文山集

Wénshān jí 文山集

Wénshān Collection by 文天祥 (撰)

About the work

The principal collected works of Wén Tiānxiáng 文天祥 (1236–1283), the zhuàngyuán of Bǎoyòu 寳祐 4 (1256), Right Chancellor of the resistance government, and the most iconic loyalist-martyr of the SòngYuán transition. The Kanripo recension follows the Sìbù cóngkān Wénshān xiānshēng quánjí 文山先生全集 — the full 21-juàn (formally extending to a “complete collection” of 20+ juàn depending on edition) compilation that combines (a) Wén Tiānxiáng’s pre-resistance literary collection (juàn 1–12), (b) the Zhǐnán lù 指南錄 and Zhǐnán hòulù 指南後錄, his autobiographical poetic diaries of the years 1276–1278 and 1278–1283 (juàn 13–14), (c) the Yínxiào jí 吟嘯集 from the Yān (Dàdū) prison (juàn 15), (d) the JíDù shī 集杜詩 — 200 jueju assembled exclusively from Dù Fǔ lines as a poetic history of the dynasty’s fall (juàn 16), (e) the Jìnián lù 紀年録 chronology and Shíyí 拾遺 supplements (juàn 17–18), and (f) biographical and commemorative appendices (juàn 19–20). The collection thus constitutes the principal documentary record of the late-Sòng resistance and one of the most-cited biéjí in late-imperial Chinese letters.

Tiyao

The KR4d0365 base text in the Kanripo distribution is the Sìbù cóngkān (SBCK) edition rather than the WYG, and so does not carry a standard Sìkù 提要. In place of a Sìkù tíyào, the present base text opens with Luó Hóngxiān’s 羅洪先 reprint preface of Jiājìng 嘉靖 39 (1560), here translated.

Preface to the Re-Cutting of Wénshān xiānshēng wénjí [by Luó Hóngxiān]: The Jí’ān 吉安 old cutting of the Wénshān xiānshēng wénjí was sprawling in arrangement, slipped and erroneous in lines and passages, and through the years had become so blurred as to be nearly unreadable. The Director-Censor He of Dé’ān 德安何公遷, on transfer to govern Wǔyòu [Jiāngxī], having brought forth what he had previously cultivated and disseminated it as his administration’s teaching, further proclaimed the worthies of the various counties of his prefecture so as to inspire-and-elevate the literati. Coming together with the prefect Zhāng of Pǔjiāng 浦江張公元諭, who had just arrived, he immediately commissioned the work [to Zhāng], who personally edited and arranged it, sorted and corrected the errors, drew on surplus public funds, and selected good wood-blocks for cutting. With the work half done, he conveyed the Censor’s command to me, Hóngxiān, asking that I write a preface to set forth the rationale of the collation.

I once observed Mèngzǐ’s discussion of how Běigōng Yǒu 北宫黝 and Mèng Shīshě 孟施舍 nurtured their courage, and felt something of it. Theirs — the unflinching, the fearless — was a courage as if sworn-and-pledged, an oath unbreakable until the end of life. Yet these two were men who relied on qì 氣; they still had something to ground them in their inner core. How much more so, then, for one who advances beyond them. I have here repeatedly turned over the events of the Master’s life, taking [his] poetry and letters as evidence, and so come to know the full detail of his career and to discuss it.

At the start: when the Master, fresh from passing the jìnshì in his early twenties, was returning home for his father’s mourning four years later and was appointed to the Jīngzhào staff, on the eve of the frontier urgency, Dǒng Sòngchén 董宋臣 was the main proponent of peace negotiations. The Master was the first to respond to the imperial summons by submitting that Dǒng be beheaded to settle the realm; he asked himself to be dismissed [for the offense]; when transferred to Hóngzhōu 洪州 he again asked to be dismissed; and shortly thereafter, when as a precedent he was appointed to the Hànlín 翰林 establishment and rose to a Department-of-Punishments officer, Dǒng was once again in office, and he again submitted a memorial of resignation. From the prefecture of Ruìzhōu he transferred to be Jiāngxī Judicial Commissioner, and the censorial faction had him dismissed; afterwards on a concurrent Academician appointment as Fújiàn Judicial Commissioner he was again repeatedly dismissed as he had been in Jiāngxī. Then having acted as Hànlínyuàn drafter he composed an edict that offended Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道, who incited his censors to impeach him: his Vice-Directorship was abolished, and as Húnán Transport Vice-Commissioner he was again impeached and dismissed. He thereupon retired in the Qián Ruòshuǐ 錢若水 manner, taking his retirement-leave. He was then only thirty-seven.

This was a time when he had just newly entered office at court, with no commitment to weighty military or other crisis affairs, and with state affairs lying with others, and without the corrective force of censorial-remonstrance powers; whether his words were attended to or not should have made no one slander him. Yet he was unable to wait so much as a single day in patience. Why? Men who suffer rebuffs often turn back and change step. Three rebuffs and not turning angry was difficult for the ancients; the Master was thrice rebuffed and re-employed, employed and thrice rebuffed again — six or seven times in all of suffering rebuff — and his resolve grew firmer, his qì fiercer, never once turning to self-regret. There must, then, have been something to ground him in his inner core.

From the start of his rise to the precipitate retirement; in the prime of his years content to retreat; called insane and not declining the label; placed in danger and not changing — these are not the manners of an extraordinary man. Yet he said: “[I act this way] for the sake of the world’s Way; my mind cannot but do so. What stands against me and will not let me run my course directly is circumstance (shì 勢); shall I bend to shì and betray my mind, or shall I rather seek to exhaust my self?” For this reason: when matters fail of accomplishment, [he] dares not bury them and conceal them in word; when words fail of acceptance, he cannot observe-and-wait to preserve his person; when his person is at last to be cast aside, he refuses to dally and idle so as to fill a position. He must do this and not that. The decisive-and-firm in the matter of life-and-death, with not a hair’s-breadth of confusion: this was the Master’s whole life.

And when one observes his prose: it soars-and-vaults like a wild swan emerging from the dust-and-wind, drifts like the islet-gull oblivious of mechanical contrivance, freezes-fast as the sword in the case carrying its blade. As to his memorialized statements and proclamations — heart-and-liver fully revealed — drawing widely on parallel-and-citation, exhausting the affair: he flows like the long river or great stream, in a hundred turns descending east, with nothing able to withstand his speed. This is no thing got casually in a morning or an evening. As to his tear-stained entry to guard the throne, the sale of his household to provision the army, the wandering in exile, the going-out from ten thousand deaths into one life to plan the restoration; when his strength would no longer support him, the prisoner-of-the-northern-cells captivity — in stately ease at Yān market, gathering the three hundred years of merit of nurturing literati to a lasting glow — when the longer the trace the brighter the radiance — through this, all-under-heaven and the after-ages have plainly known that there is an officer-duty of righteousness: men have said that none was so fierce in death’s encounter as the Master, ancient or modern.

People do not know that his repeated rebuffs without remorse were his prior preparation (chéng yùyě 誠豫也). Had he by chance not encountered the catastrophe, then those who die [for the cause] would surely not be heard of; and if they had been heard of, men would still have sighed at the difficulty. Some compare him to qì-relying [Běigōng Yǒu and Mèng Shīshě] without being able to find the deep ground of his mind. Were the Master’s lifelong cultivation in the end not to be revealed plainly to the world and to posterity, would this still be worth calling “discoursing on the age”? Misfortune is not what men ordinarily encounter. If one meets favourable fortune and can exhaust oneself, then how should one come to be so often rebuffed? But it is precisely because he sought to exhaust himself and could not escape repeated rebuff, that we know: his decisive-and-firm courage in the matter of life-and-death was a thing of cannot-but-do, and not of the Master’s desire. That it was not his desire, and yet he must always have prior preparation for it, foreseeing the unescapable, and yet never wavering — this is what the ancients meant by knowing what to nurture.

Those who have responsibility for the Way-of-the-world must think of having such prior preparation. I, Hóngxiān, am from his prefecture. Imagining-and-yearning at his lifelong example, I have placed myself in his position and have been deeply moved by the doctrine of nurturing the qì. Therefore I write this preface to his collection and append it. Alas! If men everywhere knew this nurturing — not merely sighing in admiration at the Master’s difficulty — then there must come a real reliance for the Way-of-the-world; and the encouraging intent of these two Lords would then take its effect.

Jiājìng 39 (1560), gēngshēn 庚申, second month, full-moon-after — your humble student of Jíshuǐ, Luó Hóngxiān 羅洪先, prostrates and respectfully writes this.

Abstract

The Wénshān jí is the central documentary survival of the SòngYuán transition. Wén Tiānxiáng (b. 6/6/1236, executed 9 January 1283 [Zhìyuán 19, 12th month, 9th day]; the catalog meta of “1236–1282” is wrong by one year — Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §39.12.2 example 3 specifically identifies this very text’s catalog entry as the canonical misdated case in SòngYuán scholarship; the correct dates are 1236–1283 as confirmed by CBDB 19123) was the zhuàngyuán of the Bǎoyòu 4 (1256) examination and a pupil of 歐陽守道 at Báilùzhōu 白鷺洲 Academy in Jízhōu 吉州. After repeated dismissals across his pre-resistance career (six or seven times, as Luó Hóngxiān’s preface counts them) — chiefly for his memorials against the war-eunuch Dǒng Sòngchén 董宋臣 and the chancellor Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道 — he retired in 1273 at age 37. He was recalled at the catastrophe of 1275 to raise a relief army for the imperial court, served briefly as Right Chancellor (Yòu chéngxiàng 右丞相) of the Lín’ān 臨安 government, was captured during the abortive 1276 peace mission to the Yuán camp at Hángzhōu, escaped at Zhènjiāng 鎮江 (the Zhǐnán lù 指南錄 documents this escape in verse), and continued the resistance from Fújiàn and Guǎngdōng. Captured at Wǔpōlǐng 五坡嶺 (Guǎngdōng) in early 1279, he was transported north to Yān (Dàdū 大都) and held for three years; he was executed in the capital on 9 January 1283 after refusing to serve the Yuán.

The collection is structured as follows (Wilkinson’s analysis, Chinese History: A New Manual, §35 and the citation at p. 27312 of the local text, reproduces it cleanly): Wénjí (juàn 1–12); Zhǐnán lù, Zhǐnán hòulù, Yínxiào jí, JíDù shī, Jìnián lù (juàn 13–18); biographies, sacrifices, and other appendices (juàn 19–20). The principal late-Sòng poems of patriotic resistance — the Zhèngqì gē 正氣歌 (“Song of the Upright Qì”), the Guò Língdīng yáng 過零丁洋, the Jīnlíng yì 金陵驛 — are all preserved in the Zhǐnán hòulù and the Yínxiào jí. The JíDù shī (treated as a separately catalogued work, KR4d0366) is the unique experiment of constructing a 200-poem cycle entirely from Dù Fǔ 杜甫 lines as a shīshǐ 詩史 chronicle of the dynasty’s collapse.

Textual history. Wén Tiānxiáng’s collection was first cut in Jí’ān in the Yuán, suffered serious textual corruption, and was recut by Hé and Zhāng under the supervision of Luó Hóngxiān in Jiājìng 39 (1560) — Luó’s preface is given above. Subsequent editions include Wáng Shǒurén’s 王守仁 (Wáng Yángmíng) preface to the Wénshān biéjí, Hán Yōng’s 韓雍 preface, Yán Màoqīng’s 鄢懋卿 preface, and many others; the SBCK base used here represents the standard late-imperial scholarly recension. For Wén Tiānxiáng’s life in Western scholarship, the standard reference is now Richard L. Davis, Wind Against the Mountain: The Crisis of Politics and Culture in Thirteenth-Century China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1996). Wilkinson singles out Wén Tiānxiáng’s death-date as the textbook case of lunisolar-to-Gregorian date-conversion error in modern reference works (A New Manual, §39.12.2 example 3).

Translations and research

• William Andreas Brown, Wen T’ien-hsiang: A Biographical Study of a Sung Patriot (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1986).
• Richard L. Davis, Wind Against the Mountain: The Crisis of Politics and Culture in Thirteenth-Century China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1996) — the standard modern English-language biography and intellectual study, covering both Wén Tiānxiáng’s career and his teacher 歐陽守道.
• Wén Tiānxiáng 文天祥, Wén Tiānxiáng quán-jí 文天祥全集, ed. Liú Wényuán 劉文源 et al. (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá shū-jú, 2017) — modern critical edition.
• Yáng Dé 杨德, Wén Tiānxiáng shī-jí jiào-jiān 文天祥诗集校笺 (Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi gǔjí, 2014).
• Burton Watson, trans., in The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry (1984), includes the Guò Líng-dīng yáng and the Zhèng-qì gē (selections).
• Jonathan Chaves, Heaven My Blanket, Earth My Pillow (1975) — also translates portions of the patriotic-resistance corpus.
• Hu Shih 胡適, in Chinese Literature: An Introduction (variants in older anthologies), translates extensive selections of Wén Tiānxiáng’s prose and poetry.
• Hé Zhōngshùn 何忠順 et al., Wén Tiānxiáng nián-pǔ jiǎn-biān 文天祥年譜簡編 (Běijīng, 1987) — the standard modern niánpǔ.

Other points of interest

The Zhèngqì gē 正氣歌 (“Song of the Upright Qì”), composed in the Yān (Dàdū) cellar-prison in 1281–1282, has become one of the most-recited classical Chinese poems of moral fortitude. Its catalog of historical exemplars (Sū Wǔ 蘇武, Yán Gāoqīng 顏杲卿, Zhāng Liáng 張良, Zhū Gě Liàng 諸葛亮, Tāo Qián 陶潛, and others) is the canonical late-Sòng inventory of zhōngyì 忠義 (“loyal-and-righteous”) archetypes and was systematically reused in Míng and Qīng didactic literature. The JíDù shī experiment (catalog’d separately as KR4d0366) — composing a poetic cycle exclusively from Dù Fǔ lines — is the most extended example of jíjù 集句 in classical Chinese poetry, and shows the unusual capacity of Dù Fǔ’s qì to be reassembled into a coherent historical voice across a 500-year gap.

Links

• WYG / SBCK base, V1184.2, p359.
• CBDB person 19123
• Wikidata, Wen Tianxiang
• Companion volume: KR4d0366 Wén Xìnguó jíDù shī 文信國集杜詩.