Mùzhāi yǒu xué jí 牧齋有學集
Continuing Learning Collection of (Qián Qiānyì) Mùzhāi by 錢謙益 (撰), with collation-notes (撰校勘記) by 姜殿揚
About the work
The post-1644 collected poetry and prose of 錢謙益 Qián Qiānyì (1582–1664), the companion to KR4f0010 Mùzhāi chū xué jí, in 50 juan. The collection covers Qián’s complicated late-life trajectory: brief service to the Qīng as Lǐbù shàngshū in 1645, dismissal and return to Chángshú, clandestine support for Míng-loyalist resistance through the 1650s (the Zhèng Chénggōng 鄭成功 Yangtze campaign of 1659 is shadowed in many poems), increasingly fervent lay-Buddhist devotion under the influence of his consort Liǔ Rúshì 柳如是, and a copious late prose corpus of biographies, prefaces, and Buddhist commentarial essays. The Republican-era SBCK editor 姜殿揚 (Jiāng Diànyáng) supplied a substantial jiàokān jì 校勘記 of textual variants drawn against the surviving Qīng manuscripts and clandestine prints.
Prefaces
Preface to the Yǒu xué jí, by Qián’s disciple 黃宗羲’s younger fellow-disciple Jīn Bǎo 金堡 (the Hànshāntā 函山-塔 monk Dānxiá 丹霞; ordained name Jīnbǎo 今霖):
The tradition speaks of Three Immortalities: highest is to establish virtue; next is to establish merit; next is to establish words. The ancients combined the three into one. Now that humaneness and righteousness, the Way and its arts, are lost; that signal achievements have grown rare — only establishing words remains; and even words are difficult. The plagiarizing rú trace the ruler and step to the rule, but gain only the outer face and lose the inner spirit; the truant scholars rely on cleverness and dash off in conceit, beginning in oddity and ending in shallowness. The two factions trade in mockery and exchange the upper hand, but no one knows whose mastery to follow; to be divine and to make plain depends on the person. The Mùzhāi Master was born at the end of the Míng and became the consummation of the age. In poetry, he plucks the elegance of the Jiāngzuǒ school without taking over its phrasing, holds himself against the Cǎotáng (Tù Fǔ’s) grandeur without imitating his face; he ranges in and out between mid- and late-Sòng and Yuán, fusing them all into a smelter of his own design — North-land [Xú Wèiyuàn] bows his heart before him; the Xiāng river [the Gōngān school] loses its color. In prose, he looks up at the changes of cloud and rosy mist and down at the wonders of mountains and rivers; he plumbs the manifold ranks of persons and things; he takes the Six Classics as the basis of his understanding, gleans the Three Histories to refine his talent, ranges among the Eight Masters [of Tang and Sung prose] to communicate his energy, and pushes to the very limits of the various masters, the side-officials and the xiǎoshuō miscellany to exhaust his usage. No piece is uniform; no piece falls into one mold…
Abstract
The Yǒu xué jí is the more politically dangerous half of Qián’s two-collection corpus. The first imprint was the Sūzhōu bāojìtā 包繼堂 woodblock of 1664, issued at his death; subsequent late-Kāngxī private prints survive. The proscription under the Qiánlóng emperor (edict of Qiánlóng 34, 1769) targeted both jí but the Yǒu xué jí in particular because of its open Míng-loyalist sympathies and its many poems shadowing the Zhèng Chénggōng campaign of 1659 (the Hòu qiūxìng 後秋興 cycle of 108 poems in seven-character regulated meter, modeled on Dù Fǔ’s Qiū xìng 秋興, which is the most famous loyalist poetic sequence of the early Qīng).
The work is not in the Sìkù; the SBCK is the canonical pre-modern recension. The Republican-era SBCK edition is supplemented by 姜殿揚’s collation notes against multiple Qīng-era manuscript witnesses.
The composition window runs from 1644 (the immediate post-fall pieces) through Qián’s death in 1664. Many poems are precisely dateable from internal gānzhī references — the Hòu qiūxìng sequence is securely dated 1659 (jǐhài) through 1663.
Translations and research
Wai-yee Li, “Heroic Transformations: Women and National Trauma in Early Qing Literature,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 59 (1999), 363–443 — uses the Yǒu xué jí substantially.
Lawrence C. H. Yim, The Poet-historian Qian Qianyi (London: Routledge, 2009) — principal English-language monograph.
Chen Yinque 陳寅恪, Liǔ Rú-shì bié zhuàn 柳如是別傳 (3 vols., 1960; rpt. Shanghai guji, 1980) — the foundational biographical study, using the Yǒu xué jí throughout.
Stephen Owen, ed., The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 2010) — situates the Hòu qiū-xìng sequence.
Qián Zhōng-lián 錢仲聯, ed. Mùzhāi yǒu xué jí jiān jiào 牧齋有學集箋校 (Shanghai guji, 1996) — the modern critical edition.
Other points of interest
The 108-poem Hòu qiūxìng sequence is among the most studied poetic monuments of the MíngQīng transition: its allusive code (the “evening sun on the southern paths,” the “long willow at the western road”) was specifically calibrated to be readable both as topographic description and as commentary on the Zhèng Chénggōng Yangtze campaign. Chen Yinque devoted a substantial portion of Liǔ Rúshì bié zhuàn (chapters 5–6) to decoding the sequence.
Links
- Wikidata Q707080 (Qian Qianyi)
- ECCP 148–150