In his later years, the official was the Prince with less Fu, and posthumous title was Bai Fu and Bai Wengong. He actively advocated the new Yuefu movement in literature, arguing that articles should be written in time and poems should be written for things. He wrote many poems lamenting the times and reflecting the sufferings of the people, which had a great influence on later generations. He is a very important poet in the history of China literature.
Life is divided into two periods, with Sima being demoted to Jiangzhou at the age of 44. The early period is the period of helping the world, and the later period is the period of being independent. Bai Juyi was a 29-year-old scholar in the 26th year of Zhenyuan. Successive provincial school secretary, provincial school secretary, Hanlin bachelor. During the Yuanhe period, he ran away and wrote a lot of satirical poems, including Ten Famous Poems of Qin Zhongyin and Fifty Poems of New Yuefu, which made the dignitaries gnash their teeth and regret their wrists. In the sixth year of Yuanhe, Bai Juyi's mother died in Chang 'an because of mental disorder. According to the rules at that time, Bai Juyi returned to his hometown for three years and returned to Chang 'an after the funeral. The emperor arranged for him to be a doctor. In June of the 10th year of Yuanhe, when Bai Juyi was 44 years old, Prime Minister Wu and imperial envoy Zhong Cheng Pei Du were assassinated. Wu died on the spot and Pei Du was seriously injured. For such a big event, the eunuch group and the old bureaucratic group in power at that time kept calm and were in no hurry to deal with it. Bai Juyi was very angry. For the sake of law and order, he urged the authorities to strictly arrest the murderer. However, instead of praising his enthusiasm for state affairs, those in power say that he is an official of the Eastern Palace, and it is trespassing to talk about state affairs in front of the admonishers. He also said that his mother fell into a well and died while looking at flowers. He wrote poems about flowers and wells, which hurt filial piety. Such a person is not worthy to be a doctor. Zuo Zanshan should accompany the prince to study and should be expelled from Beijing. So he was demoted to Jiangzhou Sima. In fact, the reason why he offended was those satirical poems.
The official demotion to Jiangzhou dealt a great blow to Bai Juyi. He said that he "eliminated the troubles and happiness on the surface and the right and wrong in his chest", and his early Buddhist and Taoist thoughts also grew. Three years later, he was promoted to Zhongzhou Secretariat. In the fifteenth year of Yuanhe, Tang Xianzong died suddenly in Chang 'an, and Tang Muzong succeeded to the throne. Mu Zong loves talents, recalled Chang 'an, and became a foreign minister, doctor, doctor and sinologist. However, at that time, North Korea was in chaos, with ministers fighting for power and profit and infighting. Mu Zong is politically lazy and doesn't listen to advice. Therefore, Mu Zong was appointed as the secretariat of Hangzhou in the second year of Changqing, and Suzhou was appointed as the secretariat after the expiration of Hangzhou. In his later years, he was divided into the eastern capital by the Prince. A 70-year-old official. Compared with the previous period, he is much more negative, but after all, he is a poet who has made a difference and actively pleaded for the people. Some of his poems at this time still show his concern for the country and the people. He is still diligent in political affairs and has done many good things, such as dredging six wells dug by Li Bi and solving the drinking water problem of the people. He built a long dike on the West Lake to store water and irrigate the fields, and wrote down the easy-to-understand Stone of Qiantang River, which was carved on a stone to tell people how to store water and drain water. He thought that as long as the dike was as good as law, it would not suffer from drought. This is the famous "Bai Causeway".
Bai Juyi's grandfather, his father Bai and his grandfather are all poets. In this family background, Bai Juyi studied very hard and eventually became a poet. But Bai Juyi, like Li Bai and Du Fu, was a heavy drinker. Zhang Wenqian said in Tiaoxi Fish in Conghua: Although Tao Yuanming loves to drink, he can't drink often because of his poor family. Drinking with him are farmers who collect firewood, catch fish and farm land, and the location is also in the Woods and fields. Bai Juyi makes wine at home, and every time he drinks, he must be accompanied by silk and bamboo and served by prostitutes. All the people who drink with him are social celebrities, such as Pei Du and Liu Yuxi.
At the age of 67, he wrote a biography of Mr. Drunk Sound. This drunken Mr. Yin is himself. In his biography, he said that there was a man named Mr. Zuiyin, and he didn't know his name, hometown and official position. He only knew that he had been an official for 30 years and retired to Los Angeles. He lives in ponds, bamboo poles, trees, pavilions, pontoons and so on. He likes drinking, reciting poems, playing the piano, and playing with drunkards, poetry space clubs and piano lovers. This is also the case. Bai Juyi has been roaming in temples, hills and spring stones inside and outside Luoyang.
Whenever the weather is beautiful, or it snows, he invites guests to his house, first painting the jar, then writing poems, and then holding silk and bamboo. So while drinking, I recited poems and played the piano. There is a boy playing "wearing a dress and feathers" and a little prostitute singing "Yang Liuzhi", which is a great pleasure. It didn't stop until everyone was drunk. Bai Juyi sometimes went out to play in the wild on a whim. He put a piano and a pillow in the car, hung two flagons on bamboo poles on both sides of the car, drank with the piano and came back happily.
According to Poor You Ji, Bai Juyi has a pond where he can row a boat. He entertained guests, and sometimes on the boat, he ordered people to hang more than 100 empty bags beside the boat, which contained wine and delicacies, and went with the boat. When he wants to eat or drink, he pulls them up, and when he finishes eating or drinking, he pulls up another one until he finishes eating or drinking.
In this way, it must be different from Tao Yuanming's predicament.
Fang Shao's Zhai Bo Discriminations says: Of the 2,800 poems written by Bai Letian, 800 were drunk. This number is not small.
When he drinks, he sometimes drinks alone. For example, when he was a secretariat in Suzhou, he was busy with official business and dismissed him with wine. He drank wine all day to relieve his nine days' hard work. He said: don't underestimate a day of drunkenness, that is to eliminate nine days of fatigue. If you are not tired for nine days, how can you cure the people of the country? How can you entertain yourself if you are not drunk for a day? He combines work and rest with wine.
More is drinking with friends. He said in the poem "Drunk with Li Eleven and Remember Yuan Jiu"; When you are drunk, you will break your spring worries, and when you are drunk, you will make wine. In the poem "To Yuan Zhen", it is said: Flower swimming on the pommel horse, a glass of wine in the snow. In the poem "Drinking, Drinking, Dreams and Late Period", he said; * * * Put 10,000 in a bucket and 70 in three years. In his poem "Recalling Yuan Jiu and Li Yi Drunk", he said: There is a ray of green in the old bottle and a touch of red in the static furnace. With dusk and snow coming, how about a glass of wine? Wait, wait.
Bai Juyi was 75 years old. Buried in Longmen Mountain. After his death, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty wrote a poem to mourn him, saying, "Who taught Ming Lu to write poems for sixty years and make jade beads?" Floating clouds are naturally happy if they are not famous and easy to live in. Boys perform "Song of Eternal Sorrow", and Hu Er can sing "Pipa". The article is full of people's ears. "For a while, I missed you sadly."
Luzhen, a native of Yining, Henan Province, carved a biography of Mr. Zuiyin on a stone and stood beside the tomb. Legend has it that Luoyang people and tourists from all over the world know that Bai Juyi was addicted to alcohol all his life, so they all came to sweep the grave to propose a toast as a souvenir. The vast land in front of the tomb is often wet and never dry.
Bai Juyi was an outstanding poet in the middle Tang Dynasty. His poetic thoughts and creations, which emphasize popularity and realism, occupy an important position in the history of China's poetry. In Jiu Shu Tong Yuan, he clearly said: "Servants aim to help the two, and they are independent. Always serve the Tao, and invent poetry. Calling it a satirical poem is also aimed at helping others; It's not bad to call it leisure poetry. " It can be seen that among Bai Juyi's four kinds of poems, satire, leisure, sentimentality and miscellaneous law, the first two poems are the most valued, because they embody his "serving the people and always being kind". His poetic thoughts are mainly based on early satirical poems.
As early as the early Yuan Dynasty, Bai Juyi showed a tendency to emphasize realism, popularity and irony: "If there is no textual research on today's praise and demotion, there is a lack of punishment and persuasion;" If the poem "The Beauty Sting" does not test politics, then the significance of the make-up test will be abolished. ..... Those who give ci and fu with admonition and irony are wild in nature. "The role of poetry is to punish evil and persuade good, and make up for current politics. The means of poetry is praise, criticism, admonition and satire, so he advocates: "Set up officials to collect poems, make sarcastic remarks, examine their gains and losses, and understand their feelings." (Poetry Sixty-nine) He opposes the simple pursuit of "high palace rhythm" and "strange writing" without content, and even more opposes the gorgeous poetic style of "mocking the wind and making flowers" since Qi and Liang Dynasties. In the preface to new Yuefu, he clearly pointed out that the standard of writing poetry is: "the quality and path of his words are easy to distinguish for those who want to see;" "His words are straightforward and he admonishes those who want to listen; Its business is nuclear and true, so people who use it can send messages; Its body is very smooth and can be played in music songs. " Here, "quality and diameter", "straightness and tangent", "core and reality" and "smoothness and smoothness" respectively emphasize that the language should be simple and popular, the discussion should be straightforward and exposed, the writing should be absolutely false and pure, the form should be smooth and fluent, and it has the color of ballads. In other words, poetry must be authentic, easy to understand and easy to sing in order to be considered the ultimate.
Bai Juyi's above requirements for poetry have only one purpose, that is, to make up for current politics. So he went on to say: "In short, for the monarch, for the minister, for the people, for things, for things, not for writing." (Preface to New Yuefu) In Nine Books with the Same Yuan, he recalled his early creation and said, "Since I came to Korea, I have been older and read more. Every time he talks to others, he asks more current events; Every time you read history, you should seek truth and Tao, and you will know that articles are written in time and songs and poems are written in things. " The first thing to do for time is to show it to the king. He also said: "I don't know when to avoid it" (the second of two painful poems about Tang Qu), and created a large number of satirical poems reflecting the sufferings of people's livelihood, but the general direction is "only songs make people sick, hope the emperor can know" (sent to Tang Sheng). Because only when the people's feelings are heard in heaven, the emperor opens the door and reaches the people's feelings, will politics tend to be calm.
Pipa Xing and Song of Eternal Sorrow are Bai Juyi's most successful works, and the outstanding feature of their artistic expression is the strengthening of lyric factors. Compared with the previous narrative poems, although these two works also use narrative and description to express events, they can no longer simplify the events, and only use one central event and two or three main characters to structure the whole article, such as the dramatic Ma Wei incident that the author is about to take over, but in the most lyrical psychological description of the characters and the rendering of the environmental atmosphere, they pour ink like rain in order to enjoy themselves, even though Pipa is such a story. In addition, the lyricism of these two works is also manifested in creating an appropriate atmosphere and setting off the artistic conception of poetry with selected images. For example, in Song of Eternal Sorrow, "He gazed at the desolate moon from the temporary palace, and he heard the bell in the late rain, cutting it on his chest"; "Maple leaves and mature rushes rustle in autumn" and "When the river mysteriously expands to the full moon" in the pipa; Or combine the bleak moonlight, the patter of rain at night and the heartbroken bell into a charming scene; Or use rustling maple leaves, flowers and boundless rivers and the moon to form a sad and lonely picture, revealing sadness, sadness and loneliness.
Leisure poems and satirical poems are two kinds of poems that Bai Juyi pays special attention to. Both of them are realistic, vulgar and thrifty, but they are quite different in content and mood. Satire poems aim at "helping the two" and are closely related to social politics, and write more about lofty sentiments and excitement; Leisure poems are meant to be "exclusive", "content with harmony, and give play to one's temperament" (Nine Books of Yuyuan), thus showing an indifferent, peaceful and leisurely state of mind.
Bai Juyi's leisurely poems have a great influence on later generations. His simple language style and indifferent and leisurely mood have been praised repeatedly. However, in contrast, the "leisure" thought of retiring from politics and being content with peace, and the attitude of returning to Buddhism and imitating Tao Yuanming in these poems have far-reaching influence because they are more in line with the psychology of later literati. For example, Bai Juyi said, "If you fight for two snail horns, you'll get a dime a dozen" (No.7 of Let's Drink Seven Songs), "If you fight for the snail horns, I'll send the body in the firelight of the stone" (No.2 of Drink Five Songs) and "I'll know what happened to the snail horns later" (No.8 of Wu Zeng's Can Change My Diet). That is to say, on the basis of the names given by the Song people, "the names of drunkards, pedants and Dongpo all come from Bai Letian's poems" (Gong Yizheng's "Notes on Mustard Seeds"). Zhou Bida, a poet in the Song Dynasty, pointed out: "Su Wenzhong, a loyal minister in this dynasty, did not pay much attention to permission, only loved Lotte and wrote poems many times. Gage's articles are all about words, but they are honest and generous, outspoken, full of words, affectionate with people and indifferent to things. Living in Huangzhou, the first name is Dongpo, which must have started from Lotte Zhongzhou. " (Poems of Erlaotang) All these show the influence track of Bai Juyi and his poems.