Méicūn jiā cáng gǎo 梅村家藏藁
Drafts Preserved in the Méicūn Family Library by 吳偉業 (撰), with appendix (坿錄) by 顧師軾
About the work
The fuller, family-preserved recension of 吳偉業 Wú Wěiyè’s collected works, in 58 juan, compared to the 40-juan Sìkù selection in KR4f0012 Méicūn jí. The “family-preserved drafts” title (jiācáng gǎo) is precise: this is the lineage’s own, internally-circulated, more complete recension assembled by Wú’s descendants and by the Tàicāng scholar 顧師軾 (1799–1884), who provided the 1841-era fùlù of biographical and bibliographic apparatus. The opening juan reproduce period-portraits of Wú by Yú Zhīdǐng 禹之鼎 (the famous Hónglú portraitist), with Daoguang-Tongzhi-era poets’ inscribed verses appreciating these portraits — Qín Xiāngyè 秦湘業, Zōng Yuánhàn 宗源瀚, Xuē Shíyǔ 薛時雨, Shī Bǔhuá 施補華, Wáng Línshū 王麟書, and others.
Prefaces
The opening of the recension is a series of Tóng-zhì-era juéjù by Qín Xiāngyè 秦湘業, dated wùchén qī yuè (Tóngzhì 7, 1868):
“Āi Jiāngnán fù and the Tōngtiān biǎo — / ‘Killing-with-grief, the courtiers of the former dynasty.’ / Bitterly people call him Wú jìjiǔ (Master Wine-Pourer Wú) / Yet on his own garden-stone he wrote ‘I am [merely] a poet.‘”
These are followed by Qín’s own colophon (1868): “These are Master Wú Méicūn’s Drawn-Looking-at-his-Sons portrait, made by Yú Shènzhāi for Gù Yuánzhāo, which I purchased in wùchén (1868) the seventh month; I appended four juéjù and asked my colleagues to harmonize.” Wú died in Kāngxī 10, xīnhài (1672), aged 63; Yú Shènzhāi (the portraitist) was therefore younger than Wú by some decades; the portrait is dated approximately to Wú’s sixtieth year. The Tóngzhì circle of TàicāngSūzhōu poets then added matching verses: Zōng Yuánhàn, Xuē Shíyǔ, Yuán Lì 袁立, Shī Bǔhuá, Wáng Línshū.
Abstract
The Méicūn jiācáng gǎo preserves about 18 juan of material that the Sìkù compilers cut from their own Méicūn jí recension: principally those pieces touching too closely on Wú’s reluctant 1653–1657 Qīng service (when he was pressed back into office by the Manchu administration), on the Míng-loyalist resistance in the lower Yangtze region, and on the marginal social-occasion verse and xí-letters (informal letters and notes) that did not meet the Sìkù compilers’ threshold for literary merit. For modern philology — and for the historical reading of Wú — the jiācáng gǎo is the more valuable text.
The SBCK reproduces the 1841 gēngxū Tàicāng imprint with 顧師軾’s 1841 fùlù, supplemented by Sūn Yùxiū’s collation against the surviving Kāngxī manuscripts. The fùlù contains 顧師軾’s Wú Méicūn xiānshēng nián pǔ 吳梅村先生年譜, a contemporary inscription-record (hé yǐn zī liào), period-portraits, and an exhaustive bibliography of secondary references through the early DàoGuāng period.
Composition window: 1631 (the earliest dated piece, from Wú’s jìnshì year) through 1672 (his death). The Yú Zhīdǐng portraits at the head of the volume are themselves c. 1670 commissions.
Translations and research
See secondary literature under KR4f0012. The 1990 Féng Qí-yōng Wú Méicūn nián pǔ substantially updates 顧師軾’s 1841 chronological biography.
Wai-yee Li, “Heroic Transformations: Women and National Trauma in Early Qing Literature,” HJAS 59 (1999) 363–443 — uses the jiā-cáng gǎo version of the Yuán-yuán qū and related pieces.
Stephen Owen, ed., The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 2010).
Féng Qí-yōng 馮其庸, Wú Méicūn nián pǔ 吳梅村年譜 (Beijing: Wenhua yishu, 1990).
Yè Jūn-yuǎn 葉君遠, Wú Méicūn yánjiū 吳梅村研究 (Beijing: Wénhuà yìshù, 1986).
Other points of interest
The jiācáng gǎo preserves the original prefaces and postfaces that Wú himself attached to his poems — including the famous Yuányuán qū headnote explaining Wú’s commission by Chén Yuányuán’s brother — material the Sìkù compilers stripped on political grounds. Modern critical editions (Féng Qíyōng 1990; Lǐ Xuéyǐng 1990) use the SBCK jiācáng gǎo as base-text.
Links
- Wikidata Q1015367 (Wu Weiye)
- ECCP 882–883