Báishí dàorén shījí 白石道人詩集
Poetry Collection of the Daoist of White Stone by 姜夔 (撰)
About the work
The collected shī of Jiāng Kuí 姜夔 (c. 1155–c. 1221, zì Yáozhāng 堯章, hào Báishí dàorén 白石道人, of Póyáng 鄱陽), one of the supreme lyric poets of the Southern Sòng — best known above all for his cí. The shī-collection in two juàn with appended jíwài shī preserves his long ballads, yuèfǔ-style imitations, and occasional verse; it is conventionally bound together with the Báishí dàorén gēqǔ 白石道人歌曲, the cí-collection in four juàn (here listed as part of the appended material in the SBCK source). Jiāng Kuí is also the author of Xù shūpǔ 續書譜 (calligraphy theory), Dàyuè yì 大樂議 (court music memorial), the Qínshǐ 琴史 of his circle, and the Gēqǔ 歌曲 with his unique surviving cí-music notation — the only substantial source for Sòng-period lyric song melody.
Tiyao
No tíyào present in the local source file. The Kanripo source for KR4d0309 (file KR4d0309_000.txt) is the Sìbù cóngkān (SBCK) photo-reproduction of a Sòng / Míng line of the Báishí dàorén shījí and Gēqǔ, not the WYG. The frontmatter consists of Jiāng Kuí’s own zìxù 自序 (a tale of meeting an immortal at Yúnmì peak on Mount Héng in Chúnxī bǐngwǔ 淳熙丙午 [1186] who handed him a treatise on poetry) and the mùlù of the Gēqǔ. The WYG tíyào is therefore not available within this Kanripo source file.
Translation of Jiāng Kuí’s self-preface: “On the lìxià day of bǐngwǔ of Chúnxī [summer 1186], I travelled to Mount Héng. Reaching Yúnmì peak, I lingered beneath the bridge over Yǔ stream, loving its quiet seclusion. I sent away my servant and horse and went alone to seek the source of the stream, walking and chanting verses, when I caught sight of a thatched roof half-hidden among the trees. A man was sitting on a great stone, a brightness about his brow; he might have been forty or fifty. I knew at once he was no ordinary man and went forward to bow. He received me very warmly and invited me into his hut, brewed bitter tea, and we ate together. He asked at his ease where I had come from and what I had been chanting. I told him the truth and quoted the lines I had composed the day before — gazing at the peaks: ‘The little hills cannot make clouds; / the great hills are half become sky.’ The master was pleased: ‘You are a man for me,’ and reaching into his pouch he produced a scroll, saying, ‘This is Discussions on Poetry (Shīshuō 詩說). I once gave thought to such matters and produced this book. Now I have given up writing — I pass it directly to you.’ I was the more amazed at him, but in my haste had no time to read it; I tucked it in my sleeve and thanked him only. When I asked his age he said he was born in the Qìnglì era [1041–1048]; this so astonished me that I begged repeatedly for the secret of long life — he only smiled and would not say, would not even tell me his name. He pressed me to stay longer for a yellow-millet porridge but I declined, saying my companion was waiting on the official road. I took my leave; out at the bridge and on horse I asked the local people, but no one knew of him. Only one old man sighed: ‘That master has long ceased to come out — is he still here?’ Just as he was about to say more, the old man too vanished. I returned downcast. That evening I unsaddled and read his book carefully — most striking. I have kept it in my pillow ever after, savouring it from time to time. When fellow enthusiasts have heard of it and come to look, I have not begrudged them. Of old, Xuānyuán Mímíng was famous for poetry — he was always in the southern hills. Surely the Master is his peer? — Báishí, Jiāng Kuí Yáozhāng, preface.”
Abstract
Jiāng Kuí is the central poet of the late twelfth-century cí “elegant school” (yǎcí pài 雅詞派), the patron-saint of Southern Sòng song-aesthetic, and the principal source-author for the actual sound of Sòng lyric song through his seventeen self-composed melodies (zìzhìqǔ 自製曲) preserved in the Gēqǔ together with their lyrics in side-pipe notation. He never passed the examinations; he lived as a literatus-client of patrons such as Xiāo Dézǎo 蕭德藻 (whose niece he married), Yáng Wànlǐ 楊萬里, Fàn Chéngdà 范成大, and Zhāng Jiàn 張鑑 of Hángzhōu, and ended in poverty. Lifedates are conventionally given as c. 1155 – c. 1221 (CBDB has him without firm years; the upper bracket is set by the Gēqǔ postscript dated 1221 which speaks of him as still alive, the lower by his earliest dated poems c. 1175). The composition window adopted here is 1180–1221.
The Sìkù entry on the Báishí dàorén shījí (preserved in the Sìkù tíyào, not in the local file here) is the standard early-modern bibliographic statement of the work; the WYG recension treats shī, cí, Shīshuō, Xù shūpǔ, and Gēqǔ as separate-but-bound items. The textual line of the Gēqǔ with its precious music notation goes through the late-Yuán Táo Zōngyí 陶宗儀 manuscript copy and the Qīng jǐngSòng reprint of Lù Zhōnghuī 陸鍾輝 (1743), the first to make Jiāng Kuí’s cí-music broadly known. The SBCK base used here is one of these jǐngSòng lines.
Wilkinson (Chinese History: A New Manual §62) treats Jiāng Kuí among the canonical Southern Sòng cí-poets and notes his exceptional standing as the only Sòng cí-composer whose original melodies survive.
Translations and research
- Lin Shuen-fu, The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K’uei and Southern Sung Tz’u Poetry (Princeton, 1978) — the standard English-language monograph; Jiāng Kuí as inflection point in the cí tradition.
- Laurence Picken, Music from the Tang Court, 7 vols. (Cambridge, 1981–2000) — the indispensable musicological framework within which Jiāng Kuí’s notation can be read.
- Rulan Chao Pian (Pián Zhāo-tóu 卞趙如蘭), Sonq Dynasty Musical Sources and Their Interpretation (Harvard, 1967) — earliest Western transcription and analysis of Jiāng Kuí’s seventeen melodies.
- Joseph S. C. Lam, “Huizong’s Dashengyue, a Musical Performance of Emperorship and Officialdom” — situates Jiāng Kuí’s 1197 Dà-yuè yì memorial against the imperial-music background.
- Xià Chéng-tāo 夏承燾, Jiāng Báishí cí biān-nián jiān-jiào 姜白石詞編年箋校 (Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1981 rev.) — the classic chronological annotated edition of the cí.
- Liú Nài-chāng 劉乃昌 et al., Jiāng Kuí cí jiào-zhù 姜夔詞校註 (Qí-Lǔ shū-shè, 1986).
- Yáng Yìn-líu 楊蔭瀏 and Yīn Fǎ-lǔ 陰法魯, Sòng Jiāng Báishí chuàng-zuò gē-qǔ yánjiū 宋姜白石創作歌曲研究 (Yīnyuè chū-bǎn, 1957) — foundational Chinese-language musicological treatment.
Other points of interest
The zìxù of 1186 (the “Yúnmìfēng / Yǔxī meeting”) is one of the most celebrated tales in Sòng literary autobiography — a self-presentation in which Jiāng Kuí casts himself as the recipient of a lost poetic-treatise from a Daoist immortal of the Qìnglì era (i.e. over 140 years old). The text of his Shīshuō 詩說 itself, said in the preface to be the immortal’s gift, circulated under Jiāng Kuí’s own name and is one of the seminal treatises of late-Sòng poetics.