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陸士龍文集

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Text ID
KR4b0007
Date
1200–1200
Dynasty
晉 (recompiled 宋)

Lù Shìlóng wén jí 陸士龍文集

Collected Works of Lù Shìlóng (Lù Yún) by 陸雲 (撰)

About the work

Lù Shìlóng wén jí 陸士龍文集 in ten juǎn (with a one-juǎn appended Jìn shū běn zhuàn 晉書本傳, “Lù Yún’s biography from the Jìn shū”) preserves the writings of Lù Yún 陸雲 (262–303), the younger of the Èr Lù 二陸 brothers. Lù Yún rose to Qīnghé nèishǐ 清河內史 (the title under which the SBCK volume identifies him) and was killed alongside his elder brother 陸機 in 303 in the chaos of the Bā wáng zhī luàn. The Jìn shū says his prose was rated below his brother’s but his argumentation above it; the present collection — re-edited by Xú Mínzhān 徐民瞻 of Xìn’ān in Sòng Qìngyuán gēngshēn (1200) as the second half of the Jìn èr jùn wén jí 晉二俊文集 — leads with the philosophical Yì mín fù 逸民賦 (fù on the man-apart-from-the-world) and the matching Yì mín zhēn 逸民箴, and continues with assorted fù, qǐ (memorials of recommendation), shū (letters), funerary inscriptions, and a substantial body of letters to his brother Lù Jī.

Tiyao

By Lù Yún of the Jìn. Yún and his elder brother Jī were equally famous and were known as the Èr Lù. The standard histories say that Yún’s wénzhāng did not match his brother’s, but his chí lùn (argumentation) exceeded his brother’s. Now, looking at the various qǐ in this collection, his strict, well-grounded remonstrance and frank counsel come close to the spirit of antiquity’s principled men. As for the rich and dense literary texture and the deep-and-elegant sense, brother and brother are nearly equals — once Wú was conquered, the two paragons (èr jùn 二俊) were not easily ranked.

The Suíshū jīngjí zhì records Yún jí in twelve juǎn (with a Liáng-era ancestor of ten juǎn + one-juǎn table of contents) — already differing in count from the Liáng. The new Tángshū yìwén zhì gives only ten juǎn; the twelve-juǎn version had already disappeared. By the Southern Sòng, even the ten-juǎn version was fading. In the Qìngyuán reign-period (1195–1200), Xú Mínzhān 徐民瞻 of Xìn’ān 信安 first re-obtained it from the Mìshūshěng 秘書省 archive and printed it together with 陸機’s collection. But the Sòng print is no longer extant; what circulates today is the present edition.

The standard histories say Yún’s writings number 349 pieces; this volume records only over two hundred — apparently not a complete text. The pre-Sòng original was long lost, and this volume represents a re-aggregation of scattered remnants, hence the rather chaotic order. For example, the second of the two Dā xiōng Píngyuán shī 答兄平原詩 — the Xíng yǐ yuàn lù cháng 行矣怨路長 piece — is in fact Lù Jī’s zèng (gift-poem) to Yún, included by Féng Wéinè 馮惟訥 in Shī jì 詩紀 under Lù Jī, but here mistakenly placed under Yún as dā (response) to his brother. Furthermore, the Lǜ fáng hán qīng shí 綠房含青實 four-line excerpt and the Xiāo yáo jìn nán pàn 逍遙近南畔 two-line excerpt are actually scraps from the Yìwén lèi jù 藝文類聚 fúqú (lotus) and xiào (whistling) categories — fragments without their full body — which Féng’s Shī jì registers as shī tí (titles missing) at the end with the lèishū note. Here they are simply mis-titled as Fú róng 芙蓉 and Xiào 嘯, evidently the work of an unlearned Míng editor working after Féng’s Shī jì. Lù Yún’s original collection is no longer accessible; through this volume we still get a tenth of the whole. We therefore retain it as is and record only its general outline.

(Translated from the Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào edition; the WYG 000.txt for KR4b0007 is missing in this corpus, hence falling back to Zinbun per CLAUDE.md guidance.)

Abstract

The Suíshū jīngjí zhì and Liáng-era catalogs already disagree on the juǎn count of Lù Yún’s works (Liáng 10, Suí 12). The Jìn shū biography reports Lù Yún composed 349 piān in his lifetime; the present text contains only “over two hundred” — i.e., perhaps two-thirds of the historical corpus. The base text is the Sòng Qìngyuán gēngshēn (1200) edition by Xú Mínzhān 徐民瞻 (printed jointly with Lù Jī’s collection as Jìn èr jùn wén jí 晉二俊文集), recovered from the Sòng Mìshūshěng; the Sòng print itself is no longer extant, and later editions descend through the editorial hand of Míng compilers (the tíyào notes evidence of Míng-editor confusion in mis-naming fragmentary lèishū extracts).

The signature works in the corpus are: the Yì mín fù 逸民賦 with its responsive Yì mín zhēn 逸民箴 (statement of the philosophical-political disengagement that was the brothers’ shared ethos in Wú); the Suì mù fù 歲暮賦; the Chóu lín fù 愁霖賦; the Hán chán fù 寒蟬賦 (one of his most admired pieces); the long correspondence with his brother Lù Jī (Yǔ xiōng Píngyuán shū 與兄平原書 — the most extensive surviving early-medieval Chinese literary correspondence, an indispensable source for the writing process behind Lù Jī’s Wén fù 文賦); and various qǐ (memorials of recommendation) which the tíyào praises as the moral-political voice of the volume.

The standard biography in Jìn shū 54 (which is appended in one juǎn to this collection in the WYG) gives Lù Yún’s life as 262–303, executed alongside Lù Jī by Sīmǎ Yǐng on the Lú Zhì 盧志 denunciation. CBDB confirms 262–303.

Translations and research

  • David R. Knechtges. 2014. Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature: A Reference Guide, vol. 2. Brill, s.v. Lù Yún. Standard English-language reference article.
  • Liú Yùnhǎo 劉運好. 2010. Lù Shìlóng wén jí jiào zhù 陸士龍文集校註. Fènghuáng. The principal modern critical edition.
  • Huáng Kuīluán 黃葵彎. 1988. Lù Yún jí 陸雲集. Zhōnghuá. Critical edition with index.
  • David R. Knechtges. 2002. “Sweet-peel Orange or Southern Gold? Regional Identity in Western Jin Literature,” in Studies in Early Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History in Honor of Richard B. Mather and Donald Holzman, ed. Paul Kroll and David Knechtges. Sino-Platonic Papers — discusses both Èr Lù in their Wú-southern context.
  • Knechtges. 2004. “Han and Six Dynasties Parallel Prose,” Renditions 33–34, includes Lù Yún translations.
  • Wú Pèilín 吳培林. 2014. Èr Lù yán jiū 二陸研究. Shàngwù — substantial PRC monograph on the brothers.

Other points of interest

The Yǔ xiōng Píngyuán shū 與兄平原書 letters preserved in this collection are the single most important contemporary source for the gestation of Lù Jī’s Wén fù 文賦: in them Lù Yún reads, criticizes, and proposes specific revisions to drafts of his brother’s pieces — a level of intimate compositional detail unique in the corpus of surviving early-medieval Chinese letters. Modern study of the Wén fù (Owen, Knechtges, Yáng Mù) all draw on these letters for evidence about the Wén fù’s textual history.

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