Yǒulín yǐgǎo 友林乙稿
The Yǒu-lín “Second Draft” by 史彌寧 (zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A single-juan recension of 170 poems by Shǐ Míníng 史彌寧, zì Ānqīng 安卿, of the Níngbō Shǐ clan, composed during his tenure as prefect of Shàoyáng 邵陽 in the Jiādìng era (1208–1224). The collection bears the suffix yǐgǎo 乙稿 (“second draft”) because the jiǎgǎo preceded it; the jiǎgǎo is lost. The Wényuàn manuscript follows a clean Sòng imprint, opening with a fragmentary preface (the original year-and-signature-leaf having been torn out) and closing with the Sìkù compilers’ own tíyào. The Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì does not record the work, and the verse predominantly assumes the jìntǐ (recent-style) form. The aesthetic programme is encapsulated in the four-line poem Shī chán 詩禪 (“Poetry-Chán”): “shījiā huófǎ lèi chánjī, wùchù gōngfū shéi dé zhī, xún-zhe zhèxiē guānlìzǐ, guó fēng yǎ sòng bù nán zhuī” — the explicit statement of miàowù poetics, in conscious dialogue with Yán Yǔ 嚴羽’s contemporary Cāngláng shīhuà.
Tiyao
We respectfully observe that the Yǒulín yǐgǎo in one juan was composed by Shǐ Míníng of the Sòng. Míníng’s zì was Ānqīng; he was a native of Yínxiàn, nephew of Shǐ Hào 浩. In the Jiādìng era, as a guózǐ shèshēng (student of the Imperial College), he was attached as zhīshì to the chūnfáng (heir-apparent’s establishment), bearing the rank Gémén xuānzàn shèrén; he held office as prefect of Shàoyáng. The Sòng shǐ gives him no biography, and his collection is not noted in its yìwén zhì. This text preserves an old Sòng-printing, the kǎishū hand quite finely cut. It records a hundred-and-seventy poems in all. There is at the front an original preface in which the writer self-references his míng as “Yù 域” — the gist of which is that “Hào, when commanding Mǐn (Fújiàn), most warmly approved [me] among the prefectural-school students; forty years later he obtained Míníng in Húnán; and so [I] gathered the Yǒulín shīgǎo and engaged a workman to print it.” But the preface has lost a leaf at the start, the year-and-signature gone, and we cannot tell whose family-name it was; from the diction and content, it must have been written when Míníng was prefect of Shàoyáng. Among the poems in the collection the jìntǐ predominates. There is one juéjù that says: “The huófǎ of the poets resembles the Chán jī — / who knows the gōngfū at the moment of wù? / If you can find these little hinges, / Guófēng, yǎ, sòng are not hard to follow.” His doctrine of poetry takes miàowù as core; therefore his verse-construction and word-choice are dedicated to the freshly new — falling at times into the precariously clever. Yet his brushwork is still bright and sharp; the gold-dust in the sand sometimes does break out into a smile. The Shǐ family had many cousin-versifiers; Shǐ Mígǒng 彌鞏 has poems preserved in the Jǐngdìng Jiànkāng zhì, but his collected works are entirely lost — only Míníng’s collection here remains. Reverently collated, third month of Qiánlóng 42 (1777). Editor-in-chief Jì Yún, with Lù Xīxióng and Sūn Shìyì; chief proofreader Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Yǒulín yǐgǎo is the only complete poetic collection of any member of the major Níngbō Shǐ clan that has come down to us. Its survival is essentially mechanical — the Sìkù manuscript was prepared from a Sòng kǎishū imprint, which the tíyào itself describes as “fine”; the original-preface leaf, however, had already lost its first folio, removing the year and the signer’s identity. The internal evidence locates the text firmly in Shǐ Míníng’s tenure as prefect of Shàoyáng (Hunan); the jiǎgǎo (preceded the yǐgǎo implied by the title) is lost. The fragmentary preface confirms the story preserved in the title: that Shǐ Hào 浩 (Míníng’s uncle) had patronised the writer of the preface (probably Lóu Yuè 樓鑰 or another of Shǐ Hào’s bīnkè), and that the same writer encountered Míníng forty years later in Húnán and oversaw the printing. Aesthetically, the work is the most explicit verse-statement of miàowù poetics from a southern-Sòng official — written within years of, and in clear dialogue with, Yán Yǔ’s Cāngláng shīhuà. The notBefore / notAfter dates here use the bracket of Shǐ Míníng’s documented official career (Jiādìng 1 = 1208 to mid-1230s). CBDB id 18145; lifedates not securely established. Wilkinson’s Chinese History (Chap. 30 on Sòng poetry) treats miàowù as the principal late-Sòng poetic doctrine; this is one of the corpus-internal pieces of evidence cited in that literature.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. References to the Yǒu-lín yǐ-gǎo appear in the modern miào-wù literature (e.g. Mò Lìfēng 莫礪鋒’s surveys, the various studies of Yán Yǔ’s Cāng-láng shī-huà, and Stuart Sargent’s article on Yán Yǔ in Asia Major) but no monograph or article is dedicated to the work itself.
Other points of interest
The Shǐ-clan poetic tradition of Níngbō: the tíyào notes that the Jǐngdìng Jiànkāng zhì preserves verse by Shǐ Mígǒng 史彌鞏, and that the family generally produced verse in quantity. Shǐ Míníng’s Yǒulín yǐgǎo therefore stands as the lone surviving document of a wider clan literary practice that has otherwise vanished.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū tíyào (juan 162, jíbù biéjí lèi sān).
- CBDB id 18145 (Shǐ Míníng).