Jūyìtáng jí 居易堂集
The Easy-Dwelling Hall Collection by 徐枋 (撰), with supplementary recovered poetry-and-prose by 王大隆 (輯集外詩文)
About the work
The collected works of 徐枋 Xú Fāng (1622–1694, zì Zhāofǎ 昭法, hào Sìzhāi 俟齋 — “Studio of the Awaiter”) — the most famously withdrawn of the Sūzhōu Míng-loyalist yímín. Twenty juan, edited by Xú’s disciple 潘耒 Pān Lěi in the early Kāngxī, with the Republican-era SBCK recension supplemented by 王大隆 Wáng Dàlóng’s jíwài shīwén recovery from later Qīng manuscript witnesses. The collection’s title — Jūyìtáng (“Easy-Dwelling Hall”) — recalls Xú’s lifelong retreat to Tiānpíng mountain near Sūzhōu; the title is sometimes rendered as alluding to Lǐ jì’s jū yì sǐ yú yì (“in dwelling at ease, dying at ease”), the formula of high-Confucian withdrawal.
Prefaces
Self-preface by 徐枋, undated but written c. Kāngxī 24 (1685, marking the close of his forty years of withdrawal):
The sage in establishing his teaching first speaks of wén and xíng, and wén must precede xíng: for it is in wén that xíng is seen. Why so? The Six Classics are the sage’s wén; yet save through the Six Classics there is no seeing the sage’s dào. Down through the various masters and the hundred schools, with their thousand divergences and myriad classes, prose-making takes different forms — but in pouring out what is stored up and capturing one’s lifetime, none differs. So with the sage and the worthy there is the wén of the sage and the worthy; with the loyal subject and the filial son there is the wén of the loyal subject and the filial son. Sincerity gathered within, taking form in speech: there is something that cannot be helped — as in Táng and Yú with their xū yú (sighs and assents), in Yī and Zhōu with their xùngào (instructions-and-commands), in Zōu and Lǔ with their Zhū sì (the Zhū-river of Mèng and Kǒng) speech; down to the cǎiwēi gē of Bóyí (the Brake-Cutting Song of Bóyí), the huái shā piān of Qū Yuán (the Embracing-Stone piece), the lǚ shuāng cāo of Bó Qí (the Treading-Frost performance) — they hang at one with sun and moon, abrade one with heaven and earth, so that even a thousand years afterward men read the work and seem to see the person, hear the voice, weeping or singing, drawn out and unable to stop. All these are the uses of wén.
Alas, hard it is to say! Without something one’s body has trodden, one’s mind has gone toward, life-long unmoved, dying without two minds — sincerity that can pierce metal and stone, that can make ghosts and spirits weep — one cannot speak in these terms. I, your unworthy servant, painfully met the calamity of family and country: I was 24 years old, my late father, the Wénjìng Master, died in his integrity for his country; I swore to follow him in death — but my resolve could not be fulfilled and I survived, suspended in my time. So I bound myself in an earthen room, cutting myself off from the world utterly. Even then, drudging in compromise, I had no place of friction; but heart-rending grief, end-of-life pain, scalding and ferocious — the surviving people’s life is not as good as long-dead. And in these forty years, bēng tiān zhī dí (the collapsed-Heaven enemy), jī tiān zhī bō (the Heaven-grazing waves), mí tiān zhī wǎng (the Heaven-covering net) — there has been nothing I have not encountered. Add to this the chill of hunger and cold, the toss of wind and rain, the misjudgments of the age, the precariousness of flesh-and-bone — there is nothing I have not gone through, nothing I have not endured to the limit. Alas, this is to be pitied.
[Xú then describes the structure of the collection: from the first twenty years not entering a city, to the next twenty not leaving his hut; from the records of friend-and-old-acquaintance exchanges, scene and mood, to the brief flashings of single phrase or thought — each must be set in writing or it cannot be conveyed. The collection has been ordered by genre and edited into N juan, named the Sìzhāi wén jí. The reader-to-come will see his wén and thereby see his heart.]
Abstract
The Jūyìtáng jí is the foremost early-Qīng yímín (Míng-loyalist) literary monument: a forty-year archive of the most uncompromising sealed-withdrawal in the Qīng record. The collection’s prefaces, biographical pieces, lamentations, and aphoristic essays document the Sūzhōu literati network of Míng-loyalists — including 歸莊 Guī Zhuāng (1613–1673), 呂留良 Lǚ Liúliáng (1629–1683), 黃宗羲 (epistolary), and many others — sometimes from the distinct angle of Xú’s monasticism-like withdrawal.
The collection was not in the Sìkù: Xú’s record was deeply incompatible with Qīng official ideology. The Pān Lěi recension circulated in private prints from the 1690s through the 18th century; the Republican-era SBCK reissue with 王大隆’s supplement is the canonical pre-modern scholarly text.
The catalog meta classifies Xú as Míng (明) — appropriate for an absolute loyalist who never recognized Qīng legitimacy. Composition window: 1645 (Xú’s father’s death; the beginning of his withdrawal) through 1694 (his own death). The 20-juan recension was assembled in roughly the last decade of his life.
Translations and research
Lynn A. Struve, The Southern Ming, 1644–1662 (Yale UP, 1984) — references Xú in the Sūzhōu loyalist context.
Lynn A. Struve, “Confucian PTSD: A Confucian Family’s Trauma during the Ming-Qing Transition,” in Trauma and Transcendence in Early Qing Literature, ed. Idema, Li, Widmer (Harvard, 2006).
Frederic Wakeman, The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China, 2 vols. (Berkeley: UC Press, 1985) — references Xú’s father.
Wai-yee Li, “Heroic Transformations: Women and National Trauma in Early Qing Literature,” HJAS 59 (1999).
Pān Lěi 潘耒, Suì-tāng wénjí — substantial materials on Xú from his editorial work.
Other points of interest
Xú Fāng’s reputation as the Sìzhāi — “Awaiter” — was modeled on Bóyí (the cǎiwēi recluse waiting for Zhōu’s fall to recant his refusal); the self-comparison with Bóyí, Qū Yuán, and Bó Qí in the self-preface is precise and not metaphorical. The fact that Xú lived precisely 40 years in withdrawal (1645–1685) before completing the collection lends the Sìzhāi identity a deliberate liturgical-numerological closure: forty years of bóyí-style resistance.
Links
- Wikidata Q11377908 (Xu Fang)
- ECCP 318–319 (Tu Lien-che)
- Pān Lěi (Suìtāng wénjí, KR4f) — editorial materials