Hédōng jí 河東集
The Hé-dōng Collection (of Liǔ Kāi) by 柳開 (撰), edited by 張景 (編)
About the work
Hédōng jí 河東集 (also titled 河東先生集 in the SBCK and SòngYuán manuscript line) is the 15-juǎn collected works of Liǔ Kāi 柳開 (947–1000), the doctrinaire early-Sòng gǔwén polemicist conventionally regarded as the principal pre-Ōuyáng-Xiū revivalist of Tang gǔwén and the one who most loudly invoked Hán Yù 韓愈 and Liǔ Zōngyuán 柳宗元 as his stylistic patrons. The catalog meta gives Liǔ’s death as 995, but CBDB and the standard Sòngshǐ j. 440 biography record his death in Xiánpíng 3 / 1000 at age 54 — followed here. The collection was assembled posthumously by Liǔ’s pupil-collaborator Zhāng Jǐng 張景 (970–1018), who appended the xíngzhuàng 行狀 carried as a 1-juǎn appendix in the catalog.
Tiyao
No tíyào in source — the file is digitized from the SBCK base, which carries instead the original mùlù. The Sìkù WYG 15-juǎn tíyào is preserved in WYG V1085.2 but not present in the local source file. The Sìkù characterizes Liǔ as “the founder of the Sòng gǔwén movement” but criticizes him for the doctrinaire severity of his rhetoric and for the fact that his prose, despite its programmatic gǔwén aspirations, often fell back into the prolix mannerisms of the late-Five-Dynasties piāntǐ.
Abstract
Liǔ Kāi (originally named Zhāoliàng 肇亮, zì Zhòngtú 仲塗, after a pupil of Hán Yù) self-consciously fashioned himself as the second coming of Hán Yù — even taking the name Kāi 開 (“Opener”) and the zì meaning “the way of the middle [of the Confucian Way].” Born of Hédōng (modern Shānxī) family that had migrated to Dàmíngfǔ 大名府, he passed the jìnshì in 973, served as Diānshūyùan zhīzhì and as prefect (zhīzhōu) at Yīngzhōu, Bīnzhōu, Cāngzhōu, and Dàizhōu, dying in office at Bīnzhōu in 1000. The collection’s principal contents are the polemical xù 序 and shū 書 — Liǔ’s letters to Wáng Yòu 王祐, Fàn (Yòng), Lǐ Chāngyán, Lú [Xuéshì], Hán Jì 韓洎, Lǐ Zōng’è 李宗諤 etc. — in which he announces his program of gǔwén revival and savagely attacks the prevailing XīKūn 西崑 ornamentalism. The Bǔ wáng xiānshēng zhuàn 補亡先生傳 (j. 2) is his self-mythologizing fictional autobiography, modeled on Hán Yù’s Máoyǐng zhuàn; the Hán Wéngōng Shuāngniǎo shī jiě 韓文公雙鳥詩解 is his exegesis of one of Hán Yù’s most opaque poems, prefiguring the kind of “Hánxué” 韓學 that would emerge in the Northern Sòng. The collection’s smallness and Liǔ’s notoriety as a fierce, often quarrelsome stylist made it less influential than its programmatic ambitions intended; later Sòng gǔwén polemicists (Mù Xiū 穆修, Shí Jiè 石介, Sūn Fù 孫復) consciously placed themselves in his lineage even when stylistically they followed Hán Yù more directly.
The editor Zhāng Jǐng 張景 (970–1018), Liǔ’s jìnshì of 1000 and his immediate disciple, supplied the xíngzhuàng and oversaw the cutting of the first printed edition. The SòngYuán manuscript line goes back to this Zhāng Jǐng kèběn; both the SBCK and the WYG 15-juǎn recension are descendants of it via Míng kèběn of the late 16th century.
Translations and research
- Bol, Peter K. 1992. “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China. Stanford UP, ch. 5. Foundational treatment of Liǔ Kāi as the principal pre-Ōuyáng-Xiū gǔ-wén polemicist.
- Hartman, Charles. 1986. Han Yü and the T’ang Search for Unity. Princeton UP. Discusses Liǔ Kāi’s reception of Hán Yù.
- Zhāng Yì 張毅. 1995. Sòng dài wén-xué sī-xiǎng shǐ 宋代文學思想史. Zhōnghuá. The standard Chinese intellectual-history treatment of the early-Sòng gǔ-wén program.
- Mōri Hideki 毛利英記. 1981. “Ryū Kai no koshōbun seiyaku” 柳開の古文章主義. Tōhō gakuhō 53.
Other points of interest
The catalog meta lifedate “d. 995” is a known transmission error (perhaps a misreading of Zhìdào 至道 era references); the Sòngshǐ j. 440 and CBDB give Xiánpíng 3 (=1000), age 54, which is followed here. Liǔ’s literary self-styling as a Hán Yù redivivus — including the renaming and the claim of direct discipleship via Hán’s zàichuán — is itself one of the central episodes in the constitution of a “gǔwén” lineage as a Sòng intellectual category.
Links
- Liu Kai (Wikipedia)
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.1 (Sòng biéjí); §54 (gǔwén movement).