Dú yì jì wén 讀易紀聞
Recorded Hearings on Reading the Changes by 張獻翼
About the work
A late-Míng Yìjīng miscellany in six juàn by Zhāng Xiànyì 張獻翼 (1534–1604) of Kūnshān 崑山, composed in his early years while reading at Mount Shàngfāng 上方. Structurally not a continuous commentary: the canonical text is not reproduced; instead, each section consists of free-standing aphoristic notes (zhájì 劄記) on selected passages, picked out for what Zhāng considers their illuminative interest. Methodologically the work is firmly within the late-Míng yìlǐ tradition: Zhāng sets aside LǎoZhuāng metaphysics and brings out the principles of Chéng Yí and Zhū Xī, with particular attention to the human-affairs lessons (advance and withdrawal, gain and loss, regret and stinting) that the Yì makes available. The Sìkù editors note the contrast between the work’s substantive solidity and its author’s notoriously loose personal conduct, with characteristic Confucian moderation: he can speak but cannot act.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Dú yì jì wén in six juàn was composed by Zhāng Xiànyì of the Míng. Xiànyì, zì Yòuyú, was a man of Kūnshān; later he changed his name to Mǐ 敉. This is what he wrote in his early years while reading at Mount Shàngfāng. Xiànyì was loose and unrestrained, with strange words and conduct; he ended his life by being killed when, drunk and lying in the open, he encountered bandits — the man perhaps suffered some mental illness. Yet his exposition of the Yì is plain, smoothly arranged, solid, and not extravagant: he sets aside the LǎoZhuāng metaphysical and brings out the principles of Chéng and Zhū. Whatever in human affairs may serve as a mirror — fortune and misfortune, regret and stinting, advance and withdrawal, preservation and ruin — he often illuminates with success, getting at the sage’s import of admonition. Tested against his ordinary conduct, this is what people call “able to speak but unable to act.”
Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo lists five kinds of Yì-glosses by Xiànyì; only the Dú yì yùn kǎo 讀易韻考 survives. The Dú yì yuē shuō 讀易約說 in three juàn, Yì záshuō 易雜說 in two juàn, Dú yì yì shuō 讀易臆說 in two juàn, and the present six-juàn book are all marked with the note “have not seen.” We have now searched and gathered surviving compilations and obtained only the Yùn kǎo and the present book. The Yùn kǎo is grossly defective — like a blind man speaking of black-and-white, like a deaf man discussing musical modes — and we have separately listed it under the catalog-only [cún mù 存目]. This book does not lay out the canonical text but expounds passage by passage as a zhájì-style notebook; its words are sufficient to be drawn upon, and one ought not to discard the work on account of its author.
Respectfully collated, the second month of the forty-fifth year of Qiánlóng (1780). Editor-in-chief: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief proofreader: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Composition is bracketed loosely by Zhāng’s early reading-years. Born 1534, he probably began the work in his early twenties (mid-1550s) and continued it for some years while at Mount Shàngfāng. The bracket adopted (1555–1580) covers his early-to-mid-career Yì engagement before his more notorious late-career erratic behavior set in. The work was not actively printed in his lifetime; the Sìkù editors recovered it after extensive searching.
The work is one of the better-preserved late-Míng yìlǐ miscellanies, characterized by relatively brief, tightly-focused aphoristic notes rather than running exegesis. The Sìkù editors’ notice contains an unusually frank biographical assessment — “the man perhaps suffered some mental illness” — which is then balanced by an editorial defense of the work itself (“his words are sufficient to be drawn upon, and one ought not to discard the work on account of its author”). This explicit distinction between work and author is a representative example of the Sìkù editors’ general bibliographic ethic.
The transmission profile is striking: Zhāng wrote five Yì works according to Zhū Yízūn; the Sìkù editors located only two; one of those (the Yùn kǎo) was demoted to cún mù. The present book is therefore the only one of Zhāng’s Yì writings to enter the Sìkù quánshū proper.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. Zhāng Xiànyì has received some attention in studies of late-Míng Sūzhōu literary culture (the Kūnshān “Three Mr Zhāngs” — Zhāng Fèngyì 鳳翼, Xiànyì, Yányí 燕翼), most notably for his elder brother Zhāng Fèngyì’s Hóng fú jì 紅拂記 and other Kūnqǔ plays.
Other points of interest
Zhāng’s case is one of the clearest Sìkù tíyào examples of the editors’ policy on disreputable authors: they preserve the work, frankly note the author’s defects, and explicitly invoke the principle of judging the writing on its own merits. The implicit comparison with Lái Zhīdé (KR1a0100) — also late Míng, also late-career oddity, but received with more polemical heat — is instructive.