Shūshǐ 書史
A History of Calligraphy by 米芾 (Mǐ Fú, 1051–1107, 宋, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
The calligraphic counterpart of the KR3h0021 Huàshǐ: Mǐ Fú’s running notebook on calligraphic models he personally examined, beginning from the Western Jìn and running down through the Five Dynasties. The book records — for each authentic piece — seals, colophons, paper-and-silk, mounting, and provenance, and includes Mǐ’s evaluation of authenticity. The book is the most consulted single source on the practical principles of pre-Sòng calligraphic connoisseurship. The Sìkù tíyào for the Shūshǐ is incorporated into the entry for KR3h0021 Huàshǐ in the WYG layout and the present file’s tíyào heading thus stands as inherited from that joint notice.
Tiyao
We have respectfully examined: Shūshǐ in one juàn, by Mǐ Fú of the Sòng. This compilation evaluates the genuine traces of earlier ages, always taking what he had himself seen as the criterion — hence it begins with the Western Jìn and ends with the Five Dynasties. Seals, signatures, paper-and-silk, mounting and roller-fittings are all minutely recorded. For example, on the Xùtiè he identifies it as Wáng Xīzhī’s hand and refutes Liǔ Gōngquán’s error of attributing it to Wáng Xiànzhī; the Zhìyǒng Qiānzìwén he verifies as the work of Zhōng Shàojīng with Ōuyáng Xún’s hand; the cursive of Yú Shìnán in Wèi Tài’s collection he assigns to Zhìyǒng — all distinctions of the finest grain, not erring by a hair’s breadth. The poetry and prose he records mostly fall outside what was already in the public record. For Xǔ Hún’s poem the Xiāngtán-line “XiāngTán’s clouds disperse, the dusk mountain appears” — this records his autographic black-line silk-leaf manuscript, with “dusk mountain” actually reading “dusk smoke” — so the present Dīngmǎo jí edition is in error. Yáng Shèn in his Dānqiān lù simply appropriated the observation and concealed its source. The work is thus useful not only for connoisseurial appraisal but for textual criticism as well. Only its closing piece on private seals — that seals govern fortune-and-misfortune, citing contemporary government seal-impressions as oracle-readings — refers to an Xiàngyìn fǎ tradition extant since the Wèi (per the Suíshū jīngjí zhì, Sānguó zhì zhù, and the Wèizhēngjūn Chéng Shēnbó xiàngyìn fǎ); the ancient tradition existed, but Mǐ Fú had no real transmission of it and his treatment is forced — fondness for the unusual, no more.
Abstract
The Shūshǐ is Mǐ Fú’s most extended treatise on calligraphic objects and was compiled in parallel with the KR3h0021 Huàshǐ and the KR3h0023 Bǎozhāng dàifǎng lù. The book is critically important as the source for our knowledge of the contents of late Northern Sòng private calligraphy collections, and contains some of the earliest detailed connoisseurial descriptions of the seals and mountings on specific pieces. The work also has substantial philological value: the case of Xǔ Hún’s Xiāngtán poem, in which Mǐ records the authentic bàozhuǎn reading “dusk smoke” against the printed Dīngmǎo jí reading “dusk mountain,” is one of the locus classicus cases of textual emendation from calligraphic witness. The composition window is bounded by the Bǎozhāng dàifǎng lù presentation date (Yuányòu 1, 1086) and Mǐ’s death in 1107; the Shūshǐ’s mature form, like the Huàshǐ’s, belongs to his final decade.
Translations and research
- Ledderose, Lothar. Mi Fu and the Classical Tradition of Chinese Calligraphy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979 (the foundational Western-language monograph; uses Shū-shǐ throughout).
- Sturman, Peter Charles. Mi Fu: Style and the Art of Calligraphy in Northern Song China. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
- Harrist, Robert E., Jr., and Wen C. Fong. The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection. Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum, 1999.
- McNair, Amy. The Upright Brush: Yan Zhenqing’s Calligraphy and Song Literati Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998.
- Cao Baolin 曹寶麟. Mǐ Fú píngzhuàn 米芾評傳. Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 1997 (modern critical biography).