Ní Wénzhēn jí 倪文貞集
Collected Works of Ní Wén-zhēn (Ní Yuán-lù) by 倪元璐 (撰)
About the work
The Ní Wénzhēn jí 倪文貞集 is the collected writings of 倪元璐 Ní Yuánlù (1593–1644; posthumously Wénzhēn 文貞 under the Qīng Shùnzhì régime, hence the title), the late-Míng Hùbù shàngshū and Grand Secretary of Shàngyú 上虞 who hanged himself when Lǐ Zìchéng entered Běijīng on 19 April 1644 (Chóngzhēn 17, third month, bǐngshēn day). The WYG redaction comprises the principal Ní Wénzhēn jí 17 juǎn, a xùbiān 續編 (supplement) in 3 juǎn, zòushū (memorials) in 12 juǎn, jiǎngbiān 講編 (Hànlín lectures) in 4 juǎn, and shījí (poetry) in 4 juǎn — a 40-juǎn aggregate. The WYG opens with a Qiánlóng yùzhì postscript (1784) admonishing the deference of Ní’s zhìcí for Wáng Duó 王鐸, four prefaces — by 文震孟 (for the prior Dàiyán xuǎn), by 黃道周 (Chóngzhēn rénwǔ / 1642), by 陳子龍 (also 1642), and by Ní’s son 倪會鼎 — and the tiyao itself.
Tiyao
The collated tiyao reads as follows. — Your servants etc. respectfully memorialise. The Ní Wénzhēn jí in 17 juǎn, xùbiān in 3 juǎn, zòushū in 12 juǎn, jiǎngbiān in 4 juǎn, and shījí in 4 juǎn was composed by Ní Yuánlù 倪元璐 of the Míng dynasty. (Yuánlù’s Éryì nèiwài yí 兒易內外儀 (KR1a0111) is catalogued separately.) When Yuánlù was an officer in the Hànlín he had charge of drafting the wàizhì (external edicts); his compositions were classical and stately, the model for the Guǎngé establishment. His disciples printed his Dàiyán xuǎn 代言選 in 6 juǎn, with a preface by Wén Zhènmèng 文震孟 ‘of Chángshā’ (sic, for 長洲 Chángzhōu — a copy-slip). In Chóngzhēn bǐngzǐ (= 1636), having returned home as Guózǐjiān jìjiǔ (Chancellor of the National University), he gathered up his own writings into a collection titled Hóngbǎo yìngběn 鴻寳應本, prefaced by Chén Zǐlóng 陳子龍 of Huátíng. In rénwǔ (= 1642) he was recalled to office as Bīngbù shìláng; the following year (= 1643) promoted to Hùbù shàngshū. The political situation by then having become urgent, he composed no more yìngzhì prose, but in his spare moments would draw out his old printed copies and re-mark them for an eventual re-edition, entrusting them to his son Huìdǐng 會鼎 for safekeeping. In Qiánlóng rénchén (= 1772) his great-great-grandson 倪安世 Ānshì re-arranged and re-printed the materials — and this is that text.
Yuánlù in his youth had Zōu Yuánbiāo 鄒元標 (鄒元標) for his master, and as his career advanced was a peer of Liú Zōngzhōu 劉宗周 (劉宗周) and Huáng Dàozhōu 黃道周 (黃道周). He bound himself to the ancients in mutual expectation, but devoted particular attention to jīngjì (governance). His designs and recommendations — his fiscal-and-military assessments — could all be put into practical effect; he is not to be compared to the empty-talking, frivolous chatterboxes among the jīngshēng (degree-candidate exegetes). His verse and prose, while not breaking entirely with the old manner of Běidì (Lǐ Mèngyáng 李夢陽) and Yǎnzhōu (Wáng Shìzhēn 王世貞), are in his memorials lucid and pointedly relevant, much of it touching on the great affairs of state, on the rise and fall of dynasties — and for this they were greatly valued by his age. At the Tiānqǐ–Chóngzhēn moment, gentlemen and petty men advanced jumbled together, primaries and supplementaries clashed like water and fire, favours and resentments succeeded each other, and on the whole the jūnguó (sovereign and state) were set aside while the factions warred. Yuánlù alone maintained a position of forthright neutrality, leaning to neither side; for this he was at odds with all parties and never appointed to high office — and only when the disorder had reached its limit was he at last entrusted with great responsibility, when there was no longer anything he could do to redress it. He could only die for the state, and so was passed to posterity as a paragon of loyal heroism. This is why the world places weight on his person and weights his writings doubly.
The poetry-collection has many lacunae. The seven-character lǜshī ‘Wén Cháoxiān duò yī chéng’ 聞朝鮮墮一城, the seven-character gǔshī ‘Tóng zhòng yǒu Fànjī jí Báixià bìshǔ hútíng’ 同衆友范姬集白下避暑湖亭, and also the regulated couplets Huánghuā gǔshù chūn nán dào, kūshù yánguān yàn bù guò 黄花古戍春難到，枯樹嚴關雁不過 and Níngshí Wèigōng piān wǔmèi, qīngyān Lǚxiàng bù hútú 獰石魏公偏娬媚，輕烟吕相不糊塗 — all appear in Shī Nán 施男’s Qióngzhúzhàng zhōngjí 笻竹杖中集, but are not entered into the present collection. Perhaps the editor had not yet seen Mr Shī’s book. Respectfully collated, eleventh month of Qiánlóng 46 (= 1781). 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 collection is the principal documentary base for Ní Yuánlù’s career as a Míng jīngjì official and martyr. The textual history is unusually complex, and the four prefaces in the WYG let one reconstruct it stage by stage:
- The Dàiyán xuǎn 代言選 (6 juǎn): a selection of Ní’s zhìcí (edict-drafting) from his Hànlín tenure, printed in his lifetime by disciples Yáng Jībù 楊機部 and Wáng Èrmí 王二彌, with 文震孟 Wén Zhènmèng’s preface (‘of Chángzhōu’, misprinted in the Sìkù tiyao as ‘Chángshā’).
- The Hóngbǎo yìngběn 鴻寳應本: gathered by Ní himself after his return to Shàngyú in Chóngzhēn bǐngzǐ / 1636 as Guózǐjiān jìjiǔ; printed at Huátíng with 陳子龍 Chén Zǐlóng (Wòzǐ 卧子) overseeing the engraving, 黃道周 Huáng Dàozhōu writing a preface dated eleventh month of rénwǔ / 1642 ‘at Húshuǐ on the boat’, and Chén Zǐlóng adding his own preface the day after the winter solstice of the same year ‘at the Yǔtíng boat-stop’.
- The Chóngzhēn 15–16 / 1642–43 phase: after his recall to the Ministry of War (1642) and Ministry of Revenue (1643), Ní composed no new ceremonial prose, but with a vermilion brush re-collated his old prints in his retiring hours, marking them for an eventual re-edition. The proofs were entrusted to his son 倪會鼎 (1620–1706).
- The post-1644 catastrophe: when Lǐ Zìchéng broke Běijīng and Ní hanged himself, the family library was scattered; his son’s preface to the WYG laments that ‘only three or four parts in ten’ survived.
- The 1772 redaction: Ní’s great-great-grandson 倪安世 Ní Ānshì re-edited the surviving manuscripts in Qiánlóng rénchén / 1772 and reprinted them as the present 40-juǎn WYG ancestor.
The Qiánlóng yùzhì postscript (1784) prefixed to the WYG critiques Ní’s zhìcí for Wáng Duó 王鐸 (1592–1652) — the late-Míng calligrapher who served first the Míng court, then the Southern-Míng Hóngguāng court, then the Qīng Dàxuéshì — as breach of the proper jūn gào chén (sovereign-instructing-minister) decorum, taking the occasion to issue a more general critique of the late-imperial zhìgào tradition and the contrast with what Qiánlóng presents as the cleaner Guócháo practice of plain instructional formulae. The postscript constitutes a substantial independent piece of imperial literary criticism and is one of the most notable Qiánlóng yùzhì prefaces attached to a Sìkù biéjí.
The dating window for the works themselves runs from Ní’s jìnshì (Tiānqǐ 2 / 1622) and Hànlín entry through to his suicide on the third month of Chóngzhēn jiǎshēn (1644).
The Sìkù compilers’ literary assessment — that Ní’s prose and verse remain within the Hóuqīzǐ (Late Seven Masters) frame of Lǐ Mèngyáng and Wáng Shìzhēn but break new ground in the memorial form by combining classical articulation with sharp policy diagnosis — is broadly representative of the modern verdict on him as a transitional figure between late-Míng fùgǔ and the looser Qīng jīngshì memorial style.
The compilers correctly identify the eight pieces of his verse extant in Shī Nán 施男’s Qióngzhúzhàng zhōngjí 笻竹杖中集 which the 1772 redaction missed — these recover, in particular, a gǔshī on the autumn 1640 Báixià (Nánjīng) gathering at the Bìshǔ hútíng and four regulated couplets on contemporary politics. Modern editions integrate these.
Translations and research
No standalone Western-language monograph located. Ní Yuán-lù is treated in:
- the DMB entry on him (Charles O. Hucker, in L. C. Goodrich, ed., Dictionary of Ming Biography 1, 1976, pp. 1108–1112);
- Frederic Wakeman Jr., The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China (Berkeley 1985), passim;
- Marc Abramson, ‘The Calligraphy of Ni Yuanlu (1593–1644)’, M.A. thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1988 (calligraphy);
- Bai Qianshen, Fu Shan’s World: The Transformation of Chinese Calligraphy in the Seventeenth Century (Harvard 2003), passim, on Ní’s place in the Wàn-lì sì jiā of late-Míng calligraphy.
In Chinese the principal modern edition is Ní Yuán-lù jí 倪元璐集 (Hángzhōu: Zhèjiāng gǔjí, 2012; ed. Lǐ Zhèn-hé 李振河), based on the WYG with the Qióng-zhú-zhàng zhōng-jí recoveries integrated. The Ní Wén-zhēn-gōng nián-pǔ 倪文貞公年譜 by his son 倪會鼎 is reprinted in the Bĕijīng túshūguǎn cáng zhēn-běn nián-pǔ cóng-kān 北京圖書館藏珍本年譜叢刊.
Other points of interest
The Qiánlóng yùzhì topical postscript (Yùzhì tí Ní Yuánlù zhuàn Wáng Duó zhìcí 御製題倪元璐撰王鐸制辭) of Qiánlóng 49 / 1784 — explicitly contrasting Ní’s drafting of the patent for the disloyal Wáng Duó (who later submitted to the Qīng) with the imperial author’s own preferred plain-instructional gàoshēn convention — is an important text for understanding Qiánlóng’s editorial politics in the Sìkùquánshū. It is one of the rare instances of an imperial postscript prefixed ahead of the Sìkù tiyao itself, signalling that the throne wished its assessment to govern the reader’s approach to the collection.
Ní’s two principal Yìjīng works, the Éryì nèiyí yǐ 兒易內儀以 and Éryì wàiyí 兒易外儀, are catalogued separately in the jīng division (see KR1a0111).