臞軒集

Qúxuān jí 臞軒集

The Collection of [the Studio of the] Lean Hut by 王邁 (撰)

About the work

A sixteen-juàn literary collection of the early-to-mid thirteenth-century official and outspoken memorialist Wáng Mài 王邁 (1184–1248), reconstituted by the Sìkù editors from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. The title Qúxuān 臞軒 (“Lean Hut”) is the studio name (and one of his hào) Wáng adopted after retirement to Pútián.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Qúxuān jí, sixteen juàn, was composed by Wáng Mài of the Sòng. Mài, zì Shízhī 實之, was a man of Xiānyóu in Xìnghuàjūn. He took his jìnshì in Jiādìng 10 (1217), was appointed Instructor of the Nánwài Mùzōngyuàn, summoned to test in the Hànlín Academy and reassigned as Vice-Prefect of Zhāngzhōu. Responding outspokenly to imperial decrees, he was impeached by censorial officials and demoted by two ranks. In the Chúnyòu era he served as Prefect of Shàowǔjūn, then retired with sacrifice-office and on death was posthumously named Junior Vice-Director of the Court of the Imperial Granaries. His doings are recorded in his biography in the Sòngshǐ. Yet on examination of Zhōu Mì’s 周密 Guǐxīn zázhì 癸辛雜識, we find an anecdote concerning Mài when he served as Rectifier (正字), which the Standard History does not mention; thus the text of the Shǐ itself is in places defective. As for the literary collection Mài left behind, the Sòngshǐ yìwénzhì does not record it; only Qián Pǔ’s 錢溥 Míng-dynasty Mìgé shūmù 秘閣書目 lists a Qúxuān jí in seven volumes, and Wáng Qí’s 王圻 Xù wénxiàn tōngkǎo 續文獻通考 also lists a twenty-juàn Qúxuān jí; from this it appears that a Míng transmission still existed. Today there survives in the world only the Qúxuān sìliù 臞軒四六 in one juàn, a collection entirely of memorial-style and parallel-prose pieces, evidently extracted from the larger collection and circulated separately, surviving by chance.

We have now drawn upon what the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserves and supplemented it from citations in other books, recovering altogether 171 prose pieces, 443 shī, and five cí, and arranging them into sixteen juàn. Counting the headings, this is approximately seven- or eight-tenths of the original.

Mài was renowned in his youth for his talent, and the Standard History especially praised his practical mastery of affairs — he was no man for whom literary ornament alone was the goal. As his palace examination ranked him fourth, he set out as adjutant to the Chángshā staff; Liú Kèzhuāng 劉克莊 wrote a parting poem with the lines “your policy-essay was so fine all are reciting it; the lofty scholar is faulted for being too forthright” 䇿好人争誦,名髙士責全 (preserved in the Hòucūn jí) — showing that already at the time of his palace test he had a reputation for blunt uprightness. Subsequently, in the various memorials he submitted in office, he repeatedly distinguished the upright from the wicked and dissected the ills of the day, as in his remonstrance against Qiáo Xíngjiǎn 喬行簡’s second appointment as chief councillor, his decree-response on the lightning-and-rain sacrifice, and others — all candidly stated. On the affair of [Prince] Jǐwáng Zhú 濟王竑 he counselled and remonstrated with utter sincerity. The Guǐxīn zázhì records that, on his turn at audience, Mài denounced Shǐ Mǐyuǎn 史彌遠’s monopoly of power so vehemently that the emperor styled him a “wild scholar” (狂生); after returning to his native place Mài thereupon styled himself “Wild Scholar by Imperial Grant” (勅賜狂生). This affair is missing from his Standard History biography, but it suffices to show his moral fibre. The various memorials in this collection still allow us to reconstruct one or two of these episodes; and the poetry and prose in the collection are mostly bright and forceful, after the manner of the man — the reader, taking his words and judging his deeds, will find here something more than mere literary craft.

Respectfully collated, ninth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Editors-in-chief: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Editor-General: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The 提要 anchors the standard understanding: Wáng Mài’s collection circulated as the Qúxuān jí in late Sòng and Míng, but no Sòng-printed edition has survived; the WYG sixteen-juàn version is a Yǒnglè dàdiǎn reconstitution prepared in 1781. The catalog meta gives Wáng’s lifedates as 1184–1248; CBDB returns 1185–1248 for the corresponding jìnshì of 1217 and accords with Wáng’s Sòngshǐ biography. The catalog 1184 is followed here, but the small discrepancy is noted. Internally, the strongest pieces are the political memorials cited by the editors — the impeachment of Qiáo Xíngjiǎn, the response on the lightning-and-rain sacrifice, the memorials concerning Prince Jǐwáng Zhú, and the audience speech against Shǐ Mǐyuǎn — which together place Wáng among the most outspoken memorialists of the Lǐzōng court. His epithet “Wild Scholar by Imperial Grant” became proverbial. The collection’s cí (only five pieces preserved) is too slight to support generic placement, but the shī are stylistically aligned with 劉克莊 (Liú Kèzhuāng), with whom Wáng was personally close. The Qúxuān sìliù — a separately-circulating one-juàn extract of his parallel-prose work — survived independently and is implicitly absorbed into the present sixteen-juàn reconstitution. The composition bracket for the surviving texts is the span of Wáng’s career, 1217–1248.

Translations and research

• Sì-kù provincial editions and modern punctuated reprints (Zhōnghuá shū-jú, Shànghǎi gǔ-jí) carry the Qúxuān jí; no full Western-language translation exists.
• For Wáng Mài’s political role and rhetoric, see the surveys of Lǐ-zōng-era court politics in Charles Hartman’s articles in the Cambridge History of China, vol. 5 part 2 (2009), and the relevant chapters in Richard Davis, Court and Family in Sung China.
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (2018, 6th ed.), does not single-out the Qúxuān jí, but Liú Kèzhuāng’s parting poem to Wáng is among the standard exempla of late-Sòng remonstrance lyric.

Other points of interest

Wáng’s audience-speech denouncing Shǐ Mǐyuǎn is a key counter-document to the official Standard-History portrait of Lǐzōng’s accommodation of the Shǐ regency, and survives only because Zhōu Mì preserved it in the Guǐxīn zázhì. Wáng’s self-styling as “勅賜狂生” — the imperial sneer reappropriated as a badge — is one of the rare Sòng instances of weaponized self-deprecation that has entered the standard literary lexicon.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1178.8, p441 (electronic facsimile via various library SKQS subscriptions).
• CBDB person 11391
• Sòngshǐ, juàn 423, biography of Wáng Mài.