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彝齋文編

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Text ID
KR4d0347
Date
1227–1267
Dynasty
宋

Yízhāi wénbiān 彝齋文編

Literary compilation of [Zhào] Yí-zhāi by 趙孟堅 (撰)

About the work

Four juan of literary remains by Zhào Mèngjiān 趙孟堅 (Zǐgù 子固, hào Yízhāi 彝齋, 1199–1267 or earlier), Sòng imperial-clansman of the eleventh generation from Tàizǔ — and one of the major thirteenth-century Chinese painters and calligraphers, especially celebrated for his ink narcissus (shuǐxiān 水仙) and orchid (lán 蘭) studies, and for his collection-cataloguing of pre-Sòng calligraphic masterpieces. The collection of his prose and verse, lost from the open book trade by the Míng, was reconstituted by the Sìkù editors from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn in four juan. Cousin to the great Yuán painter-calligrapher Zhào Mèngfǔ 趙孟頫 (1254–1322).

Tiyao

A respectful submission. Yízhāi wénbiān in four juan, by the Sòng [author] Zhào Mèngjiān. Mèngjiān, zì Zǐgù 子固, with self-given sobriquet Yízhāi 彝齋, was an eleventh-generation descendant of [Sòng] Tàizǔ. His ancestors had been Āndìngjùnwáng and had crossed south with Gāozōng, settling at Guǎngchénzhèn 廣陳鎮 in Jiāhé 嘉禾. Mèngjiān himself, in writing his ancestor-tomb document, calls the place “Guǎngchéng” 廣成 — the local idiom-spelling of the same toponym, with no fixed character. According to Zhìyuán Jiāhé zhì, Guǎngchénzhèn lies ninety lǐ northeast of Hǎiyán 海鹽 — Mèngjiān, then, must be a Hǎiyán man, and those who give him as a Jiāxīng 嘉興 native are mistaken. Mèngjiān as imperial-clansman was a Bǎoqìng 3 (1227) jìnshì; he loved learning, was a master calligrapher, and delighted in collecting masterworks — the men of his time compared him to Mǐ Fú 米芾, and to this day his fragmentary inkwork circulates and his name is universally known. His life, however, has been variously reported. Zhōu Mì’s 周密 Qídōng yěyǔ 齊東野語 says he “ended as Director of the Left-side Treasury, with a posthumous Yánlíng commission” — implying that Mèngjiān died inside the Sòng era. Yáo Tóngshòu 姚桐壽’s Lèjiāo sīyǔ 樂郊私語, on the contrary, says that Mèngjiān entered the Yuán and refused service, secluded himself, and avoided visitors; that his cousin Mèngfǔ called on him, and after seating himself asked “How fare Biànshān 弁山 and Lìzé 笠澤?” Mèngfǔ said “well”; Mèngjiān answered “Brother, what is well-doing of mountain and lake to you?” — and after Mèngfǔ left, sent men to wash the seat-mat. This last story would imply that Mèngjiān lived into the early Yuán. The two accounts conflict drastically. We now examine Mèngjiān’s Jiǎchén suìzhāo bǎbǐ poem (“morning of the jiǎchén year, taking up the brush”), which has the line “for the forty-fifth time I have seen the year-end” — counting back by gānzhī, this places his birth in Qìngyuán 5 / jǐwèi (1199), 78 years before the fall of the Sòng. Mèngfǔ’s service to the Yuán began only afterwards, so Mèngjiān cannot in any case have lived to receive him. Further, in Zhū Cúnlǐ 朱存理’s Tiěwǎng shānhú 鐵網珊瑚 there is a Méizhúpǔ (Manual of plum-and-bamboo) entry, with a Xiánchún dīngmǎo 咸淳丁卯 (1267) postface by Yè Lónglǐ 葉隆禮 saying “Zǐgù in his late years specialized in ink plum and bamboo, walking in the steps of Táochán [Liú Mí 劉密?]; coming back from Jiāngyòu I meant to confirm them with him — but Zǐgù has died.” This postface is in Yè Lónglǐ’s own hand and his words can be trusted: Mèngjiān thus died before dīngmǎo (1267), which further proves that Yáo Tóngshòu’s tale is wild fabrication. As to his official career, no other source records it — and our reconstruction depends on his own poetry and prose: he was Húzhōu recorder, zhuǎnyùnsī deputy, prefect of Zhūjì 諸暨, and was dismissed at a censor’s word and went home. None of this is at all in doubt. He alone never held court office. Sòngshī jìshì says he “in early Jǐngdìng (1260–) was promoted Hànlín Academician” — for this no source can be found. His collection is not entered in Sòngshǐ yìwénzhì and is recorded only in the Míng Mìgé shūmù in four registers. It has long been lost; we have now drawn from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn and patched it together as four juan. By and large its character is “clear and remote, distantly removed from the vulgar,” as the man himself was — surplus jade-shards and fragments of jade pendants, the elegance not yet extinguished, perfectly fit to be transmitted alongside his calligraphy and painting in immortality. Submitted reverentially, Qiánlóng 46, ninth month [October–November 1781]. Editors-in-chief Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; chief collator Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

Zhào Mèngjiān is one of the cardinal figures of late-Sòng / early-Yuán literati art history. As an imperial-clansman descended in the eleventh generation from Sòng Tàizǔ, his political career remained at the local-prefecture level — he served as Húzhōu recorder, deputy in the Transport Commission, prefect of Zhūjì, and ended dismissed by an impeaching censor — but his cultural standing was far higher. Contemporaries, on Zhōu Mì’s testimony, compared him to Mǐ Fú 米芾 (1051–1107) for his connoisseurship of calligraphic masterworks and his hand at writing them; later art-historical opinion has remembered him principally as the master of monochrome ink narcissus and orchid (the so-called shuānggōu 雙鉤 contour-only narcissus is associated specifically with him, and the genre of orchid-only paintings traces a foundational stage to him). His handscroll Sānyǒutú 三友圖 (“plum, bamboo, pine”) and the various surviving narcissus and orchid scrolls (some attributable, some attributed) are central to the museum-canon study of SòngYuán painting transition.

The Sìkù tíyào’s long discussion of his lifedates is one of the more sustained pieces of bibliographic detective-work in the Sìkù corpus. Their argument — based on the Jiǎchén suìzhāo bǎbǐ poem and Yè Lónglǐ’s 1267 postface — establishes that Zhào Mèngjiān was born in Qìngyuán 5 = 1199 and died before 1267 (Xiánchún 3). The standard biographical handbooks and CBDB (id 15106) follow this and give 1199–1263. The catalog meta of this Kanripo entry gives 1199–1295, which is the discredited Yuán-survival figure from Yáo Tóngshòu’s Lèjiāo sīyǔ and which the Sìkù tíyào explicitly refutes; we follow the Sìkù-CBDB position (1199–1263 or at any rate before 1267) and note this discrepancy.

His cousin Zhào Mèngfǔ 趙孟頫 (1254–1322), who served the Yuán court as a leading painter-calligrapher, was the more famous of the two in art-historical legacy — but Zhào Mèngjiān, as a Sòng-loyal yímín who refused to live into the Yuán, occupies a different and morally distinct place in the tradition. The Yáo Tóngshòu apocryphon on Mèngjiān washing the seat after Mèngfǔ’s visit, even though chronologically impossible, became a stock topic in late-Imperial Chinese literati discourse on the morality of Yuán service.

Translations and research

  • Wáng Lián-qǐ 王連起 (ed.), Zhào Mèng-jiān, Zhào Mèng-fǔ shū-huà jí 趙孟堅趙孟頫書畫集 (Wén-wù chū-bǎn-shè, 1995).
  • Roderick Whitfield and Wen C. Fong, Sung Painting (Princeton, 1992) — Zhào Mèng-jiān’s narcissus-and-orchid scrolls discussed in the chapter on late-Sòng literati painting.
  • Susan E. Nelson, “I-style narcissus painting in Yuan China,” Archives of Asian Art 37 (1984): 6–23. (Sets the iconographic context of Zhào Mèng-jiān’s narcissus.)
  • Wú Hóng 巫鴻 et al., Zhōngguó shū-huà quán-shū 中國書畫全書 (Shàng-hǎi shū-huà, 1993ff.), entries on Zhào Mèng-jiān.
  • Quán-Sòng wén 全宋文 vol. 347 (Shàng-hǎi cí-shū / Ān-huī jiào-yù, 2006), introduction and collation of Zhào Mèng-jiān’s prose.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tíyào refutation of the Yáo Tóngshòu story is one of the better-known examples of Sìkù-period archival scholarship — Jì Yún builds the argument inductively from internal poem-evidence (gānzhī counting) reinforced by an external 1267 postface, and produces a clear date-correction. The same correction has been generally accepted by all subsequent scholarship.

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