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語林

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Text ID
KR3l0089
Date
1540–1551
Dynasty
明

Yǔlín 語林

Forest of Conversations (also known as Héshì Yǔlín 何氏語林, “The Hé-Clan Forest of Conversations”) by 何良俊 (撰)

About the work

A thirty-juàn topical anecdote-collection by 何良俊 Hé Liángjùn 何良俊 (1506–1573; zì Yuánlǎng 元朗, hào Bǎizhāi 柏齋, also Qīngsēn jūshì 清森居士), a mid-Míng Sōngjiāng 松江 literatus and bibliophile best known for his Sìyǒuzhāi cóngshuō 四友齋叢說 (KR3l0090). The work is explicitly modelled on Liú Yìqìng’s 劉義慶 Shìshuō xīnyǔ 世說新語 (KR3l0002) — Hé borrows its categorical framework wholesale (38 mén, from Déxíng 德行 through Chóuxì 仇隙) and continues its narrative range from the LiúSòng down through the Yuán. The title revives that of Péi Qǐ’s 裴啟 lost Jìn-era Yǔlín (the immediate predecessor of the Shìshuō), and the work is conventionally called Héshì Yǔlín to distinguish it from Péi’s. Hé followed Liú Xiàobiāo’s 劉孝標 Shìshuō commentary practice by appending his own zhù (notes) to each entry; the total is over 2,700 entries in some 100,000 graphs. Composed at Hé’s Sōngjiāng studio during the late 1540s and completed by 1551 when Wén Zhēngmíng 文徵明 supplied the preface; the work was the principal quarry mined and reorganised a generation later by Wáng Shìzhēn 王世貞 for his Shìshuō xīnyǔ bǔ 世說新語補.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Héshì Yǔlín in 30 juàn, by the Míng Hé Liángjùn. Liángjùn’s Sìyǒuzhāi cóngshuō has already been catalogued. This compilation takes its title from the Jìn Péi Qǐ’s Yǔlín; its taxonomic principles and the headings of its ménmù (categories) take Liú Yìqìng’s Shìshuō xīnyǔ as their blueprint throughout, while collecting in supplement the affairs and traces of the Sòng, Qí, and later periods. Combined with Yìqìng’s original entries the work amounts to over 2,700 items; its winnowing is fairly careful and precise. In gathering old reports and in trimming and re-casting them, it achieves a manner of plain limpidness and elegant grace; compared with the spurious Xù Shìshuō of Lǐ Hòu 李垕 — which plundered bulkily from the Nánshǐ and Běishǐ and merely fattened its fascicles with verbose padding — it is far the better. Beneath each entry Hé furthermore composed his own zhù in the manner of Liú Xiàobiāo’s exemplar, which is likewise quite copious and rich. Among his many gleanings there are occasional inconsistencies — as Wáng Shìmào’s 王世懋 Dúshǐ dìngyí 讀史訂疑 points out, he confused the Chén Xián 陳咸 of Wáng Mǎng’s time with the Chén Xián of Hàn Chéngdì’s time, an error indeed not avoided. Yet in the conflicting reports of various books his work in fact contains many corrections — for example, in juàn 22, the entry on Jì Yuánzǎi’s 紀元載 wife Wáng Yùnxiù 王韞秀, where the cited evidence is also of the most precise and verifying kind. Though it cannot be set abreast of Línchuān (i.e. Liú Yìqìng of Línchuān) and run the same course through the ages, the discourse here has true foundation, and is in the end not to be ranked with ordinary Míng xiǎoshuō. Qiánlóng 42 (1777), 2nd month, respectfully checked. Chief Compilers: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

Hé Liángjùn was a Sōngjiāngfǔ Huátíng 華亭 (modern Shànghǎi) gentleman whose attempt at a court career miscarried (he obtained the gòngshēng status but never passed the jìnshì, served briefly as a Hànlín kǒngmù 翰林孔目 under the Jiājìng régime, and retired to his garden-estate in 1556 in disgust); his durable cultural standing rests on the Sìyǒuzhāi cóngshuō and the Yǔlín. The catalog meta of data/catalogs/meta/KR3l.yaml gives Hé’s lifedates as 1526–1573, but CBDB (c_personid 128402, source: Míngrén zhuànjì zīliào suǒyǐn p. 270) and the standard reference works give 1506–1573, followed here; the catalog meta appears to be a typographical slip (1526 for 1506).

The work’s composition window is bracketed by two firm dates: it was substantially complete by the 4th month of the xīnhài year of Jiājìng — i.e., Jiājìng 30 (1551) — when Wén Zhēngmíng (1470–1559), the senior figure of Sōngjiāng literary life and Hé’s mentor, supplied the preface that opens the WYG text; and Hé himself is reported to have begun gathering material seriously in the 1540s after taking up residence at his Sìyǒuzhāi studio. The 1551 xīnhài date in Wén’s signature (“xīnhài sìyuè zhī wàng, Wén Zhēngmíng shū”) is the firmest single anchor for the work and is the basis for the notAfter of 1551. The book was first printed in Jiājìng (the Lù Shūshēngzhāi 陸氏書聲齋 edition survives), and was reissued repeatedly in the Wànlì.

The work’s structural significance is double. First, it is the most successful Míng continuation of the Shìshuō xīnyǔ tradition: where the spurious Xù Shìshuō attributed to Lǐ Hòu (Sòng) was rejected by the Sìkù compilers as a mechanical paste-up from the Nánshǐ and Běishǐ, Hé’s work earned the Sìkù’s grudging praise as having “real foundation” (yán yǒu gēndǐ 語有根柢). The 38-category framework reproduces Liú Yìqìng’s exactly, but Hé’s narrative range extends from the Liùcháo down through Táng, Sòng, Yuán; combined with the Shìshuō originals (which Hé did not duplicate — see the preface: “fán Liú suǒ yǐ jiàn zé bù fù shū”) the Yǔlín effectively offers a Shìshuō-style topical index to a thousand years of literati anecdote. Second, the Yǔlín became the principal Vorlage for Wáng Shìzhēn’s 王世貞 (1526–1590) Shìshuō xīnyǔ bǔ 世說新語補, a Wànlì compilation that wove Hé’s selections back into Liú Yìqìng’s text to produce the hybrid edition that dominated late Míng — Qīng Shìshuō circulation. Wáng Shìzhēn’s bǔ is now generally regarded as having borrowed extensively (some scholars say plagiaristically) from the Yǔlín; the relationship between the two works is the central textual question in modern Shìshuō-tradition scholarship.

Wén Zhēngmíng’s preface frames the work polemically against the late-Sòng xìngmìng (Neo-Confucian moral-philosophy) tradition, which Wén characterizes as having drifted into idle quietism and verbal poverty; the Yǔlín’s revival of the Shìshuō mode — short, pointed, conversational, attentive to language as such (shí wéi yǔyán wéi zōng 寔惟語言為宗) — is presented as a corrective to that drift. The preface should be read together with the broader mid-Míng Wújùn literary movement around Wén Zhēngmíng, Zhù Yǔnmíng 祝允明, and Tāng Xián 唐顯, who valorized Six-Dynasties belletristic prose against the Táigétǐ of the early-Míng court.

The pseudo-Lǐ Hòu Xù Shìshuō attacked in the Sìkù tíyào is the work catalogued elsewhere in Sìkù under the same title; modern scholarship has shown that work is not by Lǐ Hòu but is a Míng forgery.

Translations and research

  • Qián Nán-xiù 錢南秀. Spirit and Self in Medieval China: The Shih-shuo hsin-yü and Its Legacy. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001. Chapter on the Hé-shì Yǔlín as a Shìshuō continuation; the principal English-language treatment of the work.
  • Qián Nán-xiù. “Hé-shì Yǔlín yǔ Míng-dài Shì-shuō tǐ xiǎo-shuō zhī fù-xīng” 何氏語林與明代世說體小說之復興. In Wén-xué yí-chǎn 文學遺產 (2000).
  • Níng Jià-yǔ 寧稼雨. Zhōng-guó zhì-rén xiǎo-shuō shǐ 中國志人小說史. Shěn-yáng: Liáo-níng rén-mín, 1991. Treats Yǔlín as the central work of Míng zhì-rén xiǎo-shuō revival.
  • Zhōu Xīng-lù 周興陸 (annot.). Hé-shì Yǔlín 何氏語林. Shàng-hǎi gǔ-jí, 2018. Modern critical edition with collation against the Jiā-jìng Lù Shū-shēng-zhāi printing and the WYG; the standard scholarly text.
  • Mather, Richard B. Shih-shuo Hsin-yü: A New Account of Tales of the World. 2nd ed., University of Michigan, 2002. Mather’s introduction discusses the Yǔlín — Shìshuō xīnyǔ bǔ line of transmission as the principal late-Imperial vehicle of the Shìshuō.
  • No full European-language translation of the Yǔlín itself has been located.

Other points of interest

The textual relationship between the Yǔlín and Wáng Shìzhēn’s Shìshuō xīnyǔ bǔ is the central modern controversy. Wáng Shìzhēn’s bǔ reproduces an enormous proportion of Hé’s selections without attribution, restructuring them under the Shìshuō headings as if continuing Liú Yìqìng directly; the Sìkù tíyào to the Shìshuō xīnyǔ bǔ notes the borrowing but does not pursue the question of plagiarism. Modern editors (Qián Nánxiù, Zhōu Xīnglù) have established that for the post-Shìshuō (post-420 C.E.) material, the Shìshuō xīnyǔ bǔ is essentially a re-edition of Hé Liángjùn. This makes the Yǔlín the actual source-text for much of what late-Imperial and early-modern readers took to be Wáng Shìzhēn’s own contribution to Shìshuō-style historiography.

A secondary point: Hé Liángjùn’s interest in Yuán-dynasty literary anecdote (the Yǔlín is the only Shìshuō-type work that systematically includes Yuán material) makes it a useful source for Yuán literary biography, where standard zhèngshǐ coverage is thin.

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