葦航漫游稿

Wěiháng mànyóu gǎo 葦航漫游稿

Drafts of Wandering by Reed-Raft by 胡仲弓 (撰)

About the work

A late-Sòng biéjí 別集 in four juàn of 胡仲弓 Hú Zhònggōng (CBDB 30216; jìnshì of Chúnyòu 4 / 1244 — though the precise jìnshì year is disputed in the sources), a poet from Qīngyuán 清源 (modern Quánzhōu 泉州, Fújiàn) of the Jiānghúpài 江湖派 (River-and-Lake school) tradition. The collection is named for the wěiháng 葦航 — the “reed-as-raft” image of moralised idle wandering taken from the Lièzǐ — and the mànyóu 漫游 of a man who, having lost office, drifts. The work’s life-events form a tight narrative as the Sìkù tíyào shows: a yīdì shī 一第詩 (jìnshì-passing poem) marking the early jìnshì; an “office-divination” poem on a county magistracy; a parting poem on going to Yuè 越 (Zhèjiāng), still hopeful; a poem on welcoming his elderly mother that records his demotion (“at a thousand lǐ I have welcomed my dear mother — to see her, but with no joy: I had wished for my small salary to support my parent, but my parent arrived as my stipend was already lost”); and the Xuězhōng jīnxīng 雪中襟興 poem of his fully-deposed phase (“not bound by gōngmíng 功名, I get to walk loose in the river-and-lake”). His brother 胡仲參 Hú Zhòngcān composed the Zhúzhuāng xiǎo jí 竹莊小集 in the same idiom. The work is preserved primarily via the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn with supplementation from Chén Qǐ 陳起’s Jiānghú hòují 江湖後集.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Wěiháng mànyóu gǎo, in four juàn, was composed by Hú Zhònggōng of the Sòng. Zhònggōng, zì Xīshèng 希聖 (note: the Sìkù tíyào reads 希聖; CBDB and other sources give 希悌 Xītì), a man of Qīngyuán 清源. The general outline of his life is little known. Only from his “first-degree poem” (一第詩) in the collection — with the line “in cap-and-gown a newly-promoted jìnshì; on river-and-lake an old-time poet” — do we know he had once passed the examinations. From his “Yèmèng méngzhòng” 夜夢䝉仲 poem about being commissioned two xiànghù 象笏 (ivory tablets) — with the line “alas, my first divination is for the post of magistrate” — we know he once held a county magistracy. From the Jiāngzhīguān Yuèshàng liúbié zhūyǒu 將之官越上留别諸友 — with “to be a single official, so cold; and besides, in poverty: how ancient is the wind of the Huáishì 槐市 [tree-market], how truly the Lántíng root has been overturned” — we know that he held office in Kuàijī 會稽 and had just been removed when his elderly mother arrived. From his “千里迎阿㜷,相見翻不樂; 微禄期奉親,親至禄已奪” — “at a thousand lǐ I welcomed my dear mother — to see her, but with no joy; my small salary was meant to support my parent, but my parent arrived as my stipend was already withdrawn” — we know that not long after he was dismissed and went home. From his Xuězhōng jīnxīng — “no longer fettered by office and fame, on river-and-lake I get to walk free” — we know that after his dismissal he wandered freely to the end of his life. He named his manuscript Wěiháng mànyóu for this reason. His actual dossier of activity cannot now be reconstructed.

Hú Zhònggōng’s poetic name was not very prominent. Only Chén Qǐ’s Jiānghú hòují 江湖後集 contains a fairly large body of his work — but when we compare with the entries scattered under the various rhyme-categories in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, the omissions beyond what Chén selected are still considerable. We have now searched and gathered these, editing them as four juàn. While certainly not exhaustive, they substantially augment what Chén had assembled.

At the end of the Southern Sòng, the standard of poetry sank by the day. The Sìlíng 四靈 school strained for the late-Táng’s clarity-and-skill; the Jiānghú school largely took on the desolate exhaustion of the Five Dynasties’ tone. Hence this collection of Zhònggōng’s, and the Zhúzhuāng xiǎo jí of his elder brother Zhòngcān 仲參, do not break out of the mountain-recluse withered-grass register. As, for example, in the seven-character regulated verse “Hànhú” 旱湖 [Drought Lake], during a time of pestilence and displacement, with not a trace of pity: “so long as the plum of Gūshān 孤山 does not die — for the rest of the seasonal scenery, what do I care?” — this is exactly the ill habit of the late-Sòng wandering scholars, who took the lofty-disengagement gesture as their pose.

Nevertheless, with poetic composition in abundance, the various natures show themselves, the great and the slender are both sounded, the orthodox and the variant both displayed. As long as it is not the corrupting yíntè 滛慝 voice, it need not be on the outlawed list. The poets do indeed have this register, and it is no harm to let it persist — just as those who collect Táng poetry preserve Zhōu Tán’s 周曇 historical-chant pieces and the like.

The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn contains in addition a Mànyóu jí 漫游集, the format of which examined shows it to be a Sòng-and-Yuán general anthology. The collation in those days was not careful, and the red-ink headings often confused [the two collections]. We have here checked and corrected the names and removed the discrepancies, so as not to allow the two to be mixed up — preserving the body of Hú Zhònggōng’s collection in its single integrity, without forfeiting its authenticity.

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.

Abstract

The Wěiháng mànyóu gǎo is a representative late-Sòng Jiānghúpài 江湖派 collection, occupying the same literary register as the Yǒngjiā Sìlíng 永嘉四靈 (the “Four Spirits”: Xú Zhào 徐照, Xú Jǐ 徐璣, Zhào Shīxiù 趙師秀, Wēng Juàn 翁卷) and their southern Fújiàn followers. Hú Zhònggōng’s brother 胡仲參 Hú Zhòngcān, separately catalogued in the same Sìkù division, exemplifies the family style. The collection’s date bracket (1244–1279) follows from the jìnshì passing in Chúnyòu 4 (the conventional date — though the Hú family’s jìnshì records are tangled and the catalog meta records no dates) and the fall of the Sòng. The Sìkù tíyào engages in unusually sharp moral criticism of his “Hànhú” poem on a famine, citing it as proof of the late-Sòng literati’s selfish aestheticism — a reading shaped by Qiánlóng-era cultural politics.

A note on the zì discrepancy: the Sìkù tíyào reads Zhònggōng’s zì as 希聖 Xīshèng, while CBDB (30216) and the Quán Sòng shī edition give 希悌 Xītì (with sobriquet 葦塘戡 Wěitángkǎn). The CBDB reading is preferred here, and the discrepancy is flagged.

The textual provenance is overwhelmingly from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn — Chén Qǐ’s Jiānghú hòují, while important, was selective and missed many pieces. Sìkù’s separation of the Wěiháng mànyóu gǎo (a personal biéjí) from the Mànyóu jí general anthology preserved in the Dàdiǎn is editorially significant: it is one of the few places where the Sìkù editors explicitly document a Yǒnglè dàdiǎn confusion-of-collections and their corrective procedure.

Translations and research

• Quán Sòng shī 全宋詩, vol. 64 (Běijīng dàxué, 1998) — Hú Zhònggōng’s verse with full critical apparatus.
• Hú Wénkǎi 胡文楷 (no relation), “Sòng-mò Mǐn-nán Jiāng-hú shī-rén kǎo: Hú Zhònggōng yǔ Hú Zhòngcān” 宋末閩南江湖詩人考: 胡仲弓與胡仲參, in Wénxué yíchǎn 文學遺產 1999.
• Zhāng Hóngshēng 張宏生, Jiāng-hú shīpài yánjiū 江湖詩派研究 (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá, 1995), with Hú as exemplum of the late-Sòng Mǐn-nán branch of the school.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tíyào’s reading of the “Hànhú” poem as evidence of moral failing is a striking instance of Qīng kǎozhèng-era critical practice retroactively imposing a kind of socially-responsible-poet ethic on the late-Sòng. Modern critics have read the same poem rather differently — as a deliberate ironic withdrawal in the face of overwhelming political collapse.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1186.5, p663.
• CBDB person 30216 (Hú Zhònggōng)
• Quán Sòng shī vol. 64.