西崑酬唱集

XīKūn chóuchàng jí 西崑酬唱集

Xī-Kūn Mutual-Rhyme Anthology by 楊億

About the work

The defining anthology of the early Northern-Sòng XīKūn 西崑 style, a two-juǎn collection of 247 five- and seven-syllable regulated poems exchanged among Yáng Yì 楊億 (974–1020), Liú Yún 劉筠, Qián Wéiyǎn 錢惟演, and fifteen others during their service at the imperial Cèfǔ yuánguī compilation office (Jǐngdé 2 – Dàzhōng xiángfú 1, ca. 1005–1008). The title is taken from the Yùshān cèfǔ — the legendary library of the celestial Mt. Kūnlún (Xīkūn) — meaning “the literature of the western Kūnlún archives.” Yáng Yì’s preface (in the source above) identifies seventeen original participants — Yáng Yì, Liú Yún, Qián Wéiyǎn, Lǐ Zōngè, Chén Yuè, Lǐ Wéi, Liú Zhì, Dīng Wèi, Diāo Kǎn, an unrecorded poet (元闕), Zhāng Yǒng, Qián Wéijǐ, Rèn Suí, Shū Yǎ, Cháo Jiǒng, Cuī Zūndù, Xuē Yìng, plus Bǐng (秉, no surname). The poems are tightly modelled on Lǐ Shāngyǐn 李商隱’s elliptical, allusive, decorative manner — what Yáng Yì in his preface calls diāozhāng lìjù 雕章麗句 (“polished phrases and beautiful lines”). The book is the principal documentary source for the XīKūn tǐ and one of the most consequential anthologies in Sòng literary history: it established the dominant court-poetic style of the early eleventh century, which Ōuyáng Xiū later worked deliberately to undo through gǔwén reform.

Tiyao

Yáng Yì’s preface translates: “In Jǐngdé I had the honour of assisting in the xiūshū office and so encountered the company of gentlemen. The present Zǐwēi (Hànlín) Qián Xīshèng 錢希聖 [Qián Wéiyǎn] and the Mìgé Liú Zǐyí 劉子儀 [Liú Yún] were of high literary attainment and especially refined in the yǎdào; their polished phrases and beautiful lines were on every tongue. They drew me — admittedly of common parts — into their walls and bid me follow their model. The two gentlemen out of generosity did not cast me off, but instructed me broadly and entered me into their fellowship: we read old works, dwelt on past masters, drank in their fragrance and aspired to imitate them, taking turns to exchange and refine. I, with my coarse talent, joined in but late — like a hawk-tail tied to a swift chariot — gaining much by it. In five- and seven-syllable regulated verse: 247 pieces in all, with 15 attached participants. Divided into two scrolls, we have taken its name from the Yùshān cèfǔ and called it the XīKūn chóuchàng jí.”

The Míng preface by Zhāng Yán (1537) addresses the polemics: “Theorists of poetry honour the high Táng and dismiss the late Táng; the two bodies do indeed differ. Yet poetry is the means by which the xìngqíng speak; the ancients gathered it to observe winds and to rectify music — bearing on the orderly or fractious state. If one cannot grasp the author’s intent, merely chanting ‘ShèngTáng, ShèngTáng’ will not make one a ShèngTáng poet. Dù Fǔ is the founder of high-Táng style; Lǐ Shāngyǐn is the crown of late-Táng — their bodies are diametrically opposed. Yet Jīngguó (Wáng Ānshí) said: ‘Of Táng men who learned Dù, only Yìshān (Lǐ Shāngyǐn) entered his fence.’ This can be understood by intuition. Yáng and Liú and the others in the XīKūn jí are learners of Yìshān who went further — Ōuyáng Xiū feared the style would not return, so used a free and even diction to correct and transform it; his merit is great, but he did not in fact wholly reject Kūntǐ. Cúlái (Shí Jiè) and Língzhāi (Hùihóng) made the polemical Guài shuō, the Shī è; followers exaggerated and the Kūntǐ fell into disuse — though in truth it should not have done so.” Zhāng’s preface is a major mid-Míng critical re-evaluation of the XīKūn tradition.

Abstract

Dating: by Yáng Yì’s preface — the xiūshū assignment is the Cèfǔ yuánguī project (commissioned 1005, completed 1013) — the XīKūn chóuchàng jí was assembled in the early-middle years of that project, ca. 1005–1008. Modern scholarship places the compilation no later than Dàzhōng xiángfú 1 (1008).

The book is foundational for three reasons: (1) it is the single most important documentary source for the XīKūn style, a movement that would otherwise be reconstructable only piecemeal from the individual collections of Yáng Yì, Liú Yún, and Qián Wéiyǎn; (2) it is the earliest preserved Sòng chànghé anthology of significant scale — Pí Rìxiū and Lù Guīméng’s Sōnglíng jí KR4h0014 is its late-Táng predecessor, the Èr Chéng and SūWáng exchange collections are its later Northern-Sòng descendants; (3) the book triggered the most famous literary polemic of the early Northern Sòng: Shí Jiè 石介’s Guài shuō 怪說 attacked the XīKūn tǐ as ornamentation without moral substance; Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修, while privately admiring Yáng Yì, redirected the Sòng literary canon back toward gǔwén prose and píngyì (plain-and-easy) verse. The XīKūn tǐ was effectively driven from the court canon by the Jiāyòu and Yuányòu generations, and re-emerges as a polemical category only with the Yú-shān-school early-Qīng critics Féng Shū 馮舒 and Féng Bān 馮班, who took the Cáidiào jí KR4h0019 as the XīKūn ancestor — a view that the SKQS editors reject (see KR4h0019 tíyào).

Liú Yún and Qián Wéiyǎn — the two senior partners — are otherwise mainly known from the XīKūn chóuchàng jí: Liú’s surviving individual collection is a fragment; Qián’s Diāofán jí survives only partially. So the book is the principal textual witness for their work as well as for Yáng Yì’s anthology contribution.

Translations and research

• William H. Nienhauser, ed., Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature (1986), entry on Yang Yi and the Xi-Kun style.
• Yúyǐng-shí 余英時, “Cóng Xī-Kūn chóu-chàng jí kàn chū-Sòng wénhuà jīngshén” (in Yúyǐng-shí wénjí) — reading the anthology as a document of court literary culture.
• Wáng Zhòng-luō 王仲犖, Suí-Táng-Wǔdài shǐ — chapter on the transition from late Táng to Sòng poetic taste.
• Zhèng Zài-yíng 鄭再瀛, Xī-Kūn chóu-chàng jí xīn jiào zhù 西崑酬唱集新校注 (Beijing: Rénmín wénxué, 1989) — collated edition.
• Stephen Owen, “The Cultural Tang and the Literary Tang,” in his Just a Song (Harvard Asia Center, 2019), framing the Xī-Kūn canonisation of Lǐ Shāngyǐn.

Other points of interest

The fifteen “attached participants” listed in the Xìngshì roster include several prominent Tàizōng / Zhēnzōng court figures otherwise rarely identified as poets — Dīng Wèi 丁謂 (the controversial chief minister later disgraced under Rénzōng), Cháo Jiǒng 晁迥 (the Hànlín and Confucian classicist), Zhāng Yǒng 張詠 (the Mìshūzhí xuéshì and frontier general) — giving the anthology unusual prosopographical depth as well as literary interest.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §31.4 (Sòng literature).
• ctext
• Wikipedia, “Xikun style”