陳拾遺集

Chén Shíyí jí 陳拾遺集

Collected Works of the Right Reminder Chén (Chén Zǐ-áng) by 陳子昂 (撰)

About the work

Chén Shíyí jí 陳拾遺集 in 10 juǎn — also transmitted as Chén Bóyù wén jí 陳伯玉文集 (the SBCK title) — is the surviving collection of Chén Zǐáng 陳子昂 (661–702), the Wǔzhōu 武周-period poet whose programmatic Gǎn yù 感遇 (“Encountering Things”) cycle is conventionally cited (from Lú Cángyòng 盧藏用’s contemporary preface onward) as the decisive break from the Liùcháo 六朝 ornamental tradition and the foundation of the High-Táng gǔfēng 古風 idiom that Lǐ Bái 李白 李白 and Dù Fǔ 杜甫 杜甫 would inherit. The collection is anchored by the original 10-juǎn recension assembled at Chén’s death by Lú Cángyòng (his closest friend and the huángmén shìláng 黃門侍郎 of the Wǔzhōu court), whose Chén shì bié zhuàn 陳氏別傳 — preserved as appendix here — is the principal early biographical source. The Wǔzhōu Xīn Tángshū lièzhuàn (preserved as a parallel appendix), a Jīngdé bēi 旌德碑 by Zhào Dǎn 趙儋 (drafted under the patronage of the Jiànnán dōngchuān jiédùshǐ 劍南東川節度使 Xiānyú Zhòngtōng 鮮于仲通, ca. 771), and Lú Cángyòng’s jì wén 祭文 fill out the editorial frame.

Tiyao

No tíyào in source. The KR4c0008 file in this corpus is digitized from the SBCK base (Chén Bóyù wén jí 陳伯玉文集), which carries a substantial Hóngzhì 4 (1491) preface by Zhāng Yí 張頤 of Wéiyáng 維揚, the original Lú Cángyòng preface, and a pair of late-Qīng colophons (one by Hú Tǐng 胡珽, Línláng zhǔrén 琳琅主人, dated Xiánfēng 4 = 1854); but no Sìkù tíyào. The Sìkù WYG 10-juǎn tíyào (V1065.7) survives in the Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào; Hú Tǐng’s 1854 colophon transcribes a key passage from it (“the present text-transmission has many errors and lacunae; juǎn 7 is missing two leaves”), confirming that the WYG and SBCK lines descend from related but somewhat distinct manuscript witnesses.

Abstract

The Chén Zǐáng corpus came to the Sìkù compilers in two parallel transmissions: the WYG 10-juǎn line (printed here) and a less authoritative Míng manuscript line (the Wényìtáng 文義堂 print recovered in 1854 by Hú Tǐng), both descended from Lú Cángyòng’s original 10-juǎn edition. The Sìkù tíyào notes that juǎn 7 of the transmitted text is missing two leaves — Màyá wén 禡牙文, Yíng hǎi wén 禜海文, Diào sàishàng wēng wén 弔塞上翁文, and Jì Sūn fǔjūn wén 祭孫府君文 — all four of which, however, can be recovered from the Wén yuàn yīng huá 文苑英華 (juǎn 999, 999, 999, 979). One additional piece, the Dà Chóngfúguàn jì 大崇福觀記 — important for its early reference to Wǔ Shìhuò 武士彠 (Wǔhòu’s father) as Tàizǔ Xiàomíng huángdì 太祖孝明皇帝 — is missing from the transmitted recension entirely but preserved at Wén yuàn yīng huá 822.

Chén Zǐáng (661–702 per CBDB; the catalog meta gives 656–695, which is the older Wén Yīduō figure now displaced by the modern scholarly bracket; CBDB followed here, with the 661–702 dates supported by the dual-source agreement of Tángshū and Lú Cángyòng) was a Zǐzhōu 梓州 Shèhóng 射洪 (modern central Sìchuān) native, the son of a wealthy local clan with hereditary contact with Daoist alchemical circles (his great-great-grandfather Chén Fāngqìng 陳方慶 was reputed to have inherited a Mòzǐ wǔ xíng mì shū 墨翟五行秘書 and to have retired to Wǔdōngshān 武東山 for forty years). Chén himself was a high-spirited youth — by his own account he could not read until suì 18, when an episode in his county school changed him; thereafter he closed his door to all visitors and read the Five Classics and the philosophers obsessively for several years. Jìnshì of Wénmíng 1 (684); his bold opening memorial against Gāozōng’s funeral cortège returning to Chángān (he argued that Luòyáng was the better burial site) brought him to Wǔhòu’s notice. Promoted to Líntái zhèngzì 麟臺正字 (Mìshūshěng drafter) and later Yòu shíyí 右拾遺 (“Right Reminder,” the title that gives the collection its name).

His career was effectively destroyed by the Wànsuì tōngtiān 萬歲通天 1 (696) Khitan campaign: as a staff officer to the Jiànān jùnwáng 建安郡王 Wǔ Yōuyí 武攸宜 (Wǔhòu’s nephew), he repeatedly petitioned for command of the vanguard against the Khitan and was angrily demoted to jūncáo (records office). Frustrated, he ascended the Yōuzhōu tái 幽州臺 — the platform Yān Zhāowáng 燕昭王 had built to recruit Yuè Yì 樂毅 — and composed the famous quatrain Dēng Yōuzhōu tái gē 登幽州臺歌 (“Song on Climbing the Tower of Yōuzhōu”): “Qián bù jiàn gǔrén, hòu bù jiàn láizhě, niàn tiāndì zhī yōuyōu, dú chuàngrán ér tìxià 前不見古人後不見來者念天地之攸攸獨愴然而涕下” — the single most-anthologized Táng quatrain. He resigned to nurse his elderly father, became implicated in the local feud of the Shèhóng magistrate Duàn Jiǎn 段簡 (who had been bribed to harass the wealthy Chén family), and died in prison in 702 at age 42, possibly murdered.

The 38 (or 39, depending on edition) Gǎn yù 感遇 poems — programmatically “encountering things and being affected by them” — are deliberately archaic, channeling the moral intensity of Ruǎn Jí 阮籍’s Yǒnghuái 詠懷 cycle and the Shījīng Guófēng 國風 voice; they were the founding texts of the fùgǔ 復古 (“return to antiquity”) program that Lǐ Bái and Dù Fǔ would carry forward.

Translations and research

• Stephen Owen. 1977. The Poetry of the Early T’ang. Yale UP. Substantial chapter on Chén Zǐ-áng — the most important English-language treatment.
• Pei Chengang 彭慶生, ed. 1981. Chén Zǐ-áng shī zhù 陳子昂詩注. Sìchuān rénmín. Modern annotated edition of the poetry.
• Xú Péng 徐鵬, ed. 1960. Chén Zǐ-áng jí 陳子昂集. Zhōnghuá. Standard modern critical edition.
• Tomoharu Wakizaka 脇阪友治. 1981. Chin Shisū kenkyū 陳子昂研究. Kyūko shoin. Substantial Japanese monograph.
• David L. McMullen. 1988. State and Scholars in T’ang China. CUP. Essential context for Chén’s career as a cì-shǐ and shí-yí.

Other points of interest

The Dēng Yōuzhōu tái gē — only 22 characters — is one of the very few Táng poems to enter the Chinese vernacular as a free-floating saying; its line niàn tiāndì zhī yōuyōu 念天地之攸攸 (“[I] think on the immensity of heaven and earth”) is regularly cited apart from its source. The poem is structurally so simple that it almost belongs to the Chǔcí 楚辭 tradition rather than to shī; it is the anchor for Chén’s reputation as the inaugurating voice of the High-Táng generation.

Links

• Chen Zi’ang (Wikipedia)
• Chen Zi’ang (Wikidata Q713079)
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §54 (Tang literature).