Wúxī jí 梧溪集
Plane-Tree Brook Collection by 王逢 (撰)
About the work
A seven-juǎn poetry collection by Wáng Féng 王逢 (1319–1388), style-name Yuánjí, sobriquet Xímào shānrén (“Hat-Mat Mountain Man”). The collection’s defining feature, noted by the tíyào compilers, is Wáng’s use of xiǎoxù (short prefaces) attached to individual poems to record specific cases of zhōngxiào jiéyì — loyalty and integrity — from the SòngYuán and YuánMíng transitions. These xiǎoxù preserve historical detail not found in the Yuán shǐ or other standard histories and were treasured by Qīng-era historians as a documentary supplement. The transmission of the collection was very thin in the Míng — the WYG version derives from a hand-copy by the late-Míng Jiāngyīn scholar Zhōu Róngqǐ 周榮起 (sobriquet Yànnóng), which Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎 had Yáng Míngshí 楊名時 (Wáng’s fellow-townsman) seek out in the early Qīng. Zhōu Róngqǐ was a six-script specialist and the principal editor for many Jígǔ gé prints; his autograph was the basis for the wide circulation of Wúxī jí in the high Qīng.
Tiyao
Wúxī jí, 7 juǎn. By Wáng Féng of the Yuán. Féng, style-name Yuánjí, self-styled Xímào shānrén, was a man of Jiāngyīn. In the Zhìzhèng era he was recommended and did not come out; he fled to the Wúsōngjiāng and built his house at Wūníjīng on the Shànghǎi side. With Zhāng Shìchéng occupying Wú, the literati of the southeast all served his cause — Féng alone gāodào yuǎnyǐn (kept aloof and went into distance). When in the early Hóngwǔ the recruitment-letters came pressing, he again declined on grounds of age and illness. In youth he studied poetry under Chén Hànqīng, receiving the bequest of Yú Jí. His talent and vigor are broad-ranging and never lose the jǐnyán (disciplined gravity). The collection carries cases of zhōngxiào jiéyì from the SòngYuán transition in great fullness, each poem prefaced with a small foreword to mark its general outline — sufficient to supplement what the standard histories do not reach. This is where his subtle intent lies. The transmitted copies of this book are rather rare. Wáng Shìzhēn instructed his fellow-townsman Yáng Míngshí to seek it out: he obtained a holograph copy by the late-Míng Jiāngyīn elder Zhōu Róngqǐ. This is what is now widely circulated. Róngqǐ was sobriquet Yànnóng; he focused on the six scripts. The Jígǔ gé prints of Máo Jìn were largely his collation work. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng forty-fourth (1779), third month. Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; head proofreader: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Wúxī jí is one of the most documentary-loaded late-Yuán biéjí, principally because of Wáng Féng’s signature practice of attaching historical xiǎoxù to individual poems. The Sìkù compilers explicitly note these as a supplement to the standard histories — the xiǎoxù preserve concrete information about specific late-Sòng / late-Yuán loyalists whose biographies do not appear in the Sòng shǐ or Yuán shǐ. Modern historians regularly mine Wúxī jí for prosopographic information on YuánMíng transition loyalists. The transmission history is itself a documentary anchor for early-Qīng literary recovery: the Wáng Shìzhēn → Yáng Míngshí → Zhōu Róngqǐ holograph chain locates this collection at the heart of the Kángxī era project to recover late-Yuán literary materials. Composition window: roughly 1340 (Wáng’s young maturity, end of the Zhìshùn era) through to his death in 1388; the bulk of the loyalty-themed pieces sit in the 1360s–80s.
Translations and research
- The xiǎo-xù of Wú-xī jí are routinely cited in Chinese-language studies of Yuán-Míng transition local society and loyalist biography.
- John Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy and Conquerors and Confucians — uses Wú-xī jí as a documentary source.
Other points of interest
- Wáng Féng’s xiǎoxù practice is one of the few systematic Yuán applications of the Shī jīng-style prefatory tradition to shī documentation; this is a methodological precedent for Qīng-era shīshǐ scholarship.
Links
- WYG SKQS V1218.4, p563.