高太史大全集

Gāo tàishǐ Dàquán jí 高太史大全集

The Complete Collection of Grand Historian Gāo by 高啟 (撰)

About the work

Gāo tàishǐ Dàquán jí 高太史大全集 in eighteen juǎn is the Sìbù cóngkān (SBCK) printing of the verse collection of Gāo Qǐ 高啟 (1336–1374), zì Jìdí 季迪, hào Qīngqiūzǐ 青丘子 (later also Cháxuān 槎軒), native of Chángzhōu 長洲 (Sūzhōu prefecture). Gāo Qǐ is universally recognised as the foremost poet of the early Míng — the great Míng poet by most reckonings — and the leader of the so-called Wúzhōng Sìjié 吳中四傑 (the Four Talents of Wúzhōng: Gāo Qǐ, Yáng Jī 楊基 KR4e0041, Zhāng Yǔ 張羽 KR4e0042, Xú Bēn 徐賁 KR4e0043). The Dàquán jí — the title given by Liú Chāng 劉昌 in his Jǐngtài 1 (1450) preface — gathers what could be recovered of Gāo’s verse after his early execution: roughly two thousand poems consolidated by the literatus Xú Yōng 徐庸 (zì Yònglǐ 用理) from the constituent collections Fǒumíng jí 缶鳴集 (Gāo’s own selection in twelve juǎn, c. 900 poems), Chuītái jí 吹臺集, Jiāngguǎn jí 江館集, Fèngtái jí 鳳臺集, Lóujiāng yín gǎo 婁江吟稿, and Gūsū záyǒng 姑蘇雜詠. The text was first cut by Gāo’s nephew Gāo Lì 高立 in Yǒnglè 1 (1403); recompiled and enlarged by Xú Yōng under the title Dàquán jí and prefaced by Liú Chāng (a jìnshì of Wú) in 1450. The parallel WYG eighteen-juǎn recension is catalogued as KR4e0039.

Prefaces

Liú Chāng 劉昌, Dàquán jí xù 大全集叙, Jǐngtài 1 (1450) winter, twelfth-month full moon — the principal preface, written by Liú as a former jìnshì of Wú who knew Xú Yōng’s editorial method intimately. The preface places Gāo Qǐ in the Dàotǒng literary line from the Six Classics through Dǒng Zhòngshū 董仲舒 and Jiǎ Yì 賈誼, Hán Yù 韓愈, Dù Fǔ 杜甫 and Lǐ Bái 李白, Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修, Sū Shì 蘇軾, and Zhū Xī 朱熹 — a self-consciously orthodox positioning that reflects the politically careful re-publication of an executed poet seventy-six years after his death. Liú emphasises that Gāo would have been “stopped at thirty-nine” by Heaven’s design — the canonical formula for moralising Gāo’s premature execution which the Sìkù editors of KR4e0039 Dàquán jí echo. Note that the SBCK Gāo tàishǐ Dàquán jí preserves the title tàishǐ 太史 — i.e., Gāo’s office as Hànlínyuàn Guóshǐ biānxiū 翰林國史編修 — which the WYG recension drops; the SBCK title is closer to the early Míng manuscript witness.

Abstract

Gāo Qǐ’s lifedates 1336–1374 are confirmed in every authoritative reference (CBDB 34385, Wilkinson, DMB), and his death — by yāozhǎn 腰斬 (waist-cutting) at the marketplace of Nánjīng in autumn Hóngwǔ 7 (1374), aged thirty-nine — is one of the canonical episodes of early-Míng political-literary history. Wilkinson, Chinese History, §28.4, takes Gāo as the principal early-Míng poet and §43.7 cites his execution among the standard examples of the Hóngwǔ literary purges. The capital charge was nominally his composition of the shàngliáng wén 上梁文 for the Sūzhōu prefect Wèi Guān 魏觀’s rebuilding of the fǔ offices on the disputed site of Zhāng Shìchéng 張士誠’s former palace — interpreted as treasonous nostalgia. The execution swept up Wáng Yí 王彝 (KR4e0027) and others of the Sūzhōu circle alongside Gāo.

The textual history of the verse collection is also given in the parallel WYG Dàquán jí KR4e0039 Tíyào: Gāo had himself collated his constituent verse collections (Chuītái jí, Jiāngguǎn jí, Fèngtái jí, Lóujiāng yíngǎo, Gūsū záyǒng) totalling over two thousand poems into the Fǒumíng jí 缶鳴集 in twelve juǎn (about 900 poems). On his death without son, the nephew Gāo Lì had this cut in 1403; Xú Yōng 徐庸 in the Jǐngtài era recompiled the original two-thousand-poem material into the eighteen-juǎn Dàquán jí and Liú Chāng prefaced it in 1450. The SBCK base is Xú Yōng’s 1450 cut, the earliest extant printing; the WYG recension is a later descendant of the same XúLiú edition. The Sìkù editors’ celebrated assessment — that Gāo’s verse imitating the HànWèi resembles HànWèi, imitating the Six Dynasties resembles Six Dynasties, imitating Táng resembles Táng, imitating Sòng resembles Sòng, embracing the entirety of the antique tradition without forging a single distinctive GāoQǐ manner of his own — is the standard description of Gāo’s place in early-Míng poetics; the Tíyào itself attributes the unfinished personality of his verse to his early death.

Translations and research

• F. W. Mote. The Poet Kao Ch’i, 1336–1374. Princeton: PUP, 1962. The standard monograph in any Western language; remains authoritative on Gāo’s life, the Wèi Guān affair, and the Sū-zhōu literary circle.
• L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds. Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368–1644. New York: Columbia UP, 1976. Entry on Gāo Qǐ (vol. 1, pp. 696–698).
• John Timothy Wixted. Poems on Poetry: Literary Criticism by Yuan Hao-wen (1190–1257). Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982. Comparative discussion of Gāo’s late-imitative practice.
• Jīn Tán 金檀. Qīng-qiū-zǐ shī-jí zhù 青丘子詩集注 (annotated edition of Gāo Qǐ’s verse). Kāng-xī era; the standard pre-modern annotated edition.
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng bié-jí) and §43.7 (Hóngwǔ literary purges).

Other points of interest

The Wúzhōng Sìjié 吳中四傑 — Gāo Qǐ, Yáng Jī, Zhāng Yǔ, Xú Bēn — were all caught up in the Hóngwǔ purges: Gāo executed 1374, Xú Bēn died in prison 1380, Zhāng Yǔ drowned in custody 1385, Yáng Jī died as a convict labourer c. 1378. The SBCK Gāo tàishǐ Dàquán jí and the partner KR4e0030 Gāo tàishǐ Fúzǎo jí together constitute the most authoritative early-printed witness to Gāo’s verse and prose.

Links

• Gao Qi (Wikipedia)
• Sìkù tíyào, Kyoto Zinbun digital edition (parallel WYG)
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng biéjí).