Wu Weiye

Wu Weiye

Wu Weiye (June 21, 1609 - January 23, 1672), named Jungong, is a native of Taicang, Jiangsu Province.

Born in the 37th year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, he was a Jinshi in the fourth year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty (1631). He once served as the editor of the Imperial Academy, Zuo Shuzi and so on. In the 10th year of Shunzhi (1653) of the Qing Dynasty, he was forced to go north by imperial edict. In the next year, he was awarded the title of secretary of the court, and later he was promoted to Imperial Academy to offer sacrifices. At the end of the 13th year of Shunzhi, he begged for leave to return to the South on the ground of mourning his heir's mother. Since then, he did not return to office.

He is a famous poet in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasty. He, together with Qian Qianyi and Gong Dingzi, is also known as the "three masters of Jiangzuo" and the founder of Loudong School of poetry. He was good at seven character singing and began to learn "Changqing style". Later, he became a new poet, which was called "Meicun style" by later generations.

(overview photo source: Portraits of past dynasties)

Life of the characters

Early experience

Wu Weiye was born on May 20 (June 21, 1609) in the 37th year of Wanli reign of Ming Dynasty. When Wu Weiye was born, his mother dreamt that an emissary in red would send him to huiyuanfang. Therefore, his parents had deep expectations for him. At the age of seven, Weiye began to study in a family school. At the age of fourteen, he was able to write. Zhang Pu, a famous scholar, sighed when he saw the article of great cause: "the article is printed here!" So he took Wu Weiye in to receive his education and taught him the knowledge of the past and the present. From there, Wu Weiye not only learned a wide range of knowledge and laid a solid foundation for his literary creation, but also made him one of the leaders of the restoration society, resulting in a series of benefits and troubles.

Become an official

In the first year of Chongzhen (1628) of the Ming Dynasty, he was a scholar in the examination. In the third year of Chongzhen (1630), he was elected. In the fourth year of Chongzhen (1631), he was 23 years old and won the first prize in the examination. Then he won the second prize in the examination. At that time, some people suspected that there was fraud in it, so the examiner had to submit the original volume of Huiyuan to the emperor. As a result, Emperor Chongzhen criticized the eight words "Zhengda Boya, zushi guimi" on the paper, and the material dispute subsided. This made Wu Weiye famous, and therefore had an unforgettable feeling of knowing emperor Chongzhen. Before long, Wu Weiye got married on leave, which was very glorious. In his official career, he was first taught the Imperial Academy to edit, and then passed the Huguang rural examination. In 1637, he served as an official in the east palace. In 1640, he moved to Nanjing Guozijian, and left zhongyun, Zuo Yude and Zuo Shuzi. His official rank has been rising step by step, although he has been affected by the dispute of the party Bureau in the DPRK. In the late Ming Dynasty, Donglin, fushe and the eunuch party were constantly fighting, and Wu Weiye was not successful in his official career. He saw that the Ming Dynasty was in a precarious state and the sun was falling, so he resigned Zuo zhongyun, Zuo Yude, Zuo Shuzi and other officials and refused to go to work. In the Hongguang Dynasty, he was called to serve as the Minister of shaozhan. He found that Ma Shiying and Ruan Dacheng, who were in control of the government, were actually corrupt national thieves. In only two months, he left angrily.

Forced out of office

After the Qing soldiers went south, they lived in seclusion for a long time, and presided over the activities of the southeast culture society as a famous hostel. Chen Zhilin, Wu Weiye's son and daughter-in-law, was a minister from Ming Dynasty to Qing Dynasty. At that time, he was in the party struggle in the new dynasty, trying to take advantage of Wu Weiye's reputation and literary talent to form the main body. At the same time, he hoped that Wu Weiye could join the cabinet to expand his power. Therefore, he strongly recommended Wu Weiye to be an official in Qing Dynasty. However, just because Wu Weiye was a well-known adherent of the former dynasty, his official career would objectively cause the negative impact of disintegrating the people's fighting spirit against the Qing Dynasty and making use of the Qing government's policy of appeasement. Therefore, many of his friends and ordinary adherents strongly opposed it and tried to dissuade it. For example, Hou Fangyu, a famous ancient writer, once wrote to Wu Weiye and raised various objections. However, Wu Weiye was intimidated by the imperial power of the Qing Dynasty and urged by his mother, so he was forced to go north in September 1653. When he was about to arrive in the capital, he wrote several poems to the important people concerned, praying for a holiday. But he was not allowed to do so. Finally, he was granted the Secretary's lecture the next year, and later he was promoted to the Imperial College to offer sacrifices. But he did not enter the cabinet as Chen Zhilin expected. On the contrary, Chen Zhilin himself failed in the fierce party struggle and was sent to the northeast. However, Wu Weiye felt very sorry for his chastity, and he often borrowed poems to express his sorrow. At the end of the 13th year of Shunzhi (1656), he returned to the South with Ding you, and never returned to office.

Life in old age

Since then, for more than ten years, the big prison was popular in Southeast China, and Wu Weiye was always in a state of panic and fear of death. In the summer of the tenth year of Kangxi (1671), the south of the Yangtze River was very hot. Wu Weiye had "a great deal of old diseases, the sound of phlegm was like a saw, and his chest was like a pestle". He had a premonition that he would soon die, so he left his last words: I suffered from all kinds of hardships in my life, and I experienced all kinds of hardships, and I was a miserable man in the world. After my death, I gathered a monk's coir and buried me near Deng Wei's Lingyan. A round stone stood in front of the tomb and said, "the tomb of poet Wu Weiye.". On December 24 (January 23, 1672), a great poet Wu Weiye died of illness and was buried in the north of Xuanmu mountain in Suzhou.

Main achievements

Literary achievements

Wu Weiye has written 58 volumes of Meicun family collection manuscript, Meicun poetry Yu, legend moling spring, Zaju tongtiantai, linchunge, Shicheng suikou Ji Lue, spring and autumn geography annals, etc. Most of them are excellent works in ancient poetry garden. There are nearly a thousand poems in existence, among which there are nearly 160 poems in the five and seven dynasties. Among these 160 ancient poems, long and huge poems account for about half of the total. There are more than 20 long narrative poems, which account for a small proportion in the whole collection of Wu Weiye's poems. However, in the long history of the underdeveloped Chinese classical narrative poetry, it is unprecedented and has no successor. Moreover, most of these 20 works have been unanimously recommended as excellent structure of famous works by poetry critics for more than 300 years. From the preliminary study of these long narrative poems, we can see that there are great breakthroughs in both the content and the artistic form of the poems. Wu Weiye's creation of a large number of long narrative poems created an unprecedented prosperity of long narrative poems in the Qing Dynasty, and thus established his special position in the development history of Chinese classical narrative poems. This point has not been discussed before. At the same time, he also refined Ci, music, calligraphy and painting, which can be called erudite and prolific. His works reflect a wide range of social life, so it is known as "the history of poetry". On behalf of the outstanding achievements of Wu Weiye's poetry, yuanyuanqu marks that ancient Chinese narrative poetry has reached a new height.

Wu Weiye developed the style of ancient seven character song and formed a unique artistic style of poetry, which was called "Meicun style" at that time and influenced the poetic style of the Qing Dynasty. In the works of many poets in the Qing Dynasty, there is almost a shadow of "Meicun style". Therefore, the summary of Sikuquanshu lists Meicun poetry anthology as the top of other collections of the state and Dynasty.

Artistic features

Wu Weiye inherits the traditional creation methods of Chinese classical long narrative poetry, such as the commonly used techniques of arousal, chain (also called Lianzhu, Lianlian, Dingzhen) and question and answer, which gradually forms an artistic style that not only pays attention to poetry, but also emphasizes popularity, fluency and humor. All kinds of artistic expression methods and artistic characteristics of Chinese classical long narrative poems mentioned above are fully reflected in Wu Weiye's long narrative poems. The perfect combination of narration and lyricism, skillful tailoring, simple and complicated, highly refined, and examples of skillful use of various techniques in folk literature are everywhere in Wu Weiye's numerous long narrative poems.

The general characteristics of Wu Weiye's long narrative poems can be summarized in one sentence: to write long narrative poems with the skill of writing modern style poems. The reason why the traditional narrative poetry has always been criticized and despised by the critics is that it is simple and popular, and lacks the implicit beauty of "containing endless meaning, appearing outside the words". Wu Weiye's poetry theory is not much, and there are many chronicles in Meicun Shihua. He seldom expresses his critical opinions, nor his views on narrative poetry. However, from his writing practice, we can see that he attaches great importance to the creation of long narrative poems, carefully studies the gains and losses of predecessors in the creation of narrative poems, and tries to draw the popular and simple narrative poems closer to the implicit and refined modern style poems, and takes the implicit beauty as one of the criteria to measure the narrative poems. From the criticism of narrative poetry by critics, he realized that what narrative poetry lacks is the implication advocated by traditional poetics. Therefore, in his creation of long narrative poems, he made a bold attempt to make narrative poems poetic. The first is to change the structure of the traditional long narrative poem, which is straight to the end. There is a kind of leaping reverse structure, which connects the leaping fragments with profound connotation, so as to reflect the implication and implication of the poem. Secondly, the introduction of common allusions into long narrative poems increases the factors of tactful, implicit and elegant narrative poems.

Generally speaking, Wu Weiye's attempt is worthy of affirmation. He raised the expressive art of long narrative poems to a new level. With his long narrative poems of certain quantity and quality, Wu Weiye established his important position in the poetic world between Ming and Qing Dynasties, and also established his important position in the development of Chinese classical long narrative poems.

Meicun style

He combined Li Shangyin's rich and colorful style with the extravagance of Yuan Bai's narrative poems. He often uses Gongli's language, changeable composition and appropriate allusions to describe new subjects and express new themes, which is known as "Meicun style" in the world.

The most important artistic feature of "Meicun style" should be embodied in the way of narration. Generally speaking, Wu Weiye's narrative poems are character centered, that is to say, through one or two central characters

Chinese PinYin : Wu Wei Ye