草澤狂歌

Cǎozé kuánggē 草澤狂歌

Wild Songs from the Grass and Marsh by 王恭 (撰)

About the work

Cǎozé kuánggē 草澤狂歌 in five juǎn is the second of Wáng Gōng 王恭’s three verse collections (with KR4e0045 Báiyún qiáochàng jí 白雲樵唱集 and the lost Fèngtái qīngxiào 鳳臺清嘯). Like the Báiyún qiáochàng, this is pre-Yǒng-lè-Hàn-lín verse — composed during the long Hóngwǔ–Jiànwén retreat years. The collection nearly vanished: the Qiānqǐngtáng shūmù 千頃堂書目 records its title but gives no juǎn number; the Fànshì Tiānyī gé 范氏天一閣 has only the Báiyún qiáochàng, not this one. The text was finally recovered from a manuscript in the Wāngshì of Xiùshuǐ 秀水汪氏 family library — almost lost, and barely surviving.

Tiyao

The Cǎozé kuánggē in five juǎn — by Wáng Gōng of the Míng. Examining Gōng’s three collections: the Fèngtái qīngxiào has not been transmitted, so the Qiānqǐngtáng shūmù has its name but lacks its juǎn count. The Fànshì Tiānyī gé collection has only the Báiyún qiáochàng and not this one. This collection comes from the Wāngshì of Xiùshuǐ — almost lost yet barely preserved. The overall style is close to Báiyún qiáochàng; but as middle-aged work, the qíngsī (feeling and thought) is deeper. Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊’s Jìngzhìjū shīhuà once cited several pairs of fine couplets from the collection, such as: “Wèi shuǐ hán liú Qín sài wǎn / Bà líng cán yǔ Hàn yuán qiū” (The Wèi waters in their cold flow, the Qín frontier toward evening; Bàlíng’s lingering rain, the Hàn plains in autumn); “Zōnglǘ yè shàng jīng xīn yǔ / Zhēnchǔ shēng zhōng yì gù yuán” (On palm fronds the new rain startles; amid the laundry pestles’ sound I remember the old garden); “Jǐ chù yí jiā jīng luò yè / Yī nián guī mèng zài gūzhōu” (Through several places of moving house, the falling leaves startle; one year’s homeward dreams are all in a lone boat) — these are common phrases of the verse-makers. But for “Yún guī dú shù tiān biān xiǎo / Xuě bà gū fēng niǎo wài qīng” (Clouds return to a lone tree, the sky’s edge small; snow stops over a solitary peak, beyond the birds is blue) — here the word xiǎo (small) is poorly carved in description, and the word bà (stops) is imprecisely cadenced. And the line “Niǎo wài mínghé qiū yī yè / Tiānyá liáng yuè yè qiān fēng” (Beyond the birds, the Milky Way of autumn, one leaf; at the horizon, the cool moon of night, a thousand peaks) — this is especially flawed. For: by day one sees flying birds but not the Milky Way; by night one sees the Milky Way but not flying birds — the upper four characters thus do not cohere. A single leaf falls and you know autumn — this is not bound up with the Milky Way; the heaven’s river is bright already in summer — this is not bound up with falling leaves; the lower three characters do not join together either. Probably this was where xìng (mood) struck and was casually composed — not enough to exhaust his strengths. Readers of Gōng’s verse should not be like a kèzhōu qiújiàn 刻舟求劍 fool who marks a moving boat to look for a sunken sword — and that should suffice. Compiled and presented respectfully in the eighth month of Qiánlóng 42 (1777).

Abstract

Cǎozé kuánggē is the more contested of the two surviving Wáng Gōng collections in terms of Sìkù-editor evaluation. The editors’ meticulous critique of specific couplets — citing Zhū Yízūn’s Jìngzhìjū shīhuà as the canonical source of admiring excerpts, then dissecting two specific weaker couplets to demonstrate that even Wáng’s fine pieces are uneven — is a textbook display of Sìkù-era close-reading method. The closing admonition not to “kèzhōu qiújiàn” (the Lǚshì chūnqiū 呂氏春秋 fable of the foolish boat-man who marks the moving boat to find the sunken sword) is a rare Sìkù-editor caution against doctrinaire reading of an individual biéjí on the strength of partisan praise or blame.

The textual recovery — from the Wāngshì of Xiùshuǐ (Hángzhōu prefecture) family library — is one of the better-attested Sìkù-era recoveries from a single late-Míng / early-Qīng private collection. The Fànshì Tiānyī gé and Wāngshì of Xiùshuǐ together account for the entire surviving textual base of Wáng Gōng’s pre-Hàn-lín verse.

Translations and research

• L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds. Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368–1644. New York: Columbia UP, 1976. Entry on Wáng Gōng (vol. 2, pp. 1397–1398).
• 陳慶元 Mǐn-zhōng shī-pài yánjiū 閩中詩派研究. Fú-zhōu: Fú-jiàn rén-mín, 2007.
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng bié-jí).

Other points of interest

The Sìkù editors’ surgical critique of two specific weak couplets — and their warning against doctrinaire reading from anthologised admirable couplets alone — is a representative example of the editorial style in Tíyào notices of mid-rank Míng poets: praise grounded in named shīhuà citations, criticism in identified specific lines.

Links

• Wang Gong (Wikipedia, Chinese)
• Sìkù tíyào, Kyoto Zinbun digital edition
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng biéjí).