Chéngzhāi jí 誠齋集
The Chéng-zhāi Collection by 楊萬里 (撰), 楊長孺 (編)
About the work
Chéngzhāi jí 誠齋集 in 133 juǎn is the comprehensive biéjí of Yáng Wànlǐ 楊萬里 (1127–1206, zì Tíngxiù 廷秀, hào Chéngzhāi 誠齋, posthumous Wénjié 文節), of Jíshuǐ 吉水 in Jízhōu (modern Jiāngxī), one of the four great Southern-Sòng poets (with 陸游, 范成大, and Yóu Mào 尤袤). Jìnshì of Shàoxīng 24 (1154); held office to Bǎomógé zhí xuéshì. Compiled and edited by his eldest son Yáng Chángrú 楊長孺 (zì Bózǐ 伯子, hào Dōngshān 東山), and printed at Tōngdé-xiāng under the magistracy of Liú Wěishū 劉煒叔 in Duānpíng 1–2 (1234–1235), with Liú’s preface preserved at the head of the SBCK. The collection encompasses 4,239 shī, plus prose and cí; the SBCK preface notes the total at 132 juǎn and 807,108 characters.
Tiyao
[The KR4d0266 source file is SBCK and contains only the Liú Wěishū preface; the WYG tíyào is the standard Sìkù tíyào (j. 159), which records the work as 133 juǎn and characterizes Yáng’s poetry as the Chéngzhāitǐ 誠齋體 — a distinctively quick, colloquial, and humorous style breaking with the Jiāngxīpài conventions Yáng had absorbed from his teacher Wáng Tíngguī 王庭珪 and Liú Mián 劉勉之. Yáng famously underwent a series of poetic conversions: from the Jiāngxīpài to Wáng Ānshí, then to the late-Táng quatrains, then finally (1178, the Jiānghú jí threshold) to his own mature Chéngzhāitǐ. The Sìkù editors recognize Yáng as one of the four great Southern-Sòng poets but rank him below Lù Yóu in technical accomplishment.]
Abstract
Chéngzhāi jí preserves the largest single-author Southern-Sòng poetic corpus, organized chronologically by Yáng Wànlǐ himself into nine sub-collections (jí) corresponding to phases of his career and his successive poetic conversions: Jiānghú jí 江湖集, Jīngxī jí 荊溪集, Xīguī jí 西歸集, Nánhǎi jí 南海集, Cháotiān jí 朝天集, Jiāngxī Dàoyuàn jí 江西道院集, Cháotiānxù jí, Jiāngdōng jí 江東集, Tuìxiū jí 退休集. The conversion-narrative is preserved in Yáng’s own preface to the Jiānghú jí, where he reports having burned 1,000 of his early poems before reaching his mature manner.
The collection’s prose includes Yáng’s substantial body of memorials and zhāzǐ, his prefaces (notably the 1194 preface to Fàn Chéngdà’s Shíhú shījí — KR4d0265 — composed at Fàn’s deathbed request), and his classicist works the Yì zhuàn 易傳 (separately cataloged as KR1a — Yáng was a serious Yì-scholar in addition to a major poet), the Yōngyán 庸言, and the Tiānwèn tiānduì jiě 天問天對解. Yáng’s frontier-and-policy memorials reflect his consistent anti-appeasement stance against the Hán Tuōzhòu faction in the Qìngyuán period.
The dating bracket: 1154 (Yáng’s jìnshì) through 1206 (his death year per CBDB id 10566 and Sòngshǐ j. 433; followed here over the catalog meta’s birth-year of 1124 — CBDB and Wikidata give 1127, the more widely-accepted figure). The catalog meta’s “1124” is a minor error.
Translations and research
- Schmidt, J.D. 1976. Yang Wan-li. Twayne. The standard English-language monograph.
- Chaves, Jonathan, ed. and trans. 1975. Heaven My Blanket, Earth My Pillow: Poems by Yang Wan-li. Weatherhill. Substantial translations.
- 周汝昌. 1962. 《楊萬里選集》. Beijing. Standard PRC selection.
- 莫礪鋒. 1994. 《江西詩派研究》. Nanjing: Jiangsu Guji. Treats Yáng’s relation to and break from the Jiāngxī-pài.
Other points of interest
The Chéngzhāitǐ 誠齋體 is the most distinctive Southern-Sòng poetic style after the Jiāngxīpài, characterized by quick perception, colloquial diction, humor, and what Yáng himself called huó fǎ 活法 (“live method”) — the deliberate avoidance of fixed compositional conventions. The collection’s value as a record of Yáng’s repeated poetic self-revision (visible in the prefaces to each of the nine jí) makes it one of the most useful documents for understanding Sòng-era poetic self-consciousness.