文安集

Wénān jí 文安集

The Wén-ān (Posthumous-name) Collection by 揭傒斯 (撰), compiled by 錫喇布哈 (編)

About the work

The 14-juǎn collected works of Jiē Xīsī 揭傒斯 (1274–1344), zì Mànshuò 曼碩, the fourth and youngest member of the Yuánshī sìdàjiā 元詩四大家. The title takes Jiē’s posthumous name Wénān 文安. Native of Fùzhōu in Lóngxīng (Jiāngxī). The collection is organized in two blocks: 4 juǎn of shī (poetry) plus a xùjí 續集 of 2 further juǎn, followed by 8 juǎn of zhì, biǎo, shū, xù, jì, bēizhì, and záwén. The compiler was Jiē’s disciple Xīlǎbùhā 錫喇布哈 (Qiánlóng-era sinicization of the original Yuán transcription 燮理普化 Xièlǐ pǔhuà; zì Yuánpǔ 元普), jìnshì of Tàidìng 4 (1327), to whom juǎn 9 of the collection itself preserves a farewell xù. Yuán transmission was already in this form. The WYG block is a clean copy of the master-and-disciple line.

Tiyao

Wénān jí, 14 juǎn. By Jiē Xīsī of the Yuán. Xīsī’s zì was Mànshuò, a native of Fùzhōu in Lóngxīng. In early Yányòu (1314) he entered office by recommendation as Guóshǐyuàn biānxiūguān and yìngfèng Hànlín wénzì, was transferred to Guózǐ zhùjiào, asked leave to return home, and was again summoned back. In early Tiānlì (1328), when the Kuízhānggé was opened, he was the first man promoted to shòujīng láng, and participated in the compilation of the Jīngshì dàdiǎn. He repeatedly rose to Hànlín shìjiǎng xuéshì and was general editor of the three LiáoJīnSòng histories, dying in office; posthumously enfeoffed Yùzhāngjùngōng with the posthumous name Wénān. His career is recorded in his Yuánshǐ biography. Xīsī ranks together with Yú Jí 虞集, Fàn Pèng 范梈 and Yáng Zài 楊載. His prose composes affairs with severe order, in language concise and apposite; the major court tablets and stele inscriptions of his day mostly issued from his hand, and he was reckoned to write jùzhì “weighty compositions.” But in his poetry, he is qīnglì wǎnzhuǎn “limpid and lithe,” with a distinctive grace — as if the prose and poetry came from two different hands. Yet the spirit-bones are clearly cut and the entrustment is deep — this is not to be classed with the yānhóng zhàzǐ “rouge and purple”-type writers who flaunt their charms. Yú Jí once characterized Xīsī’s verse as resembling “a new bride on the third day” and characterized his own as resembling “an old clerk at the Hàn court”; Xīsī, unsettled, composed his Yìzuó 憶昨 lines: “xuéshì shī chéng měi zìkuā — ‘the academician’s verse, when finished, always boasts of itself.‘” Yú answered with a poem ending “shī chéng duān-de xiàng shuí kuā — ‘the verse when finished, to whom can it truly boast?’” and appended the inscription “Today the new bride has grown old.” Though theirs was the deepest of friendships, in the matter of ranking neither would yield. Yáng Wéizhēn 楊維禎 in his Zhúzhīcí xù writes: “Jiē Mànshuò’s prose ranks just behind Yú; as among the Sòng gǔwén, like Sū and Zēng coming after Ōuyáng — this is perhaps the settled verdict.” Gù Sìlì’s 顧嗣立 Yuánshī xuǎn records Xīsī’s verse as titled Qiūyí jí 秋宜集 but this work is no longer seen. Jiāo Hóng’s 焦竑 Guóshǐ jīngjí zhì records a Xīsī jí in one juǎn but this also is no longer seen. The present recension has 4 juǎn of poetry and 2 of xùjí, plus 8 juǎn of zhì, biǎo, shū, xù, jì, bēizhì, and záwén, compiled by his disciple Xīlǎbùhā (originally written 爕理普化, here corrected). Xīlǎbùhā’s zì was Yuánpǔ, jìnshì of Tàidìng 4 (1327); juǎn 9 contains a Sòng Xī Yuánpǔ xù — namely the present compiler. Although what he assembled does not exhaust Xīsī’s complete works, what he received from master to disciple by direct transmission is in the end finer than any other recension. Note that the Qiūyí jí preserved in Gù Sìlì’s Yuánshī xuǎn contains a quatrain “Xiǎo chū Shùnchéngmén yǒu huái Tàixū” reading “bù chū chéng nán mén, yáo wàng Jiāngnán lù; qiánrì fēng xuě zhōng, gùrén cóng cǐ qù” — this is in fact half of an existing Hàn yuèfǔ, attributed to Xīsī by accident — so Gù Sìlì’s gleanings cannot be very precise. Respectfully collated in the tenth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781).

Abstract

Jiē Xīsī’s collected works survive in the recension prepared by his disciple Xīlǎbùhā (Yuán original: 燮理普化 Xièlǐ pǔhuà), who included Jiē’s poetry, his xùjí, and the eight juǎn of state and personal prose composed during his long Hànlín career. The Sìkù tíyào prefers this master-and-disciple recension over Gù Sìlì’s later Yuánshī xuǎn gleanings (which conflate at least one Hàn yuèfǔ fragment with Jiē’s authentic verse) and over Jiāo Hóng’s no-longer-extant 1-juǎn Xīsī jí. Jiē’s poetry is anchored in the early-Yuán recovery-of-Táng aesthetic; the prose is dominated by occasion-pieces written in his official capacity at the Hànlínyuàn and Kuízhānggé. The literary-historical importance of the collection rests on three points: (1) it preserves the principal corpus of one of the sìdàjiā; (2) it is the textual evidence for the famously contested sānrì xīnfù / Hàntíng lǎolì exchange with Yú Jí, with Jiē’s response poem preserved in Yìzuó; (3) it contains the Sòng Xī Yuánpǔ xù identifying the compiler. The catalog name 錫喇布哈 is the 1781 Qiánlóng-era systematic sinicization of the Mongolian original 燮理普化; the Sìkù tíyào preserves the editorial note (“原作爕理普化 今改正”). Composition window: from Jiē’s earliest documented compositions after his 1314 entry into office to his death in office in 1344.

Translations and research

• Yuán-shǐ j. 181 (Jiē Xī-sī biography).
• Yoshikawa Kōjirō 吉川幸次郎. 1965. Gen Min shi gaisetsu. Iwanami.
• Yáng Lián 楊鐮. 2003. Yuán-shī shǐ 元詩史. Rénmín wénxué chūbǎnshè. Treats Jiē Xī-sī in the chapter on the sì-dà-jiā.
• The Liáo-Jīn-Sòng history compilation supervised by Jiē is examined in Hok-lam Chan, The Historiography of the Chin Dynasty (1970) and in studies on the Sòng-shǐ compilation team.

Other points of interest

The catalog meta records the Yuán form of the compiler’s name as 錫喇布哈 following the Sìkù; this is the post-1781 sinicization. The original transcription 燮理普化 (variant 爕理普化) is the form used during the Yuán dynasty itself and survives in the xù on which Xīlǎbùhā’s identification depends. The discrepancy between the Qiūyí jí known to Gù Sìlì and the Xīsī jí known to Jiāo Hóng — both apparently lost — is one of the standard puzzles in Yuán-poetry bibliography.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1208.3, p149.
• Wikipedia, 揭傒斯
• Yuánshǐ j. 181