San Mao said that some things are only fit to hide what exactly is the

Some things are only suitable for collection

Always believe in one thing: works are the most reliable autobiography of a writer. Even if this writer is not like Sanmao, who takes his own life as the main subject of his works, the emotions and loves and hates of the person who writes these words will still flow out accurately between the lines the moment he puts pen to paper. Therefore, it is absolutely indispensable to write a biography of a writer without analyzing the works of the biographer. Kou Yan's biography of the Tang poet Xue Tao, "The Peacock of the Tang Dynasty," is just such a biography that combed through relevant historical materials and analyzed Xue Tao's poems at different stages, but what impressed me the most after reading it was Xue Tao's silence.

"Poetry speaks of will" is the tradition of Chinese literati, a literati's life is penetrated by poetry, as "one day to see all the flowers of Chang'an", disillusioned like "Jiangzhou Secretary of the blue shirt wet", no matter how happy, angry or sad. "Whether happy or sad, the literati's instinct is to use poetry to express their feelings. For Xue Tao, since the age of sixteen, as the poetry of the famous genius girl by the then Jiannan Xichuan Festival Minister Weigao "called into the curtain to serve wine and poetry, and then into the music of the book" began, poetry is her life depends on the survival of the occupation. However, in Xue Tao's life in some important moments, some should be poetic moments, she was strangely silent, did not write even a line of poetry.

In the early years of Xue Tao was relegated to the border camps of Songzhou because of the offense of Weigao, wrote a mournful and humble "ten away from the poem" to be able to return to the curtain shortly thereafter, coinciding with the Weigao army in the Yazhou defeat of the Tubo, was appointed king of the county of Nankang, the bureaucrats competed to offer poems, Xue Tao, but there is no corresponding poems have been passed down, which is silent there are also mostly young girl Xue Tao in the shock of the grievances. Xue Tao's later silence in love, however, was a reversal of the common ancient female emotional dependence of "the king as a female Luo grass, the concubine as a doddering dodder flower," showing a closer to the modern woman's independence and self-esteem.

In the more than ten years of emotional entanglements with Yuan Zhen, in addition to the feelings of love when the deep love of poetry, Xue Tao is more silent, Yuan Zhen married Pei's official girl, Kou R & D: "Since then, Xue Tao's poems no longer "Autumn Springs", "Peony", "River", such as bluntly talking about lovesickness of the poem, and no longer "Willow Wadding," such as the complaint of the poems. " Bai Juyi gave her a poem to urge her to die to Yuan Zhen, but she did not respond at all and remained silent. Until the death of Yuan Zhen, the early years of sending Yuan Zhen poems in the "cabinet do not know the military affairs, the moon is still high on the lookout for the husband's building" such a couple of self-commenting lingering poems Xue Tao, but there is no mourning Yuan Zhen's words to leave behind.

Shi Tiesheng in "I and the Earth" in a passage, perhaps can be borrowed to interpret Xue Tao at this time of silence: "If there are some things I did not say, you do not think that is forgotten, I did not forget anything, but there are some things that are suitable for collection. They can't be said, they can't be thought, and yet they can't be forgotten. They can't be turned into words, they can't be turned into words, and once they are turned into words they are no longer them. They are a hazy patch of warmth and silence, a ripe patch of hope and despair."

Another silence by Xue Tao is even more intriguing. It was the death of a peacock that had been kept in the Xichuan provincial governor's palace for 32 years. The peacock's death became a major event in the poetry world of Sichuan, and poets wrote poems to commemorate it, but Xue Tao, who had a deep connection with the Xichuan provincial governor's palace and who had been compared to the peacock by many literati, did not say a word about the peacock's death in his own poems.

In addition to writing poetry, another achievement in her life was the creation of the "Xue Tao paper", which she also wrote the lines "always write to the red paper to follow" and "tears wet red paper complaining about parting". However, this time, the red paper was blank, without a single word. Blank Xue Tao paper, is a thousand years ago, a female Tang Dynasty literati heart, a thousand years after the book "Peacock of the Tang Dynasty", is another female literati Kou research from the vast historical data in the East and West claw of the text and no words read out of the embroidered articles for the paintings, brushwork depicted a picture of the life of the Tang poetess Xue Tao.

Taiwanese writer Zhang Dachun once said, "It is impossible for everyone to detach themselves from their own reality to look at history purely objectively. Every reader of history, or the person who reads historical material, uses his own view of reality or the worldview he has formed later in life to empathize with history." The Peacock of the Tang Dynasty is no exception, as the author reads Xue Tao's life from the perspective of a clear, contemporary, independent woman, focusing on the wisdom she realized in the midst of difficult and desperate times, her efforts to take control of her life, and her impassioned poems that do not let the world go to her head. In the author's preface, author Kou Yan uses the term "extremely revered" to describe her feelings toward Xue Tao, not for her poetry, but for the life of a talented woman in chains, who did everything she could to build it.