仇池筆記

Chóuchí bǐ jì 仇池筆記

The Chóu-chí Notes

attributed to 蘇軾 (Sū Shì, zì Zǐzhān 子瞻, hào Dōngpō jūshì 東坡居士, 1037–1101)

About the work

A 2-juan miscellany attributed to Sū Shì but most likely a posthumous compilation by admirers from the great poet’s scattered colophons and short notes. The title Chóuchí — a place-name famous from Dù Fǔ’s verse — was one of Sū Shì’s playful sobriquets. The Sìkù editors are explicit in their skepticism: “old recensions title this ‘compiled by Sū Shì of the Sòng’ — but I suspect that admirers gathered his scattered zátiē and made it; it does not necessarily come from Sū’s own hand.” The book is the companion-piece (biǎo lǐ — front-and-back, paired) of Dōngpō zhì lín 東坡志林 (KR3j0094); the two collections were transmitted together and the SKQS recension cross-references entries that appear in both. The Míng Wànlì rényín (1602) Zhào Kāiměi 趙開美 edition (whose preface is preserved at the head of the SKQS recension) is the basis of the modern transmitted text.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Chóuchí bǐ jì in two juan: the old recension is titled “compiled by Sū Shì of the Sòng”; but I suspect admirers gathered his scattered zátiē and made it — it does not necessarily come from Sū’s hand. As to the lower-juan entry on Dù Fǔ — “Dù Fǔ’s poetry is certainly unmatched; but from the line ‘reaching the far’ down, the verses are quite vulgar”; the lower-half of that entry: “Sū Shì was reading Dù poems and wrote this comment beside the line ‘reaching the far, in the end I fear being stuck’” — clearly the entry was made by someone looking over Sū Shì’s shoulder, not by Sū himself. Other entries follow the same pattern. The Zhēng tún shī (steamed-pig poem) entry recording the drunken-monk affair likewise does not have Sū’s voice — perhaps appended-attributed and slipped in. Yet it has been long transmitted and cited, and may occasionally serve textual investigation.

Táo Zōngyí’s Shuō fú also includes it, but with cuts; it is incomplete. In Wànlì rényín (1602) Zhào Kāiměi printed a complete recension; the blocks have long since been lost. This recension carries Kāiměi’s preface at the head and is taken from the Zhào edition. Entries that appear in both this and the Zhì lín have here the title alone retained with the note “see Zhì lín” beneath — these may also be Kāiměi’s editorial alterations.

Respectfully revised and submitted, seventh month of the forty-second year of Qiánlóng [1777].

General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The book is a posthumous compilation attributed to Sū Shì but in fact gathered after his death from his scattered notes, marginalia, and short prose pieces by admirers. The companion-piece Dōngpō zhì lín (KR3j0094) is the principal parallel work; the two collections overlap substantively and the SKQS editors note the cross-references between them.

Despite the editorial attribution problem, the book is universally treated as a valuable witness to Sū Shì’s intellectual life: even if the editorial framing is admirer-imposed, the substance of the entries is reliably Sū’s. The book covers Sū’s characteristic range: poetic and literary criticism, classical exegesis, anecdotes, observations on contemporaries, food and wine, painting and calligraphy, Buddhism, medicine. The Zhào Kāiměi 1602 Míng-printed edition is the basis of the modern text.

Sū Shì’s Chóuchí sobriquet — taken from a place-name in northern Sìchuān made famous by Dù Fǔ — captures Sū’s late-life imaginative geography after his three successive banishments (Huángzhōu 黃州, Huìzhōu 惠州, Dànzhōu 儋州 on Hǎinán island). The book’s framing as “Chóuchí” therefore evokes Sū’s exilic-poetic persona.

Dating. NotBefore 1080 (Sū’s Huángzhōu exile, when his prolific zátiē output begins); notAfter 1101 (Sū’s death). The actual compilation of the book postdates Sū’s death and probably crystallized in the Southern Sòng. The autograph preface attributed to Sū Shì within the recension cannot be confidently dated.

The standard text is the Zhào Kāiměi 1602 edition transmitted through the SKQS.

Translations and research

Sū Shì has been the subject of one of the largest bodies of Western and East-Asian scholarship on any premodern Chinese figure. The Chóu-chí bǐ jì is regularly cited as one of the principal Sū Shì bǐjì sources. Substantial treatments:

• Ronald C. Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (Harvard, 1994). Treats both the Chóu-chí bǐ jì and Dōng-pō zhì lín as primary sources.
• Beata Grant, Mount Lu Revisited: Buddhism in the Life and Writings of Su Shih (Hawaii, 1994).
• Standard Chinese-language editions: Wáng Sōng-líng 王松齡 (ed.), Dōng-pō zhì lín; Chóu-chí bǐ jì (Zhōnghuá shū-jú, 1981 etc.).
• The book is regularly cited in modern Chinese-language scholarship on Sū Shì across all fields (literary criticism, philosophy, food history, painting history).

Other points of interest

The book’s status as posthumous compilation under Sū Shì’s name is in some ways characteristic of premodern Chinese authorship: many great writers’ miscellanies were preserved this way. Zhào Kāiměi’s 1602 Míng preface — preserved in the SKQS — is itself a notable late-Míng document of Sū Shì reception: Zhào ends his preface with the famous remark that Sū’s quarrels with Wáng Ānshí and others, however justified, “should not have been pushed to the marrow” — a humane Míng reading of the Sū Shì / Wáng Ānshí controversies.

Links

• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi 3 · Záshuō zhī shǔ, Chóuchí bǐ jì entry.
• Wikidata: Sū Shì https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q298281.