Lú Shēngzhī jí 盧昇之集
Collected Works of Lú Shēng-zhī (Lú Zhào-lín) by 盧照鄰 (撰)
About the work
Lú Shēngzhī jí 盧昇之集 in 7 juǎn — also transmitted under the alternative title Yōuyōu zǐ jí 幽憂子集 (the zhōjí xuáncí 著集懸詞 hào Lú took on after his crippling illness) — is the late-Míng recompilation of the surviving writings of Lú Zhàolín 盧照鄰 (ca. 634–686), third of the Sì jié 四傑 (“Four Outstanding Ones”) of early-Táng letters. The recompiler is again Zhāng Xiè 張燮 張燮, in his Wànlì 萬曆 Qīshí èr jiā jí 七十二家集 series, who supplied the substantial Yōuyōu zǐ jí tící 幽憂子集題詞 that opens the SBCK reproduction. The collection contains fù, gǔshī, lǜshī, juéjù, and a small body of prose — most importantly the autobiographical Wǔ bēi wén 五悲文 (“Five Laments”) and the Shì jí wén 釋疾文 (“Letter of Reconciliation with Illness”), composed in the depths of his crippling autoimmune disease and including the famous suicide note that prefaces his eventual self-drowning in the Yǐngshuǐ 潁水.
Tiyao
No tíyào in source. The KR4c0005 file in this corpus is digitized from the SBCK base, which preserves Zhāng Xiè’s preface (the Yōuyōu zǐ jí tící 幽憂子集題詞) and a list of collaborating editors but not the Sìkù tíyào. The Sìkù WYG 7-juǎn tíyào (V1065.5) survives in the Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào.
Abstract
The Jiù Tángshū records a Lú Zhàolín jí in 20 juǎn, the Xīn Tángshū in 20 juǎn; this 20-juǎn recension is reflected in the Lú biography that the Sìkù compilers found in their copy. By the Wànlì period only a 2-juǎn selection of shī fù (the so-called Yǒngjiā dānxíng běn 永嘉单行本, named after its print location in Wēnzhōu) was in circulation — Zhāng Xiè cross-checked this against Wén yuàn yīng huá 文苑英華 and recovered enough additional matter to expand the corpus to 7 juǎn (3 of shī fù, 4 of wén). The Sìkù compilers received Zhāng’s 7-juǎn recension and printed it.
Lú Zhàolín (ca. 634–686 per CBDB; the catalog meta gives ca. 641 – ca. 680, in line with the older Wén Yīduō 聞一多 hypothesis; CBDB followed here for the death year, with ca. 634 as the modern earliest defensible birth-year) was a member of the powerful Fànyáng 范陽 Lú clan; zì Shēngzhī 昇之, hào Yōuyōu zǐ 幽憂子. Liángliáng wángfǔ 邓王府 diǎnqiān 典簽 to the Liáng prince Lǐ Yuányù 李元裕 in his early career, where he had access to the prince’s substantial library and is said by his biographers to have read the entire collection. After a brief xīndū wèi 新都尉 magistracy in modern Sìchuān, he contracted in his thirties an autoimmune disease (the contemporary diagnoses are fēng 風 and lì 癘; modern retrospective diagnosis is rheumatoid arthritis or polymyositis) which progressively crippled his hands and feet. His last decade was spent between Chángān and Tàibáishān 太白山, attempting alchemical cures (he memorized the Bāopǔzǐ 抱朴子 and consulted Sūn Sīmiǎo 孫思邈, who is said to have been his physician at Tàibáishān); when his father died he was unable to perform the requisite kòushǒu prostrations and the elixir he had ingested was vomited up — this episode is the focus of Zhāng Xiè’s preface. He drowned himself in the Yǐngshuǐ near Yángzhái 陽翟 in Wǔzhōu 武周 (probably 686), having walked himself to the river’s edge with great difficulty. The Wǔ bēi wén and Shì jí wén — composed in the years immediately preceding the suicide — are among the most personal texts of the early-Táng tradition.
Translations and research
- Stephen Owen. 1977. The Poetry of the Early T’ang. Yale UP. Substantial chapter on Lú Zhào-lín, with extended translation and discussion of the Cháng-ān gǔ-yì 長安古意.
- Ren Guoxu 任國緒, ed. 1989. Lú Zhào-lín jí biān-nián jiān-zhù 盧照鄰集編年箋注. Hēi-lóng-jiāng rénmín. The principal modern annotated edition.
- Li Yunyi 李雲逸, ed. 1998. Lú Zhào-lín jí jiào-zhù 盧照鄰集校注. Zhōnghuá. Complementary modern critical edition.
- Paul W. Kroll. 1989. “The Memories of Lu Chao-lin.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 109.4. The most extensive English-language treatment of Lú’s autobiographical prose.
Other points of interest
The Chángān gǔyì 長安古意, Lú’s longest qīyán gǔshī, is one of the most important Táng meditations on the imperial capital and a model for later High-Táng yǒngshǐ poetry. Its closing line — jì jiàn Sòngjiā dōng zǎo zhì, qǐ wén Sòngyù xī xiāng wén 寂寂寞寞楊子居,年年嵗嵗一床書 (“Year after year, a couch of books”) — became proverbial.
Links
- Lu Zhaolin (Wikipedia)
- Lu Zhaolin (Wikidata Q713124)
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §54 (Tang literature).