Màntíng jí 幔亭集
Collected Works of (Master) Màntíng by 徐熥 (撰)
About the work
The Màntíng jí 幔亭集 is the WYG redaction of the poetry of the late-Míng Fújiàn literatus Xú Hōng 徐熥 (1561–1599), zì Wéihé 惟和, edited and printed after his death by his younger brother Xú Bó 徐𤊹 (zì Xìnggōng 興公). The set as transmitted in the Sìkù quánshū runs to fifteen juǎn organised strictly by verse-form — gǔyuèfǔ, five- and seven-character gǔshī, shēngshī, wǔyán lǜshī (2 j.), qīyán lǜshī (3 j.), wǔyán páilǜ, wǔyán juéjù (with a forty-poem huíhuán dú palindromic cycle), liùyán juéjù, qīyán juéjù (2 j.), and shīyú (lyrics). This is the poetry portion only of an originally twenty-juǎn whole (10 juǎn poetry + 10 juǎn prose, printed in 1601 by Wáng Ruò 王若 at Qīngliú); the Sìkù editors excluded the prose. Xú Hōng was a leading figure of the Mǐnzhōng shīpài 閩中詩派 of the Wànlì era and his retrenchment toward Táng prosody contrasted with the late-Míng faddish school-fights between Archaists, the Gōngān school, and the Jìnglíng school.
Tiyao
Your servants etc. respectfully memorialise. The Màntíng shījí in fifteen juǎn was written by Xú Hōng 徐熥 of the Míng dynasty. Hōng, zì Wéihé 惟和, a man of Mǐnxiàn 閩縣, became jǔrén in Wànlì wùzǐ 戊子 (= 1588). Hōng was a talented man held back by adverse fortune, and threw his strength into poetic composition, taking the Táng masters as his standard but not falling into the contemporary fault of fragmentation and patchwork-erudition. At the head of the volume is a preface by Zhāng Xiànyì 張獻翼, which says of him: ‘His tonality was no narrow specialty, his forms necessarily fully mastered; he strove to recover antiquity and so swept away the modish habits utterly’ — extravagant praise indeed. Xiè Zhàozhì 謝肇淛 likewise said that his talent, sentiment, voice and modulation were such that he might stand brother-to-brother with Gāo Jìdí 高季迪 (Gāo Qǐ 高啟), regretting only that his archaic-style verse fell somewhat short. Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊 in the Jìngzhìjū shīhuà 靜志居詩話 likewise notes that his seven-character quatrains take Wáng Jiāngníng 王江寧 (Wáng Chānglíng 王昌齡) as their model, abounding in lines of deep feeling. On close perusal of the collection one finds it is by no means mere mutual self-promotion: in the late-Míng season of confused and tangled poetic ways, it can fairly be said to be one that sloughed off the filth and grime. Among the Fújiàn poets, after Lín Hóng 林鴻, Wáng Méng 王䝉 and their generation, Zhèng Jìzhī 鄉繼之 had been ranked first; Hōng all his life liked to invoke Jìzhī, and that his life was cut short at thirty-nine, the same age at which Jìzhī also died, is itself a striking coincidence. The collection was engraved by his younger brother Xú Bó 徐&KR0958; (his given name written here with a rare graph that is the same character variantly rendered), zì Xìnggōng 興公, who likewise won fame for his broad erudition; his own works Bǐjīng 筆精 and Róngyīn xīnjiǎn 榕陰新檢 and others are catalogued separately. Respectfully collated in the tenth month of Qiánlóng 42 (= 1777).
Chief compilation officers: your servants Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief collation officer: your servant Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Màntíng jí in its WYG form preserves Xú Hōng’s verse only. The internal preface, by Zhāng Xiànyì 張獻翼 of Chángzhōu, dates from very late in the poet’s life (he refers to himself as already in advanced age and to having tasted Xú’s poetry on three successive visits over three years); the editor of the printed collection was the poet’s younger brother Xú Bó 徐𤊹 (zì Xìnggōng 興公), who compiled the manuscript at Xīngguósì 興國寺 in Shāxiàn 沙縣 after Xú Hōng’s death (1599) and brought it to Wànlì 29 / 1601 print by the offices of Wáng Ruò 王若 of Qīngliú 清流. Dèng Yuányuè 鄧原岳 wrote a xù, Wáng Bǎigǔ 王百谷 supplied a xíngzhuàng and míng, and Tú Lóng 屠隆 a further preface dated 1601. The complete original print ran to twenty juǎn, ten of verse and ten of prose, but the Sìkù editors retained only the fifteen-juǎn poetry portion (re-organised by metrical form rather than by chronology, hence the differing juǎn count). The catalog gives the Sìkù state.
Xú belongs to the late-Wàn-lì Mǐnzhōng shīpài circle that included Xiè Zhàozhì, Dèng Yuányuè, Cáo Xuéquán 曹學佺 and his own brother Xú Bó. His aesthetic platform, as articulated by the tiyao and confirmed by the prefaces, was a fùgǔ programme keyed to the High Táng — taking Wáng Chānglíng and Gāo Qǐ as touch-stones — but pointedly resisting the late-Míng Archaist mannerism of stitched-together allusion-mosaic (dòudìng 餖飣). He was admired in his own time by Zhū Yízūn (in the Jìngzhìjū shīhuà) as well as by Xiè Zhàozhì. The poetic catalogue inside the Sìkù collection is heavily weighted toward the regulated styles (six of fifteen juǎn are wǔyán and qīyán lǜshī) and includes one curious technical tour de force: forty wǔyán juéjù arranged as a huíhuán dú 迴環讀 palindromic reading cycle (j. 11).
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. In Chinese, Xú Hōng has been the subject of regional-literary surveys of the late-Míng Mǐn school (e.g. Chén Qìng-yuán 陳慶元 et al., Fújiàn wénxué fāzhǎn shǐ 福建文學發展史, 1996; the Fújiàn shěng yánhuáng wénhuà yánjiūhuì essay ‘徐熥与《幔亭集》’ in the Mǐn-rén yào-jí bǎi-bù píng-jiàn 闽人要籍百部评鉴 series). A modern annotated edition is Xú Hōng jí 徐熥集, ed. Fújiàn shěng wénshǐ yánjiūguǎn 福建省文史研究館 (Yáng-zhōu: Guǎnglíng shūshè, 2005).
Other points of interest
The graph used for Xú Hōng’s younger brother in the tiyao is the same as the modern editorial &KR0958; convention for a rare unicode character; modern editions standardise as 徐𤊹 (U+241A9). The brothers’ shared library Hóngyǔlóu 紅雨樓 was one of the most important Fúzhōu private collections of the late Míng and the source of many otherwise lost Fújiàn imprints.