Tínglín shījí 亭林詩集
Poetry Collection of (Gù Yánwǔ) Tínglín by 顧炎武 (撰) and 孫毓修 (輯詩集校補)
About the work
The poetry collection of the great early-Qīng kǎozhèng founder Gù Yánwǔ 顧炎武 (1613–1682), in 5 juan with a supplementary 6th bǔyí 補遺 juan added by the Republican-era Sìbù cóngkān editor 孫毓修 (Sūn Yùxiū, 1871–1923). The poetry covers Gù’s post-1644 lifetime of wandering through northern and central China as a Míng-loyalist refugee; the dates implicit in the colophons run from the late 1640s through the 1670s, with juan 5 reaching into Gù’s final period at Huáyīn 華陰. The poems are characteristically grave, formally compact, and densely allusive — many are explicitly historical-poetic responses to the MíngQīng transition (e.g., the opening Dà xíng āi shī 大行哀詩 mourning the Chóngzhēn emperor’s death). Substantial annotation accompanies the poems, in the form of interlinear citation-keys drawn principally from the Hòu Hàn shū and other histories — a hallmark of Gù’s mode of work.
Prefaces
The SBCK recension does not preserve a contemporary preface; it reproduces the body of the work and a bǔyí compiled by 孫毓修 from materials gathered after the original print runs. The bibliographic identification in the front matter reads simply: “Tínglín shījí mùlù: Kūnshān Gù Yánwǔ Níngrén zhù” 亭林詩集目録：崑山顧炎武寧人著. The SBCK draws on Gù’s own circulated manuscript tradition rather than on a single Qīng print.
Abstract
Gù Yánwǔ’s poetry survives in two SBCK-edited bundles: this Tínglín shījí (5 juan + bǔyí) and the supplementary KR4f0007 Tínglín yújí 亭林餘集 (1 juan). The two together constitute the canonical recension of Gù’s verse, edited and proof-read by Sūn Yùxiū for the SBCK first series in the late 1910s–early 1920s. Sūn drew on the surviving Qīng manuscripts and on the 1888 Tínglín shīwénjí 亭林詩文集 imprint compiled by Zhāng Mù 張穆 (and corrected variously by Yú Yuè 俞樾 and others). For Gù’s prose — both the wénjí proper and his more famous notebook-and-treatise works — see the separate Tínglín wénjí 亭林文集 (also in the SBCK series) and the Rì zhī lù 日知錄 (KR3a0091).
The Sìkù commissioners in the early 1780s notoriously refused to admit Gù’s collected poetry-and-prose, classifying his loyalist record as politically inadmissible, even while admitting his Rì zhī lù, Tiānxià jùnguó lìbìng shū, and Yīn xué wǔ shū as evidential-research works. Gù’s biéjí therefore lacks a Sìkù tíyào; the SBCK is the standard pre-modern recension.
The composition window runs from the late Chóngzhēn / early Shùnzhì years (mid-1640s) through Gù’s death in 1682. The notBefore / notAfter are set accordingly. Many of the poems are explicitly dated by gānzhī in their headnotes or implicit in their referents — e.g., poems memorializing the failed Lóngwǔ and Yǒnglì regimes are securely datable to the 1640s–1660s. Gù’s wide-ranging epigraphic and geographic travels in northern China after his foster mother’s death (Wángshì 王氏, who starved herself rather than serve the Qīng) supply the principal occasions of the verse.
Translations and research
Wm. Theodore de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 2 (2nd ed., New York: Columbia UP, 1999) — translates a small selection of Gù’s prose and verse.
Willard J. Peterson, “The Life of Ku Yen-wu (1613–1682),” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 28 (1968) 114–156 and 29 (1969) 201–247 — the principal English-language biographical study; uses the shījí substantially.
Thomas Bartlett, Ku Yen-wu (1613–1682) and the Sung Learning (PhD diss., Princeton, 1985).
Xu Sumin 許蘇民, Gù Yánwǔ píng zhuàn 顧炎武評傳 (Nanjing UP, 2006).
Zhou Kezhen 周可真, Gù Yánwǔ nián pǔ 顧炎武年譜 (Suzhou UP, 1998).
Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (Harvard, 2018), §66.4.10 on the Rì zhī lù; §54.2.1 on Gù as a geographer.
Other points of interest
The opening poem Dà xíng āi shī 大行哀詩 — a xíng-form lament on the Chóngzhēn emperor — set the model for an entire 17th-century mourning-poetry sub-genre. Gù’s verse is also a major source for the topography of his epigraphic travels: the Guǎngchāng dào zhōng 廣昌道中, Jì wèn Fù chǔshì Tǔtáng shān zhōng 寄問傅處士土堂山中 (i.e., Fù Shān 傅山), and similar poems are cited by historical geographers as primary evidence.
Links
- Wikidata Q381888 (Gu Yanwu)
- ECCP 421–426 (Fang Chao-ying)
- Wilkinson 2018, §54.2.1, §66.4.10