With the deepening of reading books of the Ming Dynasty, I quite agree with the point mentioned by the author in the book: "Except hongzhi emperor (Zhu Shitang), it is generally acceptable, and there is no second emperor in the Ming Dynasty whose image is not negative." Ming Wuzong, who built a leopard house, Jiajing, who wanted to live forever, and Wanli, who went on strike all the year round, looked at the emperors of the Ming Dynasty as if they were watching an absurd play. I wanted to be accompanied by Emperor Chongzhen's suicide by hanging himself. The Ming Dynasty ended with a curtain call, but I didn't want to have an absurd role-Zhu Yousong. In less than a year, the Hong Guang Dynasty led by him staged several major dramas-Hong Guang's three cases (the case of great compassion, the case of the prince and the case of the child princess), Zuo Liangyu's uprising, and Ruan Dacheng's revenge on the social literati. Some people around this regime were "psychologically complicated."
Black humor is an important literary school in the United States in 196s. Black is often sad and depressing, and humor contains sour satire, funny absurdity and painful despair. Therefore, this school actually expresses the tragic content in the form of comedy. For example, in Catch-22 of joseph heller, Jocelyn, who was in charge of the flight mission, fled the battlefield to save his life because he hated war.
In the tenth chapter of the book, the author wrote about Gong Dingzi, which once again showed me the humorous grotesque in troubled times.
Gong Dingzi, a well-read man, is good at writing poems, and has a high reputation in the literary world in the late Ming Dynasty. He is also known as the "Three Schools of Jiangzuo" with Qian Qianyi and Wu Weiye. Most of them are familiar with him, not because of his poems without thinking, but because of a famous saying: I was going to die, but my concubine refused!
A good saying "concubines refuse" has turned a clean and elegant scribe into a disdainful hypocrite who "doesn't care about the national disaster and feel the gratitude of the monarch". After reading this, I was deeply amused by his self-mockery, and thought of Qian Qianyi's "famous saying"-"The water is too cold"
. In 1645, the Qing army immediately invaded Nanjing City, and Emperor Hongguang Zhu Yousong fled. There is a dialogue between Liu Rushi and Qian Qianyi
Liu Rushi: the land is ruined, so we must not be honest and clean. It is better to die in the water together.
Qian Qianyi (who pretends to be a "clean stream" and is full of benevolence and morality): the water is too cold to jump
Liu Rushi (exploded with anger), so he threw himself into the water and was dragged up by him.
Soon, the Qing court asked.
Look at these two words, it's like a "farce" of two children. It's hard to believe that they came from the mouth of everyone in the literary world who has read a lot of poetry books. One person said that he didn't want to die, and his little wife wouldn't let him die. The other person thought that the water was too cold to jump. I wonder what it will be like when two people sit opposite each other and look at each other.
when I go back to the book to mention Gong Dingzi, I take out a whole chapter for his author, including his birth, political career, imprisonment, surrender to Li Zicheng and then to the Qing court, love with Yan Mei Ku in Qinhuai, struggling after being an official, and being written into the biography of two ministers. There is a plot in the book that makes me re-examine his sentence "I was going to die, but my concubine refused".
In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, that is, before the fall of Beijing, Gong Dingzi always impeached his colleagues and succeeded in impeaching Zhou Yanru for the first time. Then he sued Lu Daqi, which angered Emperor Chongzhen and put him in prison. The prison in Ming Dynasty was no different from hell. At this moment, his favorite concubine Gu Mei showed the chivalry of "sharing weal and woe" with practical actions, waiting for her husband to get out of prison. For such a woman, he must be moved in a big mess, but fortunately, he was released because of the small charges. But just one month after he was released from prison, he met with another big event: King Chuang captured Beijing, and Emperor Chongzhen hanged himself in jingshan park. Gong Dingzi, who witnessed this great change, didn't really want to surrender at first, but chose to throw himself into the well with his concubine Mei Ku to save his honor. Clinker attempted suicide, was arrested and imprisoned by the peasant army and was tortured. In prison, he described many poems about Mei Ku and imagined the beauty of life.
I guess, because of human survival instinct, and because of her reluctance to give up her splendor and beautiful flowers and pure flowers, Mei Jiao Niang finally gave up her bottom line and chose to surrender. It's only natural for her to live the rest of her life for concubines.
After Li Zicheng failed to withdraw from Beijing, Gong Dingzi surrendered to the Qing Dynasty. Compared with some courtiers who were loyal to the country, he was not a hero, and his ethics in this respect was really contemptible. However, if we look closely at him, compared with those treacherous officials who ruined the country and the people, he didn't do anything really bad. Instead, he used his position to secretly protect the adherents of the Ming Dynasty and the righteous people who fought against the Qing Dynasty. Perhaps all he wanted was to fulfill the wish that "concubines refused" to live for her. And at this point, Gong Dingzi is really worthy of this Qinhuai woman. After 2 years, 44-year-old Gu Mei left him first, and since then, she has not added a wife's room. In contrast, Mei Ku's fate is the luckiest one among the eight beauties in Qinhuai.
After the Qing Dynasty, he often kept in touch with adherents like Mao Xiang and Li Yu in the late Ming Dynasty. His poems were mostly nostalgic for the Ming Dynasty, and he was demoted for many times because he did not pay attention to the Qing Dynasty, which also showed his struggle in career and emotion. Literati in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, especially the "Three Jiang Zuos" who surrendered to the Qing Dynasty as officials, often expressed their inner anguish and bitterness in their works. For example, in Wu Weiye's poems, they expressed their remorse for being rude and honest, fearing that water-cooled Qian Qianyi would engage in anti-Qing activities after surrendering to the Qing Dynasty. Gong Dingzi mentioned here was also secretly protecting anti-Qing fighters.
This kind of person who is not attached to the concept of loyalty to the monarch, but also feels guilty because of his own behavior, has appeared in some literati at the turn of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. After knowing the whole story in this book, he will not kill them with a stick because of "dishonor", but he will have a little more sense of humor when he looks at "I was going to die, but my concubine refused".