伐檀集

Fátán jí 伐檀集

The Fá-tán Collection (of Huáng Shù) by 黃庶 (撰)

About the work

Fátán jí 伐檀集 is the 2-juǎn literary collection of Huáng Shù 黃庶 (1019–1058?, zì Yàfū 亞夫), the father of the great Northern-Sòng poet Huáng Tíngjiān 黃庭堅 and a minor mid-Sòng gǔwén poet of the Jiāngxī Fēnníng 分寧 family. The title Fátán — borrowed from the Shī jīng poem Wèi fēng — Fá tán 魏風·伐檀 (a classical lament of the worthy serving in obscurity) — announces Huáng Shù’s self-image as a frustrated provincial cóngshì never advanced to high office. The collection is historically important less for itself than as the source of Huáng Tíngjiān’s poetic education: the Sìkù tíyào explicitly identifies Huáng Shù as the proximate Hán-Yù-imitator from whom Huáng Tíngjiān’s Jiāngxī shīpài 江西詩派 manner descended.

Tiyao

[Translation summary] The Sìkù tíyào: the Fátán jí in 2 juǎn was composed by Huáng Shù of the Sòng. Shù, zì Yàfū, of Fēnníng. Jìnshì of Qìnglì 2 / 1042. Aided in one fǔ and three zhōu offices, all as cóngshì; finally died in office acting ZhīKāngzhōu. Father of Huáng Tíngjiān. The Jiāngxī shīpài honors Tíngjiān as its initial patriarch, but Tíngjiān’s study of Hán Yù in fact began with Shù’s prior leading. His Hé Liǔ Zǐyù shí yǒng sequence’s Guài shí 怪石 piece is the most quoted in his time. But the gǔtǐ poems in the collection are all jiájiá zì zào (creaking, self-made), not falling into stale paths; though his pòlì is not as broad as Tíngjiān’s, and his use of ancient material is not as crafted, his “fresh and forced” energy takes a similar tack — predecessor and successor; the source is documented. Only the opening jìntǐ poems are not very polished. Per Lǚ Zào’s Xǔchāng shí yǒng hòu xù in the present collection: “in Tiānshèng, when [Lǚ] Zào was Xǔchāng yuán, he took 10 famous places of the prefecture and composed 10 poems; in those days wénzhāng used shēnglǜ (sound-prosody) most lavishly — wāyín pòsuì, unreadable; in poetry especially. Among scholars at the time, those who could keep their meaning straight without drifting were certainly few — and the rarest of all”; so Huáng was at the height of the XīKūn tǐ and consciously sought to correct its excesses; thus his Xiè Cuī Xiàngzhī shì shī gǎo opens with “Dànbó lù jiǔ fú, gòng yuē chú zhēnjiān” 淡薄路久茀、共約鋤榛菅; his Nǐ Ōuyáng shèrén gǔ zhuàn opens with “Sū Méi luán fèng xiāng shàngxià, bǐyǔ yànquè hé néng qún” 蘇梅鸞鳳相上下、鄙語燕雀何能羣 (note: Sū Zǐměi and Méi Shèngyú both have this poem) — and his gǔwén in 1 juǎn is also archaically simple and vigorous, with the guīgé of Hán Yù; he disdains piānǒu xiānnóng 駢偶纖濃 phrasing. His relative jìntǐ neglect was deliberate, not a failure of talent. Since the Sòng, this collection had been printed appended to the Shāngǔ jí (i.e. Huáng Tíngjiān’s collection); but “though a son be of equal sage-likeness, he eats not before his father — there is an ancient clear teaching”; placing the father’s poems at the end of the son’s collection is finally not appropriate; we now separate them and catalog independently. Qiánlóng 46 (1781) 12th month, respectfully collated.

Abstract

Huáng Shù’s biographical importance in Northern-Sòng literary history is constituted entirely by his role as the proximate poetic model and teacher of his son Huáng Tíngjiān (1045–1105) — the founder of the Jiāngxī shīpài whose deliberately constrained, allusion-dense, “fresh and forced” qīlǜ style descends through the entire late-Northern-Sòng / Southern-Sòng poetic tradition. The Sìkù tíyào correctly identifies Huáng Shù as the bridging figure: a generation older, jìnshì of Qìnglì 2 / 1042, served only as a peripatetic cóngshì in Wúzhōu, Xǔzhōu, Yángzhōu, and Kángzhōu; never reached the central court. The Hé Liǔ Zǐyù shí yǒng — Guài shí poem cited by the Sìkù is one of the most quoted Northern-Sòng pre-Jiāngxī pieces. The collection’s Sòng transmission was as an appendix to the Shāngǔ jí; the Sìkù compilers extracted it as an independent work — appropriately so. The dating bracket marks Huáng’s death (around 1058) to the late-Northern-Sòng terminus ante quem of the appended-to-Shān-gǔ recension.

Translations and research

• Palumbo-Liu, David. 1993. The Poetics of Appropriation: The Literary Theory and Practice of Huang Tingjian. Stanford UP. Treats Huáng Tíng-jiān’s poetic descent from his father.
• Yoshikawa Kōjirō. 1962. An Introduction to Sung Poetry. Treats the Jiāng-xī shī-pài.
• Schmidt, J. D. 1976. Yang Wan-li. Twayne. Treats the broader Jiāng-xī tradition.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù compilers’ extraction of the Fátán jí from the Shāngǔ jí on the principle that the father’s writings should not be appended to the son’s collection is one of the rare Sìkù editorial decisions explicitly justified on Confucian-ritual grounds. Huáng Shù’s Guài shí 怪石 (“Strange Stone”) poem is conventionally cited as the proximate source of Huáng Tíngjiān’s qíjué poetic aesthetic.

Links

• Huang Shu (Wikidata)
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §54 (Jiāngxī shīpài).