Shūjué 書訣
Calligraphic Formulae by 豐坊 (Fēng Fāng, c. 1492–c. 1563, 明, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A one-juàn late-Míng treatise on calligraphy, no attributed author in the Míngshǐ Yìwénzhì but identified by the Sìkù editors as the work of the eccentric Níngbō scholar Fēng Fāng. The book combines a doctrinal treatment of calligraphic method — especially of seal-script — with a comparative ranking of past and present calligraphers. Fēng’s signature critical positions: Yán Zhēnqīng excelled at piēkē tíshǔ 擘窠題署 (large-character public signage) and ranks first there, but the Dōngfāng Shuò zàn and Duōbǎotǎ bēi (two of Yán’s most-loved pieces) are “vulgar brushwork”; Sū Shì’s kǎishū “uses the flesh to press on paper, deeply vulgar in air”; for kǎifǎ only three Sòng pieces (the Shàngqīng chǔ-xiángɡōng bēi and two others) are worth taking — a position the Sìkù editors call “high-talk from his madness, yet each expresses his own view, and is not the same as the empty bragger.”
Tiyao
We have respectfully examined: Shūjué in one juàn, no compiler’s name. The Míngshǐ Yìwénzhì does not record it. The text refers to its author’s tenth-generation ancestor Jì 稷, great-grandfather Qìng 慶, grandfather Yún 耘, father Xī 熈 — these are the genealogy of Fēng Fāng of Yín 鄞 in the Jiājìng era; so the book is Fāng’s. Fāng has Gǔyì shìxué already recorded. He was fond of fabrications and false books, baseless in countless ways; his reputation has long suffered. But in calligraphy he had real attainments. Zhānshì’s Xiǎobiàn says: “Fāng’s character was beyond the bounds of law and convention; but his calligraphic learning was extremely broad — five-form, all able; the various houses from WèiJìn to the present dynasty all understood, the rules all from his hand — apparently he was expert at the holding of the brush. So his calligraphy has great arm-power; only the shényùn is slightly inadequate.” Zhū Móuyīn’s Shūshǐ huìyào also says: “Fāng’s cursive — from JìnTáng down — no modern man’s brush-attitude; only fond of kūbǐ (dry brush), short of fēngyùn.” This compilation all discusses the methods of learning calligraphy, particularly attentive to zhuàn and zhòu; further arranges past and present calligraphers in detailed order. He singularly elevates Yán Zhēnqīng’s piēkē tíshǔ as the first, but rebukes the Dōngfāng Shuò zàn and Duōbǎotǎ bēi as vulgar; he further demotes Sū Shì for “the flesh on the paper, deeply vulgar”; in kǎifǎ he takes only the Shàngqīng chǔ-xiángɡōng bēi and two others — striving for high speech, apparently still the lingering disposition of his madness. Nevertheless he is expressing his own view, which is not the same as the empty bragger. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), tenth month.
Abstract
Fēng Fāng 豐坊 (c. 1492 – c. 1563; zì Cúnshū 存叔 / later Rénwēng 人翁, hào Nányú 南禺, of Yín 鄞 in Níngbō) is one of the most notorious figures in mid-Míng intellectual history: an erudite classical scholar of immense calligraphic and paleographic learning who turned to large-scale forgery (the Lǔshī Shīxù 魯詩詩序 and other pseudepigraphic “ancient” classical commentaries that he claimed to have rediscovered) and ended his life in mental disturbance, dependent on the support of family. The Shūjué is one of his rare unmistakably substantive works on calligraphy. The Sìkù editors identify it through internal genealogical evidence (the work refers to ancestors Jì, Qìng, Yún, Xī — Fēng family). Fēng’s polemics — anti-Yán’s middle-period stelae, anti-Sū Shì’s kǎi, pro-large-character public signage — are characteristic of the late-Míng anti-Yuán-and-Sòng critical position and are connected to the wider Wáng-Yáng-míng-school revaluation of classical antiquity in the visual arts.
Translations and research
- McNair, Amy. The Upright Brush: Yan Zhenqing’s Calligraphy and Song Literati Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998 (Fēng on Yán).
- Brokaw, Cynthia. Commerce in Culture: The Sibao Book Trade in the Qing and Republican Periods. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007 (publishing context for Fēng’s forgeries).
- No comprehensive Western-language monograph on Fēng Fāng or this work.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ identification of the book through internal genealogical fingerprinting (ancestor-names) is a model case of attribution from internal evidence.