Ní Wénxǐ jí 倪文僖集
Collection of [the Posthumous Title] Wén-xǐ [by Ní] by 倪謙 (撰)
About the work
Ní Wénxǐ jí 倪文僖集 in 32 juǎn — the surviving 1/6 of the original output of Ní Qiān 倪謙 (1415–1479), zì Kèràng 克讓, hào Jìngcún 靜存 (also Qīngxī 青谿; zì Shùnzī 舜咨 per the Lǐ Dōngyáng preface), native of Shàngyuán 上元 (Nánjīng), posthumous title Wénxǐ 文僖. Zhèngtǒng jǐwèi (1439) jìnshì jídì (a top-three placement); rose to Nánjīng Lǐbù shàngshū. Best known for the embassy to Korea (Cháoxiǎn) — his Liáohǎi biān 遼海編 of embassy poems circulated separately (now lost). Per Lǐ Dōngyáng (李東陽, cf. KR4e0120)‘s head preface, Ní’s lifetime output was: Yùtáng gǎo 玉堂稿 100 juǎn, Shànggǔ gǎo 上谷稿 8 juǎn, Guītián gǎo 歸田稿 43 juǎn, Nángōng gǎo 南宮稿 20 juǎn — totalling 171 juǎn; the present Wénxǐ jí is Ní’s own self-selection — Ní pruned to one-sixth of his lifetime output — comprising 11 juǎn of fù, cí, qíncāo, ancient-and-modern style poetry, shīyú; 1 juǎn of sòng, zàn, biǎo, jiān, zhēn, míng; and 20 juǎn of prose. The present 32-juǎn recension is the Sūzhōu literatus Ní Jùn 倪儁 (Ní Qiān’s son, zì Shùnzī, with hào Qīngxī — actually the Qīngxī is the son’s hào, not the father’s) preservation; the original printing-blocks survived a fire at the Nánjīng official residence and were assembled into the 32 juǎn with Lǐ Dōngyáng’s Chéng-huà-era preface.
Tiyao
Ní Wénxǐ jí in 32 juǎn — by Ní Qiān of the Míng. Qiān, zì Kèràng, hào Jìngcún, native of Shàngyuán. Zhèngtǒng jǐwèi (1439) jìnshì jídì; office reaching Nánjīng Lǐbù shàngshū; posthumous title Wénxǐ. According to Lǐ Dōngyáng’s preface, Qiān’s compositions are: Yùtáng gǎo 100 juǎn; Shànggǔ gǎo 8 juǎn; Guītián gǎo 43 juǎn; Nángōng gǎo 20 juǎn; also a composition from his embassy to Cháoxiǎn (Korea) called Liáohǎi biān, separately circulating in the world. All today unseen. The present text — fù, cí, qíncāo, ancient-and-modern style poems, shīyú 11 juǎn; sòng, zàn, biǎo, jiān, zhēn, míng 1 juǎn; prose 20 juǎn — clearly Qiān’s own selection out of his lifetime works, pruned to one-sixth of what was preserved. The Sān Yáng Táigé style, by the Hóng[-zhì]-Zhèng[-dé] era, reached its great abuse: tàrǒng fūkuò (suffocating-redundant, surface-shallow), almost the same voice from ten-thousand mouths. Qiān met the day of the Míng’s flourishing, not far from the dynasty’s beginning, [where] the predecessors’ flowing manner and lingering rhyme often still survived; so his prose’s bùzòu (stride-and-pace) is jǐnyán (rigorous), pǔ ér bù lǐ (simple but not base), jiǎn ér bù lòu (concise but not crude); his form is close to the Sān Yáng but not yet infected by their late-stream loss. Although he does not match Lǐ Dōngyáng’s lóngzhào yīshí (covering his age), he has both zhì and wén, ornamentally a self-made school. We cannot weigh literary excellence by shēngjià (sound-and-price-reputation). Compiled and presented respectfully in the fifth month of Qiánlóng 45 (1780). Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Editor: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Sìkù tíyào is one of the cleaner statements of the mid-Míng Táigé tǐ moderate position: between the early-Sān-Yáng Táigé mode and the later HóngzhìZhèngdé degeneration into tàrǒng fūkuò, Ní Qiān represents a transitional figure who retains the form without the decline. The literary-historiographical argument anticipates the Sìkù-era defence of KR4e0091 Yáng Róng against the later-school degeneration.
The Sǐkù editors’ principled criterion — we cannot weigh literary excellence by sound-and-price-reputation — is the corrective to the Hòu-qī-zǐ-era critique that pulled down all Táigé tǐ figures together.
The Lǐ Dōngyáng 李東陽 head preface (preserved at the head of the present recension) is one of the principal Chéng-huà-era documentary sources for the early-Míng cabinet-literary lineage. Lǐ Dōngyáng himself, separately catalogued in this division as KR4e0120, is the next-generation literary leader; the preface to Ní’s collection is also documentary for Lǐ Dōngyáng’s own literary-historiographic vision.
Ní’s lifedates 1415–1479: CBDB id 34509 has no birth/death years; catalog meta gives 1415–1479; Míng shǐ j. 171 (appended) supports this.
The lost Liáohǎi biān — embassy poems from Ní’s Cháoxiǎn (Korean) embassy — is one of the cleaner cases of a fully-attested but no-longer-extant sub-collection in the Míng biéjí corpus.
Translations and research
- L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368–1644. New York: Columbia UP, 1976. Notice of Ní Qiān.
- Donald Clark, “Sino-Korean Tributary Relations under the Ming,” in The Cambridge History of China vol. 8. Cambridge UP, 1998. (For the embassy context.)
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng bié-jí) and §28.6 (Tái-gé tǐ).
- Míng shǐ j. 171 (appended) — Ní Qiān biography.
Other points of interest
The lifetime-output / surviving-collection ratio (171 juǎn → 32 juǎn = 1/6 surviving) is documentary witness to the conscious self-pruning practice of mid-Míng cabinet literati. The Liáohǎi biān loss is symmetrically significant — embassy poetry was a distinctive genre, and its disappearance leaves a gap in the documentary record of the Zhèng-tǒng-Tiān-shùn-era Sino-Korean relationship.