靜居集

Jìngjū jí 靜居集

The Quiet-Dwelling Collection by 張羽 (撰)

About the work

Jìngjū jí 靜居集 in six juǎn (SBCK printing in xùbēi 續備 edition) is the verse collection of Zhāng Yǔ 張羽 (1333–1385), zì Láiyí 來儀, also zì Fùféng 附鳳, hào Jìngjū 靜居, native of Xúnyáng 潯陽 (Jiāngxī) but resident in Wú (Sūzhōu) on his father’s appointment under the late Yuán. Zhāng Yǔ was one of the canonical Wúzhōng Sìjié 吳中四傑 — the Four Talents of Wúzhōng: Gāo Qǐ 高啟 (KR4e0029, KR4e0039), Yáng Jī 楊基 (KR4e0041), Xú Bēn 徐賁 (KR4e0043), and Zhāng Yǔ. Note that the preface to the SBCK printing explicitly names the four (“In our age there is the sound at Wú: Master Gāo Jìdí 高季迪, Master Yáng Mèngzǎi 楊孟載, Master Xú Yòuwén 徐幼文, and among them Zhāng Láiyí xiānshēng — who was originally of my own Jiāngyòu Xúnyáng — moved on his father’s appointment in Wú and stayed there”). Zhāng’s career: summoned in Hóngwǔ 4 (1371), appointed Tàichángsī chéng 太常司丞, demoted to jiàoyù 教諭 of Lǐngnán; recalled and again employed, banished a second time to Lǐngnán, where he drowned (some sources say by his own hand) in the Lóngjiāng 龍江 in 1385. Note on attribution: the catalog meta records the author as 張雨 (Zhāng Yǔ, the Yuán Daoist priest of 1283–1350, zì Bóyǔ 伯雨, 句曲外史). This is incorrect: the collection’s preface and the title Láiyí xiānshēng explicitly identify the author as the Wúzhōng Sìjié figure Zhāng Yǔ 張羽 (1333–1385). The error is the character substitution 雨 for 羽 in the meta. The corrected attribution is followed here.

Prefaces

The SBCK preface (anonymous, signature damaged) places Zhāng Yǔ in the lineage of post-Shījīng poetics: “Verse emerged from the Three Hundred, transformed at Hàn and Wèi, shū in the Táng, and at the height; in Sòng, by the rectification-and-rightness path — to greatness: there were Sū, Huáng, Chén, Méi, each forming its own yījiā yán. In our Jiāngxī verse, none was finer than Shèngyú 聖兪 [Méi Yáochén] — Jiāngdōng’s hero — and at the moment Shèngyú was less acclaimed than the various others. The Yuán entered into the classics and ran through the affairs at the height — once imitating Dù Shǎolíng 杜少陵 [Dù Fǔ] also into a yījiā — only Yáng Zhònghóng 楊仲弘 was native; the rest such as Yú Bóshēng 虞伯生 [Yú Jí], Fàn Déjī 范德機 [Fàn Pèng], Jiē Mànshuò 揭曼碩 [Jiē Xīsī] — were they not all from Xījiāng? Our court’s wénwù flourishing surpasses the ancients — and what makes for zhīshèng is what Sòng and Yuán cannot reach. In Hóng[-wǔ], there was the resounding at Wúzhōng: Master Gāo Jìdí 高季迪, Master Yáng Mèngzǎi 楊孟載, Master Xú Yòuwén 徐幼文, and Master Zhāng Láiyí 張來儀 xiānshēng, who was originally of my own Jiāngyòu Xúnyáng — moved on his father’s appointment to Wú and stayed there. Each of these four formed his own yījiā yán; truly can stand beside the Táng’s Wáng [Bó], Yáng [Jiǒng], Lú [Zhàolín], and Luò [Bīnwáng].” — The preface is the principal external witness to the Wúzhōng Sìjié formation and to Zhāng’s Jiāngyòu origins.

Abstract

Zhāng Yǔ’s lifedates 1333–1385 are confirmed by CBDB (id 34386). The narrative is the standard Wúzhōng Sìjié arc: as young man Zhāng lived in Sūzhōu with the Gāo–Yáng–Xú circle through the late Yuán Zhāng Shìchéng regime (he refused service); summoned in 1371 in the new Hóngwǔ dispensation, appointed Tàichángsī chéng 太常司丞; demoted to jiàoyù of Lǐngnán (Guǎngdōng); recalled; banished a second time and drowned at the Lóngjiāng en route in 1385, traditionally regarded as a forced suicide. His verse collection survives as the Jìngjū jí (this entry, SBCK) — his verse — and the prose collection KR4e0042 Jìngān jí 靜菴集 in four juǎn (WYG). The two should be read as the verse and prose halves of a single early-Hóng-wǔ literary yījiā.

Note the discrepancy in the catalog meta (張雨 = Zhāng Yǔ the Yuán Daoist priest, 1283–1350, of KR4d0544) which would be impossible since the present collection’s preface lists him alongside Gāo Qǐ, Yáng Jī, and Xú Bēn as one of the Hóng-wǔ-era Wúzhōng Sìjié — and Zhāng Yǔ the Daoist was dead nearly twenty years before the Hóngwǔ reign began. The character substitution 雨/羽 is one of the standard errors in the early-Míng biéjí catalog tradition (the two characters are visually similar and pronounced identically). The KRP catalog should be amended to 張羽 for KR4e0038.

Wilkinson, Chinese History, §28.4, treats the Wúzhōng Sìjié as the central late-Yuán / early-Míng literary network; Zhāng Yǔ specifically is one of the canonical four. Frederick Mote, Poet Kao Ch’i (1962), ch. 4, gives the most detailed Western-language treatment.

Translations and research

• L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds. Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368–1644. New York: Columbia UP, 1976. Entry on Zhāng Yǔ (vol. 1, pp. 113–114).
• F. W. Mote. The Poet Kao Ch’i, 1336–1374. Princeton: PUP, 1962. Ch. 4 on the Wú-zhōng Sì-jié including Zhāng Yǔ.
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng bié-jí).

Other points of interest

Catalog correction needed: the catalog meta entry for KR4e0038 attributes the Jìngjū jí to 張雨 (Zhāng Yǔ the Yuán Daoist priest, zì Bóyǔ 伯雨, 1283–1350) but the SBCK source preface and the title Láiyí xiānshēng clearly identify the author as the Wúzhōng Sìjié figure 張羽 (Zhāng Yǔ, zì Láiyí, 1333–1385). The two are unrelated; the character substitution is one of the recurring confusions in early-Míng biéjí attribution. The KR4e0042 Jìngān jí (WYG, also by Zhāng Yǔ 張羽) confirms the correct identity.

Links

• Zhang Yu (Wikipedia, Chinese)
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng biéjí).