Yěqù yǒushēng huà 野趣有聲畫
Wild-Interest Sounding-Paintings by 楊公遠 (撰)
About the work
A two-juàn poetic collection by Yáng Gōngyuǎn 楊公遠 (CBDB 35322, 1228–after 1286), zì Shūmíng 叔明, native of Shèxiàn 歙縣 (Huīzhōu, Ānhuī). The unusual title “yǒushēng huà” (“sounding-paintings”) plays on the topos that “painting is silent poetry, and poetry is sounding painting” (shī huà yǒu shēng / huà shī wú shēng) — Yáng presents his verse explicitly as the “sound” complement to a now-lost painted album of his hand. Yáng was an amateur painter resident in the Sōngluó / Báiyuè (i.e. Huángshān) region of Huīzhōu; the residence had a substantial garden and reading-pavilion modeled on Wèi Yě’s 魏野 retreat. The Yěqù collection was first compiled in one juàn during the late Sòng (1270, with a preface by Wú Lónghàn 吳龍翰 吳龍翰 dated Xiánchún 6 = 1270); the second juàn was added posthumously by his descendants — the Sìkù editors deduce this from the placement of Fāng Huí’s 方回 postscript at the end of juàn 1 (dated Zhìyuán yǐyǒu = 1285) before the juàn-2 poems, and from a bǐngxū chūdù shī (Birthday Poem of bǐngxū, i.e. 1286) appearing in juàn 2. Internal dating: Zhìyuán 22 (1285), where Yáng calls himself “liùshí píngtóu qiān liǎngsuì” (sixty round less two — i.e. 58) — so birth year c. 1228; a Sòng yímín who did not formally take Yuán office (the Sìkù editors note he should be classed as a Yuán figure rather than a Sòng one since post-1276 his verse “places the rise-and-fall of [the] Sòng [dynasty] outside [his] consideration” and contains administrative-flattery and dézhèngsòng (virtuous-administration) poems addressed to Yuán officials, distinguishing him from steadfast yímín like Zhōu Mì).
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: Yěqù yǒushēng huà in two juàn was composed by Yáng Gōngyuǎn of the Yuán. Gōngyuǎn’s zì was Shūmíng, a man of Shèxiàn. This collection has prefixed Wú Lónghàn’s Xiánchún (1270)-era preface, which says one juàn; this base however is two juàn. Yet Fāng Huí’s Zhìyuán yǐyǒu (1285) postscript-to-the-original-base is loaded at the end of the upper juàn; what is recorded — the Huíxī dàozhōng one poem — is then in the middle of the lower juàn. If the original [really] was two juàn, then this postscript should not be inserted in the middle [between the two juàn]; if the collection originally recorded this poem, then [Fāng] Huí must not have re-recorded the complete text [in his postscript]. [We] know the original collection was only one juàn, and the lower juàn is what later persons supplementarily compiled — therefore [it] also has the bǐngxū (1286) birthday poem composed-after-the-postscript, [i.e.] one year [later].
His poetry does not depart from the late-Sòng Jiānghú form; presumably one-time fēngshàng (high-tide of fashion) made it so. Yet [for] one-mound-and-one-valley [scenery], [it] also at times has fine arrival. Because long without [a] cut-base, those who selected Sòng-and-Yuán poetry mostly missed [it]. In Míng Jiājìng bǐngshēn (1536), Wāng Yuánxī 汪元錫 first obtained the base from his clan-son [Wāng] Hàn 瀚, then again transmitted [the] copy.
In the collection there is the Zhìyuán 22 (1285) birthday poem saying “liùshí píngtóu qiān liǎngsuì” — so this year he was 58. By the long-calendar reckoning, [he] should have been born in [Sòng] Lǐzōng’s Shàodìng 1 (1228); at the Sòng’s fall his age was already 19. He entered the Yuán and did not take office — [he] should follow Zhōu Mì’s precedent and be called a Sòng yímín. However the collection’s Chūnxuě (Spring Snow) poem title-note marks “Jǐmǎo zhèngyuè chūsān zuò” (Composed on the 3rd day of the first month of jǐmǎo, i.e. 1279) — exactly the year Zhāng Shìjié and Lù Xiùfū and others jumped into the sea to give up [their] lives — yet that poem’s text has “xiàng xiǎo pī yī gèng yōng qīn / lüè wú yī shì nǎo xiōngjīn” (“Toward dawn [I] throw on clothes and still embrace the quilt / not in the slightest is there one matter disturbing [my] heart”); so [Yáng] takes the rise-and-fall of [the] Sòng and places [it] outside [his] consideration — quite different from the former-dynasty veteran-elders who [held] worried-and-concerned thoughts of the old kingdom. Moreover, after entering the Yuán, [his] presenting-petitions to those in power and his “praising-virtuous-administration” poetry — not just one or two — his not having gone out to office must be from [the absence of] step-up-ladder and no-introducer; [he] certainly cannot be on a par with [Zhōu] Mì, who [pursued his] entire-lifetime concealment of [his] traces. We now place him in the Yuán people, following his intent. Respectfully collated, fourth month of Qiánlóng 45 (1780). 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 frontmatter further preserves Wú Lónghàn’s 1270 preface — comparing Yáng’s residence at Sōngluó / Báiyuè to Wèi Yě’s retreat, observing that Yáng combines literary and pictorial talent — “moistens his brush to paint scenes hard to paint, and uses poetry to complete; recites poetry hard to recite, and uses painting to supplement”; one juàn given to “the manager-arrangement” of the collection.)
Abstract
Yáng Gōngyuǎn (CBDB 35322, 1228 — after 1286 — Yuán fl. dates) is a representative late-Sòng / early-Yuán Huīzhōu literatus-painter whose collection embodies the shīhuà aesthetic theory (poetry-as-sounding-painting) so important in late-Sòng / Yuán literary discourse. His connection to Fāng Huí (Yáng was Fāng’s contemporary in Huīzhōu — Fāng’s postscript to this collection is preserved) and to Wú Lónghàn (likewise a Huīzhōu late-Sòng jiānghú poet — Wú’s preface to this collection is preserved) places him at the center of the Huīzhōu pre- and post-conquest poetic society. The Sìkù editors carefully distinguish Yáng’s yímín affect from the steadfast post-1276 refusal of figures like Zhōu Mì: Yáng’s verse references the Yáishān catastrophe with apparent equanimity, and his Yuán-period verse includes flattery of Yuán officials and dézhèngsòng. Composition window: pre-1270 through 1286 (Yáng’s last datable poem); the bulk in the post-1276 period. CBDB 35322 confirms his floruit 1228–after 1286. Wilkinson does not single out Yáng.
Translations and research
- Susan Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su Shih (1037–1101) to Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (1555–1636) (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1971), pp. 53–60 — the shī-huà aesthetic discourse Yáng’s title invokes.
- Hé Zōng-měi 何宗美 (2009), passing references to the Huī-zhōu late-Sòng / early-Yuán poet network.
- Quán Yuán shī — collates Yáng’s verse.
Other points of interest
The title’s pun — yǒushēng huà “sounding-painting” — is one of the most concretized invocations of the Sū Shì Shī huà běn yī lǜ (“poetry and painting share one rule”) doctrine in late-Sòng literary culture, and is paralleled by the Northern-Sòng Zhāng Shùnmín wúshēngjì genre tradition. Yáng’s apparent equanimity in 1279 — composing leisure poetry “with not the slightest matter disturbing the heart” precisely when the Sòng dynasty was being extinguished at Yáishān — is one of the more notable counter-examples to the unified-Sòng-loyalist narrative usually applied to the post-1276 yímín writers.
Links
- WYG SKQS V1193.3, p729.
- CBDB person 35322 (Yáng Gōngyuǎn)