Literary story-Who wrote the epitaph of the great poet?

A person's epitaph is a summary and interpretation of his life. To write a person's epitaph well, we should not only write his life clearly, but also let readers know his life through the epitaph. In the history of China literature, there is such a brilliant story. From Du Fu to Li Shangyin, several generations of great poets have gone through the rise and fall of the whole prosperous Tang Dynasty, and in mutual appreciation again and again, they have completed the interpretation and inheritance of one generation to the previous generation.

During his five years in Tang Daizong, Du Fu lived a poor and hard life in Leiyang. Du Fu's last wish was to be buried in shouyangshan, but due to poverty, Du Fu's children had to be buried with the help of Nie Ling in Leiyang. During his life, Du Fu and his poems received little praise. With the passage of time, decades later, under the vigorous advocacy of Bai Juyi and others, Du Fu was highly respected as an enlightener of realistic themes. It was also at this time that Du Fu's remains were buried under shouyangshan, Yanshi, Luoyang, Henan Province, with the help of his grandson Doss, and his wish came true.

At the time of burial, Yuan Zhen, who was being demoted, wrote the famous Preface to Du Fu's Tomb of Yuan Wailang, Ministry of Industry of Tang Dynasty. Born nine years after Du Fu's death, Yuan Zhen never really experienced Du Fu's life and never made friends with him, but in the atmosphere of "praising Li and restraining Du Fu" at that time, he admired Du Fu.

The prosperous Tang Dynasty inherited Liang Qi's decadent voice, and it was so weak and declining in this era when eunuchs were autocratic and vassal. What people need to see and hear is Fu's "a vast building, all the poor in the world are happy." His cry and call sign is his "life is homeless, why is it steaming?" Empathy.

After experiencing the hardships of relegation and understanding the hardships of people's livelihood, Yuan Zhen had a soul dialogue with Du Fu that transcended time and space, self and other people's experiences decades ago through one poem after another.

After that, Yuan Zhen's literary creation began to change. As the first person who spoke highly of Du Fu, he inherited the mantle of Du Fu, and began to lead silent poetry to heartfelt realism, guiding poetry to become a tool to reflect reality and shout out the sufferings of people's livelihood.

In the fifth year of Daiwa in Tang Wenzong, Yuan Zhen, who was demoted four times in his life, died in Wuchang. Bai Juyi, his lifelong confidant, personally wrote an epitaph for him with great sorrow.

The meeting between Bai Yuan and his wife is a much-told story in the history of China literature. In the 19th year of Zhenyuan, Mr. and Mrs. Bai Yuan both published books with great achievements, and they were merged into the secretary province as school bookkeepers. So they got to know each other and started a lifelong friendship. Their life is like the Boya period. They sang with each other, tied with their talents, and tied with the strength of their personality. They met their courage every day for decades.

After Yuan Zhen wrote Du Fu's epitaph, under the advocacy of Bai Yuan and his wife, the poetry world began a vigorous new Yuefu movement, inheriting Du Fu's mantle side by side, criticizing the shortcomings of the times and reflecting people's livelihood. I hope to awaken those in power who are in a daze with poetry, speak for the general public, and guide politics with poetry as the direction.

But it is precisely because of the allegory of their poems to those in power that they began their wandering life. In the fourth year of Yuanhe in Tang Xianzong, Yuan Zhen was demoted to Jiangling and recalled four years later. After returning to Chang 'an, he sang with Bai Juyi's poems and wine, and planned to compose Bai Yuan's homecoming poems. However, before his poetry collection was completed, he was exiled to Tongzhou and began his relegation career for nearly 20 years. Almost at the same time, Bai Juyi was also demoted to Jiangzhou Sima, and the two bosom friends began the hard life of meeting again: "If you meet each other late, you will know where, and the two duckweeds are in the sea." The new Yuefu movement they advocated was also hit hard during this period.

In this kind of hardship, they take poetry as comfort and friendship as support. In the following decades, they wrote 180 reconciliation poems. The most famous, when several yuan Zhen's "Wenle Tiancai Jiangzhou Sima":

The residual lamp has no flame shadow. I heard that you have fallen into Jiujiang this evening.

Sitting up in a dying illness, the dark wind blows rain into the cold window.

In the fourth year of Daiwa in Tang Wenzong, Yuan Zhen was demoted again. On the way to the post office, he met Bai Juyi again The two men lamented how difficult the times were and how erratic their fate was, and they could not help but burst into tears. Without thinking, this scene is the farewell of the two.

A year later, Yuan Zhen died suddenly in Wuchang. What Bai Juyi left behind was the sigh and yearning of no confidant in the world for a long time. In Yuan Zhen's epitaph, he wrote:

The real intention is to govern the country with the people and to be a gentleman. Hold your breath and not? Will people be unlucky? To taste the sorrow of many people begins with a straight bow to the law, while diligence is bumpy and injustice is flat. If you stay in your hometown for ten years, your hair will be gray when you come back; The second time, I helped the world with my strength, but I changed my mind and became uneasy. I was only in March, and I left before it was warm. If you advance and retreat, you won't win the hearts of the people. For the purpose of jurisprudence, it stops at repairing a post and is not issued to ordinary officials; Kindness stops at one side, not all over the world. Therefore, the public's heart is insufficient, so is the timely and untimely, and so is the position and position, rich and floating. who is it? Don't do it when you do something, and don't meet it when you meet it. A friend lives in Iraq, but only knows his heart and makes him cry.

The world is so big, I'm afraid only the two of them can understand each other's ideas. After Yuan Zhen's death, Bai Juyi, who once paid attention to the sufferings of ordinary people and lashed out at powerful people, seemed to go with him. The rest are "Xiangshan laymen" who live a leisurely life.

He wrote an epitaph for Yuan Zhen, which not only evaluated and interpreted his best friend's life, but also made a farewell and summary of his past and career like a mirror.

15 years later, 75-year-old Bai Juyi died suddenly in Luoyang. After his death, the epitaph was written by Li Shangyin.

Bai Juyi is older than Li Shangyin, who is in his forties. By the time Li Shangyin's masterpiece died, Bai Juyi had entered the last few years of his life. He is very fond of Li Shangyin's poems and talents. He was drunk and joked, "After I die, I will be satisfied to be your son."

However, many years later, because of Li Shangyin's running around, this child named Bai Lao by Li Shangyin lost the opportunity to become a talent because of poverty and became stupid. "When you cry, you should count. If you are poor, you are afraid of learning late. " Even Wen joked: "Isn't it peaceful to treat you as a happy future?" I wonder what Bai Juyi would be like if he knew what was going on under the spring.

At the same time, Li Shangyin, who was troubled by the political vortex in the late Tang Dynasty all his life, was puzzled by Bai Juyi. When he was young, he was inevitably deeply influenced by Lotte and had a deep understanding of it. Poems such as Re-feeling and Qujiang are full of allegories inherited from Du Fu and Bai Yuan and worries about the fate of the country. However, compared with Bai Yuan and others, Li Shangyin is more melancholy and wandering, and his biggest theme is sadness and parting. Only from these early works can we find the teenager who has the ambition to help the world and wants to return to the heart of heaven and earth.

However, in The Change of Mana, Li Shangyin, a teenager, hated the chaotic political situation and wrote three poems of Feeling. At this time, Bai Juyi wrote the following words: The fortunes are boundless and unpredictable. Such Bai Juyi made Li Shangyin feel strange and sad. Is this the same Bai Letian who once wrote about selling charcoal Weng? In troubled times, he can only stand alone, his knees are cold.

Therefore, in Bai Juyi's epitaph, we can see Li See Shangyin's interpretation of Bai Juyi, among which more is his confusion: in the epitaph, he highly praised Bai Juyi's life and behavior, including his loyalty, integrity and outspoken loyalty, but only briefly mentioned Bai Juyi's poetic achievements.

Maybe a few years later, when Li Shangyin came to the end of his life, he finally got the answer, that is, life, originally untitled life.

Twelve years later, Li Shangyin died of illness. Poetry gradually declined after his death. Another peak of China culture: Song Ci began to enter the stage.

From Du Fu to Yuan Zhen, from Yuan Zhen to Bai Juyi, and then from Bai Juyi to Li Shangyin, in the span of a hundred years, they completed the inheritance of poetry and culture through epitaphs.

Their lives are like-minded stages, and poetry is the inheritance of personality spirit.

All this is exactly what Zhuangzi said two thousand years ago: "It means that if you are poor for salary, fire can spread, even if you don't know what you can do.