Shījiā dǐngluán 詩家鼎臠
A Slice from the Cauldron of the Poets by 闕名
About the work
A 2-juǎn Southern-Sòng poetry anthology, anonymous compiler; the brief preface at the head is signed “Juànsǒu” 倦叟 (“Tired Old Man”), which the SKQS editors identify with the late-Míng / early-Qīng bibliophile Cáo Róng 曹溶 (sobriquet Juànpǔ 倦圃, hence Juànsǒu). The collection preserves Southern-Sòng poems from 58 men in juǎn 1 and 37 men in juǎn 2 — a total of 95 poets, each entered with a small biographical headnote (native place, zì, sobriquet) of variable format. Each poet contributes between one or two and a dozen-odd poems — the “slice from the cauldron” of the title (after the proverb cháng dǐng yī luán — “tasting one piece of meat tells you the soup”). The title-character Wáng Yùn 王惲 of “Old Biàn” (古汴 = Kāifēng) appears at the head and was misidentified by some later readers with the Yuán-period Wáng Yùn of Jíxiàn (Wáng Qiūjiàn 王秋澗); the SKQS editors firmly distinguish the two (this Wáng Yùn was a Sòng émigré from Kāifēng who fled south, identified by his old-region label; the Yuán Wáng Yùn was from Jíxiàn and his Qiūjiàn jí does not contain these poems). The collection thus belongs firmly to the Sòng and is closely allied with Chén Qǐ’s Jiānghú xiǎojí 江湖小集 (KR4h0053, KR4h0054) — comparable in genre, in compilation impulse, and in being the principal repository of minor Sòng poets whose individual collections are otherwise lost.
Tiyao
Your servants respectfully submit: the Shījiā dǐngluán in 2 juǎn. The compiler’s name is not given. At the head of the book is a small preface signed “Juànsǒu”, also without surname. Examining: “Juànpǔ” is Cáo Róng’s sobriquet; this preface must be Cáo Róng’s. The book is a Sòng-end man’s record of the Southern-Crossing-and-after poets’ poems. Juǎn 1 — 58 men; juǎn 2 — 37 men. Each man has his place-of-residence and zì-sobriquet recorded, in an irregular format. The preserved poems for many men number a dozen-and-more; for few only one or two — taking the sense of cháng dǐng yī luán (tasting one piece from the cauldron), hence the name. Fāng Huí’s Yíngkuí lǜsuǐ notes: “From Qìngyuán and Jiādìng onward, there were the shīrén (lit. ‘poet’) petitioners of Hángzhōu’s lakes and mountains — collected by the hundreds — Ruǎn Méifēng (Xiùshí), Lín Kěshān (Hóng), Sūn Huāwēng (Jìfān), Gāo Jújiàn (Jiǔwàn) — they at every turn passed judgement on shìdàifū, awesome to behold.” Now examining: men like Lín Hóng, Sūn Jìfān, Gāo Jiǔwàn here listed are in the selection — perhaps this was made by some name-monger of their day, as a yīngqiú biāobǎng (response-to-petition / cv) instrument, like Chén Sī’s (陳思) Jiānghú xiǎojí in kind.
Some have argued: “the head of the book has Wáng Yùn — the Yuán Wáng Qiūjiàn — therefore this book is by a Yuán compiler”. But this is not so: the Yuán Wáng Yùn was a Jíxiàn man, while this book explicitly titles “Gǔ Biàn Wáng Yùn” — a man who fled south from Kāifēng in the Sòng-Crossing, signing his old-region label, as is common in Sòng practice. Furthermore the Qiūjiàn jí does not contain these poems. The collection also has a “Huánxī Mǎ Zhījié” — yet Sòngshǐ’s Xiángfú Mǎ Zhījié is a different man of the same name. This is firm evidence that Wáng Yùn here is a Sòng man, beyond doubt.
But within the collection, schools-of-thought are too mixed and chronology often inverted — not entirely refined-and-careful. Yet its breadth of collection is significant: of the poets recorded here, less than one in ten has a self-collected work transmitted. Today only Sū Jiǒng 蘇泂, Wáng Mài 王邁, Zhāng Fǔ 章甫** and a few others, fortunately recovered from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, are reproduced. The rest who have no other extant witness are many — and the Shījiā dǐngluán preserves a fragment of each. For the help of poetry-historical investigation, it is not without a small contribution.
Reverently submitted, tenth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Editor-in-Chief Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Collator Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Date. Late Southern Sòng, post-Qìngyuán (1195–1200) and -Jiādìng (1208–1224), most likely in the Bǎoyòu / Jǐngdìng / Xiánchún decades (c. 1250–1275). The transmitted text comes through the Cáo Róng Juànpǔ (倦圃) collection of the early Qīng — Cáo Róng’s small preface as Juànsǒu is the earliest surviving paratext. The original Sòng print is lost; what survives is a Qīng manuscript / print descended through Cáo Róng.
Significance. (1) Documentary witness to lost Sòng minor poets. As the SKQS editors emphasise, the principal value of the anthology is preservation. Some 80–90 of the 95 poets here have no other extant collection; the surviving individual collections (Sū Jiǒng’s Lěngránzhāi jí, Wáng Mài’s Qúxuān jí, Zhāng Fǔ’s Zìmíngjí) were reassembled from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn in the eighteenth century. For the great majority, the Shījiā dǐngluán is their only literary trace.
(2) Affiliation with the Jiānghú school. The collection emerges from the same Hángzhōu commercial-pedagogical milieu as Chén Qǐ 陳起’s Jiānghú xiǎojí and Jiānghú hòují (KR4h0053 and KR4h0054). Many of its poets — Lín Hóng 林洪, Sūn Jìfān 孫季蕃, Gāo Jiǔwàn 高九萬 — are Jiānghú affiliates. The collection’s role as a response-to-petition (yīngqiú) social instrument — a CV in verse, used by client-poets to seek patronage from Sòng shìdàfū — is explicitly attested by Fāng Huí.
(3) Identification problems. The conflation of the Sòng “Old-Biàn” Wáng Yùn with the Yuán Wáng Qiūjiàn is the standard textbook example of homonym confusion in Chinese bibliography. The SKQS editors’ careful disambiguation is itself a methodological model.
Translations and research
- 張宏生 Zhāng Hóng-shēng, Jiāng-hú shī-pài yán-jiū (Beijing, 1995) — the Jiāng-hú school context.
- 莫礪鋒 Mò Lì-fēng on Southern-Sòng minor-poet networks.
- 馬蓉 Mǎ Róng et al., Yǒng-lè dà-diǎn fāng-zhì jí-yì — for the Yǒng-lè dà-diǎn recoveries.
Other points of interest
The Juànsǒu preface notes critically that the collection omits the four masters of the Jiānghú school (Yóu Mào 尤袤, Yáng Wànlǐ 楊萬里, Fàn Chéngdà 范成大, Lù Yóu 陸游) and gives only modest space to Zhèng Sīxiào (Zǐzhī) 鄭思肖 (紫芝), Dài Fùgǔ (Shípíng) 戴復古 (石屏), Liú Kèzhuāng (Hòucūn) 劉克莊 (後村), Wén Tiānxiáng (Yíqīng) 文天祥 (儀卿) — a curious editorial choice, since these are the chief Southern-Sòng poetic names. Cáo Róng reads this as evidence the compiler was a provincial / commercial editor with a particular slant toward the less-famous client-poet tradition.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §31.4.
- ctext