Shī zǒngwén 詩總聞
Comprehensive Hearings on the Classic of Poetry by 王質 (Wáng Zhì, zì Jǐngwén 景文, hào Xuěshān 雪山, 1135–1189)
About the work
A 20-juǎn commentary on all 305 odes, organized by a distinctive ten-fold “hearing” (wén 聞) scheme. For each ode Wáng Zhì gives a discussion of its general meaning, then runs the ode through ten wén categories: wén yīn 聞音 (sound), wén xùn 聞訓 (philological gloss), wén zhāng 聞章 (stanzas), wén jù 聞句 (lines), wén zì 聞字 (graphs), wén wù 聞物 (things), wén yòng 聞用 (function), wén jì 聞跡 (historical traces), wén zhuān 聞專 (special points), and wén rén 聞人 (persons). Each ode receives a final zǒngwén 總聞 (“comprehensive hearing”). At the head of the four shǐ 始 sections he places three further section-introductions — wén Fēng 聞風, wén Yǎ 聞雅, wén Sòng 聒頌 — surveying the genre as a whole. Like Zhèng Qiáo 鄭樵 (KR1c0019) and Zhū Xī (KR1c0009 / KR1c0015), Wáng Zhì rejects the small preface — but unlike Zhèng he does not attack it openly, and unlike Zhū he does not develop a rival doctrinal frame. He simply ignores it and reads the poems on their own terms.
Tiyao
By the Sòng Wáng Zhì. Zì Jǐngwén, of Xīngguó. Jìnshì of Shàoxīng 30 (1160). Office: Shūmìyuàn biānxiū, then tōngpàn of Jīngnánfǔ, later of Jízhōu. Zhōu Liànggōng’s 周亮工 Shū yǐng 書影 takes him for a late-Sòng man — an oversight. Zhōu also says the work was lost from circulation for a long time; Xiè Zhàozhè 謝肇淛 first copied it from the imperial library; after Xiè’s sons sold off their books it was bought by Chén Kāizhòng and then returned to Zhōu — so the survival was a near miss. The work covers all 300 odes, giving the general sense of each, then running through ten wén categories — yīn xùn zhāng jù zì wù yòng jì zhuān rén — followed by a zǒngwén. There are also wén Fēng wén Yǎ wén Sòng at the head of the four shǐ.
In the early Southern Sòng, three commentators rejected the xù: Zhèng Qiáo, Zhū Xī, and Wáng Zhì. Zhèng’s and Zhū’s positions are best known and were the most vigorously contested in their day. Wáng Zhì does not character-by-character denounce the small preface, so his attackers are also fewer. Yet his obstinate self-confidence and fresh tailoring — his sharp, cutting energy — surpasses theirs by a factor. He himself says he laboured deeply for nearly thirty years to produce the book. In Chúnyòu guǐmǎo (1243), Chén Rìqiáng 陳日強 of Wúxīng first cut the blocks at Fùchuān. Chén’s colophon says: “He uses his intuition to seek the intent — a one-man school. The judgement is just.” It also says: “His deletion of the small preface in fact agrees with Master Zhū.” That last is not entirely true. Wáng Zhì set aside the xù like Zhū Xī, but their explanations differ. Huáng Zhèn’s Rìchāo says: “Xuěshān Wáng Zhì and Jiájì Zhèng Qiáo were the first to set aside the xù and speak of the Shī, and so departed from the various schools. Master Huì’ān (Zhū Xī) followed Master Zhèng’s account and removed all the praise-and-satire to seek out the original. The view startled the world; even Master Dōnglái could not be without doubts” — speaking of “following Zhèng,” not “following Wáng,” shows the project was not the same.
Still, Wáng Zhì’s groping out new pathways often goes deep; the forced is plentiful, but the suspended is also frequent. So the work cannot be made a model, but neither can it be discarded.
Abstract
The Shī zǒngwén is the Southern-Sòng Shī commentary that comes closest, in spirit, to a fully secular reading of the Classic of Poetry: the ten-wén analytical scheme is in effect a structural-philological and historical methodology that treats each ode as a self-standing object. Composition spans roughly thirty years (Wáng Zhì’s own statement) ending with his death in 1189; circulation began with Chén Rìqiáng’s 1243 Fùchuān edition, after which the work was nearly lost (the Sìkù editors trace its preservation through the MíngQīng book trade — Xiè Zhàozhè → Chén Kāizhòng → Zhōu Liànggōng). The Sìkù editors themselves rate it more highly than Zhèng Qiáo’s Shī biàn wàng (KR1c0019) precisely because it abstains from open attack on the xù and concentrates on positive philological reading. The dating bracket is set from the jìnshì date (1160, when Wáng Zhì begins his official career and the thirty-year project plausibly starts) to his death (1189).
Translations and research
No English translation. Treated in Hé Hǎiyàn 何海燕, Qīng-rén Shīxué yǔ Sòng-rén Shīxué (Wǔhàn dà., 2008); the ten-wén scheme is briefly analyzed in Lín Yèlián, Zhōngguó lìdài Shījīng xué. Cited in Western literature mainly through Steven Van Zoeren, Poetry and Personality: Reading, Exegesis, and Hermeneutics in Traditional China (Stanford, 1991), 161–67, where Wáng Zhì is grouped with Zhū Xī as a “post-Mao” Southern-Sòng reading.
Other points of interest
Zhōu Liànggōng’s preservation note in the Shū yǐng — that the work disappeared from circulation, was found in the imperial library by Xiè Zhàozhè, and then changed hands several times in the late-Míng book trade — is one of the better-attested examples of how late-Míng book collectors rescued Sòng commentaries from imminent extinction.