優古堂詩話

Yōugǔtáng shīhuà 優古堂詩話

Remarks on Poetry from the Hall of Esteem for Antiquity by 吳幵 (撰)

About the work

The Yōugǔtáng shīhuà 優古堂詩話, in one juǎn, is a Northern-Sòng shīhuà 詩話 in 154 entries composed by Wú Jiān 吳幵 (zì Zhèngzhòng 正仲, hóngcí 1097, d. after 1132), an official disgraced for his role in the Jìngkāng 靖康 capitulation and the subsequent Zhāng Bāngchāng 張邦昌 puppet regime. Despite the author’s poor historical reputation, the book has been considered a useful technical shīhuà of the late Northern Sòng — its focus is the genealogy of poetic diction and allusion (jùlǜ xiāngchéng biànhuà zhī yóu 句律相承變化之由), the Jiāngxī-school 江西派 doctrine of duótāi huàngǔ 奪胎換骨 (“rebirth-and-bone-exchange”) in particular. The contents are mainly devoted to the Northern-Sòng poets — Sū Shì 蘇軾, Huáng Tíngjiān 黃庭堅, Méi Yáochén 梅堯臣, Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修 — with occasional Táng material. The work belongs to the same wave of Northern-Sòng shīhuà opened by Ōuyáng Xiū’s Liùyī shīhuà KR4i0006 and continued by Sīmǎ Guāng’s Xù shīhuà KR4i0007, Liú Bān’s Zhōngshān shīhuà KR4i0008, Chén Shīdào’s Hòushān shīhuà KR4i0009, and Wèi Tài’s LínHàn yǐnjū shīhuà KR4i0010.

Tiyao

Yōugǔtáng shīhuà, by Wú Jiān of the Sòng. Jiān’s zì was Zhèngzhòng 正仲, a native of Chúzhōu 滁州. In Shàoshèng dīngchǒu 紹聖丁丑 (1097) he passed the Hóngcí 宏詞 examination. During the Jìngkāng era (1126–1127) he held office as Hànlín chéngzhǐ 翰林承旨. Together with Gěng Nánzhòng 耿南仲, he forcibly urged the policy of territorial cession, in the end ruining state affairs; he also became conveyor of intent (chuándào yìzhǐ) between Sòng and Jīn, installed Zhāng Bāngchāng 張邦昌 and served him. After Jiànyán (1127ff.) he was banished and died.

His person is unworthy of being spoken of, yet the shīhuà he wrote is by no means without merit. The book has 154 entries, mostly discussing the poets of the Northern Sòng, with some Táng material. Only at the very end of the juǎn stands a Yáng Wànlǐ 楊萬里 entry — a man of an era far too distant for Wú to have known — and we suspect transmission error, or that some later hand has interpolated it. The pieces in question — at the end of the juǎn: lìbù wénzhāng èrbǎi nián 吏部文章二百年; guǒfàn fēi zǐlái 裹飯非子來; Wáng Sēngchuò làfèng 王僧綽蠟鳳; hénáng 荷囊; yángsuì 陽燧; Yángguān tú 陽關圖; zhūhuán Hépǔ 珠還合浦; Huángjīn tái 黃金臺; yǐ Yùér wéi Yùnú 以玉兒爲玉奴; Dōngpō yòngshì qiè 東坡用事切; jìrén chūjiā shī 妓人出家詩; zhēnghú sì zhēngyā 蒸壺似蒸鴨; Wàngfūshí 望夫石; Luòméihuā Zhéyángliǔ 落梅花折楊柳 — touch on textual verification (kǎozhèng 考證). The rest are all on the descent and recombination of phrasing and word-choice in the poets’ practice.

Now the duótāi huàngǔ method, “overturning the case” (fānàn chū qí 翻案出奇) — its writers are not necessarily all derivative; in fact much of it is unconscious correspondence. To insist on tracking each line and word to a definite source X is to seek the sword from the moving boat (qiú jiàn kè zhōu 求劔刻舟). Even Lǐ Hè’s 李賀 Táohuā luànluò rú hóngyǔ (“peach blossoms scattering down like a rain of red”) and Liú Yǔxī’s 劉禹錫 Yáoluò fánhuā duò hóngyǔ (“the shaking-down profuse flowers falling as a rain of red”) — Wú already knows these two were contemporaries and could not have copied each other; yet he treats Cén Shēn’s 岑參 huánghūn zhēng dù line (“at dusk, hurry across”) as borrowed from Mèng Hàorán 孟浩然’s Yèguī Lùmén shī, though they too are contemporary — forced bracketing (qiáng wéi kēpèi 強爲科配). He recognizes Zhāng Lěi’s 張耒 xīyáng wài phrasing as derived from Yáng Jùyuán 楊巨源, but does not recognize his xīyáng xī as derived from Xuē Néng 薛能 — so the chain of mutual borrowing he traces is in any case exhaustively incomplete.

Still, by cross-checking among them one observes the yùnyì (intention-craft) and the qiǎozhuō (skill-vs-awkwardness) of diction among ancients and moderns alike, and the alert reader, taking these as starting points, finds his understanding extended by analogy — this is not without value. Among the entries the péng shēng má zhōng 蓬生麻中 piece, the chù bùfèi zhī quǎn 畜不吠之犬 piece, the Hán Tuìzhī quán yòng Lièzǐ wén 韓退之全用列子文 piece, the piece on Hán Yù learning literature thereby reaching the Way, the Dìngmìnglùn 定命論 piece, the Fù Zhènggōng zhī yán chū Yuánshū 富鄢公之言出元璹 piece, and the Nìng rén fù wǒ wù wǒ fù rén 寧人負我勿我負人 piece — all touch on miscellaneous prose, not pure shīhuà. Likewise shǒuhuá 手滑 and yìngshēngchóng 應聲蟲 have nothing to do with either verse or prose. The mixing of miscellaneous anecdotes into a shīhuà was already the practice of Liú Bān 劉攽 and Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修, so this is no new fault.

Abstract

The Yōugǔtáng shīhuà was composed in the late Northern Sòng / Jiànyán transition — Wú Jiān’s hóngcí of 1097 places the upper bound, and the text’s terminal Yáng Wànlǐ entry (suspected interpolation, since Yáng 1127–1206 was a contemporary of the next generation) gives no reliable lower bound; the work was probably substantially complete by the time of Wú’s exile shortly after 1127. The 154 entries form a database of allusion-genealogies for the Northern-Sòng poetic repertoire: Sū Shì, Huáng Tíngjiān, Méi Yáochén, Ōuyáng Xiū, and the Yuányòu 元祐 set. Wú’s central theoretical assumption — shared with the Jiāngxī 江西 school of Huáng Tíngjiān and Lǚ Běnzhōng 呂本中 — is that high poetry consists in the controlled transformation of inherited diction (duótāi huàngǔ 奪胎換骨, the doctrine that one may “take over the embryo and exchange the bone” of an earlier phrasing). His method is to set side-by-side two or more lines from the TángSòng repertoire and to argue that the later instance is a deliberate recasting of the earlier — a procedure that the Sìkù editors find both genuinely illuminating and prone to over-reading. The collection is also a major repository of incidental Northern-Sòng anecdotes (the yìngshēngchóng 應聲蟲, shǒuhuá 手滑, Huángjīn tái 黃金臺 entries are widely quoted in later compilations).

The terminal Yáng Wànlǐ entry is the most famous transmission problem. Yáng (1127–1206) belongs to the next generation of poets; the entry is almost certainly a later interpolation, as the Sìkù editors note. The work transmits through Sòng shīhuà anthologies (Hú Zǎi Tiáoxī yúyǐn cónghuà KR4i0029; Wèi Qìngzhī Shīrén yùxiè) and through the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn into a Qīng Sìkù recension from the Liǎngjiāng cǎijìn běn 兩江採進本.

Translations and research

• Guō Shào-yú 郭紹虞, ed., Sòng shī-huà jí-yì 宋詩話輯佚 (Zhōnghuá, 1980) — places the Yōu-gǔ-táng shī-huà in its Northern-Sòng shī-huà context.
• Cài Zhèn-chǔ 蔡鎮楚, Zhōng-guó shī-huà shǐ 中國詩話史 (Hú-nán Wén-yì, 1988) — standard history of the shī-huà genre; chapter on Northern-Sòng shī-huà discusses Wú Jiān.
• Zhāng Bǎo-quán 張伯偉, Zhōng-guó gǔ-dài wén-xué pī-píng fāng-fǎ yán-jiū 中國古代文學批評方法研究 (Zhōnghuá, 2002).

Other points of interest

The Yōugǔtáng is a leading textual source for the duótāi huàngǔ doctrine. The doctrine — first systematized by Huáng Tíngjiān — would be canonized by the Jiāngxī shīpài through Lǚ Běnzhōng’s 呂本中 Jiāngxī zōngpài tú 江西宗派圖, and would become the principal target of Yán Yǔ’s 嚴羽 anti-allusionist critique in the Cānglàng shīhuà KR4i0035. Wú Jiān’s specific procedure — set two lines side-by-side and demonstrate descent — is the practical fieldwork from which the theoretical doctrine was abstracted. — Wú’s political reputation is a striking case of historiographical bracketing: the Sìkù editors openly declare him “unworthy of being spoken of” (běn bù zú dào), yet preserve the work in the imperial library for its scholarly value.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.5.
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Sòng shīhuà jíyì 宋詩話輯佚 (Guō Shàoyú).