孔北海集

Kǒng Běihǎi jí 孔北海集

Collected Works of Kǒng Róng, Director of Běihǎi by 孔融 (撰)

About the work

Kǒng Běihǎi jí 孔北海集 in one juǎn preserves the surviving writings of Kǒng Róng 孔融 (153–208), a twentieth-generation descendant of Confucius and one of the Jiànān qī zǐ 建安七子 (Seven Masters of the Jiàn’ān period), here titled by his appointment as Běihǎi xiàng 北海相 (Director / Chancellor of Běihǎi). The collection is a Míng-dynasty re-aggregation, drawn from the standard histories and lèishū, of forty-four mostly fragmentary pieces (memorial, prose, verse, including three controversial six-syllable poems). The Hàn original of nine to fifteen juǎn attested in the Suíshū and Táng bibliographies was lost no later than the Sòng. Kǒng was famously executed by Cáo Cāo for the kind of frank political satire which the surviving text, even in fragments, vividly attests.

Tiyao

Kǒng Běihǎi jí in one juǎn, by Kǒng Róng of the Hàn. Wèi Wéndì’s Diǎn lùn lùn wén 典論論文 says, “Master Kǒng’s writing is excellent and full of unusual qi; the inclination of his brush and ink is hardly to be surpassed.” The Hòu Hàn shū biography of Róng also says that Wèi Wéndì greatly admired Róng’s writings and exclaimed, “He is a peer of Yáng [Xióng] and Bān [Gù],” and ordered an empire-wide reward in gold and silk for anyone offering up Róng’s compositions. He composed twenty-five pieces in all in poetry, sòng, bēiwén, lùnyì, six-syllable verse, cè, biǎo, xí, jiào lìng, and shū jì. The Suíshū jīngjí zhì records Kǒng Róng jí in nine juǎn (with a Liáng note: ten juǎn + a one-juǎn table of contents) — already an enlargement on the biography. Both Tang bibliographies give ten juǎn, the same as the Liáng. The Sòngshǐ no longer records the work, so the collection presumably perished in the Sòng.

The present edition is what Míng scholars patched together from history and lèishū: one biǎo, one shū, three shàngshū, two zòushì, one yì, one duì, one jiào, sixteen shū, one bēimíng, four lùn, and assorted poems — forty-five pieces in total; but the Shèngrén yōu liè lùn 聖人優劣論 is one composition the editors split into two, so the real total is forty-four. Zhāng Pǔ’s 張溥 Bǎi sān jiā jí gives nearly the same selection, two jiào short — Zài gào Gāomì lìng jiào 再告高密令教 and Gào Gāomì xiàn liáo shǔ jiào 告高密縣僚屬教.

The pieces are by and large bits and snippets gleaned from the standard histories and lèishū; head and tail are usually missing. Even Sū Shì 蘇軾, in his preface to the Kǒng Běihǎi zàn 孔北海贊, says he had read Kǒng’s Yángshì sìgōng zàn 楊氏四公贊 — a piece not in the present edition. So even what the Sòng could see is no longer all here. Nevertheless, the man being a vessel of state and the writings rare and precious, even the leavings deserve preservation. The six-syllable verse is mentioned in the biography; the three pieces transmitted today are stylistically lowbrow and praise Cáo Cāo’s accomplishments and virtue at length — judging by Kǒng’s life, they cannot be his. Even if such pieces existed in older recensions, they must have been forgeries circulated during the Huángchū-era buy-up of his works to flatter Cáo Cāo, and cannot be authenticated. As they have circulated long, we leave them in but note here our suspicion of forgery.

The pieces in this collection have jiān shì běn shì 箋釋本事 by an unidentified hand. The shūzòu group has these notes appended to the end of each piece; the shūjiào group has them inserted as interlinear notes after the title — inconsistent. We have now uniformly inserted them under the title to standardize. Reverently collated, third month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Chief compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The original Hàn collection of Kǒng Róng’s writings — twenty-five pieces according to the Hòu Hàn shū biography (juǎn 70), nine to ten juǎn in Suí and Táng bibliographies — was lost between the Táng and the Sòng. The present one-juǎn recension is a Míng aggregation of forty-four substantive pieces (forty-five if one accidentally split lùn is double-counted) salvaged from the standard histories, the Wén xuǎn, the Yìwén lèi jù 藝文類聚, the Tài píng yù lǎn 太平御覽, and other lèishū. The Sìkù compilers (Jì Yún 紀昀 et al., submitted Qiánlóng 46 / 1781) accept the collection while flagging the three transmitted six-syllable poems as Huángchū-era forgeries: the poems’ fawning praise of Cáo Cāo is incompatible with Kǒng’s life, which ended at Cáo Cāo’s hands in 208 on charges of bù xiào 不孝.

Important fragments include the Lùn shèngrén yōu liè 聖人優劣論 (on the relative ranking of sages), various biǎo on appointments and policy, shū including the brilliantly satirical Yǔ Cáo Cāo lùn shèng Xiào shū 與曹操論盛孝書 against Cáo Cāo’s prohibition of liquor, the Lùn liú Hé fǎ 論留合法 memorial, and the celebrated Jiàn shū to his sons. Kǒng’s status as a Confucian descendant (twentieth-generation 孔子裔孫), as a gāo shì 高士 in the gāo shì tradition, and as a martyr to free political speech under Cáo Cāo gave his writings a moral charge that explains the persistent MíngQīng effort to reassemble even the fragmentary remains.

For dating: the catalog frontmatter gives no fixed point because the work is a Míng aggregation; the bracket here (1500–1644) reflects the Míng compilation window, not Kǒng’s lifetime. The Sìkù compilers’ caveat about the six-syllable poems should be carried forward by any reader who uses the WYG text for stylistic analysis.

Translations and research

• Robert Joe Cutter. 1992. “To the Manner Born? Nature and Nurture in Early Medieval Chinese Literary Thought,” in Wen-hsin Yeh, ed., Cultural Politics in Modern China. Discusses Kǒng’s reputation in Diǎn lùn lùn wén.
• Donald Holzman. 1976. Poetry and Politics: The Life and Works of Juan Chi (A.D. 210–263). Cambridge UP. Frames Kǒng’s place in the late-Hàn / Wèi political-literary climate that produced the Jiàn-ān qī zǐ and the Zhulín qī xián 竹林七賢.
• Stephen Owen. 1986. Remembrances: The Experience of the Past in Classical Chinese Literature. HUP. Touches on Kǒng’s reception.
• Sūn Mínjūn 孫明君. 2007. Hàn-Wèi wén xué yǔ zhèng zhì 漢魏文學與政治. Shāngwù — discusses the rhetorical economy of Kǒng’s writings.
• Yú Yīng-shí 余英時. 1980. Shǐ xué yǔ chuán tǒng 史學與傳統. Shídài — see chapter on the Confucian moral-political voice of late-Hàn intellectuals, including Kǒng Róng.

Other points of interest

The famous late-Hàn comic anecdote about Kǒng (aged ten) silencing the zhōngshū Chén Wěi 陳煒 with the bons mots “ones who are clever in childhood are not always so as adults” is from Shìshuō xīn yǔ 世說新語 (Yán yǔ 言語); it is not in the jí, but the jí preserves the sharp-tongued voice that anecdote idealizes. Kǒng’s death — sentenced for bù xiào on the strength of his own iconoclastic remarks (e.g., that the parent–child bond is a one-way debt of the breeding act) — became the canonical case study of Cáo Cāo’s intolerance of Confucian moral-political opposition.

Links

• Kong Rong (Wikipedia)
• Kong Rong (Wikidata Q707081)
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §62.6 (literary collections of the late Hàn).