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東臯子集

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Text ID
KR4c0001
Date
644–644
Dynasty
唐

Dōnggāo zǐ jí 東臯子集

Collected Works of the Master of the Eastern Knoll (Wáng Jì) by 王績 (撰)

About the work

Dōnggāo zǐ jí 東臯子集 (“Collection of the Master of the Eastern Knoll”) is the Táng-period collection of the recluse-poet Wáng Jì 王績 (zì Wúgōng 無功, d. 644), younger brother of the Confucian classicist Wáng Tōng 王通 (Wénzhōng zǐ 文中子). The catalog records the Sìkù 3-juǎn version, but the corpus’s actual digitization here is the SBCK 5-juǎn edition; both are descendants of the recension assembled by his friend Lǚ Cái 呂才 from Wáng’s scattered manuscripts. Despite its small bulk it is one of the most important documents of early-Táng poetry: Wáng Jì’s Yě wàng 野望 (“Gazing on the Wilds”) is conventionally cited as the earliest mature pentasyllabic lǜshī 律詩 — the form that would dominate the High-Táng generation a century later — and the Zuì xiāng jì 醉鄉記 (“Record of the Land of Drunkenness”) and Wǔdǒu xiānshēng zhuàn 五斗先生傳 prefigure the zájì and zìzhuàn idioms of the Sòng. Wáng styled himself a follower of Táo Yuānmíng 陶淵明 and Liú Líng 劉伶 and refused all but the lowliest office (tàiyuè chéng 太樂丞, sought purely for the brewing rights it carried).

Tiyao

No tíyào in source. The KR4c0001 file in this corpus is digitized from the SBCK base, which carries Lǚ Cái’s 呂才 original Dōnggāo zǐ jí xù 東臯子集序, a Shān Dōnggāo zǐ jí xù 刪東臯子集序 by Lù Chún 陸淳 (Píngyuán), a Dōnggāo zǐ zhuàn 東臯子傳 (essentially the Xīn Tángshū biography), and a colophon by Sū Shì 蘇軾 (Shū Dōnggāo zǐ zhuàn) — but no Sìkù tíyào. The Sìkù WYG 3-juǎn tíyào is recorded in the Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào and may be consulted there; it follows Lǚ Cái’s preface in characterizing Wáng Jì as a WèiJìn literary descendant in Táng dress.

Abstract

The transmitted Dōnggāo zǐ jí is the work of Lǚ Cái 呂才 (d. 665), a younger contemporary and close friend of Wáng Jì, who collected the surviving shī, fù, and prose into 5 juǎn shortly after Wáng’s death and supplied the introductory biography that is our principal source for Wáng’s career. A late-Táng abridgement by Lù Chún 陸淳 (d. 805) reduced the collection to 3 juǎn; the SòngYuán transmission carried both versions in parallel. The Sìkù compilers received a 3-juǎn recension (printed from a Míng manuscript through Jiāo Hóng 焦竑 — see the qīngcháng dàorén postface in the SBCK file, dated 1609); the 5-juǎn expanded recension is the basis of the SBCK reproduction.

The collection contains the Yóu Běishān fù 遊北山賦 — Wáng Jì’s longest work, a substantial autobiographical fù surveying his disenchantment with public office, the ruined house of his elder brother Wáng Tōng on the Báiniú xī 白牛溪 (where Tōng had taught a circle of disciples that Wáng Jì lists by name: Dǒng Héng 董恒, Chéng Yuán 程元, Fèi Qióng 費瓊, Xuē Shōu 薛收, Yáo Yì 姚義, Wēn Yànbó 溫彥博, Dù Yān 杜淹, etc.), and the recluse community Wáng joined on the Hézhǔ 河渚 island in the Fén river. It also gathers his three zhuàn — Wǔdǒu xiānshēng zhuàn 五斗先生傳 (“Biography of Mr. Five Pecks”), Wúxīn zǐ zhuàn 無心子傳 (“Biography of the No-Mind Master”), and Zhòngcháng xiānshēng zhuàn 仲長先生傳 (for his neighbor the mute recluse Zhòngcháng Zǐguāng 仲長子光) — and the celebrated Zuì xiāng jì 醉鄉記, which became the model for SòngYuánMíng “lands of intoxication” and was directly imitated by Sū Shì 蘇軾 in his own writing on drink.

Wáng Jì’s birth year is undocumented; the conventional bracket ca. 590–644 derives from a backward-projection from his jǔ of xiàotì liánjié in Dàyè 大業 (=605–618) and his death in Zhēnguān 18 (644). His zì Wúgōng 無功 (“Without Merit”) is itself a literary statement, as he explained in his Zì zhuàn mùzhì 自撰墓誌 (also preserved here): yǒu dào yú jǐ, wú gōng yú shí 有道於己無功於時 (“having the Way for himself, having no merits for the age”). The catalog meta gives him as 唐 dynasty even though most of his life fell under the Suí; the convention follows Lǚ Cái’s preface, which dates Wáng’s last career fully into the Tang.

Translations and research

  • Ding Xiang Warner. 2003. A Wild Deer Amid Soaring Phoenixes: The Opposition Poetics of Wang Ji. University of Hawai’i Press. The standard English monograph and partial translation; argues for Wáng Jì as a deliberately oppositional voice within the early-Táng cultural project.
  • Han Lizhou 韓理洲, ed. 1987. Wáng Wú-gōng wén jí, wǔ juǎn běn huì jiào 王無功文集五卷本會校. Shànghǎi gǔjí. The standard modern critical edition, restoring the Lǚ Cái 5-juǎn recension from manuscript witnesses.
  • Stephen Owen. 1977. The Poetry of the Early T’ang. Yale UP. Includes substantial discussion of Wáng Jì’s place at the threshold of the lǜshī tradition.
  • Jin Ronghua 金榮華 et al. 1985. Wáng Jì shī wén xì nián 王績詩文繫年. Wenhua daxue.

Other points of interest

The SBCK fù file carries a colophon by Jiāo Hóng 焦竑 (1540–1620, Qīngcháng dàorén 清常道人) dated jǐyǒu of Wànlì 37 (1609), confirming the Míng provenance of this branch of the textual transmission. Wáng’s brother Wáng Tōng 王通 (583–617, Wénzhōng zǐ) is the central figure of the Zhōng shuō 中說 (KR3j0011) — his Confucian-revival Lúnyǔ-imitation that is principally interesting as a window onto the early-Táng circle that produced Wèi Zhēng 魏徵, Fáng Xuánlíng 房玄齡, Dù Rúhuì 杜如晦, etc.; that the brother of so reputedly orthodox a teacher should have written the Zuì xiāng jì and refused the early-Táng court is one of the recurring puzzles of the collection.

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