Zhúyǒu jí 竹友集
The Bamboo-Friend Collection by 謝薖 (撰)
About the work
Zhúyǒu jí 竹友集 in 10 juǎn preserves the writings of Xiè Kē 謝薖 (d. 1116), the younger of the Èr Xiè 二謝 brothers (with Xiè Yì 謝逸 謝逸). The title takes Xiè Kē’s hào Zhúyǒu 竹友. Like his brother, Xiè Kē was a Línchuān recluse-poet who never entered office, and is one of the canonical Jiāngxī shīpài figures listed by Lǚ Běnzhōng. The recension is significant for the Sìkù editors’ identification (in the Ráo Jié Yǐsōng shījí KR4d0100 tíyào) of the present Zhúyǒu jí, the parallel Ráo Jié, and Hán Jū collections as preserving the same hángkuǎn (column-format) and Jiāngxī shīpài sub-title — surviving fragments of the lost Jiāngxī shīpài jí in 137 juǎn.
Tiyao
Abstract
Zhúyǒu jí is one of the three principal surviving witnesses (with the Ráo Jié Yǐsōng shījí KR4d0100 and Hán Jū’s collection) to the lost late-Northern-Sòng / early-Southern-Sòng Jiāngxī shīpài jí — the editorial anthology that aggregated the canonical Jiāngxī school members’ work in 137 juǎn. The Sìkù editors’ detection of the shared hángkuǎn (column-format) and shared Jiāngxī shīpài sub-title across these three collections is a critical philological insight into the textual archaeology of the Jiāngxī school’s canonisation.
Xiè Kē’s poetics — like his brother’s — is a typical Jiāngxī shīpài register: dense allusion, huàngǔ duótāi (transforming-the-bone, snatching-the-embryo) technique, and emotional restraint. The collection includes substantial gǔshī, juéjù, and cí-lyrics, plus a small body of prose. Xiè Kē’s correspondence with Lǚ Běnzhōng — listed in Zhōngxìng yǐlái juémiào cí xuǎn — situates him centrally in the early Jiāngxī network, in conversation with the figure who would soon canonise the school.
The dating bracket runs from c. 1090s to 1116. Xiè Kē’s death precedes Lǚ Běnzhōng’s Zōngpài tú (c. 1130s) by some two decades — but the Zōngpài tú’s inclusion of him reflects the school’s foundational character.
Translations and research
- Sòng-shī jì-shì — preserves Xiè Kē material.
- Jiāng-xī shī-shè zōng-pài tú — Lǚ Běn-zhōng’s foundational anthology.
- Hawes, Colin. The Social Circulation of Poetry in the Mid-Northern Song (SUNY 2005).
- Chaves, Jonathan. Mei Yao-ch’en and the Development of Early Sung Poetry (Columbia 1976) — background on early-Sòng poetics that the Jiāng-xī school would inherit and transform.
- No dedicated monographic study of Xiè Kē located.
Other points of interest
- The Èr Xiè — Xiè Yì and Xiè Kē — are one of two principal sibling-pairs in the Jiāngxī shīpài network (the other being the Hóng brothers KR4d0131, KR4d0141, KR4d0142).
- The shared-format identification with Ráo Jié KR4d0100 and Hán Jū collections makes Zhúyǒu jí one of the principal philological witnesses to the lost monumental Jiāngxī shīpài jí compilation.