Gong Zizhen

Gong Zizhen

Gong Zizhen (August 22, 1792 to September 26, 1841) was named Dingzhen (Dingan) with the name of pingren. Han nationality, Zhejiang Lin'an (now Hangzhou). In his later years, he lived in Yushan hall in Kunshan, also known as Yushan people. Thinkers, poets, writers and Reformists in Qing Dynasty.

Gong Zizhen once served as the Secretary of the cabinet, the head of the zongrenfu and the head of the Ministry of rites. He advocated abolishing the bad government and resisting foreign aggression. He once fully supported Lin Zexu in banning opium. He resigned at the age of 48 and returned to the south. The next year, he died in Yunyang Academy in Danyang, Jiangsu Province. Liu Yazi praised his poems as "the first class in three hundred years". He is the author of Ding Zhen's anthology, with more than 300 articles and nearly 800 poems. There are 315 poems in the famous poem Ji Hai Za Shi. Many poems and allegories.

Life of the characters

a family of scholar

Gong Zizhen was born on August 22, 1792 (the fifth day of July in the 57th year of Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty) in Mapo lane, east city of Renhe (now Hangzhou), Zhejiang Province. Gong Jingshen, his grandfather, and his brother Gong Jingshen were both Jinshi in the 34th year of Qianlong reign (1769). Gong Jingshen was an official in the cabinet and military department. Gong Jingshen was a member of the Ministry of official affairs, wailang, and later Chuxiong Prefecture magistrate in Yunnan. He was a clean and honest official and had a strong political voice in the local area. Gong Lizheng, Gong Zizhen's father, adopted Gong Jing as his son when he was a child. He was a Jinshi in the first year of Jiaqing (1796). He went to Susong, Jiangnan, where he served as an official in Jiangsu Province. Gong Zizhen's family are not only distinguished officials, but also highly literate, including his mother Duan Xun, who wrote poetry and essays.

Growing up in such a family environment, Gong Zizhen is hard not to be edified. Gong Zizhen had been educated by her mother since childhood and was fond of reading poetry. From the age of 8, he studied the classics and history and the University. At the age of 12, he studied Shuowen from his grandfather Duan Yucai. He collected the names and anecdotes of the subjects, explained the characters by the classics, studied the ancient and modern official system, and studied bibliography, epigraphy, etc. At the same time, in literature, it also shows the talent of creation. At the age of 13, he wrote perceptual discrimination; at the age of 15, he was the editor of poetry anthology; at the age of 1810 (the 15th year of Jiaqing), he relied on his voice to fill in CI, and he took the Shuntian rural examination, ranking 28th in the Jiansheng Chinese style sub list.

Bad official career

In April of 1813 (the 18th year of Jiaqing), Gong Zizhen took the Shuntian rural examination again and lost his name. In July, his wife died of misdiagnosis in Huizhou government department.

In 1814 (the 19th year of Jiaqing), the coffin escorted his wife from Huizhou returned to Hangzhou and was stored in Maojiabu in the west of the lake. He wrote four treatises on Mingliang, which for the first time revealed his political views and attacked the autocracy of monarchy. His grandfather Duan Yucai was both surprised and happy after reading it. He gladly added ink to comment on it. He thought that his exposition hit the key point of today's politics, which was a unique view. After returning to Huizhou, he took part in the revision of Huizhou Fu Zhi presided over by his father.

In 1815 (the 20th year of Jiaqing), he married he Jiyun, the niece and granddaughter of he Yujun, the magistrate of Anqing. After his grandfather died, he went back to Hangzhou with his family to keep filial piety. Two years later, he returned to Beijing and rented the south of Fayuan temple in Beijing.

In 1818 (the 23rd year of Jiaqing period), he was elected to Zhejiang provincial examination. The examiners were famous sinologists Gao you and Wang Yinzhi.

In 1819 (the 24th year of Jiaqing), he failed in the Yinghui examination and worked together with Wei Yuan as a modern writer Liu Fenglu in the capital to study Gongyang Chunqiu.

In 1820 (the 25th year of Jiaqing), he failed again in the examination and was selected as the cabinet secretary.

Since 1821 (the first year of Daoguang), he has been an official of the national history school for more than ten years. During this period, he read the cabinet's rich archives and classics, searched for the old news, discussed the gains and losses of the past dynasties, and later participated in the compilation of the unified annals of the Qing Dynasty, and wrote some insightful articles, such as the western regions Zhi Xing Sheng Yi.

In 1829 (the ninth year of Daoguang), Gong Zizhen passed the Sixth General examination and finally won the Jinshi examination. He imitated Wang Anshi's "shangrenzong emperor's speech book" and wrote "imperial examination Anbian Fuyuan Shu" in the palace examination strategy. He discussed the aftercare management after the Zhungeer rebellion was put down in Xinjiang, and put forward reform proposals from the aspects of administration, employment, water control and border control. "All the public were shocked when they read the papers. Cao Zhenyong, the bachelor who presided over the palace examination, was a well-known tumbler of three dynasties who "kowtowed more and talked less". He put Gong Zizhen in the 19th place in the top three of the imperial examinations and was not allowed to enter the Imperial Academy.

In the spring of 1839 (the 19th year of Daoguang), Gong Zizhen repeatedly exposed the shortcomings of the times and touched the taboo of the times. As a result, he was constantly excluded and attacked by the powerful. He disobeyed his officer and decided to resign and return to the south,

He left Beijing on June 4, 1839. In September, he went north from Hangzhou to receive his family members. On the way back and forth, Gong Zizhen wrote many inspiring and affectionate poems about the country and the people, which is the famous 315 poems of Jihai.

Teaching and learning

In the spring of 1841 (the 21st year of Daoguang), Gong Zizhen taught in Yunyang Academy in Danyang, Jiangsu Province. In March, her father Gong Lizheng passed away, and Gong Zizhen also served as a lecturer in Hangzhou Ziyang academy, which was originally presided over by her father. At the end of the summer, he wrote to Liang Zhangju, governor of Jiangsu Province, to resign his teaching post and go to Shanghai to fight against foreign aggression. However, on September 26, 1841, he suddenly fell ill and died in Danyang.

Main achievements

Politics

The criticism, call, expectation in Jihai zashi reflect the poet's patriotic passion of highly caring for the fate of the nation and the country. For example, in the first two or three poems of Jihai, "no matter salt or iron, you don't have to worry about the river. If the state gives three promotions and the people fight, it will be too much to slaughter cattle and plant grass. " The author boldly exposes and criticizes the fact that the Qing government did not pay attention to the planning of salt and iron production, taxation, water conservancy and other issues related to the national economy and the people's livelihood, blindly relied on the water transport in the southeast, aggravated the exploitation of the people in the south of the Yangtze River, led to the decline of agricultural production, the hardship of the people, and harmed the national economy. Another example is the 87th poem in the Miscellaneous Poems of Jihai, "my old friend cherishes the admiral of haibai, and stands on the side of the South Heaven, where he is not honored.". I have three hundred words of Yin Fu. It's hard for wax balls to send me the words of Xiong Wen. " It expresses the poet's concern for the fight against smoking and the fate of the country.

literature

Many of his poems are both lyrical and argumentative, but they do not relate to facts and are not specific. Instead, they only refer to the common phenomenon of reality to the height of social history, raise questions, express feelings, and express attitudes and wishes. He wrote poems based on political comments, but he didn't make abstract comments or prose.

In his poems, "moon rage", "Flower Shadow rage", "Taihang rage", "Taihang fly", "claw rage", "aura rage" and so on, the common scenery becomes lively, moving eyes and ears, arousing unusual imagination. Another example is the description of falling flowers in the song of falling flowers in the western suburbs, which turns the sad decaying scenery into a magnificent scene, higher than the ordinary imagination. "Falling red is not a merciless thing, but turns into spring mud to protect flowers" (Miscellaneous Poems of Jihai), which shows the rebirth from the decline.

In fact, most of his works are "ancient poetry" with five or seven characters, and "modern poetry" with seven characters. The general trend is not bound by the rules, free use, blurt out. The seven character quatrains are the most prominent.

Most of Gong's Ci poems are leisure works, which express lingering feelings and are far less successful than poems. In his later years, he found the shortcomings of his own words: "it can't be elegant, it can't be ghost, it's hard for gas to enter the author's court. She left her daughter behind and faned her way through the flag Pavilion. " (Miscellaneous Poems of Jihai). He also wrote some words to express his feelings of loneliness and pride, the contradiction with vulgar literati and the feeling that his ideal could not be realized, the scene of Yuan Qinnan's family study as a child, and the contradiction between sword state and Xiao heart in mind. He was determined to do something, but also wanted to retire and yearn for mountains and rivers.

There are magnificent, but also simple; there are ancient, but also easy; there are rare, but also popular. A natural and elegant, calm and sophisticated, with the influence of Duhan, some chapters due to the use of allusions too complex or too raw, or too subtle twists and turns, inevitably bring the shortcomings of difficult and obscure. Gong Zizhen's advanced thought is the soul of many of his excellent poems. The profundity of thought and the originality of art make Gong's poetry a new historical era, which is different from that of Tang and Song Dynasty, and opens up a new style of modern poetry. Gong's poems were not appreciated by many people at that time, and its influence was greater than that of the late Qing Dynasty, mainly because of its outstanding ideological and political nature, which combined Lyric with ideological and political content, and did not fall behind the words, knowledge and comments as poems.

Gong Zizhen is more famous as a master of ancient Chinese prose. His prose is also consistent with the main spirit of his poetry, either "making political comments with classics", or directly criticizing and exposing the reality, or making use of the theme, or criticizing and satirizing the decadence and darkness of feudal rule through essays, discussing things, recording things and places of interest. And the expression methods are also very diverse, or straightforward, or strange, scattered in parallel even, concise in the presentation, language magnificent ancient.

Gong Wen's method of expression is generally very simple, and there are exaggerations in the summary, some straightforward, some strange. His prose language is lively and diverse. Some of them have parallel couplets, some are magnificent, some are ancient and esoteric, even remote, stiff and obscure. Gong Wen, which is different from Tang and Song Dynasties and Tongcheng school, is a unique development of ancient prose in pre Qin and Han Dynasties, and creates a new atmosphere of ancient prose or prose. Gong Zizhen's Ci is also very famous. Tan Xian thinks that CI is "beautiful and deep, with the intention of combining Zhou and Xin, which is also a wonderful work" (Fu Tang diaries II). In fact, his words did not get rid of the influence of traditional words, focusing on the emotional nature of words.

Liang Qi

Chinese PinYin : Gong Zi Zhen