Guālú jí 瓜廬集
Collection of the Gourd Hut by 薛師石 (撰)
About the work
A one-juàn poetry collection of the Southern Sòng recluse-poet Xuē Shīshí 薛師石 (zì Jǐngshí 景石, of Yǒngjiā 永嘉, d. 1228), close associate of the so-called “Four Spirits of Yǒngjiā” (Yǒngjiā sìlíng 永嘉四靈) — Xú Zhào 徐照, Xú Jī 徐璣, Wēng Juàn 翁卷, and Zhào Shīxiù 趙師秀. Xuē never took office, building a hut on the western shore of Huìchāng Lake 會昌湖 which he named “Gourd Hut” (Guālú 瓜廬) after a couplet of Zhào Shīxiù.
Tiyao
Your servants and others respectfully submit: the Guālú jí in one juàn was composed by Xuē Shīshí of the Sòng. Shīshí, zì Jǐngshí, was a native of Yǒngjiā. He lived in retirement and never took office, building a dwelling west of Huìchāng Lake which he called “Gourd Hut.” The line by Zhào Shīxiù, “Wild waters cover more than the land, spring mountains are half made of cloud,” was written for this very hut. At the end of the collection there is an epitaph by Wáng Chuò 王綽 narrating in detail the course of his life. At the head there is a preface by Zhào Rǔhuí 趙汝回 which says that whenever he gathered to chant poems with the Four Spirits, he alone took as his ideal the antique and plain (gǔdàn 古淡), broadening the narrow and smoothing what others had carved, with spontaneous spiritual insight that arrived at a natural clarity and emptiness. Reading his poems now, one finds his diction mostly natural and unforced, unlike the Four Spirits who took as their craft sharp, novel turns of phrase. The judgement that he “smoothed what others had carved” is close to the truth; but in respect of narrow scope and overly close imagery he travels the same path as the Four Spirits, and the claim that he “broadened the narrow” is hardly borne out. Beside the Four Spirits he is somewhat weaker in style, but plowing and fishing at his ease he took poetry as his diversion, and his thought is loose and free, unlike the Four Spirits’ painstaking, single-character labour — so the result is largely the same with small differences. The colophon by Liú Zhí 劉植 of Jīngshān 荊山 calls his diction full of the flavour of fertile retreat, and this is indeed so. Respectfully collated in the tenth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781]. Chief compilers: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General collator: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Xuē Shīshí of Yǒngjiā (modern Wēnzhōu) belonged to the second generation of the yǒngjiā sìlíng circle and was a personal friend of Zhào Shīxiù; the present collection is the residue of poems gathered by his disciples after his death at age fifty-one. The preface by Zhào Rǔhuí is dated Jiāxī yuán nián 嘉熙元年 (1237) Qīngmíng day, indicating that the present recension was assembled posthumously, roughly a decade after Xuē’s death. CBDB gives lifedates 1178–1228, consistent with the preface’s statement that he died at fifty-one. The composition window is therefore approximately 1180–1228, with the collection itself first circulated only after 1237. The Sìkù editors are mildly cool, judging Xuē’s verse softer and less mannered than Zhào Shīxiù’s but still confined within the narrow late-Táng aesthetic of the sìlíng. The closing colophon by Liú Zhí of Jīngshān describes his style as “full of the diction of fertile retreat” (duō féidùn zhī cí 多肥遯之詞), echoing the recluse persona that frames the whole book. Wáng Chuò’s epitaph at the end of the volume is an important biographical source for the sìlíng circle.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. Xuē Shīshí is regularly cited in studies of the Yǒngjiā Four Spirits but has not been the object of a dedicated monograph in Western languages. See generally Jonathan Chaves, Heaven My Blanket, Earth My Pillow: Poems from Sung Dynasty China by Yang Wan-li (Weatherhill, 1975) for the broader Southern Sòng late-Táng-revival context, and Zhāng Hóngshēng 張宏生, Jiāngdōng wénxué shǐ 江東文學史 (Jiāngsū rénmín, 1995) for the regional school.
Links
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11102489 (薛師石)
- CBDB id 10580