Èrlǎotáng shīhuà 二老堂詩話
Poetry Talks from the Hall of the Two Elders by 周必大 (撰)
About the work
The Èrlǎotáng shīhuà 二老堂詩話, in a single juǎn and forty-six items, is the shīhuà (poetry-talk) extracted from the great collected works of the Southern-Sòng senior statesman Zhōu Bìdà 周必大 (1126–1204), the Yìguógōng dàquánjí 益國公大全集 / Wénzhōng jí 文忠集 (KR4d0294 in WYG, in 200 juǎn). The title comes from the studio Zhōu kept in his old age after retirement: the “Hall of the Two Elders” honoured Bái Jūyì 白居易 and Liú Yǔxī 劉禹錫, the two famous Èrlǎo of late-Táng Luòyáng whose retirement model Zhōu consciously emulated. The forty-six items are short essays of bibliographic and antiquarian commentary on individual poems and verbal cruxes — Wáng Yǔchēng 王禹偁 not having taken charge of an examination, the obscure phrase jīnsuǒ jiǎ 金鎖甲 in a Sòng poem, the borrowed couplets and misattributions that pepper shīhuà exchange. The book’s strength is the consultative authority Zhōu carried as a former zǎixiàng with command of every documentary precedent; its weakness, by the Sìkù editors’ lights, is its occasional reliance on too narrow an evidentiary base.
Tiyao
Èrlǎotáng shīhuà, in one juǎn, by Zhōu Bìdà of the Sòng. Bìdà’s Yìgōng dàquánjí is already entered in the catalogue. This book was extracted by later hands from that collection and made to circulate on its own — forty-six items in all. Bìdà was broadly learned and intimately familiar with institutional precedent, so his remarks are weighted towards textual investigation. Items such as the one on Wáng Yǔchēng [王禹偁] not in fact having presided over an examination, the one on Liú Yǔxī’s [劉禹錫] Huáiyīn xíng 淮陰行, the one on the verses of Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修 sent to Bān Qí 班齊, the one on Lù Yóu’s 陸游 reading of Sū Shì’s 蘇軾 poetry, the one on Zhōu Zǐzhī’s 周紫芝 discussion of jīnsuǒ jiǎ 金鎖甲, the one on the Lǐ Bái 李白 verses at Sīkōngshān 司空山, and the one on the Xiányīn lán 閑殷䦨 rhyme in a Dù Fǔ 杜甫 poem — these are all extremely careful examinations. The item on “Xī Sī wrote the Sòng” (奚斯作頌) takes one-sidedly the view of Yáng Xióng 揚雄, and the item on “Méipā zhuìsù” 梅葩墜素 forces a connection with the diction of Hán Yù 韓愈 — these cannot avoid the charge of piānzhí 偏執 (one-sided rigidity). His item glossing the word piǎomiǎo 縹緲 cites Sū Shì’s poem but is unaware of the prior locus in Wáng Yánshòu’s 王延壽 Língguāngdiàn fù 靈光殿賦; his item on “yī huī jiānghǎi” 一麾江海 knows that the phrase is not original to Yán Yánnián 顏延年 but is unaware that it derives from Cuī Bào’s 崔豹 Gǔ jīn zhù 古今注. These are loci where his evidentiary base is occasionally thin. Still, in the main thrust of the book the breadth and detail are not to be matched except by an author of genuine learning. (Imperial editorial colophon, Qiánlóng 41 / 1776, by zǒngzuǎn Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì, zǒngjiào Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
Zhōu Bìdà composed the items collected in this shīhuà over his retirement years between 1190 (when he stepped down as Left Councillor under Sòng Guāngzōng) and his death in 1204. The “Èrlǎotáng” was the studio name he adopted at his Jí’ān 吉安 estate in Lúlíng 廬陵 from c. 1190 onward, modelled on the Luòyáng retirement circle of Bái Jūyì and Liú Yǔxī; the studio name is the basis for dating the book to that final decade-and-a-half. The pieces are short, dense, and consistently philological — Zhōu had served as Hànlín zhìzhìgāo 知制誥, Mìshū shǎojiān 秘書少監, and Sānxué jiānjiǎn 三學監學 over a long career, and the institutional precedents at his command (especially in matters of examination procedure, court music, and imperial-edict diction) give his items a heft most Sòng shīhuà cannot match. He is the principal witness for several otherwise unattested anecdotes about Lù Yóu and Yáng Wànlǐ 楊萬里 (both his contemporaries and close correspondents), and for several disputes in the textual transmission of late-Táng gǔshī. The forty-six pieces selected for separate circulation as Èrlǎotáng shīhuà are evidently the most strictly shīhuà-shaped from a much larger pool of philological notes scattered through the Wénzhōng jí.
The book first circulated as a separate work in the Yuán Shīhuà zǒngguī 詩話總龜 KR4i0012 tradition; it was included in the Míng Lìdài shīhuà 歷代詩話 of He Wénhuàn 何文煥 (1770), the principal anthology by which most Sòng shīhuà enter the modern bibliographic record, and re-entered the Sìkù quánshū directly from the Wénzhōng jí. The standard modern edition is in Wú Wénzhì 吳文治, ed., Sòng shīhuà quánbiān 宋詩話全編, vol. 5 (Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1998).
Translations and research
- Wú Wén-zhì 吳文治, ed., Sòng shīhuà quán-biān 宋詩話全編, 10 vols. (Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1998) — the standard modern collation of Sòng shīhuà, with the Èrlǎo-táng shīhuà in vol. 5.
- Guō Shàoyú 郭紹虞 and Fù Xuáncóng 傅璇琮, eds., Sòng shīhuà jí-yì 宋詩話輯佚 and Sòng shīhuà kǎo 宋詩話考 (Zhōnghuá, 1980) — bibliographic context.
- Hé Wén-huàn 何文煥, Lì-dài shī-huà 歷代詩話 (Zhōnghuá repr. 1981) — the standard pre-modern anthology containing the Èrlǎo-táng shīhuà.
- No substantial monograph dedicated specifically to the Èrlǎo-táng shīhuà located.
Links
- Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
- Wikipedia 周必大
- Wikidata Q1208027.