臨漢隱居詩話

LínHàn yǐnjū shīhuà 臨漢隱居詩話

The Linhan Recluse’s Remarks on Poetry by 魏泰 (撰)

About the work

The LínHàn yǐnjū shīhuà 臨漢隱居詩話 is the shīhuà of Wèi Tài 魏泰 (zì Dàofǔ 道輔, hào Hànshàng zhàngrén 漢上丈人 and LínHàn yǐnjū 臨漢隱居), the Xiāngyáng 襄陽 recluse-poet-critic who never held office and was brother-in-law to the reform-faction premier Zēng Bù 曾布. The book is one short juǎn of some sixty paragraphs and belongs to the second generation of Northern-Sòng shīhuà (after Ōuyáng Xiū’s 歐陽修 Liùyī shīhuà KR4i0006, Sīmǎ Guāng’s 司馬光 Xù shīhuà KR4i0007, Liú Bān’s 劉攽 Zhōngshān shīhuà KR4i0008). Its principal critical character is partisan: Wèi was an active member of the Xīníng reform faction (a party-ally of Wáng Ānshí 王安石 through his Zēng Bù connection), and the book’s evaluations of poets track his party affiliations closely — friendly to Wáng Ānshí, hostile to the Yuányòu anti-reformers Sū Shì 蘇軾, Ōuyáng Xiū, Méi Yáochén 梅堯臣, Shí Yánnián 石延年, Sū Shùnqīn 蘇舜欽, and especially Huáng Tíngjiān 黃庭堅 (the Jiāngxī-school patriarch). The Sìkù editors flag the bias openly but commend the book’s textual-critical apparatus.

Tiyao

LínHàn yǐnjū shīhuà, by Wèi Tài of the Sòng. Tài wrote also the Dōngxuān bǐ lù 東軒筆錄, already entered [in the Sìkù]. Tài was the brother-in-law of Zēng Bù 曾布. He once compiled the Bìyún xiá 碧雲騢 under Méi Yáochén’s 梅堯臣 name as a way to attack Wén Yànbó 文彥博, Fàn Zhòngyān 范仲淹, and others. In writing the present book too, he sides with the Xīníng party and presses down the Yuányòu faction.

So on Ōuyáng Xiū he regrets that Xiū’s poetry lacks “lingering flavor” (yú wèi 餘味), and on the line xíng rén yǎng tóu fēi niǎo jīng 行人仰頭飛鳥驚 (“the traveller looks up; the flying bird starts”) he is from beginning to end unwilling to allow it. On Huáng Tíngjiān he sneers that Huáng “thinks himself accomplished but is in fact off the mark”; he sets up the topic of “while picking up the pearl-and-feather, often missing the whale-and-roc” (方其拾璣羽往往失鵬鯨). On Shí Yánnián he says there is “nothing of any great merit”; on Sū Shùnqīn he says Sū goes for the “expansive and over-strong”; on Méi Yáochén he says Méi lacks “high tone.” Of Wáng Ānshí, by contrast, he abundantly praises the fine lines. The whole thing is the obstinate hold of factional partisanship — going gladly against fair opinion.

In one place, the couplet cǎo cǎo bēi pán gōng xiàoyǔ, hūn hūn dēng huǒ huà píng shēng 草草杯柈供笑語，昬昬鐙火話平生 (“hasty wine-cups for laughter and chat, dim lamplight to recall life’s road”) is in fact Wáng Ānshí’s; Wèi attributes it to Wáng’s younger sister, the Chángān District Lady (Chángān xiànjūn) — a misattribution by hearsay.

That said, the criticism of Méi Yáochén’s Zèng línjū 贈鄰居 poem as “not equal to Xú Xuàn’s 徐鉉” — that is not at all wrong. And he draws on Hán Yù’s 韓愈 poetry to verify the Guóshǐ bǔ 國史補’s account; on the Hànshū to correct Liú Yǔxī’s 劉禹錫 mistaken reference to Wèi Wǎn 衞綰; remarks on Wéi Yìngwù 韋應物, Bái Jūyì 白居易, Yáng Yì 楊億, and Liú Yún 劉筠; and an examination of inverted word-order in Wáng Wéi’s 王維 poems — these are all worth picking up. Setting the shortcomings aside and taking the strengths, the book is not without value for textual evidence.

Abstract

Wèi Tài’s LínHàn yǐnjū shīhuà is one of the most factional of all Northern-Sòng shīhuà — a fact the Sìkù editors expose at the opening of their tíyào. Wèi’s prior career as the actual author of the satirical Bìyún xiá 碧雲騢 — circulated pseudonymously under Méi Yáochén’s 梅堯臣 name to attack the Yuányòu anti-reform party — is the central piece of evidence for his political affiliation. The shīhuà’s evaluative pattern is exactly what one would predict from a Xī-níng-faction critic: Wáng Ānshí 王安石 is the unfailing model; Ōuyáng Xiū, Méi Yáochén, Shí Yánnián, Sū Shùnqīn, Sū Shì, and Huáng Tíngjiān are subject to recurring strictures. Even at the level of textual emendation Wèi’s reformist sympathies show: he is the principal critic to call out Ōuyáng’s Liùyī shīhuà misattribution of the fēng nuǎn niǎo shēng suì couplet to Zhōu Pǔ rather than Dù Xúnhè (a charge later refuted, on Wèi Tài’s own argument’s basis, by Wú Yù 吳聿).

The book is the loci classicus for the still-disputed authorship of the couplet cǎo cǎo bēi pán gōng xiào yǔ, hūn hūn dēng huǒ huà píng shēng — Wáng Ānshí’s in the Línchuān xiānshēng wén jí but here attributed by Wèi to Wáng’s sister, the “Chángān xiànjūn.” The Sìkù editors flag this as an obvious zhuànwén shīshí error. Despite the bias, the book contains substantial textual-critical apparatus: discussions of Hán Yù’s poems against the Guóshǐ bǔ, of Liú Yǔxī’s mention of Wèi Wǎn 衞綰 against the Hànshū, of word-order inversions in Wáng Wéi’s verse, and judgments on Wéi Yìngwù, Bái Jūyì, and the Xīkūn-school stylists Yáng Yì 楊億 and Liú Yún 劉筠.

Composition is not firmly dated. Wèi’s Dōngxuān bǐ lù 東軒筆錄 KR3l0048 (15 juǎn, the more important of his two works) is the larger frame and covers events down through Yuányòu; the shīhuà’s evaluative posture is contemporary to Yuánfú / Chóngníng (c. 1100), but the work’s reception in the Southern Sòng (Yè Mèngdé’s 葉夢得 Shílín shīhuà and Hú Zǐ’s 胡仔 Yúyǐn cónghuà both cite it) means it must have been in circulation by the early Southern Sòng. The Hé Wénhuàn 何文煥 Lìdài shīhuà of 1770 places the LínHàn yǐnjū fifth in chronological sequence after the three foundational Northern-Sòng shīhuà and the Hòushān shīhuà KR4i0009.

Translations and research

• Ronald Egan, The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China (Harvard, 2006) — context on the partisan poetics of the Xī-níng reform era.
• Stuart H. Sargent, The Poetry of He Zhu (1052–1125) (Brill, 2007) — discussion of Wèi Tài and the Lín-Hàn yǐn-jū shī-huà in the Northern-Sòng poetic-critical landscape.
• Michael A. Fuller, Drifting Among Rivers and Lakes: Southern Song Dynasty Poetry and the Problem of Literary History (Harvard, 2013).
• Charles Hartman, “The Reluctant Historian: Sun Ti, Chu Hsi, and the Fall of Northern Sung”, T’oung Pao 89.1 (2003): 100–148 — uses the Dōng-xuān bǐ lù and the Lín-Hàn yǐn-jū shī-huà as sources for Xī-níng / Yuán-yòu factional history.
• Cài Zhèn-chǔ 蔡鎮楚, Sòng-dài shī-huà yán jiū 宋代詩話研究 (Hú-nán shī-fàn dà-xué chū-bǎn-shè, 1990) — chapter on the Lín-Hàn yǐn-jū shī-huà.
• Guō Shào-yú 郭紹虞, Sòng shī-huà jí-yì 宋詩話輯佚 (Zhōng-huá, 1980).

Other points of interest

The Wèi Tài / Méi Yáochén ghostwriting affair (the Bìyún xiá) is the most striking single instance in the entire Sòng shīhuà tradition of an author working under a deliberately false attribution; it shapes how the LínHàn yǐnjū should be read. The book’s attack on Ōuyáng Xiū’s Zhōu Pǔ / Dù Xúnhè attribution is a small cause célèbre in Northern-Sòng poetic criticism — Wú Yù 吳聿 later vindicated Ōuyáng, on the basis of the same Táng xiǎoshuō tradition Wèi Tài had attacked.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.5.
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Wikipedia 臨漢隱居詩話