Qièzhōng jí 篋中集
From the Case (Selections from My Travelling Trunk) by 元結
About the work
A small but historically consequential single-juǎn mid-Táng anthology compiled by Yuán Jié 元結 (719–772), zì Cìshān 次山, in the third year of Qiánnián 乾元 (760) — the height of the An Lùshān rebellion. The book preserves 24 poems by seven friends of Yuán’s: Shěn Qiānyùn 沈千運 (4 pieces), Wáng Jìyǒu 王季友 (2), Yú Tì 于逖 (2), Mèng Yúnqīng 孟雲卿 (5), Zhāng Biāo 張彪 (4), Zhào Wēimíng 趙微明 (3), and Yuán Jìchuān 元季川 (4 — Yuán Jié’s own younger brother Yuán Róng 元融). It is the proto-document of the Táng fùgǔ 復古 reaction against the high-Táng gōngtǐ and ornate-allusion modes, and the immediate forerunner — both in poetic and ideological lineage — of the Hán Yù / Liǔ Zōngyuán gǔwén movement two generations later.
Tiyao
Your servants respectfully submit: the Qièzhōng jí in one juǎn was edited by Yuán Jié 元結 of the Táng; his Cìshān jí is already catalogued. This anthology was completed in the third year of Qiánnián (760) and records the poems of seven men — Shěn Qiānyùn, Wáng Jìyǒu, Yú Tì, Mèng Yúnqīng, Zhāng Biāo, Zhào Wēimíng, and Yuán Jìchuān — twenty-four pieces in all. Its self-preface says: “Of those long departed, the surviving texts are scattered and lost; of those separated from me, I do not see their recent work. I have gathered all that was in my travelling-case and edited it together; the whole I name Qièzhōng jí.” The poems throughout are plain, archaic, austere, free of any ornament — entirely separate from the path of his contemporaries; even what survives of the same seven men in other collections does not approach the refined selection here. He must have culled the best, keeping one in a hundred, but did not wish to claim the role of editor and so passed it off as merely “what was in my case.” Shěn Qiānyùn’s “Jì bìshū shísì xiōng” 寄秘書十四兄 here differs from the Héyuè yīnglíng jí version in one inverted couplet and is shorter by four lines at the end — both with small variations, both readings improving. Yuán may have personally redacted the texts. The Guǎngé shūmù claims all twenty-four pieces are Yuán Jié’s own work — incorrect. Qiānyùn was a Wúxīng man whose home was at Rǔběi; Jìyǒu was a Hénán man, poor and a shoe-seller, but exhaustively read — Lǐ Miǎn 李勉, prefect of Yùzhāng 豫章, drew him into his retinue; the Fēngchéng kèzǐ Wáng Jìyǒu 豐城客子王季友 in Dù Fǔ’s poem is the same man. Yú Tì’s hometown is unknown — Lǐ Bái 李白 and Dúgū Jí 獨孤及 both have poems addressed to him. Yúnqīng was a Hénán man, or perhaps Wǔchāng; he passed the jìnshì examination and was jiàoshū láng; his surviving collection contains only seventeen pieces — of which thirteen are dirges of bitter sorrow, evidently the work of an unfulfilled scholar. Biāo was from the YǐngLuò area — Dù Fǔ’s “Zhāng Shānrén Biāo” 張山人彪 is the same man. Wēimíng was a Tiānshuǐ 天水 man, his name in Dòu Quán 竇泉’s Shùshū fù 述書賦. Jìchuān is Yuán Jié’s younger brother Yuán Róng 元融; writing only by his courtesy name (zì) is unexplained — perhaps the editorial copy was made by Róng’s son or grandson, as the Yùtái xīnyǒng writes Xú Líng as Xú Xiàomù. Reverently submitted, ninth month of Qiánlóng 42 (1777). Editor-in-Chief Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Collator Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Qièzhōng jí is foundational for two distinct strands of Táng literary historiography. (1) Yuán Jié’s preface explicitly attacks the contemporary high-Táng aesthetic — “in our time, writers all pile up rhyme-prescriptions, take pleasure in surface effects of resemblance, and use the easy fluency of words without realizing that they have lost the yǎzhèng (Refined-Correct) mode. What they evoke is the contemporary trifles — silk-and-bamboo entertainments, songs by dancing-girls — fit at most for the private chamber, but not for the fāngzhí 方直 scholar or the dàyǎ jūnzǐ 大雅君子.” Sǐyuán’s argument prefigures the gǔwén reaction. (2) The seven poets included are programmatically anti-courtly figures: late-aged, of modest or no office, austere in temperament — a moral type that Sòng critics would explicitly identify as the yǐnyì 隱逸 fore-runner of the Northern-Sòng jūnzǐ identity. The textual significance is also non-trivial: as the tiyao notes, the recension here of Shěn Qiānyùn’s poems offers superior readings compared with the Héyuè yīnglíng jí of Yīn Pán 殷璠 (KR4h0009). Wáng Jìyǒu’s bondsmanship with Dù Fǔ via Lǐ Miǎn confirms a network of mid-Táng fùgǔ-sympathetic poets that operated in southern Hénán and Húběi around the time of the rebellion. The seven authors are otherwise sparsely documented; the Qièzhōng jí is in some cases the only substantive witness to their work.
Translations and research
- Stephen Owen, The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang (Yale, 1981), with discussion of the Qiè-zhōng jí milieu.
- Charles Hartman, Han Yü and the T’ang Search for Unity (Princeton, 1986), ch. 1.
- Anthony DeBlasi, Reform in the Balance: The Defense of Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China (SUNY, 2002).
- Sūn Wàngwèn 孫望文, “Yuán Jié Qiè-zhōng jí yánjiū” 元結篋中集研究, Wénxué yíchǎn 文學遺產 1985.3.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.3.1.
- Wikipedia, “Yuan Jie”
- ctext