鐵崖古樂府

Tiěyá gǔ yuèfǔ 鐵崖古樂府

Iron-Cliff’s Old Music-Bureau Verses by 楊維楨 (撰), compiled by 吳復 (編)

About the work

The principal poetic collection of Yáng Wéizhēn 楊維楨 (1296–1370), titled after his sobriquet Tiěyá “Iron-Cliff”. The catalog meta gives 10 juǎn; the SBCK source preserves a fuller 16-juǎn recension (10 main + 6 continuation/supplementary, with xiānglián and xùlián sections). The main collection is compiled by Yáng’s disciple Wú Fù 吳復 (style-name Jiànxīn 見心 / Zǐzhōng 子中) and prefaced by Wú in Zhìzhèng 6 bǐngxū (1346); a second preface is by the Daoist Zhāng Tiānyǔ 張天雨 (Fāngwài) in the same year. The Wú Fù preface preserves a critical biographical fact: Yáng had composed over a thousand yuèfǔ at Kuàijī, judged them unsatisfactory in old age and burned them; the present collection therefore preserves only Yáng’s compositions from Qiántáng, Tàihú, and Dòngtíng. The SBCK source also preserves a substantial mùmíng (tomb-inscription) of Yáng by Sòng Lián 宋濂 — one of the most important YuánMíng transition mortuary documents. The Tiěyá gǔ yuèfǔ is the defining anthology of the Tiěyá yuèfǔ movement, the dominant late-Yuán poetic school.

Tiyao

(The WYG SKQS edition contains the Sìkù tíyào, not preserved in the SBCK source. The contemporary Yuán-era prefaces in the SBCK supply the substantive content: Wú Fù characterizes Yáng’s poetics — yuèfǔ drawn from the fēngyǎ variant tradition, “mǐnshí bìngsú chénshàn bìxié” (mourning the times, ailing the customs, displaying the good, closing off evil), parallel to but not contradicting the fēngyǎ. Yáng’s mature poetic discipline: “recognizing poetry is like recognizing a person; recognizing a person by voice and face is easy, recognizing by nature is hard, recognizing the divine in a person is hardest. To practice poetry on the ancients but not recognize their nature and divinity — that is no poetry”. Zhāng Tiānyǔ’s preface places Yáng — and the slightly older Lǐ Jìhé 李季和 — as the principal continuers of the Wú Cáilǎo 吳才老 rhyme-scholarship + ancient-diction line; Yáng “rises above to HànWèi and emerges between Dù Fǔ and the two Lǐs” (i.e. Lǐ Bái and Lǐ Hè).)

Abstract

Tiěyá gǔ yuèfǔ is the foundational anthology of the late-Yuán yuèfǔ revival movement and the principal monument of Yáng Wéizhēn’s poetic enterprise. The collection’s documentary load is unusually wide: hundreds of yuèfǔ on historical figures (女史 sections), social ills (Yánchē zhòng, Sānnán cí, Cǐchū fán, Wú nóng yáo), local customs (the Xīhú zhúzhī gē, Wúxià zhúzhī gē sequences are pioneering — Yáng’s regional zhúzhī cí movement substantially predates the Míng explosion of the form), and Yuán court / palace life. The 409-piece main count (per the catalog totals in the SBCK source) makes the collection one of the largest single-author yuèfǔ corpora in pre-Míng Chinese poetry.

Composition window: from c. 1320 (Yáng’s young maturity at Kuàijī, though that early work was destroyed and is not here) through to 1370 (Yáng’s death); the surviving Wú Fù 1346 compilation captures Yáng’s late-1330s-to-1346 production, with the continuation juǎn extending to the post-1346 work.

Sòng Lián’s mùmíng — preserved in the SBCK source — is the principal biographical document for Yáng, recording his ancestry (descent from the Hàn Tàiwèi Yáng Zhèn), his Yuán-period official career, his late-Yuán Sōngjiāng residence (the Cǎoxuán gé and Xuánpǔ péngtái), his summons to the Hóngwǔ court for the Yuán shǐ (and lasting “jǐnjiǎrì” or “barely 100 days”), his death at 75 in Hóngwǔ 3 gēngxū (1370), and his other lost works (Sìshū yīguàn lù, Wǔjīng língjiàn, Chūnqiū tòutiānguān, Lǐjīng yuē, Jūnzǐ yì lìdài shǐyuè, Bǔzhèng sānshǐ gāngmù, Fùchūn rénwù zhì, Lìzé yíyīn — the last is KR4d0589, Gǔ yuèfǔ — this collection, Shàng huángdì shū, Quàn zhōng cí, and the major place-collections Píngmíng Qióngtái Dòngtíng Yúnjiān Qíshàng etc.).

Translations and research

• The Tiěyá yuèfǔ movement is the principal subject of late-Yuán poetic studies in Chinese: see Sūn Xiǎo-lì 孫小力 (2007), Yuán-mò Tiěyá pài yánjiū.
• Western-language treatment: Stephen H. West has discussed Yáng’s yuèfǔ in relation to Yuán performance culture; Wilt L. Idema and Stephen H. West on late-Yuán urban culture.
• The Xī-hú zhú-zhī gē and Wú-xià zhú-zhī gē sequences have been the subject of dedicated studies for their pioneering use of the zhú-zhī cí form on a substantial scale.

Other points of interest

• Sòng Lián’s mùmíng of Yáng — preserved in the SBCK Tiěyá gǔ yuèfǔ but also separately transmitted — is one of the most important YuánMíng transition mortuary documents and a key text for Sòng Lián’s own evaluation of late-Yuán literature. Sòng accepts the commission explicitly because Yáng had named him as “the man who knows my writing most deeply” on his deathbed.
• Yáng’s Cǎoxuán gé 草玄閣 residence at Sōngjiāng (named for the Hàn-period Yáng Xióng’s site of composing Tàixuán jīng) is documented as still standing at the time of Wú Mèngbīn’s Míng-era re-print.
• The Yáng → Wú Fù editorial chain (master → disciple) is a documented model for late-Yuán biéjí compilation.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1222.1, p1.
• SBCK SB04n533.