Wang Ling

Wang Ling

Wang Ling (1032-1059) was a poet of the Northern Song Dynasty. At the beginning, the characters were beautiful, but later they were changed. His native place is Yuancheng (now Hebei Daming). At the age of 5, he lost his parents and lived with his uncle Wang Yi in Guangling (now Yangzhou, Jiangsu). After growing up in Tianchang

Gaoyou

And other places to teach for a living, have the ambition of governing the country and the people. Wang Anshi highly valued his articles and his conduct. There are articles by Mr. Guangling and mengqiu of the seventeen histories.

Life of the characters

Wang Ling's grandfather Gao and great grandfather all held important positions in the imperial court, but his father was only the principal of Guancheng County in Zhengzhou for a few years. When Wang Ling was five years old, his mother and father had passed away one after another, and his only sister had been married. Wang Ling became an orphan and had nothing to rely on, so he had to be alone. He came to Yangzhou with his uncle Wang Yi, who was a junior military officer stationed in Zhenzhen, East Huainan Road, and Yangzhou at that time. He lived under his uncle and grew up. Therefore, Wang Ling regarded himself as a Guangling.

When Wang Ling was seven or eight years old, he went to a school. He often plays with all the students during the day, goes home to study alone at night, and sometimes stays up all night. In his youth, Wang Ling was helpful, arrogant and indulgent. He was good at criticizing other people's unrighteous behavior face to face without scruple. Everyone respected him.

In 1048, a 16-year-old Wang Ling followed his grandfather's eldest son Yue Shi to Guazhou (now Yangzhou south, Jiangsu Province). The next year, Wang Ling left his uncle who had been living for ten years and set up a new house to take back his widowed sister and nephew. From then on, Wang Ling began a ten-year school life with his sister. Economically, he lost his dependence on his uncle and grandfather, and the burden of a family of three fell on Wang Ling, who was only 17 years old. Soon after settling down in Guazhou, Wang Ling went to a private school in Shanyang County as a teacher. The next year, he was invited to a family school in Tianchang county. Wang Ling spent five spring and autumn years here. Shushi is one of Wang Ling's most intimate friends in his life. He gave him financial support and emotional comfort. As a matter of fact, the second son of the Shu family is about the same age as Wang Ling and has some knowledge. Wang Ling's "reply to Shu Xiaoxian" says: "the brothers of Jun's family are virtuous. When I see them, I am surprised. The articles show their brilliance and contain a lot of information. When you close the door, you should be self-sufficient? If you know the benevolence of the people, you will feel sorry for the poor and hungry. " Wang Ling's name is Mr. Wang. He is actually a companion reader, and he never regards himself as Mr. Wang. Wang Ling relied on Shu's help to maintain his life with his family.

In 1052, the imperial court held the imperial examination, but the 21-year-old Wang Ling gave up the chance to gain fame despite the public's persuasion. He had hoped to "live in a peaceful world, study and learn from the ancients, and strive to make progress from his youth, so as to make up for the chance of the world", but "unfortunately, he is poor and can't compare with Chang Liu" (ren Chen read Li Hanlin's tomb inscription on March 21, which says that Ren Shao takes Ren Xia as the cause to show Du Zichang). In the following years, Wang Ling never took the imperial examination. The dark social reality and the lonely and poor life living under the hedge of others make him have the ambition of saving the world and the people, but he is not willing to "take six feet of body, cheap and easy to five skin" (answer to the rich road of huangsou). He thinks that life is just a temporary sacrifice of heaven and earth. "A hundred years old is just like a shuttle, can he work hard and look up at Dan Guizhi?" On the new year's eve of this year, amid the laughter of all the families, Wang Ling wrote the article of sending the poor, describing his miserable life, so as to let go of his depression: "I've been born until now. I've been arrested before and after, and I'm in danger. Raise your head in the way of heaven, stretch your feet out of the ground, and put your weight on the ground, so don't settle down! It's hard to carve, but not fat. It's hard to see skin when bone comes out. It's often cold in winter, and it's still hungry when the day is short. "

As the children of the Shu family grew older, Wang Ling felt guilty for not resigning and receiving gifts, so he said goodbye to the Shu family and went to Gaoyou University. In the first year of the reign of emperor Renzong of Song Dynasty (1054), Wang Anshi was summoned to Beijing by Shuzhou Tongtan. Through Gaoyou, Wang Ling wrote to Wang Anshi and presented a poem "the field of the South Mountain" to meet him, which started his association with Wang Anshi. Wang Anshi is eleven years old. Before that, he was familiar with Wang Yi and his son, and Wang Ling admired his character and articles. Wang Ling once said in his handwriting with Shu Boren: "since Yang Xiong, there has been no Linchuan school." Wang Anshi also attached great importance to Wang Ling's personality and talent. In his reply, he praised Wang Ling for his "great talent, which is beyond one's ability" and "learning to be a gentleman". From then on, they had frequent correspondence and became intimate friends. Recommended by Wang Anshi, many famous scholars at that time began to make peace with Wang Ling, and Wang Ling's poems were circulated. Wang Ling's reputation is so impressive that many good climbers wait on him and flatter him. This makes Wang Ling very angry. He wrote on his door: "I'm going to visit all the people. What can I do? Come and annoy me, go and I won't think about it.

In this year, there was a plague of locusts in the Yangtze and Huaihe rivers. There were starving people everywhere. When Wang Ling saw the scene, he wrote the poem dream locust angrily.

The next year, Wang Ling was invited by Shao biqiang, the Zhijun of Gaoyou, to become an academic officer of Gaoyou. Soon he wrote to Shao Bi: "every man has his own ambition, and his ambition is poor and humble. I hope you will pity him for his ambition, but he is not strong at all." I will return to the family of Tianchang Shu. When Wang Ling returned to the family of Shu, "he went back and came back, and lived for a long time." he was not paid enough for the generous gifts he received. "He was also" forced to be hungry, and he could not lead himself away, so he was ashamed to never forget. ". Wang Ling was in an embarrassing situation because of his life belief and poverty.

Wang Ling knew that he could not live his life on the mercy of Shu. So in the autumn of his 25th year, he said goodbye to the Shu family and went to Runzhou (now Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province) to make a living as a professor. However, after a long time in Runzhou, he had to return to Guazhou.

From the age of seventeen or eighteen, Wang Ling has been running around alone to support his family, suffering from the coldness and coldness of the world. He used to describe himself as a lone Goose: "thousands of miles are always guests. Is flying free? Love knows rice and sorghum is urgent, so don't seek it If you cry, you will cut yourself. Who calls you sad (wild geese) he sighed the sinister heart of "smiling face and evil liver and spleen" (a gift to Du Jian in the case of cross difficulties); he longed for the day when he would "buy a field and return to Lu, plant trees around the house, teach my son to teach silkworms, I would whip cattle, teach my wife to perform in a basket, make my son pay for dongchou, and when I was a year old, I would gather together to become a white head" (Shangyang Si GUI Shu Ji nvxiong).

During his trip to Runzhou, he had nothing to gain economically and wasted a year, which made Wang Ling even more embarrassed. Although Wang ordered his widowed sister to be like a strict father and his nephew to be like a loving son, he had to decide to remarry his sister, who had been living with him for many years, in order not to die of hunger and cold. According to feudal ethics, after her husband died, a woman should be chaste all her life and not remarry. Not long after returning from Runzhou, Wang Ling moved his family to Jiyang, Jiangyin, in order not to shame himself and his sister in front of acquaintances.

"The broken eaves break the columns, but the tiles fall, the beams and the frames are empty, * the doors are open, and the dogs are kept in their own houses." From the description of Wang Ling's four poems of Jiyang residence, we can know the dilapidated house. The owner pitied him for not being able to repair it by himself, so he found a mason for him. Seeing that Wang Ling was so poor that he couldn't offer anything to serve him, he ran away. "The family has no land for food and storage, and the birds and mice are not my enemies. When they go out of the court, they begin to live, and the poems and books talk about the former cultivation" (four poems of Jiyang residence). Wang Ling is still poor, and he still lives on the help of Professor jutu. At the same time, he borrows money from all sides to raise the necessary funds for his sister's remarriage.

When his sister married, Wang Ling was alone again. Loneliness, poverty and beriberi are pestering him, which makes him depressed and hard to pick up. Late at night, he often looks at the flickering candlelight alone and sighs to himself with tears. He sighed that he was "inclined to sit in a strange place, lost the city and fell into a deep moat. His illness was not cured, and he could not be criticized. There is no home to go back to, there is a kitchen outside the cut-off "(night sitting). He hopes to die with his family as soon as possible and end his suffering.

In the miserable life after that, the only consolation that brought him was that with Wang Anshi's care and efforts, he finally got married. When he was 18 years old, Wang Ling wrote to his elder sister that "I will marry my wife and try my best to live in a stone mortar". However, he was unable to fulfill his wish for his widowed elder sister and orphaned nephew. When Wang Ling was 26 years old in Runzhou, Wang Anshi wrote many books to his Uncle Wu Chen, and recommended Wang Ling so that Wu Chen's daughter could marry Wang Ling. In the third year of Jiayou's reign, Wang Ling went to Qichun County of Qizhou (now Qichun County of Hubei Province), where Wu Zhen was appointed, to meet his relatives. In November, he returned to Jiyang, and in December, he was invited to Changzhou to give lectures.

The next year his wife was pregnant, which brought a little comfort and sweet to Wang Ling's lonely and poor life. At this time, however, his beriberi became more and more serious. His illness forced him to stay in bed and make him "guilty and forgetful when he was sick" (with Wang Jiefu). On the second day of June in the fourth year of Jiayou (1059), Wang Ling, who was only 28 years old, died of poverty and disease.

literature

Wang Ling is a talented young poet. He has only ten years to write, but he has written more than 70 essays and 480 poems. His poetry represents the main achievement of his literary creation.

Most of his poems are about his life, ambition and attitude towards life, and his miserable life of running around for food and clothing. Wang Ling's life was hard, and his mood was always gloomy. The tone of this kind of poetry was also relatively low. Wang Ling lived at the bottom of the society, close to the poor and far away from the ruling class. Therefore, many of his poems deeply reflect the diseases brought by successive years of famine and the cruel oppression and exploitation of the rulers

Chinese PinYin : Wang Ling