薛濤李冶詩集

Xuē Tāo Lǐ Yě shī jí 薛濤李冶詩集

Combined Poems of Xuē Tāo and Lǐ Yě by 薛濤 and 李冶

About the work

A joint two-juǎn re-compilation gathering the surviving verse of two of the most celebrated female poets of the mid-Táng: Xuē Tāo 薛濤 (768–832), the Chéngdū singing-girl turned Xiàoshū láng, and Lǐ Yě 李冶 (zì Jìlán 季蘭, ca. 730–784), a Daoist priestess of Wūchéng. Both women circulated their work in the highest poetic networks of their day — Xuē Tāo with Yuán Zhěn 元稹, Wéi Gāo 韋皋, Wǔ Yuánhéng 武元衡; Lǐ Jìlán with Liú Chángqīng 劉長卿 and Liú Yǔxī 劉禹錫. The original Xuē Tāo jí (one juǎn) and Lǐ Yě jí (one juǎn) recorded in the Sòng Shūlù jiětí are both lost; the present joint collection is a Míng-period reconstruction made by sifting later anthologies (the Wànshǒu Tángrén juéjù KR4h0038 of Hóng Mài, the Tángshī jì shì of Jì Mǐnfū, Yáng Shèn’s Shēng’ān shīhuà, the Táng zhāiyán, etc.). Xuē Tāo’s corpus retains about 90 poems plus three bǔyí; Lǐ Yě’s retains only 14.

Tiyao

Your servants respectfully submit: the Xuē Tāo Lǐ Yě shī jí in two juǎn. Xuē Tāo was a jì of Shǔzhōng; Lǐ Yě was a Daoist priestess of Wūchéng. Tāo exchanged verses with Yuán Zhěn; Yě also travelled with Liú Yǔxī — both are mid-Táng figures. The Shūlù jiětí records Xuē Tāo’s poems in one juǎn and Lǐ Yě’s in one juǎn; both are now lost. The present text is a later compilation. In Tāo’s collection, the piece “Wén dào biānchéng kǔ” 聞道邊城苦 is double-attested — once on its own and once via Hóng Mài’s Wànshǒu Tángrén juéjù, Jì Mǐnfū’s Tángshī jì shì, and Yáng Shèn’s Shēng’ān shīhuà — one poem appearing twice. Again, the Tángshī jì shì’s “Wǔlí shī” 五離詩 and the Táng zhāiyán’s “Shílí shī” 十離詩 are actually the same matter mis-transmitted; their texts differ; both are recorded here side by side. The compilation is careful; appended are three bǔyí; and the gathered biographical evidence is thorough.

Yě’s collection has only fourteen poems; one of them, “Ēnmìng zhuī rù liúbié tánglíng gùrén” 恩命追入留別唐陵故人, in tone and content does not resemble Yě’s work — clearly a sympathiser who wanted to balance the two collections and supplemented from elsewhere. Of Tāo’s pieces, “Sòng yǒurén” 送友人 and “Tí Zhúláng miào” 題竹郎廟 are widely chanted; her “Chóubiān lóu” 籌邊樓 — “Flat across to the cloud-birds, eight windows of autumn / boldly pressing down upon the forty prefectures of the southwest / let no general covet the Qiāng-people’s horses / from the highest place I see the borderlands” — carries a profound concern, with something of the Lǔ widow grieving the weaving-thread and the Qī-room maid sighing at her loom, far beyond the usual robe-and-clog wit; small wonder her name shone in her time. Yě’s strength is in five-syllable verse: pieces like “Jì xiàoshū qī xiōng,” “Sòng Hán Kuí zhī Jiāngxī,” “Sòng Yán èrshíliù fù Shànxiàn” — set them among the Dàlì shí cáizǐ and one cannot distinguish them; her style is much higher than Tāo’s. She must not be discarded on grounds of her small surviving corpus. Reverently submitted, twelfth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Editor-in-Chief Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Collator Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The collection is the principal scholarly resource for two of the most-studied Táng women writers. The SKQS editors’ critical apparatus is independently important: the identification of “Wǔlí shī” / “Shílí shī” as one text mis-transmitted, and the identification of “Ēnmìng zhuī rù liúbié tánglíng gùrén” as an anachronistic interpolation in Lǐ Yě’s juǎn, are foundational corrections that all modern editions follow. The Sìkù-compilers’ attached Xuē Tāo zhuàn 薛濤傳 (drawn from the Táng yǔlín, Yuánshì Chángqìng jí, Qīngyì lù, Jiànjiè lù, Jìyì lù, Zhītián lù, and Tángshī jì shì) is the single most concentrated documentary biography of Xuē Tāo available in a Qīng-dynasty edition.

The compiler is unidentified. The block-print structure (preface plus zhuàn plus bǔyí) is characteristic of late-Míng anthology practice (probably mid-Wàn-lì or earlier). The SKQS editors record no compiler attribution and do not propose one.

Translations and research

• Jeanne Larsen, Brocade River Poems: Selected Works of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao (Princeton, 1987) — full English translation of Xuē Tāo with commentary.
• Anthony C. Yu, “Xue Tao,” in Kang-i Sun Chang and Haun Saussy (eds.), Women Writers of Traditional China (Stanford, 1999).
• Wilt L. Idema and Beata Grant, The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China (Harvard Univ. Asia Center, 2004), ch. on Táng women poets.
• Zhāng Péngzhōu 張蓬舟, Xuē Tāo shī jiān 薛濤詩箋 (Beijing: Rénmín wénxué, 1983) — collated and annotated edition.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.3.1, §50.4.
• ctext
• Wikipedia, “Xue Tao”
• Wikipedia, “Li Ye (poet)”