恥堂存稿

Chǐtáng cúngǎo 恥堂存稿

Surviving Drafts from the Hall of Shame by 高斯得 (撰)

About the work

The collected works of Gāo Sīdé 高斯得 (b. 1201, jìnshì 1229), zì Bùwàng 不妄, of Qióngzhōu Pújiāng 卭州蒲江 in Shǔ. Gāo was a nephew of the great Daoxue historian Wèi Liǎowēng 魏了翁 (the so-called Hèshān 鶴山 master) and one of the boldest remonstrants of the final Sòng decades, called yìnghàn 硬漢 (“the hard fellow”) by Lǐzōng himself. The Chǐtáng cúngǎo survives in eight juàn (five of prose, three of poetry) recovered by the Sìkù editors from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn; the original Chǐtáng wénjí 恥堂文集 is lost. The collection is one of the most substantial first-hand documentary sources for the calamitous closing decades of the Sòng (the Bǎoyòu–Xiánchún 寳祐–咸淳 years and the Yuán transition), including memorials on misgovernment under Shǐ Sōngzhī 史嵩之 and Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道, eyewitness records of court ceremonies and disasters, and a substantial shīshǐ 詩史 body of poetry that the Sìkù editors compare directly to that of Dù Fǔ.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Chǐtáng cúngǎo was composed by Gāo Sīdé 高斯得 of the Sòng. Sīdé, zì Bùwàng 不妄, was a man of Pújiāng 蒲江 in Qióngzhōu. He took the jìnshì in Shàodìng 2 (1229); Lǐ Xīnchuán 李心傳 invited him into the Historiography Office as Inspector (Shǐguǎn jiǎnyuè 史館檢閲); he was successively transferred to Collator of the Imperial Library (Mìgé jiàokān 秘閣校勘) and accumulated office up to Hanlin-Auxiliary of the Duānmíng Hall (Duānmíngdiàn xuéshì 端明殿學士), Signing Officer of the Bureau of Military Affairs (QiānshūShūmìyuànshì 簽書樞密院事) concurrently Vice Grand Councilor (Cānzhīzhèngshì 參知政事). Caught in a plot by Liú Mèngyán 留夢炎, he was relieved of office and granted a temple-sinecure. After the fall of the Sòng he lived in retirement in the TiáoZhà 苕霅 region [Húzhōu], where he died. His career is in his Sòngshǐ biography.

Sīdé’s father Jià 稼 had died fighting the Yuán [Mongol] forces while Prefect of Miǎnzhōu 沔州 in the Duānpíng 端平 era. Sīdé made his loyalty-and-filiality the continuance of his house. His standing at court was upright and outspoken, taking as his urgent business the cultivation of the dynastic vitals and the breaking-down of treacherous officials. Lǐzōng even called him yìnghàn 硬漢 (“a hard fellow”). His biography records his memorials, more than ten matters in all, most of them the urgent essentials of the day. The memorials preserved in this collection number only some ten — compared with the biography there are already lacunae — yet his bitter and direct exposition of the late-Sòng symptoms of slackness, deception, and obstruction are alarming enough to serve as warning. His narrative pieces, drawn from what he personally experienced, are recorded truly and exactly, and supplement the gaps and omissions of the Sòngshǐ.

As to his career: at the outset he was thwarted by Shǐ Sōngzhī, in the middle blocked by Jiǎ Sìdào, and in his latter days excluded by Liú Mèngyán — never permitted to fully act on his intentions. His grief for the times and concern for the country, thwarted at every turn, all came to be lodged in his song-poetry. Although in giving voice to his heart he is at times too direct, the use of rhyme also sometimes lacking close scrutiny, his pieces of remembrance and record have throughout an aspect of stirring indignation and submerged grief. Pieces like Xīhú jìngdù 西湖競渡 and the three Lìrén xíng 麗人行 supplement the gaps in the Jiānchén zhuàn 姦臣傳; Léiyì 雷異, Jīhuò 雞禍 and others supplement what is not provided in the Wǔxíng zhì 五行志. For those who would trace the affairs of the final Sòng, this collection in cross-reference is truly a “history-in-verse” (shīshǐ 詩史).

We note: his biography records that he authored a Chǐtáng wénjí 恥堂文集 which circulated. The Míng-era Lùzhútáng shūmù 菉竹堂書目 by Yè Shèng 葉盛 also has a Chǐtáng jí in seven volumes; neither, however, gives a juàn count. Subsequently the work was lost in transmission, and very few collectors recorded it. Lì È 厲鶚, in compiling Sòng shī jìshì 宋詩紀事, gathered extensively, yet did not include the name of Sīdé. We have now culled and arranged the pieces from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn under their various rhymes, distinguishing prose into five juàn and poetry into three juàn, that the gist may be preserved. The original yuánxù by Gōng Sù 龔璛 of the Yuán is placed at the head as before. As for the three “music-language pieces” (yuèyǔ 樂語), they are close in style to the comic-actors’ utterance and not at all of the orthodox kind. We have for now appended them at the end of the original collection but have deleted them in the printed redaction.

Respectfully collated, third month of Qiánlóng 42 (1777). Chief-Compiler Officers Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; Chief-Collation Officer Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

(The collection also preserves the yuánxù by Gōng Sù 龔璛 of the early Yuán, which compares Gāo Sīdé to the Hàn loyalists Qū Yuán and Liú Xiàng and praises his late-Sòng remonstrances to Lǐzōng on the model of Sū Shì under Wáng Ānshí’s reforms.)

Abstract

The Chǐtáng cúngǎo is one of the most valuable surviving documentary collections for the final two decades of the Southern Sòng. Gāo Sīdé belonged by lineage to the heart of the late-Sòng Daoxue political bloc: his father Gāo Jià 高稼 died defending Miǎnzhōu against the Mongols in 1235, and his maternal uncle Wèi Liǎowēng 魏了翁 (1178–1237) — the so-called Hèshān xiānshēng — had been the leading Daoxue figure at court before his exile. Gāo Sīdé entered the Historiographical Bureau under the patronage of Lǐ Xīnchuán 李心傳 (1167–1244, compiler of the Jiànyán yǐlái xìnián yàolù 建炎以來繫年要錄), and his work bears the stamp of that historiographical milieu: meticulous attention to court ceremonies, factional turning-points, and the prosopography of his enemies.

His political career divides into three phases of confrontation with the three successive de facto chancellors of the late Sòng — Shǐ Sōngzhī 史嵩之 (ousted 1244), Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道 (in power 1259–1275), and Liú Mèngyán 留夢炎 (the man who eventually surrendered to the Yuán). Memorial 〈論留夢炎〉 was the immediate cause of Gāo’s dismissal. After the fall of Hángzhōu (1276), he retired to the TiáoZhà 苕霅 region of Huzhōu, where he survived for some years; the exact year of his death is uncertain (sources variously place it between 1276 and the late 1280s; the bracket adopted here, 1235–1290, accommodates both his early Sōngzhī-era memorials and his late post-fall poems).

The Sìkù editors’ explicit praise of the collection’s shīshǐ character is unusual. The Xīhú jìngdù set (on the regatta at West Lake, ironically composed during the Mongol crisis), the three Lìrén xíng (in deliberate imitation of Dù Fǔ’s Lìrén xíng on Yáng Guìfēi but pointed at Jiǎ Sìdào and his concubines), and the Léiyì / Jīhuò portent-poems are all cited by the editors as supplementing the Sòngshǐ’s Jiānchén zhuàn and Wǔxíng zhì. Modern historiography (Charles Hartman, James T. C. Liu, Richard L. Davis) has used the collection extensively for the political history of the Bǎoyòu–Xiánchún transition. The composition window adopted here (c. 1235, the year of his father’s death, to c. 1290, the latest plausible date of his post-fall poems) reflects the full span of his preserved writings.

The Yuán-era preface by Gōng Sù 龔璛 (b. 1266, jìnshì 1293) was solicited from Gāo’s son Chúnyàn 純彥 (sobriquet Hánrǔ 韓孺), who had moved to the Wú region in the early Yuán and was Gōng’s neighbour for twenty years. The fact that the collection survived at all to reach the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn compilers is owed to the diligence of Gāo’s two grandsons, who had it printed in the Yuán; the original print was already very rare by the Míng, and by Lì È’s time (early eighteenth century) had vanished entirely from the bibliographic record.

Translations and research

• Charles Hartman, “The Reluctant Historian: Sun Ti, Chu Hsi, and the Fall of Northern Sung,” T’oung Pao 89 (2003), discusses Gāo Sīdé in the context of late-Sòng historiographical politics.
• Richard L. Davis, Wind Against the Mountain: The Crisis of Politics and Culture in Thirteenth-Century China (Harvard, 1996), uses Gāo Sīdé’s memorials as a principal source for the Jiǎ Sìdào era.
• Jiāng Tiānshū 蔣天樞, “Gāo Chǐtáng nián-pǔ” 高恥堂年譜, in Sòng-rén bié-jí xù-lù 宋人別集敘錄 (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá, 1999).
• Pān Wèi 潘惠, “Chǐtáng cún-gǎo yánjiū” 《恥堂存稿》研究, MA thesis, Fùdàn dàxué, 2008.
• Wáng Déyì 王德毅, Sòng-dài Shǔ wén-huà yánjiū 宋代蜀文化研究 (Tāiběi: Wén-jīn, 1989), for the broader Pújiāng Gāo-Wèi 高魏 lineage milieu.

Other points of interest

The collection is one of the few surviving cases where the Sìkù editors explicitly perform a literary-critical genre cleansing: they removed the three yuèyǔ pieces from the printed redaction on the grounds that the form is “close to the language of comic-actors and not of the orthodox kind”. The fact that they note this openly in the tiyao, rather than silently excising the pieces, is a useful reminder that the Sìkù biéjí texts are not always integral and that the editorial decisions are sometimes recoverable from the tiyao itself.

The sobriquet Chǐtáng 恥堂 (“Hall of Shame”) refers both to a private dwelling and, by implication, to the shame Gāo felt at the dynasty’s continuing failures of policy and self-cultivation; the title and the collection’s pervasive tone of moral indignation are inseparable.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1182.1, p1.
• CBDB person 13847 (Gāo Sīdé)
• Sòngshǐ biography: j. 409.