竹坡詩話

Zhúpō shīhuà 竹坡詩話

Bamboo-Slope Poetry-Talks by 周紫芝 (撰)

About the work

The Zhúpō shīhuà 竹坡詩話, in one juǎn (eighty entries surviving), is the shīhuà of Zhōu Zǐzhī 周紫芝 (zì Shǎoyǐn 少隱; hào Zhúpō jūshì 竹坡居士 “Bamboo-Slope Layman”, b. 1082, fl. 1142–1165) — a jìnshì of Shàoxīng 12 (1142) who was a direct disciple of Zhāng Lěi 張耒 and Lǐ Zhīyí 李之儀 and thus among the latest direct heirs of the late-Northern-Sòng SūHuáng poetic lineage. The title is correctly Zhúpō shīhuà 竹坡詩話 (the catalog yaml’s “竹坡詩詩” is a stray typographical duplication of 詩 and is corrected here); the WYG glyph reads 詩話 throughout. The book originally ran to two juǎn with a hundred entries (Zhōu Bìdà 周必大’s Èrlǎotáng shīhuà KR4i0032 cites the lost second juǎn on a Shānhǎi jīng poem and refers to “a hundred entries in Zǐzhī’s shīhuà”); the surviving WYG text preserves only the first juǎn’s eighty entries.

Tiyao

Zhúpō shīhuà, by Zhōu Zǐzhī of the Sòng. Zǐzhī has the Tàicāng tímǐ jí 太倉稊米集, already entered in the bibliography. Zhōu Bìdà’s Èrlǎotáng shīhuà, in disputing the jīnsuǒjiǎ 金瑣甲 entry, says that “Zǐzhī’s shīhuà runs to a hundred entries” — yet the present recension has only eighty. He also, in the Shānhǎi jīng entry, says “the Zhúpō shīhuà, first juǎn…”, implying that there was a second juǎn. The present recension has only one — clearly a fragmentary form. Bìdà has fairly caught some of its weaknesses: the qíngshēnjīnsuǒ gloss as a gānbǎo style chest-armor, on which Zǐzhī’s reading was negligent; the entry on Táo Qián’s “xíng tiān wǔ gàn qī” (the chthonic giant brandishing shield and ax) for which Zǐzhī had cribbed Céng Hóng’s 曾紘 conjecture without acknowledgement; and the Qiáoguó jí 譙國集 entry which has its own factual lapses — Bìdà nails the slips. Other items: the entry on Wáng Wéi having borrowed from Lǐ Jiāyòu 李嘉祐 still follows Lǐ Zhào’s 李肇 Guóshǐ bǔ 國史補 in its error; the entry on Liǔ Zōngyuán “body on the mountain of knives” 柳宗元身在刀山 borders on facile flippancy. But entries such as the rebuttal of the attribution of “Cháohānshuì” 嘲鼾睡 to Hán Yù, the rebuttal of the Liúchūn bú zhù lyric as Wáng Ānshí’s, the rebuttal of Hán Yù’s “Tiáo Zhāng Jí” 調張籍 poem as being directed at Yuán Zhěn — these are all original perceptions. The rest is also full of useful material. Only the entry on Lǐ Bái and Liǔ Gōngquán 柳公權 discussing poetry with Wénzōng is wildly anachronistic: this is not an obscure person or matter, and Zǐzhī would not have erred so far — presumably a copyist’s slip.

Abstract

The Zhúpō shīhuà belongs to the cohort of Southern-Sòng shīhuà whose authors were the last living transmitters of late-Northern-Sòng SūHuáng poetics. Zhōu Zǐzhī had studied poetry directly under Zhāng Lěi (one of the Sūmén liù jūnzǐ) and Lǐ Zhīyí; the Zhúpō shīhuà is the principal critical document of that lineage in its late, post-Yuányòu form. The book was composed during the Shàoxīng era — Zhōu’s jìnshì year was 1142 and his decade of major office under Qín Huì’s regime fell in 1142–1155, the most plausible composition window — with the surviving entries drawing freely on Northern-Sòng yíshì (anecdotes) that Zhōu had inherited orally from Zhāng Lěi’s and Lǐ Zhīyí’s circles.

The book’s most-cited features are: (i) the philological rebuttals — the attribution of the Cháohānshuì 嘲鼾睡 to Hán Yù, the Liúchūn bú zhù 留春不住 lyric to Wáng Ānshí, and Hán Yù’s Tiáo Zhāng Jí 調張籍 (with its mocking lines on Lǐ Bái and Dù Fǔ) as a covert attack on Yuán Zhěn — all of which Zhōu rejected on cogent grounds, and all of which subsequent scholarship has substantially endorsed; (ii) the preservation of anecdotes about the Yuányòu circle (Sū Shì, Huáng Tíngjiān, Chén Shīdào, Zhāng Lěi) that Zhōu had on direct oral authority and that survive nowhere else; (iii) a number of textual missteps that Zhōu Bìdà had already corrected in his own Èrlǎotáng shīhuà a generation later, of which the Sìkù editors take a measured view (“the slips Bìdà notes hit their marks”).

Two textual problems are worth flagging. First, the book is fragmentary: it originally ran to two juǎn with one hundred entries (per Zhōu Bìdà’s citations), but only the eighty entries of the first juǎn survive; the second juǎn was already lost before the Sìkù editors compiled their recension. Second, the Lǐ Bái / Liǔ Gōngquán / Wénzōng entry preserves a manifest anachronism (Lǐ Bái was nearly a century dead before Wénzōng’s reign; Liǔ Gōngquán was a calligrapher of that reign): the Sìkù editors are right to flag it as a copyist’s corruption rather than an authorial blunder. There is also a small but persistent catalog-title typo: the catalog yaml records the title as “竹坡詩詩” — a stray repetition of 詩. The work’s correct and universally attested title is 竹坡詩話, written so on the WYG title-page and so cited by every Sòng and Yuán reference.

The work has been transmitted in several Míng anthologies (including the Bǎichuān xuéhǎi and Jīndài mìshū) and via the Sìkù recension. The modern collected editions of Hé Wénhuàn’s Lìdài shīhuà 歷代詩話 (1770) and Dīng Fúbǎo’s Lìdài shīhuà xùbiān 歷代詩話續編 (1916) both include it.

Translations and research

• Guō Shào-yǔ 郭紹虞, Sòng shīhuà kǎo 宋詩話考 (Zhōnghuá, 1979), 109–112 — the standard bibliographical study, including the reconstruction of the lost second juǎn from Zhōu Bì-dà’s citations.
• Hé Wén-huàn 何文煥, ed., Lì-dài shīhuà 歷代詩話 (1770; rpt. Zhōnghuá, 1981), vol. 1.
• Wú Wén-zhì 吳文治 et al., comp., Sòng shīhuà quán biān 宋詩話全編 (Jiāng-sū guǎn-líng, 1998), vol. 3 — standard modern 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 is, with Lǚ Běnzhōng’s Zǐwēi shīhuà KR4i0015 and Wáng Zhì’s Sìliù huà KR4i0016, one of the principal shīhuà by a critic who had personal contact with the late-Northern-Sòng SūHuáng poets — Zhōu had learned directly from Zhāng Lěi and Lǐ Zhīyí. The book’s rebuttals of Sòng-period misattributions (e.g. the Liúchūn bú zhù lyric, the Cháohānshuì of Hán Yù) are among the earliest examples of attributive kǎozhèng practice in shīhuà form, and presage the more elaborate Qīng-period attribution-critical apparatus. The work’s surviving fragmentation (one juǎn of two; eighty entries of a hundred) is a useful reminder that even much-cited Sòng shīhuà are typically transmitted in incomplete form. The relationship to Zhōu Bìdà’s Èrlǎotáng shīhuà — Bìdà uses Zǐzhī’s text as a foil — is itself one of the most attestable Sòng-on-Sòng shīhuà citation chains.

Links

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