Wúwú lèigǎo 吾吾類稿
Wúwú’s Classified Drafts by 吳臯 (撰)
About the work
A three-juǎn reconstructed collection of Wú Gāo 吳臯 (style-name Shùnjǔ, sobriquet Wúwú), a late-Yuán Línchuān 臨川 literatus and Línjiānglù rúxué jiàoshòu. The text was lost in independent transmission; the Sìkù compilers reassembled 120+ poems and a dozen prose pieces from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn (which had indexed them under Wú Shùnjǔ Wúwú lèigǎo) and added three original prefaces also in the Dàdiǎn — one by Wú’s cousin Hú Jūjìng 胡居敬, one by Liáng Yín 梁寅, and one by Zhāng Měihé 張美和 — together with prefatorial information sufficient to reconstruct biography. Wú is one of the rare Yuán literati whose identity was recovered chiefly from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn reconstruction project. The collection’s title Wúwú is the author’s sobriquet (taken from a phrase in Lǐjì, with a sense of self-effacement).
Tiyao
Wúwú lèigǎo, 3 juǎn. By Wú Gāo of the Yuán. Gāo has no zhuàn in the Yuán shǐ; the local gazetteers also fail to record his name. Only in the various rhymes of the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn are his poems and prose substantially excerpted, with the title Wú Shùnjǔ Wúwú lèigǎo. The Dàdiǎn also separately gathers three original prefaces by Hú Jūjìng and others. From the biographical material in them one can know that he was a man of Línchuān, a descendant of the Sòng councillor of state Wú Qián, and an early disciple of Wú Chéng. He once held the post of Línjiānglù rúxué jiàoshòu. After the Yuán fell he held resistant determination and did not come out, ending his life in hiding — and not bequeathing his name. Only Wáng Qí’s Xù wénxiàn tōngkǎo records the title Wú Gāo Wúwú lèigǎo; and in the collection a zhùwén (“ritual prayer-text”) contains the phrase Gāo tiǎn yóuhuàn (“I, Gāo, was unworthily an itinerant official”) — establishing that Gāo is his given name and Shùnjǔ his style. Gāo was skilled in yùnyǔ (verse); his works are mostly grounded in plain unaffected manner, free of the late-Yuán tiāoqiǎo xiānmí (flighty-clever, fine-elegant) habit. Among his datable pieces are gēngyín (1350) rénchén (1352) guǐmǎo (1363) jiǎchén (1364) etc. — these were precisely the late Zhìzhèng era when the bandit-armies ran loose. Witnessing the crisis, he often grew deeply grieved-and-indignant, as in Hé Liú Wéntíng Nǐ gǔ shí zhāng “Responding to Liú Wéntíng’s Ten Imitations” — turning repeatedly on “the country’s stride about to collapse, the frontier-marquises relaxing their integrity” — followed by “stately stately the Xúnyáng prefect held to yì and knew his roots” etc., singling out the loyalty of Lǐ Fǔ 李黼 (the Yuán Xúnyáng prefect, zhōngliè) to stir up his contemporaries. His resolve is to be pitied. Though his bone-frame is not yet firm and his work cannot stand match with the ancients, its grieving-and-tortuous emotion does not fall short of the bequest of biàn yǎ (the modified Yǎ mode of the Shī). The collection was long lost; Gù Sìlì’s Yuán shī xuǎn, the most widely gathered, also failed to include it. We now reconstitute from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn: in total over 120 poems, organized into 3 juǎn. A dozen miscellaneous prose pieces are appended at the back for reference. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng forty-sixth (1781), ninth month. Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; head proofreader: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Wúwú lèigǎo is one of the principal examples of late-Yuán literary recovery from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. The compositional fingerprint is high: Wú Gāo’s poems are anchored by named cyclic years (1350, 1352, 1363, 1364) — the height of the Red Turban warfare — and his thematic mode is loyalist-historical. The tíyào compilers identify the Hé Liú Wéntíng Nǐ gǔ shí zhāng (Ten Imitations) and the Tángtáng Xúnyáng shǒu piece on Lǐ Fǔ 李黼 (1298–1352, the Yuán jìnshì and Xúnyáng prefect who died defending the city against Xú Shòuhuī’s Red Turban army) as the most significant pieces. The biographical recovery — Línchuān, descendant of the Sòng councillor Wú Qián 吳潛, disciple of Wú Chéng 吳澄 — links Wú Gāo to the same Línchuān Wúshì lineage as Wú Dāng 吳當 (see KR4d0553). The collection is therefore a useful supplementary witness to the late-Yuán Línchuān loyalist circle and to the reception of Wú Chéng’s teaching in the generations immediately after his death. Composition window: from the early 1340s (Wú’s teaching career) through to his death in retreat after 1368, dated approximately by the late-Zhì-zhèng cyclical names. Liáng Yín’s preface confirms the editorial salvage by Wú’s son Wú Jūn 吳均 (style-name Zhòngquán), with print sponsorship by the Línjiāng shuìkèsī dàshǐ Zhào Shī (京兆 Zhào jūn shī 京兆 = a man of the capital region).
Translations and research
- Wúwú lèigǎo is treated in Chinese-language studies of Wú Chéng’s lineage of disciples; appears in late-Yuán Jiāngxī loyalist studies.
- The Lǐ Fǔ memorial verse is a documentary anchor for Yuán loyalist historiography.
- No substantial Western-language treatment located.
Other points of interest
- The collection is one of the better illustrations of Sìkù compiler’s Yǒnglè dàdiǎn salvage practice — reassembling not just the verse but the prefaces and even biographical attribution from indexed Dàdiǎn fragments.
Links
- WYG SKQS V1219.1, p1.