Hènián shī jí 鶴年詩集
Poetry Collection of Hènián by 丁鶴年 (撰)
About the work
A three-juǎn poetry collection by Dīng Hènián 丁鶴年 (1335–1424), a Sèmù-descent (West Asian) literatus of Wǔchāng who refused service after the YuánMíng transition and lived in retreat for nearly half a century. The collection’s original title was Hǎicháo jí 海巢集; the WYG receives it as Dīng Hènián xiānsheng jí 丁鶴年先生集 with an editor of unknown identity. The text is appended with poems by Dīng’s relatives: 9 poems by his eldest brother Jíyǎ Módíyīn 吉雅摩迪音 (Yuán qiānshì dūyuánshuài of Zhèdōng), 3 by his decisively elder brother Ālǐshā 阿里沙 (hànlín yìngfèng), and 5 by his cousin Wú Wéishàn 吳維善 of Fánchuān — additions whose editor is also unknown. A separate sub-text Dīng xiàozǐ zhuàn 丁孝子傳 is appended (catalog gives this as an appendix). The verse-content of the collection is fundamentally a yílǎo (loyal-survivor) corpus: pieces composed after Shùndì’s “northern hunt” (the 1368 retreat) carry the xìngwáng zhī gǎn (sense of dynastic fall) into Dīng’s late life.
Tiyao
Dīng Hènián jí, 1 juǎn. By Dīng Hènián of the Yuán. Hènián’s style-name was likewise Hènián — using the example of Mèng Hàorán’s use of Hàorán both as name and style. He was a Sèmù man and originally of a family of standing. Caught in war, he did not seek office; he firmly clung to integrity, and was famed for filial piety. Wū Sīdào and Dài Liáng wrote his zhuàn, both likening him to Shēntú Pán. After the Yuán fell he retreated to Sìmíng, then in old age returned to retire in the Wǔchāng hills. His biography is appended at the end of Dài Liáng’s biography in the Míng shǐ wényuàn zhuàn. His poetry’s original name was Hǎicháo jí; the present text is titled Dīng Hènián xiānsheng jí — it is not known who edited it. Appended at the end are nine poems by Hènián’s elder brother — qiānshì dūyuánshuài of Zhèdōng Jíyǎ Módíyīn (original “Jíyǎ Módīng” — now corrected) — three poems by another brother, hànlín yìngfèng Ālǐshā, and five poems by Hènián’s cousin (biǎoxiōng) Wú Wéishàn of Fánchuān; it is also not known who appended them. Since Hènián had renounced fame and rank and devoted his thinking only to poetic composition, what he achieved is considerable, and he is especially good at five- and seven-character regulated verse: often chényù dùncuò (deep-and-halting) approaching the ancients, free of the late-Yuán fineness-and-affectation. After Shùndì’s northern retreat, his sense of dynastic rise-and-fall is invested wholly in poetry: poignant and lingering, devoted-and-devoted, not forgetting his old country. Qú Zōngjí’s Guītián shīhuà singles out as fine the line “My footprints differ not from the owl going east; my heart only follows the geese flying north” and the piece “Táochánshì yǔ Sū shēng huà jiù” — from which one may know his settled aspiration. Zōngjí also praises Dīng’s Wúzhú xuān poem, saying: at the time, contemporary writers had filled the volume, but this one came out — and all withdrew their writing-hands. But examining the poem, the middle two couplets are stacked and tasteless: only the opening two lines use the fènghuáng topos to make a fit with “perching on wúzhú and feeding on bamboo fruits”, and the closing two lines use the Cài Yōng story to make a fit with the burnt-tailed tóng and the Jiāotíng bamboo — quite cleverly worked. But to take Dīng’s poetry through this is to lose his real reach by miles. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng forty-third (1778), second month. Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; head proofreader: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Hènián shī jí is the principal monument of Yuán Sèmù-descent (West-Asian) poetry as it was theorized by Dài Liáng’s preface. Dài’s preface is a landmark statement of the Yuán literary integration of West-Asian-origin officials: he names Guàn Yúnshí (Suānzhāi) 貫雲石, Mǎ Zǔcháng (Bóyōng) 馬祖常, Sà Dūlá (Tiānxī) 薩都剌, Yú Què (Tíngxīn) 余闕 as Dīng’s nearest predecessors and reads the corpus as a fulfillment of the Shī “BīnQín” tradition into the Western Regions — i.e. an extension of Chinese poetic culture to the Western fānbù. Modern textual scholars (e.g. Xiāo Qǐqìng 蕭啟慶) have used Dīng’s collection as a principal witness to the absorption of West-Asian-descent élites into the Chinese literary culture of the late Yuán. Composition window: most of the collection postdates Dīng’s decisive refusal of office (early 1360s) and a substantial part is post-1368. The tíyào’s remark on Dīng’s zhōngyì (loyal-righteous) inflection and the absence of late-Yuán xiānmí (ornate effeteness) is a standard Sìkù mode of approval. Dīng survived as a Yuán yílǎo into the Yǒnglè era — a remarkable longevity (89 years) — making him biographically the longest-lived of the Yuán literary loyalists.
Translations and research
- Xiāo Qǐqìng 蕭啟慶, studies on Yuán Sèmù literati. Several Chinese-language monographs on Yuán sèmù shī-rén.
- Stephen H. West, on Yuán literary culture. The Western Asian-descent Yuán poets have been periodically treated by Stephen H. West, John D. Langlois, and others, though Dīng less so than Guàn Yún-shí or Sà Dū-lá.
Other points of interest
- Dài Liáng’s preface is the most ambitious Yuán statement of “Sìyí láitóng” (the Four-Foreigners-come-as-one) culturalism in literary historiography: he positions the absorption of the huíhuí, tǔbō, kāhèěr, yīluólèkūn, tánggǔěr, huī etc. polities into Yuán letters as having created a culture larger than even Western Zhōu — a striking dynastic-self-justifying claim that the Sìkù compilers preserved without comment.
- The collection is also one of the principal Yuán-era witnesses to the practice of using one’s míng and zì identically; the Sìkù compilers note this is a borrowing of the Mèng Hàorán precedent.
Links
- WYG SKQS V1217.8, p493.