Zhúyán jí 竹巖集
Bamboo-Cliff Collection by 柯潛 (撰)
About the work
Zhúyán jí 竹巖集 in 1 juǎn poetry, 1 juǎn prose, plus bǔyí 補遺 in 1 juǎn (the Sìkù compilation; the catalog meta gives 2 juǎn total) — the surviving fragments of the writings of Kē Qián 柯潛 (1423–1473), zì Mèngshí 孟時, hào Zhúyán 竹巖, native of Pútián 莆田 (Quánzhōu, Fújiàn). Jǐngtài xīnwèi (1451) jìnshì dìyī (zhuàngyuán, optimus); office reaching Zhānshìfǔ shào zhānshì 詹事府少詹事. The Sìkù tíyào notes the Kētíng 柯亭 anecdote: Kē in the Hànlín compound built a Qīngfēngtíng 清風亭 and planted two bǎi 栢 (cypress) trees; these became canonical Hànlín antiquities, surviving for several centuries; the xuéshìbǎi 學士栢 cypresses are gone but Kētíng lives on in the Qiánlóng imperial poem on visiting the Hànlínyuàn. The textual transmission is broken: the Jiā-jìng-era printed text (per the Dǒng Shìhóng 董士宏 xù) is now reduced to manuscript only; even Kāng Tàihé 康太和’s xù refers to compositions (the Jìpényú xù 記盆魚序 and the Yúlè 愚樂 pieces) that are no longer present. The Sìkù editors reconstructed the present text from what they had and added the 1-juǎn bǔyí of 10 poems and 2 prose pieces drawn from Zhèng Yuè’s 鄭岳 Púyáng wénxiàn 莆陽文獻 and Zhèng Wángchén’s 鄭王臣 Púfēng qīnglài jí 莆風清籟集. The collection is one of the cleanest cases in this division of Sìkù-era reconstructive editing — from a deteriorating manuscript transmission supplemented with local-anthology fragments.
Tiyao
Zhúyán jí — 1 juǎn poetry, 1 juǎn prose, 1 juǎn bǔyí — by Kē Qián of the Míng. Qián, zì Mèngshí, hào Zhúyán, native of Pútián. Jǐngtài xīnwèi (1451) jìnshì dìyī; office reaching Zhānshìfǔ shào zhānshì. The events are detailed in his biography in Míng shǐ. Qián at the time bore the cílín sùwàng (literary-grove established-esteem); flowing manner and lingering rhyme covered the Yùtáng (Jade Hall, i.e. the Hànlínyuàn). [He] once made a Qīngfēngtíng in the back garden, and personally planted two cypresses; for several hundred years transmitted as ancient relics — i.e. the so-called Kētíng and xuéshìbǎi. The cypresses no longer exist, but the Kētíng designation entered the imperial composition on visiting the Hànlínyuàn; its name is the more renowned. Only the prose-collection’s transmission is rather rare. According to the collection’s head Dǒng Shìhóng preface, the original collection in Jiājìng was once cut into blocks; but what Fújiàn now submits is only a manuscript text. Also according to Kāng Tàihé’s preface, [we] know that at the time many things had already been lost; today even the Jìpényú xù and Yúlè pieces that the Kāng preface mentions are absent — perhaps further wantonly cut by later men, more reaching scattering-and-loss, and the manuscript-recording also many awry-and-errored, more losing his truth. Now from what this collection preserves — 1 juǎn poetry, 1 juǎn prose — we have re-corrected; and also from Zhèng Yuè’s Púyáng wénxiàn and Zhèng Wángchén’s Púfēng qīnglài jí recorded 10 poems and 2 prose pieces, making 1 juǎn of bǔyí, appended at the end to preserve the outline. His poetry is chōngdàn qīngwǎn (gentle-and-light, clear-and-graceful), not falling into well-worn paths; the prose too is jùnzhěng yǒu fǎdù (precipitous-and-tidy, with rule-and-measure); clearly because at the time the Hé 何 [Jǐngmíng] and Lǐ 李 [Mèngyáng] had not yet emerged and the literary style was not yet transformed; so [he] xúnxún guǐdù (step-by-step rule-and-measure), still does not lose the early-Míng xiānzhèng wind. Compiled and presented respectfully in the eleventh month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Editor: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Kē Qián is principally a documentary figure of mid-Míng Hànlín cultural memory: his planted Hànlín cypresses (xuéshìbǎi) and his Qīngfēngtíng (renamed Kētíng by later generations) became canonical features of the Hànlínyuàn compound, surviving as visible relics into the Qiánlóng era — when the imperial visit-poem reactivated their cultural memory.
The textual transmission is one of the more compromised in this division: Jiā-jìng-era printed → Wàn-lì-era partial loss → late-Míng-into-Qīng manuscript only → 1781 Sìkù reconstruction with local-anthology supplement. The fact that even the Kāng Tàihé preface (a 16th-century Pútián compatriot) mentions compositions no longer found in the present text is evidence for the rate of loss.
The Sìkù literary judgement places Kē Qián in the mid-Míng moderate Táigé — between the SānYáng early-Yǒng-lè Táigé tǐ and the HóngzhìZhèngdé later abuses, in the same chronological-stylistic position the Sìkù editors assigned to KR4e0106 Ní Qiān and KR4e0107 Hán Yōng.
The note that Hé Jǐngmíng and Lǐ Mèngyáng had not yet emerged dates the literary frame to before c. 1500.
CBDB id 34515 (1423–1473) confirms catalog meta dates.
Translations and research
- L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368–1644. New York: Columbia UP, 1976. Notice of Kē Qián.
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng bié-jí).
- Míng shǐ j. 153 — Kē Qián biography.
Other points of interest
The Hànlín cypress / Kētíng Hànlínyuàn institutional-memory complex is one of the cleaner cases in Sìkù historiography of an individual official entering the cultural memory of an institution by planting trees / building a pavilion — a chuánshū lineage independent of the literary corpus itself.