Dōngshān shīxuǎn 東山詩選
Selected Poems of Dōngshān by 葛紹體 (撰)
About the work
A two-juàn selection of poems by Gě Shàotǐ 葛紹體 (zì Yuánchéng 元承, hào Dōngshān 東山, of Tiāntái / Huángyán 黃巖, late twelfth–early thirteenth century), reconstructed by the Sìkù editors from quotations preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典. Gě studied under Yè Shì 葉適 of Yǒngjiā and his verse aligns with the sìlíng circle.
Tiyao
Your servants and others respectfully submit: the Dōngshān shīxuǎn in two juàn, scattered through the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, is everywhere ascribed to Gě Yuánchéng 葛元承 with no notice of his period or office. Examining the collection: in the poem “Setting Out at Dawn” he writes, “Today I leave Tiāntái — at every step the purple-cloud village”; and again in the poem “On the Road through Xīnchāng,” “Tomorrow’s journey, however many lǐ, must bring me near west of Chìchéng.” He was therefore a man of Tiāntái. Xiè Duó’s 謝鐸 Chìchéng xùzhì 赤城續志 records a Gě Shàotǐ, zì Yuánchéng, settled at Huángyán, who once studied under Yè Shì of Yǒngjiā and received his teaching. Zhào Xībiàn’s 趙希弁 Dúshū fùzhì 讀書附志 also records a Gě Shàotǐ Dōngshān shīwén xuǎn 葛紹體東山詩文選 in ten juàn — therefore the present collection is by Shàotǐ, the old text simply happening to record him by his style-name. But the Dúshū fùzhì says “shīwén xuǎn” (poetry-and-prose selection); what is preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn contains shī but no prose — perhaps the prose was insufficient to be recorded, or the editors discarded it. Xībiàn further says that Jiā Dàyǒu 家大酉 and Yìng Yáo 應繇 wrote the prefaces, and Yè Mèngdǐng 葉夢鼎 wrote the colophon at its end, with the xíngzhuàng and tomb-epitaph appended in the original; all these are now lost, and his life and deeds cannot be examined. Yè Shì’s Shuǐxīn jí 水心集 contains a poem presented to Shàotǐ, “After several years’ staying together — so vast and free / Today’s parting — so hasty / I think upon you: in body and reputation neither yet attained / leaving me, in my decline and sickness, with no joy at all”; and again, “I do not grieve that you love dragons but the dragons descend not / I grieve only that to love jade you must pay the price of common stone” — apparently he too was a frustrated examination-candidate. The collection contains exchange-poems with Zhào Shīxiù 趙師秀 and Wēng Juàn 翁卷, so his verse closely approaches the Four Spirits — the Yǒngjiā lineage taking the sìlíng as masters, this was the literary fashion of the time. Lì È 厲鶚 in the Sòngshī jìshì 宋詩紀事 alone fails to enter Shàotǐ’s name, knowing the collection had long been lost. We have now arranged what was preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn by genre into two juàn in order to preserve some outline. Shàotǐ also composed a Sìshū shù 四書述, noted in Zhū Yízūn’s 朱彝尊 Jīngyì kǎo 經義考 with the comment “lost”; but with this single collection still extant, his name is enough kept. Respectfully collated in the ninth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781]. Chief compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; general collator Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Gě Shàotǐ is one of the second-generation Yǒngjiā-circle poets, a disciple of Yè Shì 葉適 and an associate of the sìlíng. The original ten-juàn Dōngshān shīwén xuǎn 東山詩文選 with prefaces by Jiā Dàyǒu and Yìng Yáo and a colophon by Yè Mèngdǐng (1199–1279) was already lost by the early Qīng — Lì È did not include him in the Sòngshī jìshì (1746). The two-juàn recension restored by the Sìkù editors from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn (which was itself fragmentary by the 1770s) preserves only the shī; the prose is lost. The composition window adopted here, c. 1190–1240, brackets Gě’s plausible floruit: he was contemporary with the sìlíng and old enough for Yè Shì (d. 1223) to write a poem of farewell to him while himself “in decline and sickness.” His other major work, the Sìshū shù, is recorded in Jīngyì kǎo but lost. Wilkinson does not single out Gě Shàotǐ; he is treated in the QuánSòngshī (Běijīng dàxué, 1991–98).
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. For Chinese-language scholarship the principal references are the Quán-Sòng-shī entry, and Liú Hóng-yī 劉宏輝, “Gě Shàotǐ shēng-píng kǎo” 葛紹體生平考 (in periodical Wén-xiàn) for the basic chronology.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ detective-work — collating the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn attributions to “Gě Yuánchéng” with the Tiāntái biographical record in the Chìchéng xùzhì and the bibliographic record in the Dúshū fùzhì to identify the author as Gě Shàotǐ — is a textbook case of late-Qīng jíyì 輯佚 method.
Links
- (no Wikipedia entry located)