Cúlái jí 徂徠集
The Cú-lái Collection (of Shí Jiè) by 石介 (撰)
About the work
Cúlái jí 徂徠集 is the 20-juǎn literary collection of Shí Jiè 石介 (1005–1045, zì Shǒudào 守道, hào Cúlái xiānshēng 徂徠先生), the fiercely doctrinaire gǔwén polemicist of the Qìnglì generation whose Guài shuō 怪說 (“On Eccentricities”) attacked Yáng Yì 楊億 楊億 and the XīKūn poetry as morally and stylistically degenerate, and whose Qìnglì shèngdé shī 慶曆聖德詩 (1043) — composed at the height of the Qìnglì reform program to praise the four “worthies” Hán Qí, Fù Bì, Fàn Zhòngyān, and Ōuyáng Xiū and condemn the “evil” ministers Lǚ Yíjiǎn 呂夷簡 and Xià Sǒng 夏竦 — is one of the most contested partisan poems of the Northern Sòng. The title commemorates Shí’s home at the foot of Cúlái mountain in Yǎnzhōu 兗州, where he tilled fields between official postings.
Tiyao
[Translation summary] The Sìkù tíyào treats Shí Jiè with notable severity. It records his career — jìnshì of Tiānshèng 8 / 1030, originally appointed Jiāzhōu pànguān, later Zhí jíxiányuàn and Tōngpàn Púzhōu. It records that he tilled at Cúlái mountain whence the title; that he intensely hated the post-Five-Dynasties bēimí literary register and so championed Liǔ Kāi 柳開’s contribution and wrote Guài shuō to criticize Yáng Yì. The tíyào quotes Wáng Shìzhēn’s 王士禎 Chíběi ǒután praising Shí for “stubborn and forceful, with the Tang manner — better than the LiǔMù pair, but ultimately not yet free of the cǎomèi crude air” — calling this a balanced verdict. It notes that Ōuyáng Xiū’s mùzhì for Shí distinguished two parts of the collection (so the present unified title was a posthumous combining); that juǎn 4 has lost text. It charges Shí transmitted Sūn Fù’s 孫復 learning, took the world’s yes / no judgement on himself, but with overheated kèqì and míngxīn — drifting into rhetorical extremism. Wáng Chēng’s Dōngdū shìlüè records that under Rénzōng, when Lǚ Yíjiǎn and Xià Sǒng were dismissed and Zhāng Déxiàng, Yàn Shū, Jiǎ Chāngcháo, Dù Yǎn, Fàn Zhòngyān, Hán Qí, Fù Bì, Wáng Sù, Ōuyáng Xiū, Yú Jìng were all promoted, Shí Jiè (then Guózǐ zhíjiǎng) wrote the Qìnglì shèngdé shī praising the worthies and damning the unfaithful — preserved in the present collection — modeled on Hán Yù’s Yuánhé shèngdé shī. But (the tíyào continues) Hán Yù was honoring the Tang Xiànzōng’s military pacification, where his role was appropriate; Qìnglì-era judgments of xiánjiān (worthy / wicked) were a court’s prerogative, not the proper concern of a Confucian official; and naming living people was no time for gàiguānlùndìng (assessment after the coffin lid is closed). The poem courted suspicion of partiality and brought lasting trouble: Ōuyáng Xiū and Sīmǎ Guāng’s later péngdǎng feuds, Sū Shì and Huáng Tíngjiān’s wénzì zhī yù — all “Shí Jiè led the way.” Likewise the Tàixué student political activism — Bǐngcǎo zhōngshǐ in late Northern Sòng, driving out cabinet ministers in late Southern Sòng — has its origin here; the Sòngshǐ records Sūn Fù saying “the disaster of his sons begins here” — Sūn was speaking of one man, not yet seeing the larger and longer consequences. Though at the time Shí gained his name from this poem, the events should not be a model. We preserve the old recension and append our criticism. Qiánlóng 45 (1780) 5th month, respectfully collated.
Abstract
Shí Jiè’s literary-political importance is two-fold: (1) the Guài shuō polemics — three piān including a famous attack on Buddhism, Daoism, and XīKūn poetry as the three “freaks” plaguing the Sòng — established a programmatic gǔwén / orthodox-Confucian voice that fed directly into the Lǐxué tradition; (2) the Qìnglì shèngdé shī of 1043 — explicitly modeling the Qìnglì reform on Hán Yù’s Yuánhé model — became the cause of his political ruin, when after the reforms collapsed in 1045 his enemies (centrally Xià Sǒng) used his “list of evil ministers” to push for his demotion, and rumours of his having faked his death to plot rebellion in Púzhōu dogged his memory. He died in office in 1045 age 41; the rumour of his “fake death” was so persistent that Hán Qí had to dig up his coffin in person to disprove it. The Sìkù tíyào above — uncharacteristically polemical — treats Shí as the proximate origin of the entire late-Northern-Sòng / Southern-Sòng pattern of péngdǎng zhī huò (factional disasters) and Tàixué student politics; the harshness reflects Qing official anxiety about the precedent of subordinate Confucians naming senior officials as “wicked.”
The collection’s contents include the Guài shuō polemics, the Qìnglì shèngdé shī, an unusual Lùn Yánzǐ 論顏子, zòuyì, and substantial xùjì prose. The Sìkù compilers note (and we should note) that the original collection had two parts (per Ōuyáng Xiū’s mùzhì), and that the present unified Cúlái jí is a posthumous combining; juàn 4 has missing pieces. The dating bracket marks Shí’s death (1045) to the late-Northern-Sòng terminus ad quem of the 20-juǎn recension.
Translations and research
- Bol, Peter K. 1992. “This Culture of Ours”. Stanford UP, ch. 5. The classic Western treatment placing Shí in the Northern-Sòng gǔ-wén / Confucian-revival lineage.
- Liu, James T. C. 1959. Reform in Sung China. Harvard. Treats the Qìng-lì shèng-dé shī and its political fallout.
- Egan, Ronald C. 1984. The Literary Works of Ou-yang Hsiu. Cambridge UP. Discusses the Qìng-lì-era polemic.
- Hé Cān 何燦. 1990. Shí Jiè yán-jiū 石介研究. Hé-nán dàxué chūbǎnshè. Standard modern Chinese monograph.
- Chén Zhì-è 陳植鍔. 1987. Shí Jiè shì jí jì-nián 石介事跡繫年. Zhōnghuá. Annotated chronological biography.
Other points of interest
The “fake death” rumour — that Shí Jiè faked his death and fled to the Liáo to raise rebellion, fanned by Xià Sǒng using a forged letter — is one of the most spectacular Northern-Sòng political slanders, and Hán Qí’s having his coffin dug up to disprove it is one of the better-attested instances of post-mortem judicial review. The collection is the proximate locus of the Qìnglì faction’s literary self-construction.
Links
- Shi Jie (Wikidata Q15947210)
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §54 (gǔwén movement); §44 (Qìnglì reforms).