蒙川遺稿

Méngchuān yígǎo 蒙川遺稿

Surviving Drafts of [the Master of] Méngchuān by 劉黻 (撰), 劉應奎 (編)

About the work

A four-juàn collection of the surviving prose and verse of Liú Fú 劉黻 (d. 1276), zì Shēngbó 升伯, sobriquet Zhìwēng 質翁, of Lèqīng 樂清 (Wēnzhōu) — one of the principal Sòng yímín 遺民 loyalists, who pursued the fleeing court to Luófúshān 羅浮山 in Guǎngdōng and died there as the dynasty collapsed. The collection was assembled in the early Yuán Dàdé 大德 era (1297–1307) by Liú Fú’s younger brother Liú Yīngkuí 劉應奎 from fragments — Liú Fú’s principal works (Jiànpō zòudú 諫坡奏牘, Wéiyuán zhìgǎo 薇垣制藁, Jīngwéi nàxiàn 經帷納獻) had been carried off on the imperial flight and scattered. The collection accordingly preserves not the great court memorials of his prime, but the residue of his poems and shorter writings, of which the Sìkù editors say they recall the gǔpǔ dànbó 淳古淡泊 style of Chén Zǐ’áng 陳子昂. The collection is fronted by Liú Yīngkuí’s preface (dated Dàdé 大德, the Yuán shàngyuán 上元 day) and by Zhèng Chúsūn 鄭滁孫’s Cháoyánggé jì 朝陽閣記 — the latter the principal biographical record of Liú Fú’s last years.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Méngchuān yígǎo in four juàn was composed by Liú Fú 劉黻 of the Sòng. Fú, zì Shēngbó 升伯, sobriquet Zhìwēng 質翁, was a man of Lèqīng 樂清. In the early Chúnyòu era he entered the Imperial Academy by examination and lay prostrate at the palace gate, memorializing to attack Dīng Dàquán 丁大全, for which he was banished and consigned to Nán’ānjūn 南安軍. After Dàquán fell he was recalled. At the palace examination he again, in his answer, contradicted Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道, and was again held back by him. He proceeded from Sub-Editor of the Zhāoqìngjūn 昭慶軍 Bureau, was assigned to teaching office, promoted to Censor, and rose to Vice-Minister of Personnel (Lìbù shàngshū 吏部尚書). On the death of his mother he gave up office to mourn, and after that did not return to service.

When the Sòng fell, the two princes [Zhào Shì 趙昰 and Zhào Bǐng 趙昺] took to ship, and Fú followed them on the sea-passage into Guǎng, reaching Luófú 羅浮 where he died. His posthumous title is Zhōngsù 忠肅. His writings — Jiànpō zòudú 諫坡奏牘, Wéiyuán zhìgǎo 薇垣制藁, Jīngwéi nàxiàn 經帷納獻 — were carried with him on the sea-passage and have been dispersed and lost. The present cángǎo 殘藁 of poetry and prose in four juàn was gathered by his younger brother [Liú] Yīngkuí 應奎.

Fú’s perilous words and vigorous spirit again and again touched the powerful traitors. When the dynasty was in upheaval and he, in petty form, followed [the court] in flight and exile on the sea, he in the end embraced his principle to the death — the air of loyal-righteousness is by itself enough to be immortal. His poetry too is 淳古淡泊 “antique and pure, plain and shallow”, much modelled on the form of Chén Zǐ’áng 陳子昂. Though limited by the temper of the age, his style and meter not yet purely refined, his moral character being high, the inspirational current is itself distinct: looking down on the [late-Sòng poets] of the Fāng Huí 方回 sort he is as the phoenix soaring above the thousand-fathom drop.

Only the transmission has been long and the text greatly corrupted by errors and lacunae, with no other recension to collate against — a great pity.

The opening of the collection carries the preface by [Liú] Yīngkuí, composed in the Dàdé era of the Yuán, and also Zhèng Chúsūn 鄭滁孫’s Cháoyánggé jì 朝陽閣記. Cháoyánggé 朝陽閣 was the building in the mountains where Fú had read his books in his youth. After Fú’s death the family dwelling was destroyed, and only this pavilion remained standing; for this reason Yīngkuí asked Chúsūn to compose its commemoration.

Respectfully collated, twelfth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). 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’s front-matter contains both Liú Yīngkuí’s preface and the substantial Cháoyánggé jì by Zhèng Chúsūn — the latter the principal biographical document for Liú Fú’s final years, narrating his pursuit of the fleeing court by sea, his arrival at Luófúshān, his death there of illness, and the following sea-immolation of his wife Lady Lín and the entire household. Zhèng Chúsūn closes with an inscription comparing Liú Fú to Bó Yí of antiquity.)

Abstract

Liú Fú’s life and work are inseparable from his death. Born at Lèqīng (modern Wēnzhōu) and educated for twenty years in a mountain temple where he came to revere Chén Zǐ’áng, he entered the Tàixué 太學 (Imperial Academy) at twenty-four. In Bǎoyòu 6 (1258) he and a group of fellow Imperial Academy students prostrated themselves at the palace gate to memorialize against Dīng Dàquán; banished to Nán’ānjūn, he was recalled when Dīng fell. At the Rénxū 壬戌 (1262) palace examination — the year when he was widely expected to be first-placed — his answer ran sharply against Jiǎ Sìdào, with the result that he lost the top placement; at the moment of the announcement of results a sudden downpour darkened the courtyard, an omen recorded in Zhèng Chúsūn’s Cháoyánggé jì. He continued in central office through the 1260s under increasing pressure, eventually rising to Lìbù shàngshū 吏部尚書. He withdrew on his mother’s death.

When the southern Sòng court fled south after the fall of Hángzhōu in 1276, Liú Fú was effectively conscripted by the loyalist remnant under Lù Xiùfū 陸秀夫 and Wén Tiānxiáng 文天祥 to accompany the two princes by sea — initially as proposed Chancellor (chéngxiàng yìn 丞相印), an office he declined to accept. He died at Luófúshān 羅浮 in Guǎngdōng later that year of illness. His widow Lady Lín 林氏 led the entire household into the sea — a jiārén jiùyì 一家就義 (“family-to-righteousness”) suicide that was widely celebrated in the Sòng-loyalist memorial tradition.

His major works — the Jiànpō zòudú 諫坡奏牘 (Memorials from the Remonstrance Bureau), Wéiyuán zhìgǎo 薇垣制藁 (Drafts from the Bramble Wall, i.e., the Secretariat), and Jīngwéi nàxiàn 經帷納獻 (Submissions from the Classics Mat) — were lost on the flight. The Méngchuān yígǎo in four juàn is what his younger brother Liú Yīngkuí 劉應奎 could reassemble from “broken slips and torn pages” (or from the memories of friends), as the preface acknowledges. The four-juàn version is therefore literally a yígǎo (surviving fragments). The dating bracket (1245 — beginning of Liú Fú’s mature output — to 1276, his death year) reflects the full span of the recovered material.

The Sìkù editors’ praise of the Chén Zǐ’áng-like gǔpǔ dànbó style is significant. Chén Zǐ’áng (661–702) had been the principal early-Táng spokesman for a fùgǔ 復古 reform of poetic style against the gōngtǐ 宮體 manner; the analogy positions Liú Fú as a similar restorationist voice against the late-Sòng Jiānghú 江湖 mannerism. The closing image of the tiyao — comparing the late-Sòng poets to a phoenix soaring above the abyss — is unusually warm and reflects the Sìkù editors’ broader sympathy for Sòng loyalists.

The Yuán-era preface of Liú Yīngkuí is dated only to the “Dàdé” reign-era (1297–1307); the more precise jǐyǒu 己酉 (= Dàdé 13, 1309) is sometimes given on the strength of internal evidence, though the printing was unlikely earlier than Dàdé 1. Yīngkuí himself describes the collection as a stop-gap measure made at the request of friends and rendered urgent by his own approaching old age.

Translations and research

• Jennifer Jay-Preston Jay, A Change in Dynasties: Loyalism in Thirteenth-Century China (Bellingham: Western Washington University, 1991) — the standard English-language study of Sòng loyalist culture; discusses Liú Fú and the Luófú-shān loyalists in chapter 4.
• Richard L. Davis, Wind Against the Mountain: The Crisis of Politics and Culture in Thirteenth-Century China (Harvard, 1996), uses Liú Fú as a case study of the late-Sòng remonstrance tradition.
• Wāng Yúnhǎi 汪雲海, “Liú Fú yǔ Nán-Sòng mò-nián de zhōng-yì wén-huà” 劉黻與南宋末年的忠義文化, Sòng-shǐ yán-jiū lùn-cóng 宋史研究論叢, no. 14 (2013).
• Chéng Mín-mín 陳敏敏, “Méngchuān yí-gǎo yánjiū” 《蒙川遺稿》研究, MA thesis, Zhèjiāng dàxué, 2014.

Other points of interest

The Cháoyánggé jì by Zhèng Chúsūn 鄭滁孫 — preserved here as a paratext rather than as Liú Fú’s own work — is one of the most affecting documents of Sòng loyalist memorialization. Zhèng was himself a contemporary jìnshì and an early-Yuán recipient of summons (declined) who knew Liú Fú personally; his account of Liú Fú’s death at Luófúshān and the sea-immolation of his family by Lady Lín is the principal source for the closing scene of the loyalist resistance.

Liú Fú’s two-decade-long retreat at the Cháoyánggé — a study-pavilion on a peak in the Yàndàng mountains — is also one of the better-documented late-Sòng cases of literati mountain-retreat scholarship, with parallel structures in roughly contemporary figures like Wáng Yīngfēng 王應奉. The Sìkù tiyao’s framing of Liú Fú as a regional Wēnzhōu yímín (rather than as a court official) is consistent with the modern reading of his career.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1182.4, p639.
• CBDB person 27793 (Liú Fú)
• Sòngshǐ biography: j. 405 (zhōngyì 忠義 / loyal-righteousness chapter).