雪磯叢稿

Xuějī cónggǎo 雪磯叢稿

Collected Drafts from the Snow-Skerry by 樂雷發 (撰)

About the work

The five-juàn poetry collection of Yuè Léifā 樂雷發, zì Shēngyuǎn 聲遠, of Níngyuǎn 寧遠 in Húnán — the late-Sòng jīngshì 經世 poet best known for receiving his jìnshì-equivalent special-examination first placement in Bǎoyòu 1 (1253) only because his disciple Yáo Miǎn 姚勉, who had been first-placed in the regular examination, voluntarily ceded the laureate’s seat in his favour. The collection’s pre-Sì-kù transmission lay through the Chén Qǐ 陳起 Jiānghú xiǎojí 江湖小集 anthology; the Sìkù editors separate it out as a biéjí and judge its style notably more vigorous (fēnggǔ qiújiàn 風骨遒勁) than the typical Jiānghú manner. The work is fronted by Yuè Léifā’s own preface dated Bǎoyòu dīngsì 寶祐丁巳 (1257), apologizing for the work’s existence in the manner of Dù Fǔ’s Wénzhāng yīxiǎojì 文章一小技 (“literary composition is a minor art”).

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Xuějī cónggǎo in five juàn was composed by Yuè Léifā 樂雷發 of the Sòng. Léifā, zì Shēngyuǎn 聲遠, was a man of Níngyuǎn 寧遠. Repeatedly examined, he did not pass. In Bǎoyòu 1 (1253) his disciple Yáo Miǎn 姚勉 took the jìnshì degree and submitted a memorial requesting that he be allowed to yield his place to Léifā. Lǐzōng decreed a personal examination on eight matters of governance and conferred upon him the tèkē dìyī rén 特科第一人 (First Placement in Special Examination). Nevertheless, he never took up office, ending his days in retirement. He lived at Xuějī 雪磯 (“the Snow Skerry”) and styled himself Xuějī xiānshēng 雪磯先生, whence the name of his poetry collection.

Léifā’s character was rather high. Yet within the collection there is a Yè Yì Fú shānzhāi shī 謁易祓山齋詩 — implying that he was on close terms with the partisans of Sū Shīdàn 蘇師旦. This is most puzzling. Examining the matter: [Yì] Fú and [Sū] Shīdàn were jointly ruined, fallen together before the fall of Hán Tuōzhòu 韓侂胄. But this poem reads “the men of Chúnxī down to Jiāxī / I hear of Shānzhāi, also with white whiskers” — that is, in the period more than twenty years after Yì Fú’s banishment. There was no power of his to attach to: it must be because Fú had devoted himself to classical studies and was an honored elder, that Léifā overlooked his blemishes to befriend him. This certainly does not impeach Léifā.

His poetry was anciently included in the Jiānghú jí 江湖集 [collection]. Yet his fēnggǔ 風骨 is rather forceful, the cadence too clear and resonant; and he is in truth free of the disorderly, common, and rough faults [of that anthology] — he stands at a far remove from the Jiānghú school. His pieces such as the letter to Yáo Xuěpéng 姚雪篷, the letter to Xǔ Jièzhī 許介之, the poem to send off Vice-Minister Dīng 丁少卿 on the occasion of reading the Xìnián lù 繫年録 — all retain something of the surviving intent of Dù Mù 杜牧 and Xǔ Hún 許渾. Even his quatrain Qiūrì cūnlù 秋日村路 — “all along the way the rice-flower, who is its master? the red dragonfly companions the green mantis” 一路稻花誰是主,紅蜻蜓伴緑螳螂 — though slightly fine and tilted, still has no vulgar rhyme. He is by no means a man to be passed over merely because his name is not widely known.

Respectfully collated, ninth 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 also preserves Yuè Léifā’s own yuánxù 原序, dated Bǎoyòu dīngsì 寶祐丁巳 [1257]. In it he disclaims himself ever to have been a real poet: he says that his early circulation in the Yūjiāng 渝江 (i.e. Chóngqìng) anthologies of Luó Jìhǎi 羅季海 and the Xīhú anthology of Hú Xuějiāng 胡雪江 had misattributed pieces of his and mixed in pieces by others, so that he was taunted as a dàomíng 盜名 (“stolen-fame”) man. After his return from the capital and the misfortunes that followed, he writes, he has given up speaking of poetry. The present collection is printed only because Lǐ Yì 李抑, Zhū Sìxián 朱嗣賢, and Hé Yáoqīng 何堯卿 raised funds for the wood-blocks. He closes by quoting Dù Fǔ’s “literary composition is a minor art, in the Way it is no honor” 文章一小技,於道未為尊, as warning to himself.)

Abstract

Yuè Léifā’s biography is one of the more romantic stories in late-Sòng prosopography. A southern Húnán scholar from the remote Níngyuǎn region who had failed the regular examinations repeatedly, he came in 1253 to be granted a tèkē dìyī rén (first place in special examination) only because his student Yáo Miǎn 姚勉 — the actual jìnshì zhuàngyuán of that year — voluntarily memorialized requesting that the laureate’s seat be ceded to his master. The emperor Lǐzōng (much taken with the gesture) then put Yuè to a personal examination on eight pre-set matters of statecraft and confirmed him as special-examination first-placed. Yuè, however, declined the appointment and returned to his snow-skerry retreat in Húnán, where he ended his days. The episode is one of the few well-documented late-Sòng cases of an examination zhuàngyuán yielding his rank to another.

The dating of the works in the collection runs from c. 1240 (the earliest internal references) to the late 1250s; Yuè’s own preface is dated 1257, so the bulk of the contents predates that. The bracket adopted here (1240–1260) reflects the productive composition window of his preserved poetry.

The poetic style sits at a tense angle to the Jiānghúpài 江湖派 with which Yuè was historically associated. The Jiānghú movement, centered on Chén Qǐ 陳起’s anthology-publishing in Hángzhōu and on Liú Kèzhuāng 劉克莊 (1187–1269) as its godfather-figure, ran heavily toward the surfaces and small-scale of WǎnTáng 晚唐 manner; Yuè’s verse, while sharing the small-scale and the WǎnTáng tonal echo (the Sìkù editors specifically name Dù Mù and Xǔ Hún as his ancestors), differs in a moral seriousness and a fēnggǔ vigor that the editors find unusual. His correspondence-poems to Yáo Xuěpéng 姚雪篷 (i.e., Yáo Miǎn) and Xǔ Jièzhī 許介之 (Xǔ Yuè 許玥) document a coterie of Húnán literati who maintained a serious jīngshì orientation against the prevailing trend.

The puzzling Yè Yì Fú shānzhāi shī — implying friendship with a figure formerly entangled with Sū Shīdàn (the early-thirteenth-century chief minister and intimate of Hán Tuōzhòu) — is well handled by the Sìkù editors: the date implied by the poem (after the Chúnxī–Jiāxī generation has greyed) places it twenty-some years after Yì Fú’s disgrace, so the friendship cannot be opportunistic. The tiyao’s defense is plausible. Modern scholarship (Zhāng Hóngshēng) has shown that Yì Fú was in fact a serious Yì scholar whose late retirement was philosophically substantial.

Translations and research

• Stephen H. West and Wilt Idema, eds., The Story of the Western Wing (Berkeley, 1995), incidentally mention Yuè Léifā in the context of the Jiānghú anthology background.
• Zhāng Hóngshēng 張宏生, Jiānghú shī-pài yánjiū 江湖詩派研究 (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá, 1995), the standard modern study, situates Yuè Léifā at the southern Húnán periphery of the Jiānghú network.
• Hú Wéijùn 胡為俊, “Yuè Léifā jí qí Xuějī cóng-gǎo yánjiū” 樂雷發及其《雪磯叢稿》研究, MA thesis, Húnán shīfàn dàxué, 2007.
• Liú Yùzhēn 劉玉珍, “Yuè Léifā shēng-píng kǎo-shù” 樂雷發生平考述, Sòng-dài wénxué yánjiū 宋代文學研究, no. 16 (2015).

Other points of interest

The YuèYáo episode of 1253 — Yáo Miǎn ceding the zhuàngyuán placement to his teacher — is unique in the documented history of the Sòng jìnshì examination. The fact that the imperial court then chose to honor the gesture by instituting a special examination rather than by transferring the jìnshì placement itself is a window into the procedural rigidity of the system as well as Lǐzōng’s personal appreciation of the master-disciple ethic. The eight pre-set examination questions Lǐzōng put to Yuè on this occasion are not preserved in the collection.

The collection is also a useful witness to the geographic spread of late-Sòng poetic networks: Níngyuǎn (in southwestern Húnán, close to the Lǐngnán border) was about as remote a literary outpost as the southern court reached, and Yuè’s surviving correspondence-poems with figures at the Lín’ān center document the periphery-center literary network through which the Jiānghú aesthetic was disseminated.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1182.5, p689.
• CBDB person 35298 (Yuè Léifā)