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唐詩紀事

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Text ID
KR4i0025
Date
1145–1165
Dynasty
宋

Táng shī jì shì 唐詩紀事

Recorded Affairs of Táng Poetry by 計有功 (撰)

About the work

The Táng shī jì shì 唐詩紀事, in eighty-one juǎn, is one of the two foundational early collections of Táng poetry with biographical and circumstantial apparatus (the other being Ruǎn Yuè’s KR4i0012 Shīhuà zǒngguī), and is the single most important Sòng-period source-book for the study of the Táng poetic corpus. Its compiler, Jì Yǒugōng 計有功 (zì Mǐnfū 敏夫; jìnshì 1121), a Sìchuanese official whose career took him to Jiǎnzhōu and through the LiǎngZhè monopoly bureaucracy of the Shàoxīng era, drew on three centuries of scattered Táng material — anthologies, biéjí, dynastic-history fragments, miscellany, biographical záshuō, stele rubbings, and oral repute — to assemble entries for 1,150 named poets, ordered chronologically from the early Táng through the late. Each entry combines: (a) selected poems by the author; (b) anecdotes on the occasion of composition (běnshì 本事); (c) where possible, the poet’s lineage, examination record, official titles, and native place. The book is also the only surviving substantial witness to Zhāng Wèi’s 張為 Shīrén zhǔkè tú 詩人主客圖 — that lost Táng grading-and-affiliation chart of poets is extensively excerpted, and Jì preserves its categories of zhǔ (host), kè (guest), jímén (admitted to the gate), shēngtáng (advanced to the hall), and rùshì (entered the inner room). Wilkinson §62.3.7 calls it “one of the earliest large-scale anthologies of Táng poetry” assembling “the work of 1,100 poets together with anecdotes about the occasion for the writing of the poem.”

Tiyao

Táng shī jì shì, by Jì Yǒugōng of the Sòng. Yǒugōng’s zì was Mǐnfū; the details of his life are not transmitted. Lǐ Xīnchuán’s Jiànyán yǐlái xìnián yàolù records that in the wùzǐ day of the seventh month of Shàoxīng 5 (1135) the Yòu chéngyì láng and newly-appointed prefect of Jiǎnzhōu Jì Yǒugōng was made commissioner of the regular-grain, tea, and salt monopolies of the LiǎngZhè western circuit. Yǒugōng was of Ānrén, Sìchuān, and Zhāng Jùn’s maternal uncle. Further evidence is in Guō Yìn’s Yúnxī jí 雲溪集, which has a “Reply to Jì Mǐnfū’s ‘Note on Yúnxī’” poem reading: “Knowing your unique learning rejects the literary briefs, / Whether speaking or silent, walking or sitting, you do not obstruct Chan; / I came to Yúnxī to explain the gāthā again, / And opened heaven, cleft earth, saw the complete pure whole.” Mǐnfū was thus a man of the southern crossing — and from Yìn’s poem-meaning it appears he was a connoisseur of Chan flavor. This collection devotes itself to fēngyǎ (the Shījīng tradition): the gleanings are abundant and rich. On the poets of the Táng age it either records famous pieces or it records their occasion, and is at pains to give their family-line, rank, and native place. In all 1,150 households. Of Táng poets’ collections lost to the world, many are mainly preserved by this book. Where a piece is the work taken into some [other] anthology — for the Jí xuán jí 極玄集 or for [Zhāng Wèi’s] Zhǔkè tú and the like — this is also itemized in detail. Today Yáo Hé’s [Jí xuán jí] still exists; but Zhāng Wèi’s [Zhǔkè tú] survives in outline only through this book’s excerpts, where one can still trace out who was host and who was guest, who admitted to the gate, who advanced to the hall, who entered the inner room. Its work of compilation is thus not to be effaced. But there is also much alley-talk in it — for example, the report that Lǐ Bái in his lowly days was once a county clerk, with the accompanying joke of “leading the ox” and the poem “drowning the daughter”: these are vulgar and absurd, transparently fabricated — chaff one would best have winnowed out.

Abstract

The Táng shī jì shì was compiled during Jì Yǒugōng’s later career and retirement in the Shàoxīng era. Two prefaces transmitted with the text date the editorial work: the author’s own preface explains that he had been gathering material across his bureaucratic travels for three decades, working out of “household poverty, deficient libraries, and remote residence”; the publisher Wáng Xǐ’s 王禧 preface, dated Jiādìng 17 jiǎshēn (1224), describes the first cutting of the work at the Huáiān prefectural academy seventy years after composition. The Míng Jiājìng yǐsì (1545) re-cutting by Hóng Zǐměi 洪子美 at Huáiān, with a new preface by Kǒng Tiānyìn 孔天胤, is the basis of the Sìbù cóngkān edition; the Sìkù recension descended through the Jiājìng line. The composition window of notBefore 1145 to notAfter 1165 spans the middle and late Shàoxīng decades.

The book is organized chronologically by reign: juǎn 1 covers Táng Tàizōng, Gāozōng, and Zhōngzōng (with imperial poems first); juǎn 2 Xuánzōng (here Míng huáng), Dézōng, Wénzōng, Xuānzōng, and Zhāozōng; subsequent juǎn follow the major poets in approximate chronological order. The 1,150 figures are unevenly distributed: the major High-Táng and Mid-Táng poets (Lǐ Bái, Dù Fǔ, Wáng Wéi, Bái Jūyì, Lǐ Hè, Hán Yù, Yuán Zhěn) each fill a juǎn or more; minor late-Táng and Five-Dynasties poets appear in densely packed bricks of a few lines each. Many of the briefer entries preserve the only surviving information about their subjects — Jì had access in the early twelfth century to Táng-period materials no longer extant. The book’s antiquarian function and its anecdotal style mean it is read both as a critical apparatus and as a substantial repository of Táng běnshì lore; the Sìkù editors note that “many anthologies that no longer survive are mainly preserved by this book.”

The book has been a primary source for every subsequent comprehensive Táng anthology, most directly for Péng Dìngqiú’s 彭定求 Yùdìng Quán Táng shī 御定全唐詩 (1707), which folded many of Jì’s biographical headers and běnshì anecdotes directly into the imperial edition. The Hàrvard-Yenching Index 18 (Wāng Yīnnán 王引南 et al.) provides an author-index to the work; Wáng Zhòngyōng 王仲鏞’s Táng shī jì shì jiào jiān 唐詩紀事校箋 (BāShǔ shūshè, 1989; rev. Zhōnghuá, 2007) is the standard modern critical edition. The Sìkù tíyào notes the work’s mixed value as a source for Lǐ Bái — the alley-anecdote that Lǐ was once a county clerk, with the “leading the ox” joke and the “drowning the daughter” poem, is dismissed as a transparent fabrication — but the broader anecdotal apparatus has been rehabilitated by modern scholarship as encoding genuine Táng oral tradition even where it is not literally historical.

Translations and research

  • Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §62.3.7 (Táng anthologies) — concise survey of the work’s role.
  • Wáng Zhòng-yōng 王仲鏞, Táng shī jì shì jiào jiān 唐詩紀事校箋, 8 vols. (Bā-Shǔ shū-shè, 1989; rev. Zhōnghuá, 2007) — the standard modern critical edition with comprehensive collation and annotation.
  • Táng shī jì shì zhù-zhě yǐn-dé 唐詩紀事著者引得 (Harvard-Yenching Sinological Index Series 18, 1934) — the indispensable author-index.
  • Chén Shàng-jūn 陳尚君, Quán Táng shī bǔ biān 全唐詩補編 (Zhōnghuá, 1992) — uses Táng shī jì shì extensively to recover lost Táng poems.
  • Stephen Owen, The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century (Harvard Asia Center, 2006) — uses the Jì-shì as the principal source-text for the period.
  • Edwin Pulleyblank, “The Tang shi jishi of Ji Yougong as a Source for Tang Biography”, in Studies in Honor of Yves Hervouet (Paris, 1986) — methodological reading.

Other points of interest

The Táng shī jì shì is the chief vehicle through which Zhāng Wèi’s 張為 lost Shīrén zhǔkè tú 詩人主客圖 — a Táng-period “house and guest” diagram of poetic affiliation — survives, even in outline; the Sìkù editors recognize this as one of the principal scholarly contributions of the book. The book’s editorial method — anthology + biographical header + anecdotal běnshì — established a genre (the jìshì anthology) that was widely imitated: cf. the Sòng shī jì shì of Lì È KR4i0062 and the Five-Dynasties extensions. The jìshì model is the structural ancestor of modern source-critical Táng-poetry editions.

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