Méicūn jí 梅村集
The Méicūn Collection by 吳偉業 (撰)
About the work
The Sìkù quánshū recension of the collected poetry and prose of 吳偉業 Wú Wěiyè (1609–1672, zì Jùngōng 駿公, hào Méicūn 梅村), the most celebrated poet of the early Qīng generation that came of age under the Míng. 40 juan total — 18 juan of shī, 2 juan of shīyú (lyric-meter), 20 juan of prose. Wú took the third place in the Chóngzhēn 4 (1631) jìnshì at the age of 22, served in the Hànlín under the Míng, and after the dynasty’s fall was pressed back into office by the Qīng in 1653 as guózǐjiàn jìjiǔ 國子監祭酒 (Director of the National University), a post he held reluctantly for four years before retiring permanently to Tàicāng. The famous yùtí 御題 (“imperial inscription”) by the Qiánlóng emperor — preserved at the head of the WYG recension — praises the work warmly and is itself an important political-aesthetic gesture: the great early-Qīng èrchén (two-court servant) poet, like Qián Qiānyì, was a target of imperial ambivalence; the Qiánlóng inscription rehabilitates Wú as poetic standard-bearer in a way it pointedly refuses to do for Qián.
Tiyao
Your servants reverently submit the following: the Méicūn jí in 40 juan is by 吳偉業 of our dynasty. Wěiyè, zì Jùngōng, hào Méicūn, was a man of Tàicāng. In the former Míng, in the xīnwèi year of Chóngzhēn (1631), he was placed third in the first class of the jìnshì examinations and appointed compiler in the Hànlín Academy. Under our dynasty, he rose to guózǐjiàn jìjiǔ (Director of the National University). His Suí kòu jì lüè 綏寇紀略 (KR2c0018) has already been separately recorded; this is his complete poetry-and-prose collection, comprising 18 juan of shī, 2 juan of lyric-meter shīyú, and 20 juan of prose.
Wěiyè was already known by his poetry on the lower Yangtze region (Jiāngzuǒ) in his youth, and in his late years his standing in the literary precincts grew higher still — the ink scarcely dry, his work was being copied from far and near. His elegance and ornament were enough to illumine an age. His poetic measures struck the gōng and shāng notes precisely, his palette mingled vermilion and emerald, his presence and pose were graceful and rich, surpassing the run of his contemporaries — a singular standard rarely seen since antiquity. He was most masterful in the seven-character gēxíng form: observe how, drawing on emotion and lodging in occasion, in adverting to event and expressing his feeling, he hurries the urgent reeds’ multiplied notes and stirs the delicate string’s escaping echoes — one song with three after-sighs — possessing his own forge and hammer, unsurpassed since Yuán Zhěn and Bái Jūyì. As for his ancient-form verse, it often verges on the parallel-prose mode, decidedly not the proper standard. 黃宗羲 once observed that Wú’s two biographies of Zhāng Nányuán and Liǔ Jìngtíng in the Méicūn jí — saying that Zhāng’s art reached the level of dào, and that Liǔ’s military counsel to Níngnán (Zuǒ Liángyù) deserved comparison with Lǔ Zhònglián’s clearing of disputes — get the proportions wrong and overturn the prose-master’s stable; this critique is largely apt. Yet the various prose pieces are mostly able to express his heart, the diction is elegant and copious; though he cannot be set on a level with the great masters of antiquity, neither can his work be other than the brush of a cáirén. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), tenth month. Chief editors your servants 紀昀, 陸錫熊, 孫士毅. Chief proof-collator your servant Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Wú is the leading representative of the Yúnjiān / Yānyún 燕雲 poetic style — a refined, melodically intricate, allusively dense seven-character gēxíng (long ballad) mode that took Yuán Zhěn and Bái Jūyì’s cháng qìng tǐ as model and developed it into a vehicle for elegiac historical reflection on the MíngQīng transition. His most famous works in this register — the Yuányuán qū 圓圓曲 (the ballad of Chén Yuányuán, the courtesan whose abduction by the rebel Lǐ Zìchéng triggered Wú Sānguì’s defection to the Manchus), Chǔ liǎngshēng xíng 楚兩生行, Yǒngyǒngshǒu 永和宮詞, Hòu dōngqiū 後東皋草堂歌 — are all preserved here.
The Sìkù recension represents only the imperial-side selection: the WYG-style Méicūn jí in 40 juan is a curated, abridged form of the larger 58-juan Méicūn jiācáng gǎo 梅村家藏藁 (KR4f0013) which preserves the fuller post-1644 corpus including more politically risky pieces. The two are paired in the catalog deliberately. Wú’s Suíkòu jìlüè — the topical history of the late-Míng rebellions composed during his retirement in 1652 — is at KR2c0018 in the historical division.
Translations and research
Wai-yee Li, “Romantic Recollections of Women as Sources of Women’s History,” in Beyond Tradition and Modernity, ed. Berg & Starr (Brill, 2007) — analyses Wú’s Yuán-yuán qū and the Liǔ Jìng-tíng biography.
Lawrence C. H. Yim, “Wu Wei-yeh’s Reflections on Personal Loyalty and History,” in Trauma and Transcendence in Early Qing Literature, ed. Wilt L. Idema, Wai-yee Li, and Ellen Widmer (Harvard, 2006).
Stephen Owen, ed., The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 2010) — substantial discussion of the Méicūn style.
Yip Wai-lim, Chinese Poetry: An Anthology of Major Modes and Genres (Duke, 1997) — translates several of the major gē-xíng.
Féng Qí-yōng 馮其庸, Wú Méicūn nián pǔ 吳梅村年譜 (Beijing: Wenhua yishu, 1990) — the standard chronological biography.
Other points of interest
The Qiánlóng yùtí preserved at the head of the WYG recension — “a single roll of Méicūn is enough for elegance; turning back and forth I read it and will not stop” — is a model imperial-aesthetic appropriation: it rehabilitates Wú as part of the Qīng poetic canon while subtly distancing him from his èrchén contemporaries (most notably Qián Qiānyì, who was simultaneously being proscribed). The Méicūn signature qīyán gēxíng directly influenced the Yuán Mèi / Jiǎng Shìquán generation of mid-Qīng poets.
Links
- Wikidata Q1015367 (Wu Weiye)
- ECCP 882–883 (Tu Lien-che)
- Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào