彥周詩話

Yànzhōu shīhuà 彥周詩話

Yàn-zhōu’s Remarks on Poetry by 許顗 (撰)

About the work

The Yànzhōu shīhuà 彥周詩話, in one juǎn, is the shīhuà of Xǔ Yǐ 許顗 (zì Yànzhōu 彥周, fl. ca. 1110–1130, of Xiāngyì 襄邑) — a follower of the Yuányòu 元祐 school, close associate of the monk-poet Huìhóng 惠洪, and acclaimed by the Sìkù editors as “in the shīhuà of the Sòng, still a good edition.” Its date is fixed by an internal reference to Xuānhé guǐmǎo (1123) and the fact that the book had clearly entered Southern Sòng before assembly: the terminus post quem is 1123, the terminus ad quem probably c. 1135. The work is theoretically more disciplined than most early Sòng shīhuà: Xǔ’s criteria of judgment are explicit (the celebrated paired maxim lùn dào dāng yán, qǔ rén dāng shù 論道當嚴。取人當恕。 — “judging the Way one must be strict; choosing the person one must be generous”), and his readings of disputed poems (Dù Mù 杜牧’s Chìbì, Lǐ Shāngyǐn 李商隱’s Jǐnsè 錦瑟) became fixed reference points in the later tradition.

Tiyao

Yànzhōu shīhuà, by Xǔ Yǐ of the Sòng. Yǐ was a native of Xiāngyì 襄邑; Yànzhōu is his zì. The beginning and end of his career cannot be ascertained. The book contains the phrase “in Xuānhé guǐmǎo I roamed Sōngshān” — only three years before Jiànyán 1 (1127); he had presumably already entered the Southern Sòng. We observe in the book his record of meeting Huìhóng 惠洪 face to face and disputing the Lěngzhāi yèhuà 冷齋夜話 over its mistaken assessment of Lǐ Shāngyǐn — at which Huìhóng accepted correction; and his extravagant praise of Huìhóng’s Inscription on a Portrait of Lǐ Sù 題李愬畫像 poem, citing that “in Chángshā we were companions a whole year”. Huìhóng’s Lěngzhāi yèhuà in turn records Xǔ’s recital of Lǐ Yuányīng 李元膺’s cí of widowed mourning — so Xǔ, like Huìhóng, is rooted in the Yuányòu learning. His citations are mostly Sū Shì 蘇軾, Huáng Tíngjiān 黃庭堅, Chén Shīdào 陳師道; the doctrinal flavor of the book is plain to read.

Xǔ’s arguments have substance, and his rankings show genuine discrimination. He says of Hán Yù 韓愈 and the Qí–Liáng–Chén–Suí body of work — “I dare not dispute it, and I dare not follow it”; and lùn dào dāng yán, qǔ rén dāng shù — both judgments are notably independent of mind. But he faults Dù Mù’s Chìbì 赤壁 poem for “not speaking of the dynastic existence-or-extinction, only of the Two Qiáo” — not noticing that Dàqiáo 大喬 was the wife of Sūn Cè 孫策 and Xiǎoqiáo 小喬 the wife of Zhōu Yú 周瑜, so to say “the two enter the Wèi household” is equivalent to “Wú falls” (an yìn shǐ indirect allusion the poet would not state baldly). Xǔ snaps “the xiùcái doesn’t know good from bad” — but in fact he has missed Dù’s intent. He also reads Lǐ Shāngyǐn’s Jǐnsè 錦瑟 by the four-character categories shì-yuàn-qīng-hé 適怨清和 (appropriate-resentful-clear-harmonious) — far-fetched (chuānzáo 穿鑿) to a fault. And on Hàn Wǔdì’s Lǐ fūrén gē he reads “lìér wàngzhī” 立而望之 as a single line, with the poem dropping its end-rhyme — odd to the point of unintelligibility. Other passages slip into the supernatural and the dreamy — the form starts to verge on xiǎoshuō 小說. But on the whole, the flaws are few and the merits many. In the shīhuà of the Sòng, this is still a good edition.

Abstract

The Yànzhōu shīhuà is among the most theoretically articulate of the Xuānhé / early-Jiànyán generation of shīhuà. Xǔ Yǐ writes from within the Yuányòu tradition — the Sū Shì–Huáng Tíngjiān–Chén Shīdào tradition, with the monk-poet Huìhóng (Lěngzhāi yèhuà) as his closest interlocutor — but the shīhuà is far less of a simple inheritance than most of its contemporaries. Two passages give the work its distinct profile:

(1) His paired maxim lùn dào dāng yán, qǔ rén dāng shù — “in judging the Way be strict; in choosing the man be generous” — is one of the most quoted formulations of shīhuà criticism in the entire tradition, and a precise inversion of the dominant Confucian assumption that judgment of conduct should be lenient while judgment of doctrine should be open. Xǔ applies the maxim to poetry: a poet’s allegiances and personal habits are to be excused (the shù-rule); his craft is to be held to a strict standard (the yán-rule).

(2) His celebrated rejection of Hán Yù’s [Qí–Liáng–Chén–Suí] zhòngzuò děng chánzào yǔ 衆作等蝉噪語 verdict — “I dare not dispute it, and I dare not follow it” (bù gǎn yì, yì bù gǎn cóng) — is the most measured public response to Hán’s polemical condemnation of Six-Dynasties poetry, and was widely cited in the later tradition.

The Sìkù editors’ verdict — “yú Sòngrén shīhuà zhī zhōng, yóu shàn běn yě” — gives this single-juǎn work an unusually high standing in the Northern-Sòng shīhuà corpus. The text transmits through the Sòng shīhuà anthologies (Hú Zǎi’s Tiáoxī yúyǐn cónghuà KR4i0029; Wèi Qìngzhī’s Shīrén yùxiè KR4i0036) and the Hé Wénhuàn 何文煥 Lìdài shīhuà 歷代詩話 (1770) into the Sìkù from the Jiāngsū xúnfǔ cǎijìn běn 江蘇巡撫採進本.

Translations and research

• Guō Shào-yú 郭紹虞, Sòng shī-huà jí-yì 宋詩話輯佚 (Zhōnghuá, 1980) — context for the genre.
• Hé Wén-huàn 何文煥, ed., Lì-dài shī-huà 歷代詩話 (1770; rpt. Zhōnghuá, 1981), 1.377–397 — convenient critical edition.
• Cài Zhèn-chǔ 蔡鎮楚, Zhōng-guó shī-huà shǐ 中國詩話史 (Hú-nán Wén-yì, 1988) — Northern-Sòng shī-huà chapter.
• Stephen Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought (Harvard, 1992) — passing citation in the discussion of Yuán-yòu poetics.

Other points of interest

The Xǔ–Huìhóng correction episode — Xǔ catching Huìhóng in a Lǐ Shāngyǐn misreading, Huìhóng correcting his own Lěngzhāi yèhuà in light of the conversation — is one of the most concrete documented cases of mutual revision between two contemporaneous Sòng shīhuà / yèhuà texts. The Lěngzhāi yèhuà — Huìhóng’s parallel biji 筆記 of poetic anecdotes — survives independently and its citation of Xǔ Yǐ confirms the Yànzhōu shīhuà’s independence from later interpolation.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.5.
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Hé Wénhuàn ed., Lìdài shīhuà (Zhōnghuá rpt., 1981), 1.377–397.