Lǚshì jiāshú dú Shī jì 呂氏家塾讀詩記
Mr. Lǚ’s Family-School Notes on Reading the Classic of Poetry by 呂祖謙 (Lǚ Zǔqiān, zì Bógōng 伯恭, hào Dōnglái 東萊, 1137–1181)
About the work
A 32-juǎn compendium of Shī commentary, the principal Southern-Sòng synthesis of the pro-xù tradition. Methodologically a jí jiě 集解 (“collected exposition”): for each ode Lǚ Zǔqiān gives the prefatory xù, then the xùngǔ (philological gloss) drawn from the various schools (carefully attributing each), then the wényì (sense of the words) likewise documented, with his own original judgements set off as a separate column. The work is unfinished: from Dǔ Gōng Liú 篤公劉 onward (the back third of Dà Yǎ and Sòng) Lǚ Zǔqiān had completed his biānzuǎn (compilation of materials) but had not finished the tiáolì (organizing rules), and his pupils completed it after his death. The work preserves the first draft of Zhū Xī’s Shī commentary — at every “Mr. Zhū says” (Zhūshì yuē 朱氏曰) Lǚ Zǔqiān cites Zhū Xī’s earlier reading, the one that still followed the small preface. Zhū Xī’s preface to the Dú Shī jì (written after Lǚ Zǔqiān’s death and at his brother Lǚ Zǔyuē 呂祖約’s request) is unusually candid: Zhū Xī acknowledges that his “shallow words of youth” were taken up by Bógōng (Lǚ Zǔqiān) and that, after his own revision toward Zhèng Qiáo’s anti-xù line, Lǚ Zǔqiān was “unable not to have doubts in between.” The two friends never reconciled their Shī readings before Lǚ Zǔqiān’s early death in 1181. Wèi Liǎowēng 魏了翁’s later postscript (written on the occasion of Hè Chūnqīng’s Méishān reprint, not long after Lǚ Zǔqiān’s death — already a second recutting, which the Sìkù editors take as proof of Sòng veneration of the work) frames the work’s central virtue as exemplifying Confucius’s “thicken self, thin response on others” doctrine.
Tiyao
By the Sòng Lǚ Zǔqiān. Zǔqiān has the Gǔ Zhōu Yì, already catalogued. This is his Shī exposition. Zhū Xī and Lǚ Zǔqiān were close friends, and on the Shī their early views were closest. The “Mr. Zhū says” entries here are Zhū Xī’s first reading. Later Zhū changed to Zhèng Qiáo and discarded the earlier; Lǚ held firm to Máo and Zhèng. After Lǚ’s death Zhū’s preface to this work says: “Bógōng was mistaken to take up my shallow youthful words. As time passed I knew my words were unsettled and could not avoid revision; Bógōng then could not but doubt them; I was secretly puzzled — we were just about to talk it through to find the truth, and Bógōng died.” Although Zhū wrote on his younger brother Zǔyuē’s request, his old grievance ran deep. To this day the two readings stand against each other; the partisans of the Lǚshì book never quite die out. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiětí says: “From Dǔ Gōng Liú on, the compilation is complete but the tiáolì not finished; learners regret it.” This edition is Lù Yì’s 陸釴 reprint; Lù’s preface says he obtained the Sòng edition from his friend Fēng Cúnshū. The Lǚ original is 22 juǎn; from Gōng Liú on, Lǚ’s pupils continued — slightly different from Chén Zhènsūn’s account, and Lù does not name the pupils. But the Shū lù jiětí and the Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì both record 32 juǎn, so this was already the form at the time. Perhaps Lù was confused by Dài Xī’s Xù dú Shī jì in 3 juǎn and counted the last 10 juǎn as that. Chén Zhènsūn says: “He gathered widely from many schools, preserving the names; first listed the philological gloss, then the sense of the words, cut and threaded as if from one hand; where he has his own discovery, he sets it apart. Of the careful exhaustive Shī learning, none surpasses this book.” Wèi Liǎowēng’s postscript says: “He has made manifest the Shī poets’ principle of being thick on themselves and thin in demanding from others.” Each takes up one virtue, and between them they cover the strengths of the work. Liǎowēng’s postscript was written for Méishān Hè Chūnqīng’s reprint — not long after Lǚ’s death, the blocks had already been recut: the Sòng deeply prized this book.
Abstract
The Lǚshì jiāshú dú Shī jì is the principal pre-Zhū-Xī Southern-Sòng synthesis of the Shī tradition and one of the two essential structuring works (with KR1c0009 / KR1c0015) of the entire Southern-Sòng Shī learning. It preserves the lost first-draft Zhū Xī commentary that followed the xù; it preserves the largest single corpus of citations from earlier Sòng commentators (the Mr. Wáng says, Mr. Sū says, Mr. Lǐ says citations are systematically attributed); and its formal organization — xù ⊕ xùngǔ ⊕ wényì ⊕ biérén (his own judgement) — became the model for both Dài Xī’s Xù dú Shī jì (KR1c0018) and the late-Sòng / Yuán jí jiě commentaries. The unfinished Gōng Liú-onward portion was completed by Lǚ Zǔqiān’s pupils. Composition spans Lǚ Zǔqiān’s mature Líntái 麗澤 jiāshú teaching career, ca. 1170, to his death in 1181. The Sìkù editors treat the work as the indispensable counter-weight to Zhū Xī’s anti-xù turn — the imperial Shījīng huìzuǎn’s decision to print both readings was made specifically to keep the Lǚ-school option open.
Translations and research
No English translation. The Dú Shī jì is the principal source-base for any modern reconstruction of the lost first-draft Zhū-Xī Shī reading; this material is thoroughly worked in Mǐn Zéwǎng 閔澤萬, Běi-Sòng Shī xué chuánshì kǎo (Wén jīn, 2003), and used in Steven Van Zoeren, Poetry and Personality (Stanford, 1991), 165–73. On Lǚ Zǔqiān’s school more broadly, see Pān Fù-ēn 潘富恩, Lǚ Zǔqiān jí Jīnhuá xuépài yánjiū (Huádōng shīfàn dà., 1992).
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ precision in tracing the juǎn-count history (22-juǎn Lǚ original → 32-juǎn finished form → Lù Yì’s misreading via Dài Xī’s continuation) is one of the better small pieces of Sìkù bibliographic forensics on the Sòng Shī corpus. The continued partisanship between Dú Shī jì readers and Jí zhuàn readers in the YuánMíngQīng period is the implicit subject of nearly every Shī-class entry that follows in the tíyào.