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劉氏春秋意林

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Text ID
KR1e0023
Date
1058–1068
Dynasty
宋

Liúshì Chūnqiū yì lín 劉氏春秋意林

Master Liú’s Forest of Intentions on the Spring and Autumn Annals

by 劉敞 (撰)

About the work

The Liúshì Chūnqiū yì lín 劉氏春秋意林 in two juan is the third of Liú Chǎng’s 劉敞 Chūnqiū trilogy (KR1e0021, KR1e0022, this work) — a collection of supplementary jottings on individual jīng-passages that the zhuàn did not exhaust. The Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì records two juan; Wáng Yīnglín’s Yùhǎi gives five — the latter is a transmission error. Per Mǎ Duānlín’s 馬端臨 Jīng jí kǎo 經籍考, the three works together total 34 juan, which precisely matches Quán héng (17) + Zhuàn (15) + Yì lín (2). The Sìkù base is the Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě recutting.

Tiyao

The Sìkù tíyào (text from the Kyoto Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào):

By Liú Chǎng of Sòng. The Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì records two juan; Wáng Yīnglín’s Yùhǎi records five. Mǎ Duānlín’s Jīng jí kǎo gives Chūnqiū quán héng, Chūnqiū zhuàn, and Chūnqiū yì lín together as 34 juan total. Now the Quán héng is in fact 17 juan, the zhuàn 15 juan, plus Yì lín 2 juan = 34, agreeing with the Sòng zhì. The Yùhǎi’s “5 juan” is a transcription error.

Yuán Wú Lái’s 吳萊 postface to this work says: “Master Liú composed the Chūnqiū quán héng and self-said ‘when the book was complete no one could read it.’ Even the Yì lín was not yet a finished draft, and contains many gaps.” Now examining the work, some entries cite only a few characters of the jīng without further comment; some give a few lines of cursory text without continuity, with marginal “yún yún” 云云; some give a single entry with another heading of one or two characters appended that has no relation to the body; some are tortured and obscure, hard to punctuate; some give only the opening with the explanation cut off mid-sentence. That the work is a draft of suí bǐ zhá jì 隨筆劄記 (occasional jottings) — incomplete and unfinished — is therefore quite clear; Wú Lái’s account is not exaggerated.

Liú himself struggled vigorously with these passages, his thought labouring deeply, and he liked to chisel his prose so that it sat at the edge of comprehensibility. But Yè Mèngdé’s Shí lín Chūnqiū zhuàn 石林春秋傳 says: “Those who do not know the jīng cannot enter it, and dismiss it as overworked, sprung from forced fitting. But on close reading and deep reflection, the work’s correcting of míngfēn 名分, distinguishing of resemblances and doubts, the great meanings and subtle words flashing forth in agreement with the sage’s intent — there are quite a few.” The roughness of the prose may be left aside.

Abstract

The Sìkù tíyào makes the principal points: that this is the supplementary essay-collection completing Liú’s trilogy; that the work was an unfinished draft at Liú’s death and shows clear signs of incompleteness (single-character entries, incomplete sentences, “yún yún” placeholders); that Liú deliberately cultivated a difficult-to-read prose style; that despite the textual roughness Yè Mèngdé’s contemporary judgement — that close reading rewards with substantial xīnyì insights — is sound.

The Yì lín’s value lies in its preservation of jottings that did not make it into the zhuàn — many of them experimental readings or alternative arguments. Methodologically it is the most “private” of the three works, the closest to Liú’s notebook practice.

Translations and research

See KR1e0021.

Other points of interest

Liú’s reputation for deliberately obscure prose — “chiselling his words so that they sat at the edge of comprehensibility” — is unusual in the Sìkù tíyào’s register and represents a critical judgement also recorded by his Northern-Sòng contemporaries. The aesthetic of jué jí 倔急 (tortured and sharp) prose was a Sòng-era stylistic preference traceable to the Hán Yù 韓愈 gǔ wén 古文 line; Liú’s Chūnqiū yì lín is one of its most extreme classical-scholarship instantiations.

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