Liányáng shī chāo 蓮洋詩鈔
Selected Poems of (Wú Wén) Liányáng by 吳雯 (撰)
About the work
The 10-juan refined recension of the poetry of 吳雯 Wú Wén (1644–1704, zì Tiānzhāng 天章, hào Liányáng 蓮洋), the eccentric Púzhōu poet famously patronized by 王士禛 Wáng Shìzhēn. Wú failed the 1679 Bóxué hóngcí and spent his life in physical eccentricity and poetic excellence; the Sìkù compilers’ assessment, drawing on Wáng Shìzhēn’s mortuary inscription and on 趙執信 Zhào Zhíxìn’s Huáijiù shī, captures both the personal awkwardness and the poetic distinction.
The text’s transmission is complicated: Wáng Shìzhēn had abridged the collection to about 1,000 poems after Wú’s death (per the mortuary inscription), but the recension did not promptly circulate; in Qiánlóng 16 (1751, xīnwèi) Liú Zǔzēng 劉組曾 of Fényáng (Shānxī) gathered the full surviving corpus and printed it, with a separate small chapbook of Wáng Shìzhēn’s evaluations issued in parallel. Thirteen years later in Qiánlóng 29 (1764, jiǎshēn) Sūn È 孫諤 of Shāndōng, then tóngzhī of Púzhōu prefecture, recovered Wáng Shìzhēn’s original abridgment manuscript from Wú’s nephew Wú Dūnhòu 吳敦厚 and prepared the present 10-juan recension by collating and refining: 2 juan ancient-style, 5 juan modern-style, 1 juan bǔyí, 1 juan shīyí, 1 juan prose — preceded by the mortuary inscription and supplemented at the end by contemporary chànghé tíyǒng (responsorial-and-inscriptional) pieces. This 1764 Sūn È recension is the Sìkù’s base text.
Tiyao
Your servants reverently submit the following: the Liányáng shī chāo in 10 juan is by Wú Wén of our dynasty. Wú, zì Tiānzhāng, originally of Liáoyáng. In Shùnzhì 6 (1649) his father Yǔnshēng was appointed xuézhèng of Púzhōu and died in office. Wú’s orphaned brothers, with no means to return home, became Púzhōu people. In jǐwèi of Kāngxī (1679) he was recommended to the Bóxué hóngcí but failed selection. At his death, the Xíngbù shàngshū 王士禛 Wáng Shìzhēn wrote his mortuary inscription, recording that on first reading Wú’s poems with lines like quán rào Hàn cí wài, xuě míng Qín shù gēn; nóng yún shī Xīlǐng, chūn ní zhān tiáo sāng; zhì jīn Yáofēng shàng, yóu jiàn Yáo shí rì — he could not stop reciting them. The Jū yì lù repeatedly praises Wú’s Xīchéng biéshù sequence.
Zhào Zhíxìn’s Huáijiù shī preface also says: Wú was awkward at exam-essays, frustrated in the hall, physically coarse and homely, his clothes and cap dirty and tattered, sometimes not bathing for a whole year — everyone laughed at him. But his poetic talent was uniquely transcendent. His poetry was printed once at Wúzhōng, a second time at the capital, a third time at Tiānmén; Wáng Shìzhēn later abridged it to over 1,000 poems, as is recorded in the mortuary inscription. Because Wú’s death came before he could print the abridgment, Zhào’s preface said: “After Liányáng’s death, Ruǎnwēng [Wáng] did the mortuary text and abridged the collection, and twenty years later it is still not in the world. Maybe in that time Ruǎnwēng was old and forgetful; not long after he too died, never having returned them to the Wú family. The Chíběi library has been almost wholly scattered; the Liányáng collection one can guess.” Yet in fact the collection had been returned to the Wú family.
In Qiánlóng xīnwèi (1751) Liú Zǔzēng of Fényáng gathered the full draft and printed it, also issuing in parallel a small chapbook of Wáng’s evaluations. Thirteen years later in jiǎshēn (1764) Sūn È of Shāndōng, tóngzhī of Púzhōu prefecture, obtained from Wú’s nephew Dūnhòu the original Wáng-collated manuscript and abridged-and-reprinted, recording Wáng’s evaluations carefully, and supplementing at the back the pieces Liú’s edition had left out, also restoring further pieces seen in autograph manuscripts. What Wáng had cut but Liú had mistakenly preserved was now all removed. Two juan ancient-style, five juan modern-style, one juan bǔyí, one juan shīyí, one juan prose — preceded by the mortuary inscription and appended by contemporary chànghé tíyǒng pieces — this is the present text.
Wú’s heaven-given talent is xióng jùn (heroic-and-strong); his poetry carries on the legacy of his fellow Liáoyáng native Yuán Hàowèn 元好問 [Yuán Yíshān]. Only that he was deeply familiar with Buddhist canon and fond of lā zá duī qì (haphazardly piling up) Buddhist allusions: this is his weakness. Liú’s imprint included everything without sifting and slipped into rǒng làn (loose and excessive). The present text follows the 王士禛 Xīnchéng line and takes shényùn wǎnyuē (spirit-resonance compressed) as its standard — all the jīáng chénzhuó (vehement and weighty) pieces are mostly suppressed, perhaps slipping somewhat into qīngruò (clear-thin). Even so, it is more jiǎnjié (concise-and-clean) than the Liú edition, so we set Liú aside and record this. As to the evaluations by Wáng Shìzhēn recorded in it, they are exceedingly fragmentary; for example, under Tí Wāng Yùlún kàn jiàn tú shī the appended note reads: “Original-text evaluation qí zuò (marvelous composition) — these two characters seem to be Master Ruǎntíng’s hand-writing; the four characters xiōng yǒu zào huà (the bosom contains creation) are not Master Ruǎntíng’s hand-writing. The imprint combines them as one — that is wrong.” Likewise Chéngqū tiào … [further textual notes are itemized — these are the Sìkù compilers’ annotations on Wáng Shìzhēn’s parsed evaluations]. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 50 (1785), [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 Wén is the most representative Shényùn school disciple of 王士禛 Wáng Shìzhēn in his own century, even more than such formal pupils as Wāng Yáu 汪繹. The Liányáng shī chāo is the canonical recension of his poetry: a curated form, abridged twice from a fuller corpus, designed to maximize the Shényùn aesthetic at the cost of Wú’s more jīáng chénzhuó (vehement) pieces. The Sìkù compilers’ explicit acknowledgement of the xuǎnběn (selected-text) bias — that the present recension “slips into the clear-thin” through over-curation — is itself an unusually self-conscious editorial note.
The WúWáng patronage was one of the most documented critic-poet relationships of the high Kāngxī period; together with the Wáng Shìzhēn / 朱彝尊 / 汪琬 / 陳廷敬 court-poetic network, it defines the Shényùn school’s institutional consolidation.
Composition window: c. 1660 (Wú’s youthful work at Púzhōu) through 1704 (his death). The 10-juan Sūn È 1764 recension is the canonical text.
Translations and research
Richard John Lynn, “Orthodoxy and Enlightenment: Wang Shih-chen’s Theory of Poetry and Its Antecedents,” in The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism, ed. de Bary (Columbia UP, 1975).
Daniel Bryant, “Wang Shih-chen and the Theory of Spirit-Resonance,” Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, vol. 1.
Yán Dí-chāng 嚴迪昌, Qīng shī shǐ 清詩史 (Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1990) — Wú Wén chapter.
Other points of interest
The textual transmission story — first imprint at Wúzhōng, second at the capital, third at Tianjin, fourth as Wáng Shìzhēn’s abridgment which never circulated, fifth as Liú Zǔzēng’s 1751 Fényáng imprint, sixth as Sūn È’s 1764 Púzhōu refinement — is unusually elaborate for an early-Qīng poet and reflects the Shényùn school’s careful curation of its second-rank canonical poets.
Links
- Wikidata Q15922680 (Wu Wen)
- ECCP 904 (Tu Lien-che)
- Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào