Lóngzhōu jí 龍洲集
Collection of Dragon Islet by 劉過 (撰)
About the work
The collected verse and prose of the Southern Sòng “jiānghú” itinerant poet and cí-writer Liú Guò 劉過 (1154–1206, zì Gǎizhī 改之, of Lúlíng 廬陵, Jízhōu). Liú is one of the most flamboyant of the Heroic-Abandoned (háofàng 豪放) lineage and a regular drinking-companion of Xīn Qìjí 辛棄疾, whose cí style he closely echoes. The Sìkù recension is a 14-juàn main collection plus 2-juàn appended encomia / commemorative writings by later hands (the Fùlù 附錄), totalling sixteen juàn; in some editions counted as fifteen.
Tiyao
Your servants and others respectfully submit: the Lóngzhōu jí in fourteen juàn was composed by Liú Guò 劉過 of the Sòng. Guò, zì Gǎizhī, was a man of Lúlíng. In the reigns of Guāngzōng and Níngzōng he travelled the jiānghú presenting his poems for patronage. When Hán Tuōzhòu 韓侂胄 was in power he once meant to give him an office and dispatch him as envoy to the Jīn, but Guò was rashly indiscreet and let things slip, and ended his life in poverty. He was, in short, of the same stamp as Chén Liàng but even more loose-reined. When he beat at the palace gate to memorialise begging Guāngzōng to attend [his father] Xiàozōng at the latter’s residence, he won some renown as a forthright remonstrator; but at that time the courtiers had already submitted memorials in succession to the same effect, and the affair was for those at court, not those in the wilderness — what need had a man of the brushwood to keep stacking roof on roof? It was simply a clever bid for fame. He likewise repeatedly set out grand schemes of recovery and proposed that the Central Plain could be taken without battle — but this was no more than going along with the moment’s fashion and chasing accomplishment with bombast. The northern campaign that followed [Hán Tuōzhòu’s Kāixǐ 開禧 expedition, 1206] — what came of it in the end? Yáng Wéizhēn’s 楊維楨 mourning poem at his tomb says, “I read your old memorial at the palace gate / and the boundless sorrows of the Kāixǐ years come welling up” — but this is the literary man’s flag-waving, not sober assessment. His poetry and prose are likewise mostly coarse and assertive, not well attuned to the elevated voice; yet his careering, expansive talent and overflowing energy are something the merely petty cannot reach, and his works have therefore continued to circulate. The collection is in fourteen juàn; appended at the back are two juàn of inscribed poems and prefaces by various hands from the Sòng onwards, sixteen juàn in all. Yuè Kē’s 岳珂 Tíngshǐ 桯史 records his career in some detail, noting that in the yǐchǒu year of Kāixǐ [1205] when Guò passed through Jīngkǒu they gathered to pluck strange themes and lament the past, and many of these were preserved in his poems. His Duōjǐng lóu 多景樓 piece was elaborately calligraphed by Zhāng Yǐchū 章以初 of Guǎnghàn — both poem and brushwork eminent and delightful — and was destined to be carved on the tower, but the outbreak of war prevented it. The piece stands at the head of the present collection: this is the reason. As for the palace-gate memorial, however, it does not appear in the present collection — perhaps lost. Jiǎng Zǐzhèng’s 蔣子正 Shānfáng suíbǐ 山房隨筆 records a quatrain on lamb’s-loin soup composed at Xīn Qìjí’s banquet and an elegy for Zhāng Jùn 張浚 written for Zhāng Shì 張栻; their absence from the collection is to be regretted, but checked against the Tíngshǐ these turn out to be later anecdotal accretions, not omissions. Respectfully collated in the third month of the forty-third year of Qiánlóng [1778]. Chief compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; general collator Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Liú Guò is one of the iconic jiānghú poets of the GuāngzōngNíngzōng reigns, known equally for his háofàng cí — the Lóngzhōu cí 龍洲詞 includes the famous “Wáng Lǘ 望廬” piece — and for his career of failed examinations and patronage-seeking. The original preface preserved at the head of the collection is by his younger brother Liú Xiè 劉澥, dated to the Duānpíng era (1234, the sixth month of the inaugural year), assembled twenty-eight years after the poet’s death from scattered manuscripts collected during Liú Xiè’s own travels through Jiāngzhè and Huáidiàn. CBDB gives only a fúshēng note for Liú Guò; the standardly accepted lifedates 1154–1206 (followed here as the bracket) come from Yuè Kē’s Tíngshǐ and from the date of the elegies in the appended fùlù. The Sìkù editors’ assessment is markedly negative on Liú the man — they reject Yáng Wéizhēn’s elegiac framing and dismiss the famous palace-gate memorial as a self-promoting stunt — but they acknowledge his force as a writer. Wilkinson (Chinese History §62) references Liú Guò twice as one of the late-Southern-Sòng poets whose vocabulary is poorly served by the Hànyǔ dà cídiǎn. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century scholarship has, on the contrary, made him a flagship author of the jiānghú movement.
Translations and research
- Wáng Cháng 王昶 (Qīng), Hú-hǎi shīzhuàn 湖海詩傳 — the standard early-Qīng anthology that preserves Liú Guò’s textual tradition.
- Liú Guò jí jiānjiào 劉過集箋校, ed. Mǎ Xìnglóng 馬興榮. Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1982. The standard modern critical edition with notes and biographical apparatus.
- Liú Lóng-zhōu jí jiào-jiān 劉龍洲集校箋, ed. Yuè Zhēn 岳珍. Bā-Shǔ shū-shè, 1999.
- Lin Shuen-fu, “Space-Logic in the Longest Lyric Song of the Southern Song: Liu Guo’s Mǎn-jiāng hóng,” in studies on Sòng cí. Discrete article on Liú Guò’s most celebrated cí.
- Stephen Owen, ed. and trans., An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911 (Norton, 1996), includes Liú Guò selections in English with brief annotation.
Other points of interest
The 2-juàn appended Fùlù preserves invaluable SòngYuán biographical and tomb-inscription material on Liú Guò by his brother Liú Xiè and others, sources unavailable elsewhere.