極玄集

Jíxuán jí 極玄集

Anthology of the Utmost Mystery by 姚合

About the work

A small, intensely selected two-juǎn anthology of Tiānbǎo to Dàlì / early Yuánhé poetry compiled by Yáo Hé 姚合 (781–846), the Wǔgōng tǐ master and patron of the late-Táng kǔyín current. The collection contains exactly 100 poems (of which 99 survive in the received text) by 21 poets running from Wáng Wéi 王維 down to Dài Shūlún 戴叔倫. Yáo Hé called himself a shījiā shèdiāo shǒu (“an eagle-shooting marksman among poets”) in his self-preface — a claim that the SKQS editors emphatically endorse: of all the Táng-by-Táng-man selections, the Jíxuán jí is the most disciplined, the most discriminating, and the first total anthology to incorporate brief biographical micro-entries under each poet’s name. That methodological innovation is the major technical claim of the book.

Tiyao

Your servants respectfully submit: the Jíxuán jí (correctly Jíxuán; old printings have 元 for 玄 to avoid the Kangxi taboo on Xuán) in two juǎn was edited by Yáo Hé of the Táng. His poetry-collection is separately catalogued. Hé practised verse by stark, painstaking chant, working at small landscapes and seeking fresh meanings — but his cutting was sometimes so heavy that he fell into thin and oblique modes; the late-Sòng Jiānghú school all draw their lineage from him. Yet his editorial discernment in this anthology is genuinely keen: the 21 men from Wáng Wéi to Dài Shūlún furnish a hundred pieces, of which ninety-nine survive. Hé’s own boast — that he was an “eagle-shooting marksman among poets” — is not idle. Jì Mǐnfū’s Tángshī jì shì 唐詩紀事 notes after every poem it draws from this book “right, taken by Yáo Hé for the Jíxuán jí” — evidence that the Sòng-period scholars greatly valued the book. Of the 21 poets, only the four monks (Língyī 靈一, Fǎzhèn 法振, Jiǎorán 皎然, Qīngjiāng 清江) lack birth/death information; Zǔ Yǒng 祖詠’s zì is missing; Chàng Dāng 暢當’s zì shows two blank spaces — the original had it and the copyist lost it. The rest give zì, native place, and jìnshì year fully. The note under Liú Chángqīng calling him a Xuānchéng man — different from the Tángshū “Héjiān man” — and the note under Huángfǔ Zēng “Tiānbǎo 12 jìnshì” with Huángfǔ Rǎn “Tiānbǎo 15 jìnshì” — putting Zēng before Rǎn against the standard view that they passed together — show that these are Yáo Hé’s own notes, not later anonymous additions. Anthologies-with-mini-biographies as a single integrated form really begin here. Reverently submitted, ninth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Editor-in-Chief Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Collator Lù Fèichí.

The book also carries an original preface by Jiǎng Yì 蔣易 of Jiànyáng dated Chóngjì zhìyuán 5 (1339): “The Táng poets number in their thousands; Yáo Hé judges Táng poetry by Táng men — his discernment is precise. Yet why is his selection so few? Because at that time men of every poet name had their own collections; though their works were many, few were perfect; even pearls held in the hand and jade pressed against the body have a flaw or two. The Wǔgōng school’s law of take-or-leave is severe, so its choice is exquisitely refined, so few.” Jiǎng Yì notes that Wáng Ānshí’s Táng bǎi jiā shī xuǎn KR4h0027 selected only from what was in Sòng Cìdào’s library, and the Xuáncuìyuàn is even rarer; he himself had once compiled a Táng-poetry collection of thousands of poets and over ten thousand poems and felt ashamed beside Yáo Hé.

Abstract

Date: Yáo Hé’s anthology is uncontroversially placed in his late career, after his Yuánhé 11 (816) jìnshì and before his death in Huìchāng 6 (846). The 21 poets cover Wáng Wéi (~700–761) through Dài Shūlún (732–789) — the latter as Yáo Hé’s principal late-eighth-century critical authority. The Jíxuán jí is the third of the three canonical Tang-by-Tang anthologies (after the Héyuè yīnglíng jí KR4h0009 and the Zhōngxìng jiānqì jí KR4h0012); it is the most selective and the most stylistically homogeneous of the three.

Two significant features: (1) the inclusion of mini-biographies under each poet’s name — a formal innovation that the Sìkù tíyào explicitly singles out as the origin of the genre; (2) the non-canonical biographical readings — Liú Chángqīng as a Xuānchéng man (against the Tángshū’s Héjiān), Huángfǔ Zēng dated before Huángfǔ Rǎn (against the common belief that the brothers passed together) — which establish that the notes are Yáo Hé’s own and not later editorial accretions. This makes the Jíxuán jí the single richest mid-Táng documentary source for the prosopography of the 21 poets it includes, and it is consequently cited heavily by Fù Xuáncóng and other modern editors of late-Táng critical scholarship. The Yuán-period preface by Jiǎng Yì shows the book was already a rare survival in 1339, transmitted via Sòng Cìdào’s library and the Wáng Ānshí Táng bǎi jiā shī xuǎn network.

Translations and research

• Stephen Owen, The Late Tang (Harvard Univ. Asia Center, 2006).
• Anna Shields, One Who Knows Me (Harvard Univ. Asia Center, 2015), with discussion of Yáo Hé’s critical network.
• Fù Xuáncóng 傅璇琮, Táng-rén xuǎn Táng-shī xīn biān 唐人選唐詩新編 (Xī’ān: Shǎnxī rénmín, 1996).
• Jiǎ Jìnhuá 賈晉華, Táng-dài jí-huì zǒng jí yǔ shī-rén qún yánjiū 唐代集會總集與詩人群研究 (Beijing: Beijing daxue, 2001).

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.3.1.
• ctext
• Wikipedia, “Yao He”