Lántíng jí 蘭庭集
Orchid-Court Collection by 謝晉 (撰)
About the work
Lántíng jí 蘭庭集 in 2 juǎn — the surviving 400+ poems of Xiè Jìn 謝晉 (also written 縉; zì Kǒngzhāo 孔昭, hào Lántíng), native of Wúxiàn 吳縣 (Sūzhōu, Jiāngsū), early-Yǒng-lè-era poet-painter. The Sìkù tíyào notes the orthographic ambiguity: Zhū Yízūn’s 朱彝尊 Míngshī zōng writes 晉; the collection’s own piece sent to Shèng Qǐdōng 盛啟東 is signed Kuíqiū Xiè Jìn 葵丘謝縉; Shěn Dàběn 沈大本’s poem to him is titled Jì Xiè Yījìn 寄謝一縉 — seemingly one person and two names. The same Xiè Jìn must not be confused with the famous Hànlín Xiè Jìn 解縉 (解縉) catalogued earlier as KR4e0083 (different surname). The collection’s Chéngtiānmén xièēn zhíyǔ shī 承天門謝恩值雨詩 indicates that Xiè was once summoned to court as a bùyī (commoner). Two head prefaces: Zhōu Chuán 周傳 of Rǔnán (癸未 = 1403); Zhāng Kěn 張肯 of Jùnyí (Yǒnglè jiǎshēn = 1404). The collection includes pieces dated to Yǒnglè dīngyǒu 丁酉 (1417) — fourteen years after the Zhāng Kěn preface — explaining how the present 400+ poems can exceed the 200+ poems Zhāng knew. Zhōu Chuán characterizes Xiè as Sūzhōu’s poetry has not been so flourishing since Yáng Mèngzǎi 楊孟載 (= Yáng Jī 楊基) and Gāo Jìdí 高季迪 (= Gāo Qǐ 高啟; cf. KR4e0049 = Dàquán jí); Kǒngzhāo got the import of these two masters.
Tiyao
Lántíng jí in 2 juǎn — by Xiè Jìn of the Míng. Jìn, zì Kǒngzhāo, native of Wúxiàn; skilled at landscapes; once self-jokingly styled himself Xiè Diéshān 謝叠山. His name in Míngshī zōng is written 晉; but at the end of the collection one piece sent to Shèng Qǐdōng is self-titled “Kuíqiū Xiè Jìn 縉”; also appended Shěn Dàběn’s poem titled Jì Xiè Yījìn 寄謝一縉 — apparently one man and two names. Within the collection there is the poem Chéngtiānmén xièēn, encountering rain — i.e., in the early Míng he was once summoned as a commoner. At the head are two prefaces by Zhōu Chuán of Rǔnán and Zhāng Kěn of Jùnyí. Zhāng Kěn says Jìn’s poems are 200+ pieces; but the present collection preserves no fewer than 4–5 hundred. Examining: the Zhāng preface is from Yǒnglè jiǎshēn (1404), and the end of the collection has a piece composed in the jìwàng of the tenth month of Yǒnglè dīngyǒu (1417). Dīngyǒu is 14 years above jiǎshēn; the accumulation of poems being so much, it is fitting that it exceeds what the Zhāng preface said. Zhōu Chuán says Sūzhōu’s poetry has not flourished as much since Yáng Mèngzǎi and Gāo Jìdí, and [Xiè] Kǒngzhāo got the import of these two masters; Zhāng Kěn says he obtained the correctness of nature-and-feeling and was deep in studied learning. Although there is a little excess in the praise, his yǎxiù jùnyì (elegant-fine, distinguished-untrammelled) is also enough to make a school of his own; he does not transmit only by his pictorial work. Compiled and presented respectfully in the tenth month of Qiánlóng 41 (1776). Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Editor: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The author’s surname-and-name has variant orthography (晉 / 縉) — the Sìkù editors’ explicit kǎozhèng note that the same person used two name-forms is preserved here verbatim. The catalog meta gives no birth-or-death date; the Chéngtiānmén xièēn poem dates from the early-Yǒng-lè summons, and the latest dated piece in the collection is Yǒnglè 15 (1417) — indicating death after 1417 but otherwise undatable.
The collection is the principal documentary witness to the early-Yǒng-lè Sūzhōu poetic continuation of the late-Yuán / Hóngwǔ-era Wúzhōng sìjié 吳中四傑 (Gāo Qǐ, Yáng Jī, Zhāng Yǔ, Xú Bēn). The Sìkù tíyào positions Xiè Jìn as the principal Sūzhōu inheritor of the Gāo / Yáng tradition into the early-Yǒng-lè era — preserving the local-school continuity that the Wáng Suì 王燧 (KR4e0089) circle and the Wáng Fú 王紱 (KR4e0085) painter-circle also document.
The painter-self-styling Xiè Diéshān 謝叠山 deliberately evokes the Sòng martyr Xiè Fángdé 謝枋得 (whose hào was Diēshān) — a self-mocking allusion that suggests Xiè Jìn’s awareness of and ambivalence about the loyalist tradition.
The CBDB id 34507 has no lifedates. The painter-poet Xiè Jìn is independently attested in MíngQīng painting-history sources as one of the early-Míng landscape painters of the Sūzhōu / Jiāngnán region.
Translations and research
- L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368–1644. New York: Columbia UP, 1976. Notice of Xiè Jìn the painter.
- James Cahill, Parting at the Shore: Chinese Painting of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty, 1368–1580. New York / Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1978.
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng bié-jí).
Other points of interest
The orthographic ambiguity (謝晉 / 謝縉) preserved in the Sìkù tíyào is one of the cleanest preserved cases of an early-Míng author writing his own name in two graphs in different documents — the Sìkù editors’ prudent decision to identify them as the same person (rather than splitting them) is a small but instructive case of kǎozhèng method.