林和靖集

Lín Héjìng jí 林和靖集

The Collected Works of Lín Hé-jìng (Lín Bū) by 林逋 (撰)

About the work

Lín Héjìng jí 林和靖集 (also titled 林和靖先生詩集 in the SBCK Sòng manuscript line) is the 4-juǎn posthumous collection of the most celebrated yǐnyì 隱逸 (“recluse”) poet of the early Northern Sòng, Lín Bū 林逋 (957–1028, zì Jūnfù 君復, posthumous Héjìng xiānshēng 和靖先生). Lín became the iconic Sòng image of the bachelor recluse: he lived for over twenty years on Gūshān 孤山 island in the West Lake at Hángzhōu, refused all summons to office, and (by the famous shīhuà convention) “took the plum-blossom for wife and the crane for child” — a self-image fixed by the legendary couplet “shūyǐng héngxié shuǐ qīng qiǎn / ànxiāng fúdòng yuè huánghūn” 疏影橫斜水清淺 / 暗香浮動月黃昏 from his “Shānyuán xiǎo méi” 山園小梅, conventionally regarded as the single most influential plum-blossom couplet in Chinese poetic history.

Tiyao

No tíyào in source — the file is digitized from the SBCK base, which carries instead the Xù (preface) by Méi Yáochén 梅堯臣 dated Huángyòu 5 / 1053 6th month 13. The WYG 4-juǎn tíyào (V1086.4) is preserved separately and follows the conventional Sìkù judgement that Lín’s poetry is “qīng dàn xián yuǎn” 清淡閒遠 — clear, unaffected, leisurely, and remote — and that he is the principal precursor of the late-Sòng jiānghú aesthetic.

Abstract

The Méi Yáochén preface preserved at the head of the SBCK file is the principal contemporary biographical document. Méi recounts that he met Lín in Tiānshèng 天聖 in the snow at Qiántáng: Lín was “lofty as a deep peak, refreshing as a clear spring” — discoursing on KǒngMèng, on Hán Yù 韓愈 and Lǐ Áo 李翺, his poetry “plain and far-reaching, capable of making one forget all worldly affairs.” Lín had been famous since Xiánpíng / Jǐngdé but, refusing to take office, drew the wistful court attention of every guìrén and jùgōng who passed through Hángzhōu. He was canonized Héjìng xiānshēng 和靖先生 by Rénzōng on his death (Tiānshèng 6 / 1028, age 62). His grandson, the zhū sūn dàyán 諸孫大言, gathered the surviving poetry — Méi notes that Lín “always disregarded what he had written and threw it away — of what was composed barely one in a hundred survives” — and asked Méi to preface the resulting collection in 1053.

The collection’s principal contents are the juéjù and lǜshī poems on West Lake landscape, plum blossoms, cranes, and recluse-life, together with a small cí 詞 corpus that places Lín among the early figures of Northern-Sòng xiǎolìng. The Shānyuán xiǎo méi couplet, taken up by Sū Shì and after him by every SòngYuánMíng plum-blossom poet, became the founding citation of the méi poetic tradition; Lín’s recluse persona was visually canonized in YuánMíng painting as the méiqī hèzǐ 梅妻鶴子 image (Lín seated on Gūshān with a crane, plum blossoms in a vase). The SòngYuán transmission carried the collection variously in 4 juǎn and 12 juǎn (depending on whether the cí and the Yíshī 遺詩 supplements were included); the WYG and SBCK both descend from the 4-juǎn line.

The dating bracket is set from Lín’s death in 1028 to Méi’s preface in 1053, the terminus ante quem of the assembled posthumous collection.

Translations and research

• Yoshikawa Kōjirō 吉川幸次郎. 1962. An Introduction to Sung Poetry, trans. Watson. Harvard UP. Treats Lín Bū as the iconic Sòng recluse-poet.
• Sargent, Stuart H. 2007. The Poetry of He Zhu (1052–1125). Brill. Discusses Lín Bū’s reception in late Northern-Sòng cí.
• Hightower, James R., and Yeh Chia-ying. 1998. Studies in Chinese Poetry. Harvard. Treats Lín’s Shān-yuán xiǎo méi.
• Yú Bǐ-yún 俞陛雲, ed. 1937. Sòng cí xuǎn shì 宋詞選釋. Standard early annotated text of his cí.
• Shěn Yù-fén 沈玉芬, ed. 2001. Lín Bū jí jiào-jiān 林逋集校箋. Zhèjiāng dàxué. Standard modern critical edition.

Other points of interest

Lín Bū’s “méiqī hèzǐ” 梅妻鶴子 (“plum for wife, crane for child”) tag is the most concise piece of literary self-fashioning in Sòng poetry; it was carried into YuánMíng painting as a fixed iconographic subject (e.g. Yuán painters Lǐ Shēng 李昇, Wáng Mǐn 王冕). His grave on Gūshān — broken open during the Yuán by the warlord Yáng Liánzhēnjiā 楊璉真伽 — turned out to contain only an inkstone and a jade hairpin, taken as proof that he had indeed died unmarried; the discovery itself became a Sòng-loyalist trope in YuánMíng poetry.

Links

• Lin Bu (Wikipedia)
• Wikidata Q834022
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §54 (Sòng poetry).