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歸田錄

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Text ID
KR3l0032
Date
1067–1072
Dynasty
北宋

Guītián lù 歸田錄

Records on Returning to the Fields by 歐陽修 (撰)

About the work

A two-juàn anecdote-and-memoir collection by the great Yìníng / Jiāyòu — Xīníng statesman and literatus 歐陽修 Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修 (1007–1072), composed in his post-retirement years (after 1067, completed before his death in 1072) at Yǐngzhōu 潁州. Ōuyáng Xiū declares in his own preface that he takes KR3l0006 Táng guóshǐ bǔ of Lǐ Zhào as his model, with the deliberate variation of not recording men’s faults and crimes. The work has a complex transmission: the original draft was longer and contained material that Shénzōng — when informed of the work in progress — sent eunuchs to retrieve. Ōuyáng Xiū, unwilling to submit those entries, suppressed them and rapidly assembled an alternative “official” version, padding the volume with light anecdote and witticism. The transmitted Guītián lù is the second, edited version; the original draft has been lost.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Guītián lù in 2 juàn, by the Sòng Ōuyáng Xiū. Much records court yìshì (lost matter) and shìdàfū tánxié (talk and witticism). The self-preface says: “I take Lǐ Zhào’s Táng guóshǐ bǔ as my model — but differ in not recording men’s faults and crimes.” Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí: ‘Some say the master had not yet finished this lù when his preface circulated; Yùlíng [Shénzōng] sought it out. The text being about contemporary affairs and personal experience and observation, he did not dare submit it, and rapidly composed an alternative text — the original never came out.’ Wáng Míngqīng’s Huīzhǔ sānlù: ‘Duke Ōuyáng’s Guītián lù was first written, not out; the preface was already circulating; Shénzōng saw it and sent a court envoy to demand it. At the time, Ōuyáng had retired and was at Yǐngzhōu; on account of certain entries he had not wished to make widely known, he therefore entirely excised them, and on the other hand, finding the resulting text too short, padded it with miscellaneous witticisms and trivial matter to fill the volumes. Having transcribed and submitted the new text, he did not dare preserve the old.’ Zhōu Huī’s Qīngbō zázhì tells the same story as Wáng Míngqīng — but adds that the original did once come out — slight discrepancy with Wáng. Most likely: the original gāo (draft) was one text, the version submitted was another. The “rapidly composed” story and the “excised” story are different versions of one event in transmission. As for the time-frame: Ōuyáng’s retirement to Yǐngshàng was under Shénzōng, but the lù contains entries calling Rénzōng “the present emperor” and Yīngzōng “the heir apparent” — Yīngzōng-era phrasing, perhaps from an earlier zhájì (notebook) merely re-arranged after retirement, with the writer having forgotten to update the references…

Abstract

The Guītián lù is among the most influential of Northern-Sòng bǐjì: short, elegant, conversational in tone, and self-consciously refusing the genre’s vituperative side. The entries cover Tàizǔ through Yīngzōng (i.e., Ōuyáng Xiū’s own lifetime): court personalities (including the famous portraits of Fàn Zhòngyān, Lǚ Yíjiǎn, and Ōuyáng’s own contemporaries Hán Qí, Fù Bì, Wèn Yánbó), poetry, calligraphy, examination practice, gùshì (precedent), and fēngsú (custom). The work’s transmission story — Shénzōng’s demand and Ōuyáng’s suppression of the unsubmitted draft — is itself a primary witness to the dynamics of court-elite literary production under the high-political-pressure climate of the early Xīníng New Policies period.

Standard modern critical edition: Lǚ Yǒurén 呂友仁, coll. Shéngshuǐ yàntán lù; Guītián lù (Zhōnghuá 1981, TángSòng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān). The text is also included in the Ōuyáng Xiū quán jí (Wénzhōng jí).

Translations and research

  • Egan, Ronald C. 1984. The Literary Works of Ou-yang Hsiu (1007–72). CUP. Substantial treatment of the Guītián lù, with selected translations.
  • Chen, Jo-shui. Liu Tsung-yuan and Intellectual Change in T’ang China (CUP 1992) — uses Guītián lù on Táng intellectual reception.
  • No complete European-language translation has been located.

Other points of interest

The work is the locus classicus for the famous Ōuyáng / Wáng Ānshí cí exchange (the Línjiāng xiān 臨江仙 anecdote), and for the canonical account of Lǚ Yíjiǎn’s political prudence — material that subsequent Sòng shīhuà and biji compilers repeatedly recycled. The work’s explicit programme of not recording men’s faults and crimes makes it a useful methodological complement to Sīmǎ Guāng’s KR3l0030 Sùshuǐ jìwén, which adopts the opposite editorial principle.

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