文信國集杜詩

Wén Xìnguó jíDù shī 文信國集杜詩

Duke Xìn-guó Wén’s Collected-Dù-Lines Poems by 文天祥 (撰)

About the work

A 200-poem jíjù 集句 cycle composed by Wén Tiānxiáng 文天祥 in the Yuán prison-cellar at Yān 燕 (Dàdū 大都, modern Běijīng) in 1280–1281. Each five-character-quatrain (wǔyán juéjù 五言絶句) is assembled exclusively from lines of Dù Fǔ 杜甫 — every couplet, every line, every phrase. The cycle is structured as a poetic chronicle of the dynasty’s fall: each poem carries a title and a prose headnote naming the historical event or person, and the assembled DùFǔ verses serve as the poetic commentary. Wén Tiānxiáng called the work “another Dù shīshǐ 杜詩史” — Dù Fǔ’s poetry had been called shīshǐ (“poetic history”) since the Sòng, and Wén here makes the doctrine literal: Dù’s lines, separated by 500 years, are made to chronicle the SòngYuán catastrophe. Also titled Wénshān shīshǐ 文山詩史. The composition is dated Shàngzhāng zhíxú 上章執徐 (= gēngchén 庚辰 = Zhìyuán 17 = 1280); the postscript is from the rénwǔ 壬午 New-Year’s day (= 1282), the year of Wén’s execution.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Wén Xìngōng JíDù shī, four juàn, also titled Wénshān shīshǐ 文山詩史, was composed by Wén Tiānxiáng of the Sòng. It is the work he composed in prison after being taken to Yān 燕. There is a self-preface at the front, dated “year Shàngzhāng zhíxú 上章執徐, month Zhùlí dānè 祝犁單閼, day Shàngzhāng xiéwèi 上章協洽”. On examination: Shàngzhāng zhíxú is gēngchén 庚辰 — corresponding under the Yuán Shìzǔ to Zhìyuán 17 (1280), the year after Wén was sent to Yān. Zhùlí dānè would be the jǐmǎo 己卯 month, and Shàngzhāng xiéwèi the gēngwèi 庚未 day; but these do not concord with the proper sequence of stem-and-branch. We have checked: in that year (1280), the 1st month was guǐmǎo 癸卯 first day, and within the 2nd month there should have been three gēng days and two wèi days — there must be transcription confusion. The use of suìyáng 嵗陽 and suìmíng 嵗名 to number a day appears in the Wúguó Shān stele 吳國山碑 only as “chóngguāng dàyuānxiàn 重光大淵獻”; using them concurrently to number a month is found uniquely here in this preface.

There is also a colophon after the preface dated rénwǔ 壬午, New Year’s day (1282) — the year of Wén’s martyrdom.

The poems number two hundred in all, all five-character-couplet-pairs (wǔyán èryùn 五言二韻 = juéjù), each composed exclusively by gathering DùFǔ lines. Each poem has a title at the head, with the ordering arranged; and below the title a prose headnote setting forth the contemporaneous events. As to the reasons for the dynasty’s loss-and-collapse, the circumstances of his lifetime’s experience, and the loyal ministers and righteous men who shared his trials — each is recorded in detail. From start to end the work is luminous, and is in no way unworthy of the designation shīshǐ (“poetic history”). Wú Zhīzhèn 吳之振’s Sòngshī xuǎn 宋詩選 evaluates it merely on grounds of “clever phrasing in tailoring”: his view is indeed superficial.

Liú Dìngzhī 劉定之’s preface notes that in the original work, in the preface-colophon-headnotes there were lacunae indicating the lords-and-officers of Yuán and the rebel-traitors of Sòng — left blank and not written, as a recognition of the reality of the dynasty’s fall. The current edition has had these blanks filled in by Liú Dìngzhī with white characters (báizì 白字, i.e. small-print interpolation). The signature title “Lǚshànfǔ” 履善甫 [Wén Tiānxiáng’s zì] echoes the Zhǐnán jí allusion to “Yuèlí 越蠡 changed to Táo Zhū 陶朱” (i.e. Fàn Lí concealing his name after the fall of Yuè) — Wén’s use of his zì concealing his fame after the Sòng’s fall. Now in the present recension, the preface and colophons no longer have blanks: these are Liú Dìngzhī’s restored characters, and yet above the “Lǚshànfǔ” signature the name Tiānxiáng 天祥 is already written: it is unclear who inserted it. Liú Dìngzhī also says he divided the work into four juàn, but the present recension has only one juàn — losing the original arrangement. We have here re-divided it into four juàn to preserve the original.

Respectfully collated, third month of Qiánlóng 44 (1779). Chief-Compiler Officers (ministers) Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; Chief-Collation Officer (minister) Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Self-preface of Wén Tiānxiáng (1280; abridged in translation): “Sitting in the cellar-prison of Yōuyān 幽燕, with nothing to do, I would recite Dù Fǔ’s poetry, and gradually grew familiar with what was being moved-and-stirred in me. Therefore I gathered his five-character lines into quatrains. After long, two hundred came of it. Whatever I wished to say, Dù Fǔ had spoken for me first. Daily I would turn it over, simply feeling them to be my own poems, forgetting that they were Dù’s. Then I knew that Dù Fǔ does not himself compose poems: poetic lines are merely speech from within the inborn nature and feelings, which he troubled to articulate. Dù Fǔ is separated from me by several hundred years, and yet his words serve my use — is this not because our natures-and-feelings agree? Earlier men have called Dù’s verse ‘poetic history’ (shīshǐ 詩史), since in the form of song-and-recitation it embodied the substance of historical record. The world-changes and human affairs since my crash-and-fall are all to be seen in this gathering. It was never done with poetry in view: a future fine historian may perhaps consult it.”

Year Shàngzhāng zhíxú (1280), month Zhùlí dānè, day Shàngzhāng xiéwèi. Wén Tiānxiáng Lǚshànfǔ wrote this preface.

“This edition was composed two years ago. I did not myself expect to drift in exile and survive to this day, still not allowed to die. The text remains; to whom does Heaven assign it? Alas! Without the mind for a thousand-years’ span, none can speak of this.” Rénwǔ (1282), New Year’s day, Wén Tiānxiáng writes.

Abstract

The JíDù shī is one of the most remarkable formal experiments in classical Chinese poetry: a 200-poem cycle composed entirely from the lines of a single earlier poet, structured to function as a poetic chronicle (shīshǐ 詩史) of contemporary history. Wén Tiānxiáng was held in the Yān (Dàdū) prison-cellar from late 1278 until his execution on 9 January 1283, and composed the cycle in the relative leisure of his imprisonment between 1280 and 1281. The two prefaces (Wén’s own, dated 1280; the colophon dated 1282/1/1) frame the work as a deliberate testamentary act — a zhèngmíng 正名 of the dynasty’s fall through Dù Fǔ’s voice, with the báizì lacunae in the original (later filled in by Liú Dìngzhī 劉定之, the early-Míng editor) marking the lords of Yuán and the Sòng traitors as too dishonourable to name.

The structure of the cycle is essentially that of a chronicle-history: poems are grouped by topic — the imperial line; the disasters of Lúzhōu and Xiāngyáng; the great commanders; the fall of Lín’ān; the courts-in-flight at Fú’ān 福安, Jǐngyán 景炎, and Xiángxīng 祥興; the principal loyal generals and ministers; Wén Tiānxiáng’s own campaign; the various phases of his captivity; and finally his family, ancestors, and innermost mind. The use of stem-and-branch year-counting in suìyáng / suìmíng form (shàngzhāng zhíxú for gēngchén) is unusual; the Sìkù editors trace the convention to the Wúguó Shān stele 吳國山碑 of Sūn Wú-era Wú, and remark that the simultaneous use of these terms for month and day is found nowhere outside Wén’s preface — perhaps a deliberate archaism designed to avoid the use of Yuán reign-period reckonings.

Significance. As a jíjù cycle, the JíDù shī is the most extended example of the genre in Chinese literary history. As a shīshǐ it is the testamentary chronicle of the dynasty’s fall, by its first chancellor and last loyalist-martyr. The Sìkù tíyào’s defense against Wú Zhīzhèn 吳之振 — that the work is not to be read merely as a virtuoso exercise in line-cutting — is correct: the work has been studied as a major late-Sòng historical-poetic document by Western Sòng-Yuán-transition scholars (Davis 1996) and as a formal experiment in Sòng-poetry studies (Lin Shuen-fu and Owen).

Translations and research

• Richard L. Davis, Wind Against the Mountain: The Crisis of Politics and Culture in Thirteenth-Century China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1996) — frames the Jí-Dù shī as the principal late-Sòng patriotic-historical poem-cycle.
• Yáng Dé 杨德, Wén Tiānxiáng shī-jí jiào-jiān 文天祥诗集校笺 (Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi gǔjí, 2014) — critical edition with line-by-line identification of every borrowed Dù-Fǔ source.
• Wáng Wěi 王偉 preface and Liú Dìngzhī 劉定之 preface (both early Míng), reproduced in the WYG.
• Burton Watson, “Note on Wen Tianxiang’s Jiti shi,” in his The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry (1984), discusses the cycle’s jí-jù method.
• Cài Yìxīn 蔡義信, “Wén Tiānxiáng Jí-Dù shī yán-jiū” 文天祥《集杜詩》研究 (PhD diss., Hong Kong Baptist University, 2008).

Other points of interest

The JíDù shī is the principal documentation of Wén Tiānxiáng’s prison-period mentation: it preserves not only the dynastic chronicle but his immediate emotional response — to family deaths during his captivity, to news of the loyalist remnant at Yáshān 崖山, to his sense of impending execution. The headnotes function as a self-written xíngzhuàng 行狀, recording dates, places, and the names of associated zhōngyì 忠義 figures with archival precision. The cycle has been read by some modern critics as the precursor of the modern documentary poem (shīshǐ qua poetic history). For Wén Tiānxiáng’s life-context, see KR4d0365 Wénshān jí (the parent collection). For Liú Dìngzhī’s role as the Míng editor who filled in Wén’s deliberate blanks, see John W. Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy (1983) on early-Míng zhōngjié 忠節 commemoration.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1184.3, p805.
• CBDB person 19123
• Companion volume: KR4d0365 Wénshān jí 文山集 (the parent collection).