Bì shǔ lù huà 避暑錄話
Talk Recorded in the Summer Retreat
by 葉夢得 (Yè Mèngdé, 1077–1148; hào Shílín 石林).
About the work
A late Sòng bǐjì by 葉夢得, composed in retirement at his Shílín 石林 estate near Bīanshān 卞山 (Húzhōu) in the years following the Jīngkāng catastrophe. The book is shorter and more leisurely than its companion Shílín yàn yǔ (KR3j0105) — the Bì shǔ lù huà records talk and reading-notes from Yè’s summer reading-sessions (“recorded during the avoidance of summer heat”) with friends and visiting kinsmen. The book preserves Yè’s connoisseurial scholarship: books he had collected (Yè’s library exceeded 30,000 juàn); poems and cí; old anecdotes of the Yuányòu and Shàoshèng literati he had personally known; the Lǐxué Chéng / Sū factional standoff; and his own moderate-Shào-shèng readings of the late Northern Sòng. The book is significant as one of the most leisured and stylistically supple of the early Southern Sòng bǐjì, and is widely cited for its literary anecdotes on Sū Shì, Huáng Tíngjiān, Wáng Ānshí, and Sīmǎ Guāng.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Bì shǔ lù huà in two juan was compiled by Yè Mèngdé of the Sòng. Now, Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì records this book as fifteen juàn — wildly more than this recension; we suspect what is now in circulation is no complete recension. Yet the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo already gives it as two juàn; Máo Jìn’s Jīndài mìshū postscript says he obtained a Sòng block-print, sharply unlike the popular versions, also as two juàn. So in the Sòng dynasty itself it was already this two-juàn recension. Examining the various works’ citations of Bì shǔ lù huà, all are found among the present entries — not one is missing — therefore Cháo’s Dúshū zhì “fifteen juàn” is a transmission error.
Yè in the south-migration period was a venerable senior of the lined-up elders; his book-collection numbered more than 30,000 juàn, the foremost of his time, so he was thoroughly versed in ancient and modern, and what he writes mostly has substantive foundation. Only that he was a client of Cài Jīng’s gate, and could not avoid, on factional grounds, secretly suppressing the Yuányòu and forcedly explaining the Shàoshèng. The entry on poetry and rhapsody is an apologetic for Wáng Ānshí’s abolition of the shī fù examination; the entry on Yèyuán is an apologetic for Cài Jīng’s prohibition on reading the histories; the entry on the Wáng jī is an apologetic for Cài Jīng’s renaming of gōngzhǔ to dìjī. As for his deep censure of Sū Xún’s Biàn jiān lùn — that is the most overt. Yet he was scared of public opinion, and so masked the matter in obliquity; not at all of the stripe of Chén Shàn’s Mén shī xīn huà, who would brazenly reverse right and wrong, ally with the wicked and slander the upright. Chén’s book has accordingly been excluded from the canon; this book we have preserved in record.
Respectfully revised and submitted, third month of the forty-fourth year of Qiánlóng (1779).
Abstract
The Bì shǔ lù huà is the most accessible of Yè Mèngdé’s three bǐjì (the other two being the Shílín yàn yǔ KR3j0105 and the more philosophical Yán xià fàng yán KR3j0107). Yè composed the book in the years following his retreat to the Bīanshān estate; the latest internal datable references go to Shàoxīng 13 (1143) or so, and the work was substantially complete before his death in 1148. The form is the cool bǐjì-conversation transcript of a senior literatus with his summer guests — a relaxed, reading-and-anecdote-pivoting kind of book — and is one of the principal vehicles by which Yè’s literary memory of the Yuányòu / Shàoshèng period was transmitted to the Southern Sòng.
The book has special value for its Sū Shì and Huáng Tíngjiān poetics anecdotes and for its preservation of Yè’s first-hand recollection of Yuányòu poets and politicians. The book is also (as the Sìkù editors stress) the most politically transparent of Yè’s books on his factional position: Yè owed his rise in part to Cài Jīng 蔡京, and the Bì shǔ lù huà contains the most explicit defences of the Shàoshèng reformers’ policies — particularly the abolition of the shī fù examination, the prohibition on history-reading, and the renaming of gōngzhǔ to dìjī. Yè’s defence of Wáng Ānshí against Sū Xún’s Biàn jiān lùn is also significant — the Biàn jiān lùn is a foundational anti-Wáng polemic and Yè’s response is one of the most important Southern-Sòng restorationist rejoinders. The Sìkù editors note this but, as Yè masked his arguments rather than openly polemicising, retain the book.
Dating. The conservative bracket is Shàoxīng 5 (1135) — Yè’s retreat to Bīanshān after demitting central office — to his death in 1148; internal references include the Shàoxīng 13 (1143) Jīn embassy.
The two-juàn recension is the original; Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì claim of 15 juàn is a transmission error, as the Sìkù editors confirm by collating all later citations to the surviving text and finding no missing entries. The standard text is the SKQS recension; the Jīndài mìshū (Máo Jìn) edition is also reliable.
Translations and research
No complete Western-language translation. Selected entries on Sū Shì have been translated in studies of Sū Shì literature; the book is regularly cited in modern Chinese-language Northern–Southern Sòng literary-history scholarship and in Wāng Shèng-duó 王曾瑜 and others on the Shào-shèng restoration. Modern punctuated edition by Xú Shí-yí 徐時儀 in Tángsòng shǐliào bǐjì series (Zhōnghuá shū-jú, 2007).
Links
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi 3, Bì shǔ lù huà entry.
- Wikipedia: 避暑錄話.