Jiāngzhāi shī wénjí 薑齋詩文集
Poetry and Prose Collection of (Wáng Fūzhī) Jiāngzhāi by 王夫之 (撰)
About the work
The collected poetry and prose of 王夫之 Wáng Fūzhī (1619–1692, zì Érnóng 而農, hào Jiāngzhāi 薑齋, also Chuánshān 船山) — third of the “Three Great Confucians of the Early Qīng” alongside 顧炎武 and 黃宗羲 — in 28 juan, gathered from numerous sub-collections circulated under the Chuánshānyíshū 船山遺書 master rubric. The SBCK Jiāngzhāi shīwénjí combines: the Nánchuāng màn jì 南窗漫記, the Xītáng xìmò 夕堂戲墨 (containing the Xiāoxiāng yuàn cí 瀟湘怨詞 and parallel cí-lyric sequences), the Liú huáng shī sūn 鴻飛詩孫, the Wǔshí shī 五十詩, the Liú huáng yún 流杭韻, and the closing prose wénjí — with the Chuánshān yíshū serial volume-number 62 prominently noted on each title-page (as e.g. “船山遺書六十二”). The collection is the principal Republican-era recension of Wáng’s poetry and shorter prose, drawing on the woodblocks held by the Wáng family at Héngyáng 衡陽 after the late-19th-century recovery of his yíshū by Zēng Guófān 曾國藩 and Zēng Guóquán 曾國荃.
Prefaces
Self-preface to the Nánchuāng màn jì 南窗漫記, dated wùchén tiānzhōngrì (i.e., Wáng’s Kāngxī-era cyclical wùchén, 1688, the Dragon-Boat Festival):
Things must have what cannot be returned to yáng — let alone myself? I have abandoned myself in resignation; only there is something I cannot let myself ignore. From my early years attending in my father’s halls, going out to receive at the corner of the master’s mat, and exchanging visits with my scholar-friends — once I shut my door and lived secluded in the deep valleys, I never lacked the footstep of arriving company. In these last few years, all has been ended in a single tear. Now both my ears are deaf; the cuckoo crying in the tree behind my hut I no longer hear. And yet my small heart is as it was before — what then shall I make of it? I was born with no faculty of holding things in memory; people often say this is not so, and I see no point in deceiving them: I once read the Tàijí tú shuō three hundred times over and forgot it overnight. What others have been kind enough to send me — the works of Zhāng Biéshān, Liú Duānxīng 中丞 (湘客), Jīn Dàoyǐn 黃門 (堡), Liú Huànsōng 太史 (明遇), Lóng Jìxiá of ShàngXiāng (孔蒸), Yáo Mèngxiá of Yúháng (湘) — I have racked my mind in vain and cannot recall a single chapter. The rest may be inferred. From what I have managed in illness to recall, perhaps a few sentences are preserved… All of them are in their own way bewailed. Wùchén (1688) midyear, by the South Window.
Abstract
The principal body of Wáng’s surviving corpus — his major Classics-commentaries, philosophical treatises, and the great works of historical reflection (Dú Tōngjiàn lùn, Sòng lùn) — is preserved separately in the Chuánshān yíshū series and in the KR1 and KR3 sub-divisions of Kanripo (e.g., the Zhōuyì bài shū KR1a0120, the Zhōuyì kǎo yì KR1a0121 et al). What survives in the present biéjí is the literary Wáng — the cí-lyric sequences (which are among the most accomplished of the MíngQīng transition), the short occasional poetry, and the brief prefaces and personal essays in which his philosophical voice is shorter, sharper, and more biographically vulnerable than in the major treatises.
The SBCK recension provides the cleanest text. Like Gù Yánwǔ and Huáng Zōngxī, Wáng was excluded from the Sìkù quánshū on political grounds: his Míng-loyalist record (brief service under the Yǒnglì 永曆 emperor of the Southern Míng, 1648–1650) was disqualifying, and the Sìkù compilers did not even open a biéjí entry for him. The Chuánshān corpus was effectively rescued from oblivion only in the 1860s-70s by Zēng Guófān’s recovery and woodblock-printing project at Jīnlíng 金陵; the SBCK draws on these blocks.
The composition window runs from c. 1648 (the Yǒnglì-era pieces) through Wáng’s death in 1692. The closing dated piece in the Xītáng xìmò (Xiāoxiāng yuàn cí) is from 1665 yǐsì shàngsì (the third-day-of-the-third-month festival); other pieces are explicitly dated through the early Kāngxī period.
Translations and research
Alison H. Black, Man and Nature in the Philosophical Thought of Wang Fu-chih (Seattle: U. Washington Press, 1989) — principal English-language monograph; uses the bié-jí selectively.
Jacques Gernet, La raison des choses: essai sur la philosophie de Wang Fuzhi (1619–1692) (Paris: Gallimard, 2005) — substantial.
Ian McMorran, “The Patriot and the Partisan: Wang Fu-chih’s Involvement in the Politics of the Yung-li Court,” in From Ming to Ch’ing, ed. J. Spence and J. Wills (New Haven: Yale UP, 1979) — biographical context for the loyalist verse.
Hsiao Kung-ch’üan, “Wang Fu-chih,” in A History of Chinese Political Thought, vol. 1 (Princeton, 1979).
Wáng Fūzhī 王夫之, Chuán-shān quánshū 船山全書, 16 vols. (Yuelu shushe, 1988–1996) — the modern standard edition; vols. 14–15 cover the literary corpus.
Other points of interest
The Nánchuāng màn jì preface is one of the most affecting late-life self-portraits in Qīng literature: a deaf, half-blind eremite of the HèngYuè highlands recalling friends fifty years dead, all named in his Yǒnglì-era literary circle. The piece is often taught as a paradigm of Míng-loyalist late style.
Links
- Wikidata Q549147 (Wang Fuzhi)
- ECCP 817–819 (J. C. Yang)
- Chuánshān quánshū (Yuelu shushe, 1988–1996)