誠齋詩話

Chéngzhāi shīhuà 誠齋詩話

Poetry Talks from the Studio of Sincerity by 楊萬里 (撰)

About the work

The Chéngzhāi shīhuà 誠齋詩話, in a single juǎn, is the shīhuà extracted from the collected works of Yáng Wànlǐ 楊萬里 (1127–1206), the founder of the Chéngzhāi tǐ 誠齋體 of Sòng poetry and one of the Zhōngxīng sìdà jiā 中興四大家 (with Lù Yóu, Fàn Chéngdà, and Yóu Mào). Like the Èrlǎotáng shīhuà of his contemporary Zhōu Bìdà 周必大 (KR4i0032), it circulated in the late Sòng both inside the parent collection (here, the Chéngzhāi jí 誠齋集 KR4d0297 in 133 juǎn) and as a separate book. The work is misnamed in two respects: it treats prose at least as much as poetry, and it indulges freely in xiéxuè záshì 諧謔雜事 (anecdotes of humour and miscellaneous events). The Sìkù tíyào identifies this miscellaneity as typical of Sòng shīhuà generally rather than a personal vice of Yáng’s. Yáng’s own poetic taste was famously eclectic — he set out from the Jiāngxī school under Hú Quán 胡銓 and Zhāng Jùn 張浚’s patronage, then read his way out into a freer style modelled on the Late Táng and the yùefǔ tradition; the shīhuà preserves the working notes of that lifelong reading.

Tiyao

Chéngzhāi shīhuà, by Yáng Wànlǐ of the Sòng. Wànlǐ also wrote the Chéngzhāi Yìzhuàn 誠齋易傳 (KR1a0040); already entered in the catalogue. This compilation is entitled shīhuà, but the items on prose actually outnumber the items on verse, and there is no little wandering into humour and miscellany. This is generally true of works compiled by Sòng writers — not just Wànlǐ. Wànlǐ was famous for poetry, and so his remarks frequently strike at the root of the matter. But Wànlǐ’s own poetic practice favoured wenyan idiom and colloquial diction: thus he praises Lǐ Shīzhōng’s 李師中 verses “mountain as the long-lived sage who is rén, water as the qīng of the Sage” (山如仁者壽，水似聖之清) as good use of the Classics; he praises Sū Shì’s 蘇軾 “evading slander, I seek a doctor, fearing illness; drinking wine, I am drawn into office” 避謗詩尋醫畏病，酒入務, and the monk Xiǎnwàn’s 顯萬 “I draw on credit a clump of spring colour on the wall, leak in a stretch of light at the bamboo’s tip” 探支春色墻頭朵，闌入風光竹外梢, as good use of vocabulary; and he praises his own couplet “the wind on the standing shore is Dàzhuàng, the lamp on the returning boat is Xiǎomíng” 立岸風大壯，還舟燈小明 — which matches the titles of poems to hexagrams of the Yì — as a shīpiān duìyìguà 詩篇對易卦. None of these are sound judgements. Again, Lǐ Shāngyǐn’s 李商隱 “midnight after the feast, returning, the palace water-clock long; the Prince of Xuē is dead-drunk, the Prince of Shòu sober” 夜半宴歸宮漏永，薛王沉醉壽王醒 — to “make public the evils of the state” in this way is the height of rudeness; Wànlǐ takes it as wēiwǎn xiǎnhuì, jǐn ér bùwū 微婉顯晦盡而不汙 (subtly veiled, fully expressed without pollution), which is exactly the Sòng habit of preferring shrill exposure to circumspection. Wànlǐ lived not far in time from the Nándù (1127); yet he takes the Empress Dowager Lóngyòu’s 隆祐 hand-edict announcing the succession of Gāozōng to be a private letter urging Gāozōng to take the throne — a serious blunder in the examination of institutional precedent. He is the typical case in which “the flaws do not conceal the jewels, and the dull and the sharp are alternately on display.” The whole book is already in the Chéngzhāi jí; this one-juǎn edition is an independently-circulating selection. We re-enter it separately. (Imperial editorial colophon, Qiánlóng 46 / 1781.)

Abstract

Yáng Wànlǐ wrote no formal shīhuà as a single composed treatise; the work we know as the Chéngzhāi shīhuà is a one-juǎn selection drawn out of the Chéngzhāi jí 誠齋集 by an unnamed editor sometime in the late Sòng. Yáng’s Shīlùn 詩論 and the prefaces he wrote for the late-Sòng poetic anthologies Qiānyán zhāigǎo 千巖摘稿 (for Xiāo Déchǎo 蕭德藻) and Yánjī ji-yì 巖溪集 are kept separately; this shīhuà gathers shorter, often anecdotal items, on a single sheet of varied subjects: the technique of fānàn 翻案 (reversing a precedent’s verdict in verse), the jǐngjù 警句 (arresting couplet), the jùwàizhīyì 句外之意 (meaning beyond the line), the relative merits of Late Táng versus the Yǒngmíng style, and praise (sometimes startling, sometimes tin-eared, as the Sìkù editors note) of contemporaries and predecessors. Wèi Qìngzhī 魏慶之 Shīrén yùxiè KR4i0036 cites Yáng repeatedly under the rubric “Chéngzhāi yún” 誠齋云, indicating that the items were already circulating as detachable critical apophthegms by the mid-thirteenth century. The independent circulation in one juǎn — the form preserved in the Sìkù — is the standard transmission down through the Míng Lìdài shīhuà and the modern editions of Guō Shàoyú 郭紹虞 and Wú Wénzhì 吳文治.

The conceptual centerpiece is Yáng’s claim that the proper relation of poet to tradition is one of búcǎi sānjiā, ér biàn jǐyī 不採三家而辨己意 — “not drawing on the three schools but distinguishing one’s own intention”; he characteristically refuses the Jiāngxī method of huàngǔ tuōtāi 換骨脫胎 (“changing the bones, casting off the womb”) in favour of the fàngfā 放法 / huófǎ 活法 (“free method”) that Lǚ Běnzhōng 呂本中 had earlier advocated (KR4i0015). The result is the most personal of the great Southern-Sòng shīhuà — and, the Sìkù editors aside, one of the most influential. Its impact is visible in every late-Sòng critical work that postdates it: Wèi Qìngzhī, Liú Kèzhuāng 劉克莊 (KR4i0037), and Yán Yǔ 嚴羽 (KR4i0035) all engage Yáng’s positions directly or through Wèi’s anthology.

Translations and research

• Jonathan Chaves, Heaven My Blanket, Earth My Pillow: Poems by Yang Wan-li (Weatherhill, 1975) — annotated translation of Yáng’s poetry, with critical introduction drawing on the shīhuà.
• J. D. Schmidt, Yang Wan-li (Twayne, 1976) — the standard English-language monograph on Yáng’s poetics, with extensive use of the shīhuà as evidence.
• J. D. Schmidt, Stone Lake: The Poetry of Fan Chengda (1126–1193) (Cambridge, 1992) — includes comparative discussion of Yáng’s poetics.
• Guō Shàoyú 郭紹虞, Sòng shīhuà jí-yì 宋詩話輯佚 (Zhōnghuá, 1980) — bibliographic foundation.
• Wú Wén-zhì 吳文治, ed., Sòng shīhuà quán-biān 宋詩話全編, vol. 5 (Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1998) — the standard modern critical text.
• Zhōu Qǐchéng 周啟成, Yáng Wànlǐ hé Chéngzhāi tǐ 楊萬里和誠齋體 (Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1980).

Other points of interest

The Sìkù judgement that Yáng misreads the Empress Dowager Lóngyòu hand-edict is a famously pedantic objection: the actual edict was indeed a hand-letter and the dispute concerns only its constitutional weight. The episode is now read more sympathetically (see Schmidt 1976). Yáng’s playful self-praise of his own couplet 立岸風大壯，還舟燈小明 has provided fodder for centuries of critical opinion on the limits of poet-as-self-critic; the Sìkù editors take its inclusion as the shīhuà’s most damning piece of evidence against Yáng’s own taste.

Links

• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Wikipedia 楊萬里
• Wikidata Q572443.