䂬溪詩話

Gōngxī shīhuà 䂬溪詩話

Poetry-Talks from Gōng Creek by 黃徹 (撰)

About the work

The Gōngxī shīhuà 䂬溪詩話, in ten juǎn (the cover-character 䂬 [U+40AC] is alternatively written 礱 in some catalog notices and corresponds to the Gōngxī creek in northern Fújiàn after which Huáng’s residence was named), is a Southern-Sòng shīhuà by Huáng Chè 黃徹 (zì Chángmíng 常明, jìnshì 1124). The book is divided into 214 entries spread across ten short juǎn; the entry-by-entry count given in the mùlù is 19, 20, 19, 23, 22, 19, 27, 25, 23, 17. It was prefaced by the Southern-Sòng statesman Chén Jùnqīng 陳俊卿 in Qiándào 4 (1168), with postfaces by Huáng’s son Huáng Kuò 廓, his grandson Huáng Tāo 燾, and the local scholars Huáng Yǒngcún 黃永存 and Niè Táng 聶棠; this internal apparatus, transmitted only in the Bào-family Zhībùzú zhāi 知不足齋 manuscript that the Sìkù editors used, is what made it possible to recover Huáng’s career. The catalog meta’s date: 1124 is Huáng’s jìnshì year — the book is in fact mid-twelfth-century, with the Chén Jùnqīng preface of 1168 fixing the terminus ante quem. The book’s leading idea is that poetry must rest on fēngjiào 風教 (the moral teaching of the Shījīng tradition) rather than on ornamental polish, but — as the Sìkù editors note — Huáng was himself an able poet, so this moralist stance does not collapse into the yǔlù (Daoxue lecture-record) flatness against which Yán Yǔ would later inveigh.

Tiyao

Gōngxī shīhuà, by Huáng Chè of the Sòng. Chè’s zì was Chángmíng. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí makes him a native of Pǔtián 莆田; the BāMǐn tōngzhì makes him a native of Shàowǔ 邵武. Zhènsūn lived not so long after Chè and his evidence should be the truer. Zhū Yízūn’s 朱彝尊 Pùshūtíng jí has a colophon to this book; Lì È’s Sòng shī jìshì also records Chè’s poetry. Yízūn went only by the BāMǐn tōngzhì, knowing him as a Shàoxīng 15 (1145) jìnshì; È went only by the book’s own preface, mentioning that he had once held office in Chénzhōu — but neither knew the details of his life. Only the Bào family’s Zhībùzú zhāi manuscript has, before the text, a preface by Chén Jùnqīng of Qiándào 4 (1168), and four postfaces — by Chè’s son Kuò and grandson Tāo and by Huáng Yǒngcún and Niè Táng. Tāo’s postface records the funerary inscription written by Yáng Bāngbì, which says that Chè was a jìnshì of Xuānhé jiǎchén (1124), appointed xiànchéng of Chénxī county in Chénzhōu, then promoted to xiànlìng in the same place, where he served five years; transferred as jūnshì pànguān of Yuánzhōu, acting cì and acting magistrate of Máyáng; transferred to be xiànlìng of Jiāyú in Èzhōu; then acting magistrate of Píngjiāng in Yuèzhōu, made permanent after half a year; once more crossed the powerful, resigned office, and returned home. Zhāng Jùn wished to recruit him into his entourage; he refused, and grew old at home. The inscription also says that in Yuánzhōu he pacified the Yáo rebellion; in Máyáng he captured the bandit chief Cáo Chéng; in Píngjiāng he served as commissariat officer in the campaign against Yáng Yāo, with credit — but he was finally dismissed “for inability to humour customary practices.” This account of Chè’s life is at least roughly recoverable. Yízūn and È evidently never saw this manuscript, so their accounts are either inaccurate or perfunctory. His criticism of poetry has fēngjiào for its foundation, and does not value ornamental craft. Yet Chè was himself a fine poet, and so does not lose the spirit of the fēng poets — he is not someone who would make the yǔlù style his standard, severing the doctrine of bǐ and xìng.

Abstract

The Gōngxī shīhuà belongs to the second wave of Southern-Sòng shīhuà of the Shàoxīng–Qiándào decades (roughly 1140s–1168). Its composition window is mid-twelfth century: terminus a quo around 1145 (Huáng’s mature provincial career), terminus ante quem 1168 (Chén Jùnqīng’s preface). The Sìkù editors and modern bibliographers agree on this dating; the date: 1124 in the present catalog meta corresponds to Huáng’s jìnshì year, not the compositional date.

The book’s principal theoretical commitment is to fēngjiào — the Shījīng doctrine of poetry as the cultivation and rectification of public morals. This places Huáng with Zhāng Jiè (KR4i0021) and against the technical-aesthetic strand represented in the same generation by Lǚ Běnzhōng 呂本中 (KR4i0015) and the Jiāngxī lineage. Huáng’s entries devote disproportionate attention to Dù Fǔ, read as the supreme exemplar of moral-political seriousness in verse; Hán Yù 韓愈 and Bái Jūyì 白居易 also figure heavily; the late Táng (Lǐ Shāngyǐn 李商隱, Wēn Tíngyún 溫庭筠) is treated reservedly. Huáng has a particular concern with quánjiè 勸戒 — the function of poetry as moral admonition to rulers — and a number of entries explore Dù Fǔ’s poems as oblique remonstrance.

The book’s transmission was unusually narrow: outside of the BāMǐn local-history circuit it was for centuries known only by name (Zhū Yízūn’s Pùshūtíng colophon and Lì È’s Sòng shī jìshì are the principal Qīng records, and neither author had read the complete text). The Sìkù editors got the book through the Bào family’s Zhībùzú zhāi manuscript — a copy that uniquely preserved the Chén Jùnqīng preface and the four postfaces — and the WYG text descends from that recension. The modern Lìdài shīhuà xùbiān 歷代詩話續編 edition of Dīng Fúbǎo 丁福保 (1916) and the Sòng shīhuà quán biān edition (1998) are the standard modern texts.

Translations and research

• Guō Shào-yǔ 郭紹虞, Sòng shīhuà kǎo 宋詩話考 (Zhōnghuá, 1979), 102–106 — the standard bibliographical study, including a full reading of the Bào family manuscript apparatus.
• Wú Wén-zhì 吳文治 et al., comp., Sòng shīhuà quán biān 宋詩話全編 (Jiāng-sū guǎn-líng, 1998), vol. 4.
• Dīng Fú-bǎo 丁福保, ed., Lì-dài shīhuà xù-biān 歷代詩話續編 (1916; rpt. Zhōnghuá, 1983), vol. 1 — the modern collected edition.
• Zhāng Bó-wěi 張伯偉, Quán Sòng shīhuà jiào kǎo 全宋詩話校考 (Zhōnghuá, 2009).

Other points of interest

The book’s title character 䂬 (U+40AC, also written 礱 or 砻 in some catalogs; the Sìkù WYG glyph and the modern Kangxi-set glyph both use 䂬) refers to a creek near Huáng’s natal place in northern Fújiàn; Huáng’s own preface explains the hào. The Sìkù editors’ recovery of Huáng’s career from the Bào-family manuscript is a textbook example of the Sìkù editorial method at its best, and is cited in Yú Jiāxí’s Sìkù tíyào biànzhèng (with a small correction: the inscription says Zhāng Jùn 張浚, not 張俊). The book is also a minor source for the suppression of Yáng Yāo’s Dòngtíng rebellion (the great Sòng peasant uprising of 1130–1135), in which Huáng served as a commissariat officer.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.5.
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Wikipedia 䂬溪詩話