西塍集

Xīchéng jí 西塍集

The Western-Embankment Collection by 宋伯仁 (撰)

About the work

A single-juàn poetry collection by Sòng Bórén 宋伯仁, zì Qìzhī 器之 (the catalog meta has 嘂之, a typographical slip), of Húzhōu 湖州, an Adjunct Officer of the Salt-Transport Commission (Yányùnsī shǔguān 鹽運司属官) in the Jiāxī 嘉熙 era. The collection is also titled Xuěyán yíncǎo 雪巖吟草 (“Snow-Crag Songs”) and consists of pieces composed in 1238–1239 (Jiāxī wùxūjǐhài 嘉熙戊戌己亥) while Sòng was lodging at the West Embankment of the Mǎchéng 馬塍 area of Hángzhōu — whence the title. The Sìkù editors note that Lì È’s 厲鶚 Sòng shī jìshì 宋詩紀事 had mistakenly split this single collection into two different ones (Xuěyán and Mǎchéng) and also miswrote Xī 西 as Mǎ 馬. Sòng Bórén is associated with the Jiānghúpài 江湖派 of Chén Qǐ 陳起’s anthology — much of the content is also found in the Jiānghú xiǎojí — and his coterie included the Jiānghú poets Gāo Jiǔwàn 高九萬 and Sūn Jìfān 孫季蕃. The collection’s poems are also notable for one quatrain — Qiūwǎn 秋晚 — preserved in Liú Kèzhuāng’s Hòucūn qiānjiā shī 後村千家詩 but not in the present recension.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Xīchéng jí in one juàn was composed by Sòng Bórén 宋伯仁 of the Sòng. Bórén, zì Qìzhī 噐之 [recte 器之], was a man of Húzhōu 湖州. In the Jiāxī era he was an Adjunct Officer of the Salt-Transport Commission. The collection has the alternative name Xuěyán yíncǎo 雪巖吟草; it was composed in the two years wùxūjǐhài of Jiāxī (1238–1239). Because he was lodging at the West Embankment 西馬塍 of Hángzhōu, the collection is named Xīchéng. Lì È’s 厲鶚 Sòng shī jìshì split Xuěyán and Mǎchéng into two collections and miswrote the Xī character as Mǎ — both are inaccuracies.

Chén Qǐ 陳起, in compiling the Jiānghú xiǎojí 江湖小集, had included Bórén’s poetry. On collation the contents largely correspond to the present text, and we suspect this is in fact a separately printed offshoot from the Jiānghú anthology.

Liú Kèzhuāng’s Hòucūn qiānjiā shī 後村千家詩 records a quatrain of Bórén, Qiūwǎn 秋晚: “The west wind blows through the worn black-sable cloak; / how many rivers and mountains regretted by the weary traveller? / Red leaves already frosty, the sky about to send geese; / the green rain-cape just rained on, the visitor sings of autumn” 西風吹破黑貂裘,多少江山惜倦㳺,紅葉已霜天欲鴈,緑蓑初雨客吟秋. Its style and tone are rather clear and pulled-up, while the present collection has no such piece. We know that his full collected works ran beyond this.

Among those with whom Bórén exchanged works were Gāo Jiǔwàn 高九萬, Sūn Jìfān 孫季蕃, and others — all Jiānghú itinerant guests of the late Sòng. His poetic style accordingly resembles theirs, rather low in cumulative cadence. Only because the work has been long in circulation we now preserve it, so as to maintain a single representative.

Respectfully collated, seventh month of Qiánlóng 44 (1779). 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.

Abstract

The Xīchéng jí is one of the cleanest documented cases of the Jiānghúpài 江湖派 phenomenon as observed in a single thin volume. Sòng Bórén (fl. 1237–1261), zì Qìzhī 器之 (the catalog typo 嘂之 is here corrected to the form actually in the tiyao and in Lì È), held a modest Salt-Transport sub-administrative post and was lodging in 1238–1239 at the West Embankment 西馬塍 of the Mǎchéng district outside Hángzhōu — a quarter that had become the residential center of Jiānghú-poet hangers-on around Chén Qǐ’s 陳起 publishing house. The collection’s exact dating (1238–1239) is unusually precise for a Jiānghú book and makes it a useful chronological anchor for the broader anthology phenomenon, which is dated only generally to the BǎoQìng 寶慶 through Chúnyòu eras.

The work survives because of its inclusion in Chén Qǐ’s Jiānghú xiǎojí 江湖小集, and the Sìkù editors’ suspicion that the present recension is a printer’s offshoot of the Jiānghú set is consistent with the modern textual history of the Jiānghú anthology family. The fact that Liú Kèzhuāng’s Hòucūn qiānjiā shī — a separate anthology compiled by the Jiānghú movement’s principal patron-figure — preserves at least one Bórén poem (Qiūwǎn) not in the present recension shows that even in the late Sòng the corpus was already partial.

Sòng Bórén is also separately known as the author and woodblock illustrator of the Méihuā xǐshén pǔ 梅花喜神譜 (Album of Plum-Blossom Spirit-Likenesses, 1238–1261), the first printed pictorial monograph in Chinese book history — a hundred woodblock images of plum-blossom forms each paired with a quatrain. The Xǐshén pǔ (catalogued separately in the Yìshù 藝術 division of the Sìkù) has been the principal vehicle of modern interest in Sòng Bórén; the small Xīchéng jí is the parallel pure-poetry collection of the same authorial moment.

The composition window adopted here (1238–1239) is precisely that given by the Sìkù tiyao on the strength of the wùxūjǐhài preface dating.

Translations and research

• Maggie Bickford, Ink Plum: The Making of a Chinese Scholar-Painting Genre (Cambridge, 1996) — discusses Sòng Bórén in connection with the Méihuā xǐ-shén pǔ; the standard modern study touching on his cultural milieu.
• Yang Xiaoshan, Metamorphosis of the Private Sphere: Gardens and Objects in Tang-Song Poetry (Honolulu, 2003), briefly discusses Sòng Bórén’s Jiānghú-pài placement.
• Zhāng Hóngshēng 張宏生, Jiānghú shī-pài yánjiū 江湖詩派研究 (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá, 1995), treats Sòng Bórén in his Mǎ-chéng coterie context.
• Zhōu Mìmì 周密密, “Sòng Bórén Xīchéng jí zhī Jiānghú-pài tè-zhì” 宋伯仁《西塍集》之江湖派特質, Wén-xué yí-chǎn 文學遺產, no. 4 (2017).

Other points of interest

The note that Xī 西 was miswritten as Mǎ 馬 by Lì È is a useful caution — the two characters are graphically dissimilar but bibliographically confusable in handwritten editorial notes (since the entire residential quarter was called Mǎchéng 馬塍, of which the Xī 西-section was simply the western embankment). The Sìkù tiyao’s quiet philological correction is characteristic.

Sòng Bórén’s other principal surviving work, the Méihuā xǐshén pǔ 梅花喜神譜, is one of the most important works of early Chinese print culture and the foundational printed model for the subsequent literati-painting huàpǔ 畫譜 tradition. The two surviving Sòng prints of the Xǐshén pǔ — in the Shànghǎi Library and in the National Palace Museum, Tāiběi — are among the most studied artifacts of Sòng-dynasty book production.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1183.2, p175.
• CBDB person 10664 (Sòng Bórén)
• Wikidata