Yǒngwù shī 詠物詩
Poems on Things by 謝宗可 (撰)
About the work
A one-juǎn sequence of 106 seven-character regulated poems (七言律詩) by Xiè Zōngkě 謝宗可, each devoted to a single object or scene. The titles are characteristically oblique: rather than “swallows” or “butterflies” Xiè writes on shuì yàn “the sleeping swallow”, shuì dié “the sleeping butterfly”, and rather than “wild geese” or “orioles” on yàn zì “the geese-character” (geese-formation as Chinese script) and yīng suō “the oriole-shuttle”. The collection sits at the late end of the SòngYuán yǒngwù “poems on things” tradition, in which a single conceit is spun into ornate metaphor.
Tiyao
Yǒngwù shī, 1 juǎn. Composed by Xiè Zōngkě of the Yuán. Zōngkě styles himself a man of Jīnlíng. His start and end are unknown; he is conventionally taken as a Yuán figure because Gù Sìlì’s 顧嗣立 Yuán bǎijiā shīxuǎn placed this collection at the close of the 戊 group, though even Gù was uncertain of his date. In antiquity Qū Yuán composed his Sòng jú “Praise of the orange tree” and Xún Kuàng his Cán fù “Rhapsody on silkworms” — these are the buds of yǒngwù poetry, but they are properly fù. Hàn Wǔdì’s Tiānmǎ and Bān Gù’s Báizhì and Bǎodǐng are likewise composed on occasion and not as exercises in carving a single object. The locus classicus of yǒngwù in shī proper is Cài Yōng’s poem on the pomegranate in the courtyard. The fashion spread in the Six Dynasties: Wáng Róng and Xiè Tiǎo exchanged yǒngwù compositions in competitive vein, but their compositions were chiefly displays of erudition. In Táng and Sòng yǒngwù poets are too numerous to count. Among the outstanding, Dù Fǔ’s bǐxìng runs deep and subtle; Sū Shì and Huáng Tíngjiān’s metaphors are unusual and clever; all stand out from the crowd. The rest tend, in Táng practice, toward representation, and, in Sòng, toward discursive comment; embedded affect and indirection are scattered throughout — that is the general line. Among them Yōng Táo’s Lùsī “Egret”, Cuī Jué’s Yuānyāng “Mandarin ducks”, and Zhèng Gǔ’s Zhègū “Partridge” achieved fame for the skill of their description. By the Sòng, Xiè Húdié (Xiè Yì 謝逸) and others extend a single subject across one hundred poems, prizing the line over the feeling; thus yǒngwù branches into a shī-school minor genre, and the variations exhaust themselves. Zōngkě’s collection here contains 106 pieces, all seven-character regulated. He composes not on the swallow but on the sleeping swallow, not on the wild goose but on the goose-character. His titles are uniformly fine-honed: he follows Yōng Táo and continues the trend, ever more inclined toward novel cleverness. Qú Zōngjí (Qú Yòu 瞿祐) in his Guītián shīhuà says: “Xiè Zōngkě’s Bǎiyǒng shī is widely circulated in the world. Apart from a few pieces — Zǒumǎdēng ‘Running-horse lantern’, Liányè zhōu ‘Lotus-leaf boat’, Hùntáng ‘Common bath’, Shuìyàn ‘Sleeping swallow’ — full pieces of high quality are hard to find.” This is fair. Four of the poems are also not from his highest reach. Gù Sìlì recorded forty of them and excerpted a further twenty couplets. Among them lines like “the brush-array furiously coils dragons and snakes; the cloud and mist weep” or “the long course of wind and rain alarms the gods and ghosts” are crude and overdone. “The mantis pins it: temple-snow chills as the frost-axe falls; coiffure-clouds press low: emerald skirts emptied” is over-stuffed and cannot be called well wrought. Yet its general register, though low, has lively talent. The poetic tradition is vast and ought to contain everything; this is an old Yuán production, so we preserve it to round out the form. The Guītián shīhuà further says: “Once I saw Qiū Yànnéng recite Zōngkě’s ‘Màihuā shēng’ ‘Cry of the flower-seller’ — one poem not in the Bǎiyǒng. Since his fondness for this manner ran deep, he extemporized as the occasion arose; he did not put down his brush when he completed this collection. What Yànnéng recited probably comes from after this collection was made.” (Note: Qú Yòu’s preface-text Qú Zōngjí is preserved in the original.) Respectfully collated, fortieth year of Qiánlóng (1781), tenth month. Compilers: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; head proofreader: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Yǒngwù shī is the sole surviving production of an otherwise obscure late-Yuán Jīnlíng-affiliated poet whose dates are unknown. Both the original recension and the title were stable from the late Yuán through the Míng: Qú Yòu’s Guītián shīhuà (1425 prefatorial date) already treats Xiè’s Bǎiyǒng as a familiar property. Xiè works in the late SòngYuán yǒngwù line associated with Xiè Yì 謝逸 (“Xièhúdié”) and Yōng Táo 雍陶 (Táng), in which a poet chains seven-character regulated poems to a single, often paradoxical object. The tíyào compilers situate Xiè firmly in the late, technically virtuoso, conceptually thin branch of the genre — preserving him as a typological specimen rather than for substantive achievement. The dating bracket follows: the work cannot be earlier than the mid-Yuán (when the late-yǒngwù manner of Xiè Yì had become a standard inheritance) and is closed by the dynastic transition; precise dating is not recoverable.
Translations and research
- Treated as one node in studies of the late-Yuán yǒngwù genre. No major monographic English-language treatment of the collection located.
Other points of interest
The catalog meta has no birth/death for Xiè, consistent with the tíyào’s explicit statement of his obscurity. Gù Sìlì’s Yuán bǎijiā shīxuǎn is the principal channel of survival.
Links
- WYG SKQS V1216.6, p619.