高常侍集

Gāo Chángshì jí 高常侍集

Collected Works of Cavalier Attendant Gāo (Gāo Shì) by 高適 (撰)

About the work

Gāo Chángshì jí 高常侍集 in 10 juǎn — the Chángshì in the title from his last office zuǒ sǎnqí chángshì 左散騎常侍 (“Left Cavalier Attendant-in-Ordinary”) — is the surviving collection of Gāo Shì 高適 (700–765), the principal biānsài 邊塞 (“frontier”) poet of the High Táng generation, conventionally paired with Cén Cān 岑參 岑參 in the GāoCén 高岑 couplet. The transmitted text is a Sòng manuscript-trace edition (yǐngchāo 影鈔) from a Sòng Qìngyuán (1195–1200) or later print, identified by the quēbǐ 闕筆 (avoided strokes) for kuò 廓 — the SòngNíngzōng 宋寧宗 personal-name taboo character. The 10 juǎn are arranged: juǎn 1–8 shī (poetry, by genre); juǎn 9 zázhù (miscellaneous prose); juǎn 10 biǎo (memorials).

Tiyao

Gāo Chángshì jí in 10 juǎn — by Gāo Shì of the Táng. Shì’s zì was Dáfū 達夫. The Tángshū makes him a Bóhǎi 渤海 man, and the collection is also titled Bóhǎi; but the Héjiān fǔ zhì notes the lines in his Fēngqiū xiàn shī 封丘縣詩 — “wǒ běn yúqiáo Mèngzhū yě 我本漁樵孟諸野” (“I am a fisherman-woodcutter of the Mèngzhū fields”) — and his Chū zhì Fēngqiū shī 初至封丘詩 — “qù jiā bǎilǐ bù dé guī 去家百里不得歸” (“a hundred lǐ from home and unable to return”) — to argue he was a LiángSòng (= Hénán) man. But in the Bié Sūn Yí shī 別孫沂詩 the title-note says “at the time both were guests in Sòngzhōng” — suggesting he was not in fact a LiángSòng native. Táng-period literati often gave their jùnwàng not their actual native place; the standard histories then often passed on the same error. Liú Zhījī’s Shǐ tōng discussed this at length but could not stop it. Shì’s jíjí 籍籍 (registry) being unfixed, we may leave this quēyí 闕疑.

The Tángshū yìwén zhì records 10 juǎn; the Tōngkǎo additionally lists a jíwài wén 1 juǎn and shī 1 juǎn. The present edition is yǐngchāo from a Sòng print; kuò 廓 has quēbǐ avoiding the Níngzōng personal-name kuò 擴, dating it to Qìngyuán (1195) or later. 8 juǎn of poetry and 2 juǎn of prose, no jíwài shī. The Míng prints of Gāo’s collection had erroneously incorporated material from Tàipíng guǎngjì (the Gāo Kǎi shìláng mùzhōng húyāo juéjù 高鍇侍郎墓中狐妖絕句, “the fox-spirit’s quatrain in the tomb of shìláng Gāo Kǎi”) — that “wēi guān gāo jì Chǔgōng zhuāng…” 危冠高髻楚宫粧 piece is here mixed in, which is shabby; another Jiǔrì poem by Sòng Chéng Jù 程俱 in the Běishān jí is also misattributed to Gāo by Máo Qílíng 毛奇齡 in his Xuǎn Tángrén qīlǜ. The Sòng witness preserves the cleaner text. (Continued evaluation truncated in transcription.)

Abstract

The Sòng yǐngchāo preserved here is the cleanest pre-modern witness for Gāo Shì; it predates and corrects the various Míng anthology-prints of the corpus that had absorbed apocryphal matter (the Tàipíng guǎngjì fox-spirit quatrain, a Sòng-period Jiǔrì by Chéng Jù). The 10-juǎn form matches the Tángshū yìwén zhì and the Sòng catalogs.

Gāo Shì (700–765 per CBDB cbdbId 30851; the catalog meta gives “d. 765”) was a Cāngzhōu 滄州 Bóhǎi 渤海 native by jùnwàng, but resident much of his life in Sòngzhōu 宋州 Liángyuán 梁園 (modern Shāngqiū 商丘 in eastern Hénán). One of the few major Tang poets to make a successful military-administrative career: his late-life appointments included Huáinán jiédùshǐ 淮南節度使 (760), Pǔzhōu cìshǐ 蒲州刺史, Jiànnán xīchuān jiédùshǐ 劍南西川節度使 (763), and the late honorific zuǒ sǎnqí chángshì 左散騎常侍 (whence the collection’s title). His military experience — particularly the Héběi and Liángzhōu 涼州 frontiers in the late Kāiyuán / early Tiānbǎo — is the basis of his biānsài poetry, of which the Yān gē xíng 燕歌行 (“Song of Yān”) is the most famous example: a long narrative on a 738 frontier defeat, conventionally read as the foundational text of the biānsài school.

He was a long-time friend of Dù Fǔ 杜甫 and Lǐ Bái 李白 — the three made an extended walking tour of the LiángSòng country together in 744 — and his late move to Chéngdū in 760 brought him back into Dù Fǔ’s circle. Dù Fǔ’s Yǒnghuái jiārén 詠懷家人 piece on Gāo’s death and the Bā āi shī 八哀詩 series (one piān on Gāo) are the principal contemporary tributes.

Translations and research

• Marie Chan. 1978. Kao Shih. Twayne. The standard English-language scholarly study.
• Sun Qinshan 孫欽善, ed. 1984. Gāo Shì jí jiào-zhù 高適集校注. Shànghǎi gǔjí. The principal modern Chinese variorum.
• Stephen Owen. 1981. The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang. Yale UP. Substantial discussion of Gāo and the biān-sài school.
• Stephen Owen. 2013. The Poetry of the High Tang: An Anthology with Annotated Translations. Lib. of Chinese Humanities. Substantial selection of Gāo Shì in English.
• Liú Kāi-yáng 劉開揚. 1981. Gāo Shì shī jí biān-nián jiān-zhù 高適詩集編年箋注. Zhōnghuá. Chronological annotated edition.

Other points of interest

The Yān gē xíng — Gāo Shì’s most famous single poem — is one of the principal early yuèfǔ 樂府 transformations of a HànWèi title into a substantive Tang narrative; its critical reception in the Sòng shīhuà tradition (Yán Yǔ 嚴羽’s Cāngláng shīhuà and others) anchored the conventional pairing GāoCén (Gāo Shì + Cén Cān) as the two poles of biānsài verse.

Links

• Gao Shi (Wikipedia)
• Gao Shi (Wikidata Q706242)
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §54 (Tang literature).