文選顏鮑謝詩評

Wén xuǎn Yán Bào Xiè shī píng 文選顏鮑謝詩評

Critical Notes on the Yán, Bào, and Xiè Poems of the Wén xuǎn by 方回

About the work

The Wén xuǎn Yán Bào Xiè shī píng is Fāng Huí’s 方回 (1227–1307) line-by-line critical commentary on the Wén xuǎn poems of six South-Dynasties poets: Yán Yánzhī 顏延之, Bào Zhào 鮑照, Xiè Língyùn 謝靈運, Xiè Zhān 謝瞻, Xiè Huìlián 謝惠連, and Xiè Tiǎo 謝朓. The work is in 4 juǎn and was unrecorded by any pre-Sìkù bibliographer; it was retrieved from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 in the Qiánlóng compilation. The text reproduces each poem in full followed by Fāng’s evaluation (píng 評) and incidental textual corrections of Lǐ Shàn’s 李善 and the Five Officials’ commentaries.

Tiyao

Your servants respectfully submit: the Wén xuǎn Yán Bào Xiè shī píng in four juǎn is by Fāng Huí 方回 of the Yuán; his Xù gǔjīn kǎo 續古今考 is already catalogued. The present compilation takes the Wén xuǎn poems of Yán Yánzhī 顏延之, Bào Zhào 鮑照, Xiè Língyùn 謝靈運, Xiè Zhān 謝瞻, Xiè Huìlián 謝惠連, and Xiè Tiǎo 謝朓, and treats each in critical sequence. No bibliographic catalogue records it; it survives only through the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. The note on Yán Yánzhī’s “Composed on the Third Day of the Third Month Attending the Emperor to the Hou Lake of Qū’ā” 三月三日侍游曲阿後湖 reads, “I had not intended to transcribe this poem; I transcribe it to show that poetry brilliantly figured cannot stand comparison with Xiè Língyùn.” His note on “Travelling to Luòyáng as an Envoy” 北使洛 begins, “Two reasons for transcribing this poem…“. His note on Xiè Língyùn’s “Imitating the Yè-Court Set” 擬鄴中集八首 reads, “Stiffly metrical, brick-mortared, decoratively painted — no point in marking, so I evaluate the poems without copying them in full.” (Note: the present text does include all eight poems in full, contradicting this remark — clearly the poems were not in Fāng’s original autograph, and were supplied by a later hand who copied the píng without the supporting verse.) This appears, therefore, to have been a copybook in Fāng’s own hand later acquired by some collector and edited into the present form. Fāng’s better-known Yíngkuí lǜsuǐ 瀛奎律髓 is notoriously one-sided in its critical judgements; the evaluations here often, as with Xiè Língyùn, single out the poet’s discursive philosophical lines and his habit of foregrounding “eye-character” words (zì wéi jù yǎn 字為句眼) — a Sòng jiāngxī obsession. But the bulk of his judgements are reasonable. Thus on the second of Xiè Língyùn’s Shùzǔdé 述祖德 poems he objects to Lǐ Shàn’s note on the phrase gāo yī qīzhōu wài 高揖七州外 — which Lǐ refers to Shùn’s twelve-province division of the realm and Jìn’s seven provinces — pointing out (correctly) that the line refers rather to the seven zhōu commanded by Xiè Xuán 謝玄 (Xú, Yǎn, Qīng, Sī, Jì, Yōu, Bīng); on Xiè Zhān’s “Zhāng Zǐfáng” 張子房 he notes that Sū Shì 蘇軾, in attacking the Five Officials’ false reading of sān shāng 三殤, had in fact missed that the error lay with Lǐ Shàn; on Yán Yánzhī’s “Qiū Hú” 秋胡, that Qiū Hú served in Chén, only a neighbouring state to Lǔ — so calling Chén the wángjī 王畿 may be Yán’s incidental phrasing, not an allusion. There are also slips: on Xiè Língyùn’s “Ninth-Month Xìmǎtái” 九日戲馬臺 he proposes míngjiā 鳴葭 should read míngjiā 鳴笳, evidently without having consulted the Jìn shū biography of Xià Tǒng 夏統; on Bào Zhào’s “Walking out with Medicine” 行藥至城東橋 he glosses xíng yào 行藥 by Dù Fǔ’s line on “going out to look at the medicine railing”; on Xiè Tiǎo’s “Within the Commandery” 郡內高齋閑坐答呂法曹 he indulges in needless rhetorical maneuvering about whether xiù 岫 “really” means “cave” or “mountain”; and there is some misappropriation of Táo Qián’s 陶潛 Guīqùláicí 歸去來辭. Small slips, but they do not damage the whole; taken together the work decidedly improves on the Yíngkuí lǜsuǐ — perhaps it was a late composition, after his views had matured further. Reverently submitted, seventh month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Editor-in-Chief Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Collator Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The work is a unique survival of late-Sòng critical practice applied to the canonical Wén xuǎn poets. Fāng Huí is best known as the editor of KR4d0029 Yíngkuí lǜsuǐ 瀛奎律髓 (the great late-Sòng/Yuán TángSòng lǜshī selection) and for his jiāngxī-leaning poetic theory; this Yán Bào Xiè commentary is an inverse exercise — jiāngxī methods applied to South-Dynasties verse — and reveals the breadth of Sòng-late critical engagement with the Wén xuǎn corpus. Since the work was not in circulation, it had little reception until the Sìkù retrieval; modern scholarship treats it as a primary source for understanding Fāng’s evolving aesthetics. The four-juǎn form is the Sìkù reconstruction; the original may have been larger and is presumably truncated.

Translations and research

• Zhāng Mìnghuá 張明華, “Fāng Huí Wén xuǎn Yán Bào Xiè shī píng shùlùn” 方回《文選顏鮑謝詩評》述論, Wén xuǎn xué yánjiū 文選學研究 (2014).
• Discussion in Stuart Sargent, “Fāng Huí,” in Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, vol. 2 (Indiana, 1998).

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.3.1.
• Wikipedia, “Fang Hui”