Sānshān Zhèng Júshān xiānshēng qīngjùn jí 三山鄭菊山先生淸雋集
The Pure-and-Eminent Collection of Master Zhèng Júshān of the Three Mountains by 鄭思肖 (撰, attributed)
About the work
A short, single-juàn selection of poetry and prefaces transmitted under the name of the Sòng loyalist Zhèng Sīxiào 鄭思肖 (1241–1318). “Sānshān” 三山 (Three Mountains) is the conventional Sòng-period nickname of Fúzhōu 福州, Zhèng’s native prefecture; “Júshānxiānshēng” 菊山先生 is one of his self-styled hào. The collection was reprinted in the Sìbù cóngkān (SBCK) and is not included in the Sìkù quánshū; the catalog meta accordingly leaves the persons field blank, but the title alone secures the attribution to Zhèng Sīxiào, and this is followed here.
Tiyao
Abstract
The lone juàn preserved in the SBCK opens with Zhèng’s Suǒnánwēng yībǎièrshí tú shījí zìxù 所南翁一百二十圖詩集自序 — a self-preface to a (now-lost) “One Hundred and Twenty Pictures Poetry Collection” — which presents in compressed, almost punning Daoistic prose Zhèng’s view that “the spirit-essence (靈氣) of Heaven and Earth becomes Man, the spirit-essence of Man becomes mind, the spirit-essence of mind becomes prose, the spirit-essence of prose becomes poetry: poetry is then the spirit-thing of Heaven and Earth, ancient and modern” (天地之靈氣為人,人之靈氣為心,心之靈氣為文,文之靈氣為詩,蓋詩者古今天地間之靈物也). He goes on to declare himself “isolated, withered, awkward, scattered” (孤孤枯枯迂迂踈踈), having severed friendship, composition, and exchange — a posture entirely consonant with the Suǒnánwēng persona known from the Xīnshǐ 心史 and the orchid paintings.
The catalog meta records no author and provides no dating, but the title’s dual signum — Sānshān (Fúzhōu) plus Júshānxiānshēng — together with the body’s reference to the Suǒnánwēng preface and the loyalist register of the language fixes attribution to Zhèng Sīxiào with high confidence; this is the standard understanding in modern bibliography (cf. CBDB 10912). The composition window for the texts gathered here must fall within Zhèng’s post-conquest seclusion in Sūzhōu (after 1280) and his death in 1318. The title Qīngjùn jí (“Pure-and-Eminent Collection”) is itself a label of literary curation, not Zhèng’s own original collection-name; the present extract is best read as a thematic florilegium drawn from Zhèng’s larger transmitted corpus, including the materials known from the Suǒnán wénjí and Suǒnán shījí.
Translations and research
- Beijing Tushuguan, Lǐ Pèngfēi 李梲飛 et al., Zhèng Sīxiào jí 鄭思肖集 (Shanghai guji, 1991), the standard modern critical edition, includes both the prose and the poetry attributed to Zhèng.
- Igarashi Kenryū 五十嵐賢隆, Tei Shoshō no shisō: Sō tei zanshin no isho 鄭思肖の思想—宋帝殘臣の遺書 (Mokujisha, 1969), an early Japanese monograph.
- Jennifer Jay, A Change in Dynasties: Loyalism in Thirteenth-Century China (Bellingham, 1991), discusses Zhèng Sīxiào at length as a paradigmatic case.
- William Niu, “Zheng Sixiao’s Heart History and the Question of Authenticity,” Journal of Sung-Yuan Studies (various contributions in the 1990s–2000s).
Other points of interest
The work supplies what is effectively an extra-canonical Ars Poetica of the yímín generation: poetry as the residue of an unbroken inner spiritual filiation against the historical disaster of conquest. The signature Daoistic tetracola (lìng / bùlìng; zuò / bùzuò) anticipate the more elaborate paradoxical metaphysics of the Xīnshǐ’s “Dà yì lùn” 大義論.
Links
- Wikidata, Zheng Sixiao
- CBDB person 10912
- KR catalog: KR4d0331; cf. Zhèng’s Tàijí jìliàn nèifǎ KR5b0251 in the Daozang.