聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

曹子建集

8 min read

Text ID
KR4b0004
Date
1213–1213
Dynasty
魏

Cáo Zǐjiàn jí 曹子建集

Collected Works of Cáo Zǐjiàn (Cáo Zhí, Prince Sī of Chén) by 曹植 (撰)

About the work

Cáo Zǐjiàn jí 曹子建集 in ten juǎn (with a one-juǎn appendix Yí zì yīn shì 疑字音釋, “phonetic annotations on doubtful characters”) preserves the writings of Cáo Zhí 曹植 (192–232), the third son of Cáo Cāo and posthumously titled Prince Sī of Chén 陳思王. The base of the present recension is a Sòng Níngzōng 宋寧宗 Jiādìng 6 (= 1213) edition, recut and incorporated into the Sìkù. It carries 44 fù, 74 shī, and 92 miscellaneous prose pieces — a total of 210, exceeding the ca. 100 pieces enumerated in the Wèi zhì biography. Cáo Zhí is the canonical poet of the Jiànān 建安 style, and this collection is the principal source for the rich corpus of his yuèfǔ, lyric, fù (notably the Luò shén fù 洛神賦), letters (notably the Yǔ Yáng Dézǔ shū 與楊德祖書), and the Qī ài 七哀 lament.

Tiyao

By Cáo Zhí of the Wèi. The Wèi zhì biography says that in the Jǐngchū 景初 reign-period (237–239) Cáo Zhí’s fù, sòng, shī, míng, and miscellaneous lùn were edited and recorded — over a hundred pieces in all, with copies stored within and outside the palace. The Suíshū jīngjí zhì gives the Chén Sī wáng jí 陳思王集 in thirty juǎn; the Tángshū yìwén zhì gives twenty juǎn, but also further records “another thirty-juǎn version” — meaning the thirty-juǎn recension of Suí days was the old text, and the twenty-juǎn version was a later re-edited combination; in fact only one collection. Zhèng Qiáo’s 鄭樵 Tōngzhì lüè records both. Jiāo Hóng’s 焦竑 Guó shǐ jīng jí zhì combined the juǎn counts of the two and called Cáo’s collection 50 juǎn — a gross error.

Chén Zhènsūn’s 陳振孫 Shū lù jiě tí 書錄解題 also gives twenty juǎn, but Chén notes that some pieces are taken from the Yù lǎn 御覽, Shū chāo 書鈔, and Lèi jù 類聚 — thus already not the original Tang twenty-juǎn. The Wén xiàn tōng kǎo gives ten juǎn, again departing from Chén’s recension. The present edition has the date “Jiādìng 6 guǐyǒu” (= 1213) after its table of contents — so it is a re-cutting of the Sòng Níngzōng-era text, presumably the same as the Tōng kǎo version. It carries 44 fù, 74 shī, 92 miscellaneous prose pieces — 210 in total, exceeding the Wèi zhì’s “over a hundred.” But residual fragments and short scraps are mixed in: the Yáo què 鷂雀 and Biān fú 蝙蝠 fù both come from the Yìwén lèi jù 藝文類聚, where the citation convention is “Mr. So-and-so’s whatever fù says…,” and the editor has mistakenly taken the introductory “says” 曰 as part of the text proper, joined to the fù’s opening line — a clear oversight.

The Qī ài 七哀 poem was set to music by Jìn-period musicians, with the text adjusted (added or cut) to fit prosody, as recorded in the Sòngshū music treatise. The present edition does not preserve Cáo’s original wording but only the adjusted music-text — also wrong. The Qì fù piān 棄婦篇 is in the Yùtái xīnyǒng 玉臺新詠 and the Tài píng yù lǎn; an eight-character mirror inscription, palindromic and rhyming, is genuinely the earliest huí wén 回文 (reverse-reading) verse, preserved in the Yìwén lèi jù — yet here omitted. The Shàn zāi xíng 善哉行 is given by all editions as old (anonymous) lyric, here mistaken as Cáo’s; the editors did not recognize that the Dāng lái rì dà nán 當來日大難 listed below is the same piece — if both were Cáo’s, would he have copied his own composition out twice?

The WángSòng qī shī 王宋妻詩, the Yìwén lèi jù gives to Wèi Wéndì; Xíng Kǎi’s 邢凱 Tǎn zhāi tōng biān 坦齋通編, citing an old recension of Yùtái xīnyǒng, gives it to Cáo Zhí; the present Yùtái xīnyǒng assigns it to WángSòng’s wife herself — different views which should be jointly recorded for comparison, but here are simply omitted. None of which can call this a “good edition.” Yet the pre-Táng original was lost, and later cutters of Cáo’s collection all took the present edition as ancestor; nothing older survives. We accept it as the only available text. (The Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào edition was used here for translation as the WYG _000.txt in this corpus carries only the table of contents.)

Abstract

The transmission of Cáo Zhí’s writings is one of the more vexed cases in early-medieval Chinese literary history. The Wèi-court compilation of “over one hundred pieces” recorded by Wèi zhì (Jǐngchū-era, 237–239) is no longer recoverable. The Suí jīngjí zhì records 30 juǎn; the Tángshū yìwén zhì records 20 juǎn alongside an alternative 30-juǎn version; Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiě tí (Sòng) records 20 juǎn but flags textual contamination from lèishū; the Wén xiàn tōng kǎo gives 10 juǎn. The Sìkù base text is the Sòng Níngzōng Jiādìng 6 (1213) printing, with 210 pieces (44 fù, 74 shī, 92 prose) — a count that exceeds the original Wèi-era enumeration, indicating Sòng-era over-collection from lèishū and music-bureau sources rather than authoritative transmission.

The Sìkù compilers (Liǎngjiāng Zǒngdū 兩江總督 cǎijìn běn — submitted from the Liǎngjiāng provincial channel) catalog substantial editorial flaws: (a) two fù (Yáo què, Biān fú) carry stray “yuē 曰” from the Yìwén lèi jù citation conventions absorbed as opening text, (b) the Qī ài preserved is the music-bureau-altered version not Cáo’s original, (c) Shàn zāi xíng and Dāng lái rì dà nán are duplicate copies of one anonymous yuèfǔ both wrongly assigned to Cáo, (d) the celebrated mirror-inscription palindrome (a candidate for the earliest huí wén in Chinese literature) is not collected. Despite these flaws, the Sìkù compilers retain the edition because no earlier complete recension survives.

The signal pieces of permanent literary importance include: the Luò shén fù 洛神賦 (one of the great love-fù of Chinese tradition); the Qī āi 七哀 (lament for the political-erotic disgrace of being passed over for the succession); the Bái mǎ piān 白馬篇 (chivalric yuèfǔ); the seven Zá shī 雜詩; the Zèng Bái Mǎ Wáng Biāo 贈白馬王彪 (his greatest political poem, on the death of his half-brother Cáo Biāo 曹彪 under Wèi-court suspicion); the letters Yǔ Yáng Dézǔ shū 與楊德祖書 and Yǔ Wú Jìzhòng shū 與吳季重書; the Qī qǐ 七啓 in the qī-genre tradition; and the prose Biàn dào lùn 辯道論 against Daoist fāngshì charlatans. Cáo’s posthumous title — Chén Sī wáng 陳思王 — and the late-Táng Lǐ Shàn 李善 commentary on the Wén xuǎn 文選 fixed his image as the consummate fù-poet of the Jiànān mode. The included one-juǎn appendix Yí zì yīn shì 疑字音釋 is a Sòng-era phonetic / textual gloss on doubtful characters in the collection.

Translations and research

  • George W. Kent. 1969. Worlds of Dust and Jade: 47 Poems and Ballads of the Third Century Chinese Poet Ts’ao Chih. Philosophical Library. The first substantial English-language selection.
  • Hugh M. Stimson, tr. 1976. “The Poems of Cáo Zhí,” in Wú-Chī Liu and Irving Yúchéng Lo, eds., Sunflower Splendor. Indiana UP.
  • Robert Joe Cutter. 2021. The Poetry of Cao Zhi. De Gruyter (Library of Chinese Humanities). The standard complete English translation.
  • Jean-Pierre Diény. 1986. Les Sept Tristesses (Qi ai), poèmes complets de Cao Zhi. Collège de France. French complete translation.
  • Hans Frankel. 1964. “Fifteen Poems by Ts’ao Chih: An Attempt at a New Approach.” JAOS 84.1: 1–14.
  • Robert Joe Cutter. 2017. “Cao Zhi 曹植 (192–232) and his Liang Court Reception,” in Studies in Chinese Religions 3.4: 360–376.
  • Yip, David. 2017. Cao Zhi he ta de shige 曹植和他的詩歌. Beijing: Zhonghua. PRC standard biography.
  • Zhào Yòuwén 趙幼文, ed. 1984. Cáo Zhí jí jiào zhù 曹植集校註. Rénmín wénxué — the principal modern Chinese critical edition.
  • Robert Joe Cutter. 1989. “Cao Zhi’s (192–232) Symposium Poems.” CLEAR 11: 1–32.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tíyào used the Sòng Jiādìng 6 print (cut from the version recorded by Wén xiàn tōng kǎo). The fact that the present 210-piece collection over-shoots the Wèi-court count of “over 100” is a significant red flag: any Cáo Zhí poem or fù preserved here ought to be cross-checked against Yìwén lèi jù, Yùtái xīnyǒng, Wén xuǎn, and the music treatises before being used as solid textual evidence for Cáo’s authorial voice. The corpus has been a happy hunting ground for SòngMíng forgers and editorial conflations.

Graph View

Backlinks