals. In On Private Affairs, Gong emphasized that "private" is the basic point for people to consider all issues. Among the recognized virtues, patriotism is not a country that loves others, loyalty to the monarch is not a king who is loyal to others, and even people are filial to their parents, love their children and be faithful to their husbands. There is no such thing as "private". This argument is not only an affirmation of self-interest, but also touches on the essence of morality as a guarantee of interests, which is of great significance.

In Gong Zizhen's view, the root cause of social weakness is that personal dignity and creativity are suppressed, especially the literati who are the backbone of society are generally low in personality. On the one hand, the scholar-officials succumbed to autocracy and only knew how to flatter and flatter. "From the day when they played, they began to enter the year, and the shame has been saved!" The officials of those dignitaries, "know the clothes of horses and chariots, and they are quick to give words, but this is not what they know" ("On Ming Liang II"). In the officialdom, "tired days think of labor, counting years thinks of rank", and it is lifeless ("On Ming Liang San"). On the other hand, when "talented people and talented people come out, they are bound by a hundred talents and even slaughtered." Slaughter is not a knife, a saw or a fire; The text is also slaughtered, the name is also slaughtered, and the voice and smile are also slaughtered "("The Ninth Meeting on the occasion of B and C ").

The society, with its material and ideological ruling power, makes talented people mediocre or silent, so that "there is no talent in the left, no history of talent in the right, no talent in the lottery, no talent in the rush, no talent in the people, no talent in the hustle and bustle, no talent in the business; There is no talent to steal in the lane, no talent in the city, and no talent to steal in the river. It is not only a fresh gentleman, but also a fresh villain "(ibid.). And society makes individuals lose the possibility of development, and it also loses the possibility of development, thus becoming the lowest "declining world" in the "third-class world", and "chaos is not far away" (ibid.). In the article "Respect for Seclusion", the author even pointed out directly that because the "capital", as the center of the ruling power, can't tolerate the intelligent elites in the world, the talents will be reduced to the wild, and there will be "a big sound, the heaven and the earth will be the bells and drums, and the gods will be the waves", which means that the society will undergo tremendous changes.

Gong Zizhen's remarkable point is that he lost the vitality of self-renewal from the feudal system, not just from some specific phenomena.

He not only predicted the decline of this dynasty, but also predicted the irreversible decline of the whole feudal system.

Gong Zizhen's thoughts are intrinsically related to Gan Jia's studies. Although the study of textual research on the classics and history of Gan Jia has the drawback of escaping from the contradiction of reality, it contains the rational spirit of "seeking truth from facts" and a broad vision of looking at reality from thousands of years' history of China. This is Gong's so-called "A wise man who has received a book of historians for 3, years can worry about the world with good history" (On the occasion of B and C, I discussed the ninth). Many of his arguments directly use the argument method of "micro-speech and righteousness" expounded by the modern literature. But this is far from enough. More importantly, his thought is the result of social development. Gong Zizhen rarely cites the theory of Ming people, but many of his core arguments are just similar to Li Zhi's.

For example, we attach importance to self, affirm self-interest, praise "childlike innocence", and take the rise and fall of "talent" as the symbol of the rise and fall of "the world". This shows that these requirements are essential in the process of breaking through feudal autocracy and promoting social progress.

Gong Zizhen's attraction to future generations lies not only in the profundity of his thoughts, but also in the charm of his personality. He is a proud man, and in the decadent and depressed social atmosphere at that time, he showed a burst of heroic spirit. He despises the vulgar and vulgar world, and "The End of Knowing a Grand Order" denounces the school of worship, which is a leader of the "Yanghu School" and has a good literary name, and deceives the world only by clever words, showing his extreme dislike of this kind of orthodox figures. He fiercely pursues the liberation of personality and firmly defends his independent personality, as declared in "Eight Proverbs Cut into Proverbs", "Between heaven and earth, on the side of several cases, why should everyone be in China, why should everyone be in the middle of the circle, why should everyone be in the middle of the chord, and why should everyone be in the middle of the ink?" He is just himself and does not have to conform to any established criteria! This arrogant spirit and the radical pursuit of "I urge God to renew his spirit and drop talents without sticking to one pattern" (Jihai Miscellaneous Poems) are the internal skeleton that supports his poetry creation, and also an important factor that shocked later reformers.

Gong Zizhen's political comments and academic papers are unrestrained and often emotional. The other part is more literary, which records characters, works about travel and various essays expressing life feelings. He describes characters and likes to highlight his arrogant personality, from which he also writes his own temperament and likes and dislikes. For example, Wu Zhijia, Wang Yinjun, Hangdazong Anecdotes, and Wang Zhongqu's Epitaph all have this feature. The characters in Wu Zhi Jia have the author's own shadow. This "stubborn" is full of worries in the world, and is easy to say, referring to the capital Lang Cao as "soft and headstrong", which is not as good as the "headstrong" of the ancients; Those who blame "the upright and thrifty princes" are "those who are not prosperous, not as flawed as their words and deeds in the past", and their sharp edges reflect Gong Zizhen's unique vision of his "declining world". In Ji Xing's article, Ji Hai passed Yangzhou in June, and from the "peace" weather on the surface of Yangzhou, I felt a kind of "bleak and swaying, Ling Ran is bleak" atmosphere, which was very profound. The Story of the Sick Plum Restaurant is more familiar to people:

Dragon Pan in Jiangning, Deng Wei in Suzhou and Xixi in Hangzhou all produce plums. Or: "Mei takes music as beauty, but straightness is without posture; Taking beauty as beauty, regularity has no scenery; Mei is beautiful in sparseness, but she has no state in secrecy. " Solid also. This literati painter, knowing his meaning, failed to write a letter to the large size in order to win the world's plum; You can't make the people of the world straighten up, delete secrets, and straighten out, and take the dead plum and sick plum as their business to get money. Mei's passion, sparseness and melody are not people who are eager for money, but they can take their intelligence as their priority.

Some scholars paint a scholar's solitude, openly tell him about the plum blossom, correct it, raise its side bars, delete its secrets, kill its young branches, hoe its straightness, and curb its anger in order to pay more attention, while plum blossoms in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are all sick. The disaster of literati painters is so fierce!

if you buy 3 pots in advance, all of them are sick, and none of them are finished. Since the third day of weeping, it is an oath to treat it, longitudinal and smooth. Destroy its basin, bury it in the ground, and untie it. For a period of five years, it will be restored. For this non-literati painter, I am willing to be criticized and set up a museum of sick plums to store them.

ouch! Ann has given me more leisure days and more fields to store the sick plums in Jiangning, Hangzhou and Suzhou, and to heal the plums when I am poor!

A short essay of several hundred words, which combines narration, discussion and lyricism, reveals that the morbid society makes it impossible for talents to grow naturally and healthily, and expresses the desire to get rid of shackles, pursue free development and save the world with great significance.

Gong Zizhen's prose is just in opposition to Tongcheng School, which not only has different ideological purport, but also has completely different article style. Gong's style is either straight or bizarre, and it drives the language at will, showing the confidence and strength that everyone has. Sometimes, the words are awkward and unsmooth, and the meaning is awkward and difficult to understand, but there must be a special connotation that scares people and a very emotional style, which is comparable to those who are not weird.

Gong Zizhen is a thinker and has the temperament of a poet, as written in Jihai Miscellaneous Poems: "Young people mourn too much, and there is no reason to cry. I am strong and confused, and I am childlike. " As a visionary of an era, a man who is unwilling to live in seclusion and adapt himself to the world, his spirit is often painful. "Xiao and Jian" is an image he used repeatedly, which represents both sides of his affectionate susceptibility and bold Ren Xia. In his early years, "complaining about playing the flute, talking about the sword crazily, two kinds of spirits disappear" (Xiang Yue), and in his later years, "a case of the heart of the firm but gentle flute disappears" (Ji Hai Za Shi), he has gone through a journey of loneliness, arrogance and sadness. However, in any case, there is always a kind of extraordinary spirit and flying personality spirit in his poems.

The works that attack the disadvantages of the times represent one aspect of Gong Zizhen's poetry. For example, in the large-scale group poem Jihai Miscellaneous Poems, the poem "Jin-Liang Treaty Covers the South East" describes the harm of crow *, and the poem "No matter whether salt and iron are used to raise rivers" exposes the incompetence of rulers and the search for the people;

In addition, "Jia Yu Ballad" humorously depicts the soaring prices at that time with a lively ballad style. The following poem "Ode to History" sharply depicts the humble situation of Shilin:

Fifteen states in the southeast of Jinfen belong to celebrities. The prison basin is full of guests' exercises, and the talents of the group fans are in the upper reaches. Avoid seats and fear to smell the literary inquisition, and write books for rice and Liang Mou. Tian Heng's 5 people are in peace, so don't come back as soon as possible?

In the "Southeast of Golden Powder", the officialdom is a scene of being bored but pretending to be romantic, which is the result of the Qing Dynasty's use of high-handed means to make "the shame of the world" be "shaken and hoed" ("On Ancient History"). The poet can't help asking: Is the heroic spirit shown by Tian Heng's 5 strong men no longer available in the world? There is a mixture of despair and hope for the future of the nation.

More poems express the poet's feelings in his own life. He is a man with keen thoughts, strong feelings and personality, which inevitably conflicts with the depressed environment around him; In this kind of conflict, he has always maintained a defiant attitude. He once chanted:

A noble person flies in the air overnight, just like Fengbo's arrogance. There are two bumps in my life, and I know the cause of my internal litigation: I am lonely in the side of the world, and I am angry and sincere! Sitting on the waves and shaking four times, it is inevitable that there will be crowds. (

The arrogant "noble people" and the discontented "public people" constitute great oppression, which makes the poet feel "isolated" between heaven and earth. Although this poem was published on a specific event, it has universal significance in the poet's life. Therefore, in Gong Zizhen's poems, we can often see the sorrow that surges up: "There are many joys and sorrows everywhere, so why should we sigh at the beginning of vicissitudes" (Miscellaneous Poems), "All the dirty things make us cry, and the night surges like Quan Yuan" (Five Chapters of Poems), and so on. But this is by no means the cry of the weak, but the self-injury of the strong man in the lonely struggle. In this self-injury, the poet's spirit still maintains a strong expansion. His poems are famous for their strangeness and magnificence, which is the artistic expression of this spiritual strength.

The golden flower is flourishing, but the childlike innocence has not disappeared. At the bottom of the sea red curtain, the four-compartment flower shadow is angry at the tide. ("Four Sentences in a Dream" II)

"Liu Jiu" is a divinatory symbol of yin and yang, which refers to the doom of the cycle of nature. Here, the poet creates a magnificent artistic conception with a dream of freedom. In addition, for example, "The West Pool drinks and stops the dragon, and the East China Sea tide comes to the moon with anger and brightness" ("The sentence of" The East China Sea tide comes to the moon with anger and brightness "wakes up into a poem"), "The autumn heart is like a tide, but there is an autumn soul that can't be recruited" ("Three Poems of Autumn Heart"), "The bright moon can't sink to the sky, but Jiang Tao can move to the ground" ("Good Poems of Three Farewells"

even when the poet writes about falling flowers, it will be "like money surging in the Tang Dynasty at night, like Kunyang fighting in the morning, like 84, heavenly daughters washing their faces and pouring rouge here" (Song of Falling Flowers in the Western Suburb). In this kind of poems, we can feel the intense emotional rhythm and the posture of the poet's soul flying and dancing in heavy depression.

Sometimes, Gong Zizhen can't help but feel the emptiness of life and want to get rid of all kinds of contradictions and entanglements, especially the psychological pressure. One of "Ode to a Cold Moon" states that he wants to live in Hangzhou with his wife, Ho Chi-hung, and live in seclusion with the old. At the beginning, he says, "There are mountains and rivers at night, and the moonlight is vast, and I don't know what mountains are green, and I don't know what He Shan is white", and writes a bleak picture and a feeling of sadness. However, on the whole, his poems still show the power of making progress and breaking through.

Love poems also occupy a certain proportion in Gong Zizhen's collection. This is certainly the imprint of his "indiscretion" life, and it is also the record of his pursuit of the truth of temperament and the beautiful dream of life in the dreary world. The following is an article from Ji Hai's Miscellaneous Poems:

It can make the public happy, and the daughter of Yangzhou is named Xiaoyun. When the first string meets the first string, it is said goodbye, and the apricot skirt has never been covered.

The language is very light, but it is infatuated, and it describes the free and easy state of crazy people. Some poems, on the other hand, depict fairies with magnificent brushstrokes.