Sūn Yuānrú shīwénjí 孫淵如詩文集
The Combined Poetry and Prose Collection of Sūn (Xīng-yǎn) Yuān-rú by 孫星衍 (撰) and 王采薇 (撰坿錄)
About the work
The combined collected works of 孫星衍 Sūn Xīngyǎn (1753–1818, zì Yuānrú 淵如, also Bǎoyuān 伯淵, Jìqiú 季逑, hào Fāngmàoshānrén 芳茂山人, native of Yánghú 陽湖, Chángzhōu 常州, Jiāngsū). The leading Chángzhōu kǎozhèng polymath of the late Qiánlóng / early Jiāqìng period, jìnshì of Qiánlóng 52 (1787) ranking second in the second tier and Hànlín biānxiū; expert in Shàngshū and Zhōu yì exegesis, epigraphy, bibliography, and the cāngxué small-script tradition. The SBCK 21-juan recension contains: (1) the Fāngmàoshānrén shīlù 芳茂山人詩錄 (Sūn’s principal poetry-collection, in 10 juan, mostly gǔtǐ and jīntǐ verse covering his career from the 1780s to his death); (2) the Píngjīnguǎn wéngǎo 平津館文稿 (his collected prose, including xù, bá, kǎo, bēizhuàn etc., named after his Píngjīnguǎn studio); and (3) as an appendix, the Chángjìzhāi yíjí 長離閣遺集 (1 juan) of his first wife 王采薇 Wáng Cǎiwēi (1753–1776, zì Yùyīng 玉瑛, hào Chángjì 長離) — herself a notable late-Qiánlóng woman poet whose surviving fragments Sūn salvaged and his younger brother Sūn Xīnghéng 孫星衡 (hào Nánlù 南麓) printed with the jí. Sūn never remarried after Wáng’s death in 1776 — she had died in childbirth at 23 — and the appendix is in part a memorial.
Prefaces
The front matter contains two prefaces and at least one bá (colophon). The first preface is by 石韞玉 Shí Yùnyù (1756–1837, of Wúxiàn, jìnshì of 1790, zhuàngyuán of that year), Sūn’s Hànlín colleague and Shāndōng official-companion. Shí describes Sūn as having bào cíhuì zhī xīn, shǒu gěngjiè zhī cāo 抱慈惠之心、守耿介之操 (compassionate of heart, upright in principle), beloved by the populace as a father and revered by officials as a teacher; that Sūn retired to Jīnlíng (Nánjīng) to care for his aged parents and that Shí, himself stationed at the Qínhuái river under Zhāng Wénmǐngōng 張文敏公’s invitation, met Sūn almost daily and formed a gāndǎn xiāng xǔ, shēn yǐ hūnyīn 肝膽相許、申以昏姻 (heart-and-liver friendship, sealed with marriage) bond — Sūn and Shí became yīnqīn in-laws. Sūn died in Jiāqìng wùyín 嘉慶戊寅 (1818, Jiāqìng 23) from a minor illness. His brother Sūn Xīnghéng compiled the surviving poetry-drafts into 10 juan; after printing he appended the yícǎo of Wáng Cǎiwēi. Shí remarks on Sūn’s poetic phases: early imitation of 李白 Lǐ Bái (Qīnglián) and 李賀 Lǐ Hè (Chánggǔ) “winning by strangeness and freedom”; mature work jìn Xiāngshān lǎorén 近香山老人 (resembling 白居易 Bái Jūyì); 袁枚 Yuán Méi had called Sūn the foremost qícái 奇才 (extraordinary talent) of the age, “surpassing” 黃景仁 Huáng Jǐngrén (Zhòngzé) and 洪亮吉 Hóng Liàngjí (Zhìcún).
The second preface, the Fāngmàoshānrén shīlù xù, is by Táng Zhòngmiǎn 唐仲冕 (1753–1827, of Chángshā), dated gēngchén shǒuchūn sì rì 庚辰首春四日 (fourth day of the first month, gēngchén = Jiāqìng 25 = 1820). Táng’s preface is methodologically richer: it identifies Sūn’s intellectual position as zhuān gōng kǎodìng, yánhé xiǎoxué 專攻考訂、研覈小學 (specialist in evidential examination and xiǎoxué philology), citing Sūn’s Zhōu yì and Shàngshū commentaries as following exclusively Hàn-Jìn-and-earlier exegesis (xī qǔ HànJìn yǐqián shuō 悉取漢晉以前說) — a tightly orthodox Hàn-school position. Táng argues that Sūn’s poetry, despite being a secondary activity, zhí zhuī Cáo Liú Bào Xiè 直追曹劉鮑謝 (directly chases 曹植 Cáo Zhí, Liú Zhēn, Bào Zhào, 謝靈運 Xiè Língyùn), with secondary affinities to 韓愈 Hán Yù (Chánglí) and Lǐ Hè (Chánggǔ); Sūn combines kǎodìng (evidential research) and cízhāng (literary craft) in a single learning, qí xiān jí dé qí jí 各臻其極 (each reaching its extreme). Táng signs himself as jiāngníng Liú Wénmó qiān 江寧劉文模鋟 (carved by Liú Wénmó of Jiāngníng), indicating the Jiāngníng imprint workshop. The bá by 孫秉華 (1807) on the Píngjīnguǎn wéngǎo completes the front matter.
Abstract
The Sūn Yuānrú shīwénjí is the documentary archive of late-Qiánlóng / early-Jiāqìng Chángzhōu kǎozhèng. Sūn entered the Hànlín in 1787 (ranked second in the èrjiǎ); he served from 1795 as judicial circuit intendant in Shāndōng, becoming acting governor in 1801–1802 and senior judicial official until 1811, when he resigned on grounds of his elderly parents. From 1811 to his death he led the Zhōngshān 鍾山 academy in Nánjīng (where 姚鼐 had immediately preceded him), continuing his bibliographic, epigraphic, and editorial work. The Píngjīnguǎn cóngshū 平津館叢書 and Dàinángé 岱南閣 collectanea — his two major editorial projects — exemplify the late-Qiánlóng kǎozhèng commitment to recovering and printing rare HànTáng texts; the wéngǎo contains the prefaces, postfaces, and project-notes for these works.
Sūn’s principal kǎozhèng monographs are catalogued separately in KR: the Shàngshū jīngǔwén zhù shū 尚書今古文注疏 (a Hàn-school exegesis of both old- and new-text Shàngshū), the Zhōu yì jí jiě 周易集解 commentary, the Huányǔ fǎngbēi lù 寰宇訪碑錄 (his nationwide epigraphy register), and the Shénnóng běncǎo jīng KR3ec001 (his 1799 reconstruction with his nephew 孫馮翼 Sūn Féngyì of the lost Hàn pharmacopoeia, based on quotations in Tàipíng yùlǎn and Dàguān běncǎo). The shīwénjí preserves the prose front-matter, dedications, and occasional pieces that frame these scholarly works.
Wáng Cǎiwēi’s Chángjìzhāi yíjí — included as an appendix — is itself a significant document of late-eighteenth-century woman’s literature. Wáng was a Yánghú poet of striking talent who died in childbirth in 1776 at the age of 23. Sūn salvaged what fragments remained and circulated them in manuscript; the 1822-era SBCK appendix is the principal printed witness. Wáng’s poems show the influence of 袁枚 Yuán Méi’s circle of women poets, but with a distinctive Chángzhōu philological-allusive density.
Composition window: c. 1775 (Sūn’s earliest surviving verse) through 1818 (his death). The 1820 Jiāngníng imprint by Sūn Xīnghéng is the editio princeps; the SBCK reproduces this recension.
Translations and research
Benjamin A. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology (Harvard, 1984; 2nd ed. 2001) — substantial treatment of Sūn within Cháng-zhōu kǎo-zhèng.
Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford, 1997) — discusses Wáng Cǎi-wēi.
Wilt L. Idema and Beata Grant, The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China (Harvard, 2004) — Wáng Cǎi-wēi entry.
Ān Píng-qiū 安平秋, Sūn Xīng-yǎn yán-jiū 孫星衍研究 (Beijing, 1985).
Zhāng Shùn-huī 張舜徽, Qīng-rén wén-jí bié-lù 清人文集別錄 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1963), entry on Sūn.
ECCP 675–677 (Tu Lien-che).
Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §66 (Qīng kǎo-zhèng), refs to Sūn.
Other points of interest
The appended Chángjìzhāi yíjí of Wáng Cǎiwēi is one of the small group of late-imperial biéjí in which a husband memorializes his wife’s literary work as an appendix to his own. The convention — paralleled by 毛奇齡 Máo Qílíng’s treatment of his wife’s verses, and a few other cases — places Wáng Cǎiwēi within the late-Qiánlóng “talent woman” canon while also marking the bibliographic asymmetry: she has no independent biéjí number, surviving only as Sūn’s appendix.
Sūn’s studio name Píngjīnguǎn 平津館 (“Píngjīn Pavilion”) commemorates his ancestral connection to Píngjīnhóu 平津侯 of the Hàn (Gōngsūn Hóng 公孫弘); the Píngjīnguǎn cóngshū he edited is named for the same studio.
Links
- Wikidata Q11135041 (Sun Xingyan)
- ECCP 675–677
- Wilkinson 2018, §66
- CBDB id 34196 (Sūn, 1753–1818); CBDB id 54395 (Wáng Cǎiwēi, 1753–1776)