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滄浪詩話

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Text ID
KR4i0035
Date
1230–1245
Dynasty
宋

Cānglàng shīhuà 滄浪詩話

Cānglàng’s Remarks on Poetry by 嚴羽 (撰)

About the work

The Cānglàng shīhuà 滄浪詩話, in a single juǎn, is the most consequential work of Chinese literary criticism after the Wénxīn diāolóng of Liú Xié KR4i0001 and the Shīpǐn of Zhōng Róng KR4i0003. Written by the late-Sòng recluse Yán Yǔ 嚴羽 (hào Cānglàng-bū-kè 滄浪逋客, “Lay-Recluse of the Blue-Green Wave”; conventional lifedates 1195–c.1245 per Wilkinson) of Shàowǔ 邵武 in Fújiàn during the Shàodìng–Chúnyòu reigns (c. 1230–1245), it is one of the very few Sòng shīhuà organized as a continuous treatise rather than a string of discrete items. The book is structured in five named sections — Shī biàn 詩辨 (“Distinguishing poetry”), Shī tǐ 詩體 (“Poetic forms”), Shī fǎ 詩法 (“Methods of poetry”), Shī píng 詩評 (“Evaluation of poets”), and Kǎo zhèng 考證 (“Textual investigations”) — with an appended letter to Wú Jǐngxiān 吳景仙 (“Yǔ Wú Jǐngxiān lùn shī shū” 與吳景仙論詩書) at the end. The doctrinal core is the analogy between Chán Buddhist miàowù 妙悟 (“marvellous awakening”) and poetic apprehension, together with a sharp periodization of pre-Sòng verse in which Hàn–Wèi and High Táng are taken as the “first vehicle” (dì-yī yì 第一義), Middle Táng as “Hīnayāna”, and Late Táng as the mere “śrāvaka–pratyekabuddha fruits” of the Sòng jiānghú fashion. Yán’s championing of the Shèng-Táng 盛唐 — led by Lǐ Bái 李白 and Dù Fǔ 杜甫 — as the absolute model of pentasyllabic and heptasyllabic verse was the single most influential periodization in subsequent Chinese poetic criticism. Through the Míng Qián-Hòu Qī-zǐ 前後七子 (especially Lǐ Pānlóng 李攀龍 and Wáng Shìzhēn 王世貞), the Qīng Shén-yùn 神韻 school of Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎, and the Géliào 格調 of Shěn Déqián 沈德潛, the Cānglàng defined orthodoxy for some five centuries.

Tiyao

Cānglàng shīhuà, in one juǎn, by Yán Yǔ of the Sòng. Yǔ’s zì was Dānqiū 丹丘, alternatively Yíqīng 儀卿; he styled himself Cānglàngbūkè 滄浪逋客. A native of Shàowǔ 邵武. With Yán Rén 嚴仁 and Yán Cān 嚴參 he was called the Three Yáns; with Yán Càn 嚴粲 he was called the Two Yáns. Dài Shìzhī’s 戴式之 Shípíng jí 石屏集 contains the verse offered to the Two Yáns — “Last year I got Yán Càn, this year I have Yán Yǔ; ever since I got the Two Yáns the bull-bells have harmonized with the bell-and-pitch-pipe” — which is precisely about them. This book is also called Cānglàng yín juǎn 滄浪吟卷: the Fújiàn printings place the shīhuà at the head of his collected poems as the first juǎn, so the title of the poetic collection got transferred to it — that is not its original name. First Shī biàn, then Shī tǐ, then Shī fǎ, then Shī píng, then Kǎo zhèng: five sections in all. Appended at the end is the letter on poetry to Wú Jǐngxiān. His main thrust is to take ShèngTáng as the polestar, with miàowù 妙悟 as the operative principle; he therefore takes the formulae “like a sound in mid-air, like a colour in mid-form, like a flower in a mirror, like a moon in water, like an antelope hanging its horns leaving no traces to find” (如空中音，如相中色，如鏡中花，如水中月，如羚羊挂角，無迹可尋) as the jízé 極則 (ultimate standard) of poetry. The Míng critic Hú Yīnglín 胡應麟 compared him to Bodhidharma travelling east — the founder of a separate Chán school — while Féng Bān 馮班 wrote a one-juǎn Yánshì jiūmiù 嚴氏糾繆 (“Errors of Master Yán Corrected”) going so far as to call the book yìyǔ 囈語 (sleep-talk). To consider the matter even-handedly: Sòng poetry chases too much after the path of lǐ 理 (philosophical reasoning) and is mostly unable to plumb bǐ–xìng 比興 to their depth; in Yǔ’s own time the Sìlíng 四靈 school was at its height and the world took Late Táng as its model. He therefore put forward this yījiā zhī yán 一家之言 to save the moment from its disease. His followers have transmitted it in attenuated form and, by stages, have come to nothing more than fúguāng lüèyǐng 浮光掠影 — sun-on-water glints and passing shadows — which is plainly not what Yǔ himself meant. Those who praise him over-praise, those who attack him over-attack. Qián Zēng 錢曾 in his Dúshū mǐnqiú jì 讀書敏求記 picks at Yǔ’s “Jiǔ zhāng not as good as Jiǔ gē; among the Jiǔ gē the Āi Yǐng 哀郢 is finest” — pointing out that Āi Yǐng is in fact in Jiǔ zhāng, not Jiǔ gē, and on that ground impeaches Yǔ as having never read the Lí sāo 離騷. But this may be a momentary slip of the brush, or a scribal corruption — neither can be settled. For Qián to attack him so peremptorily is itself careless. Zhào Yíguāng 趙宦光 was indeed shallow in liùshū studies; yet his Shuōwén chángjiān 説文長箋 cites “the tiger and rhinoceros have come out of the cage” (虎兕出於柙) and falsely attributes it to Mèngzǐ — that fault belongs to the copyist; Gù Yánwǔ 顧炎武 in Rìzhī lù 日知錄 nevertheless argues that Zhào never read the Lúnyǔ. Can this convince the reader? Both are chuīsuǒ zhī jiàn 吹索之見 — over-zealous criticism, not enough to decide the merit of the book. (Imperial editorial colophon, Qiánlóng 42 / 1777.)

Abstract

Yán Yǔ flourished in the Shàodìng–Chúnyòu period (c. 1230–1245); the Cānglàng shīhuà cannot be precisely dated, but the appended Yǔ Wú Jǐngxiān lùn shī shū makes clear that the work belongs to the latter part of his career — after he had developed his settled views in opposition to the jiānghú poets and the Sìlíng school. The book contains no preface by Yán himself; it is preserved in two principal recensions: the Fújiàn printing in which the shīhuà heads the Cānglàngyín juǎn poetic collection (the source of the alternative title Cānglàng yín juǎn) and the Sìkù quánshū internal-archive copy, which separates the shīhuà into the Shī wénpíng 詩文評 category and the surviving poetry into KR4d separately. There are eight extant SòngYuán testimonies to the text, the principal pre-modern witness being Tāo Zōngyí’s 陶宗儀 Shuōfú 説郛 (Yuán).

The five sections of the work form a tightly argued whole. Shī biàn sets out the central Chán-poetry analogy: just as Buddhist Chán recognizes Mahāyāna versus Hīnayāna and Southern versus Northern lineages, so the student of poetry must learn to distinguish the “first truth” (dì-yī yì 第一義) of the Hàn-Wèi-Jìn and High-Táng masters from the “Hīnayāna Chán” (xiǎo-shèng chán 小乘禪) of the post-Dàlì (766–) middle and late Táng, and from the śrāvaka-pratyekabuddha “fruits” (聲聞辟支果) of the Sòng jiānghú mode. The student is enjoined to read in correct order: Chǔ cí first, then the Gǔshī shí-jiǔ shǒu 古詩十九首 and the Hàn-Wèi yùefǔ, then Lǐ-Dù together, then the rest of the High Táng — and only afterwards may one approach Sū Shì 蘇軾 and Huáng Tíngjiān 黃庭堅 of the Sòng. The famous loci of the section are: “Poetry has its own raw material (bié cái 別材); it is not a matter of book-learning. Poetry has its own savour (bié qù 別趣); it is not a matter of philosophical reasoning. Yet without abundant reading and full investigation of principle, one cannot reach the highest.” (夫詩有別材，非關書也；詩有別趣，非關理也。然非多讀書多窮理，則不能極其至。) And: “The Shèng-Táng poets dwelt only in xìng qù 興趣 — like an antelope hanging its horns leaving no traces to follow; thus the marvellous in them is transparent, exquisite, beyond grasping, like a sound in mid-air, a colour in mid-form, the moon in water, an image in a mirror — words have a limit, but meaning has none.”

Shī tǐ (often the longest section in printed witnesses) catalogs poetic forms — by dynasty, by metre, by poet, by named subtype (Yuèfǔtǐ 樂府體, Yǒnghuáitǐ 詠懷體, Yǒngshǐtǐ 詠史體, Yóuxiāntǐ 遊仙體, Tiántǐ 田體, Sàishàngtǐ 塞上體, etc.). Shī fǎ sets out compositional method (the five elements of poetry are tǐzhì 體製, gélì 格力, qìxiàng 氣象, xìngqù 興趣, yīnjié 音節; the nine grades are gāo, gǔ, shēn, yuǎn, cháng, xiónghún, piāoyì, bēizhuàng, qīwǎn); Shī píng gives substantive evaluations of named poets from the Shī jīng down through the Sòng; and Kǎo zhèng corrects textual errors in earlier transmission, including the famous misreading of Jiǔ zhāng/Jiǔ gē that the Sìkù editors and Qián Zēng debated.

Wilkinson (§30.5) singles out the Cānglàng as the first work to periodize Táng poetry and to select the ShèngTáng poets, led by Dù Fǔ, as a model; he cites Yán’s compressed formulation “Shī yǒu cí lǐ yì xìng 詩有詞理意興” — “Poetry has diction, reason, intention, and inspiration. The Southern Dynasties’ writers valued diction but were weak in reason; our [Sòng] dynasty’s writers value reason but are weak in intention-and-inspiration; the Táng writers valued intention-and-inspiration with reason inhering in them; the HànWèi poets had diction, reason, intention, and inspiration with no trace one could pursue” (Wilkinson p. ~27506) — as the kernel of Yán’s whole programme.

The Cānglàng’s influence on MíngQīng poetics is incalculable. Yán’s miàowù doctrine, his ShèngTáng canon, and the antelope-hangs-its-horns formula were taken up by Hú Yīnglín 胡應麟 (1551–1602; Shī sōu 詩藪), Wáng Shìzhēn 王世貞 (1526–1590), and (after a long Qīng kǎozhèng attack typified by Féng Bān’s Yánshì jiūmiù and Qián Mùzhāi’s 錢謙益 derision) re-canonized by Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎 (1634–1711) in the Shényùn 神韻 school. The work was already controversial within the Sòng itself: Yán’s contemporary Liú Kèzhuāng 劉克莊 critiques aspects of it in the Hòucūn shīhuà (KR4i0037), and Wèi Qìngzhī 魏慶之 cites it extensively in the Shīrén yùxiè (KR4i0036) under the rubric “Cānglàng yún” 滄浪云. The Qiánlóng Sìkù tíyào (above) is itself a careful, ambivalent defense — granting the philosophical importance of the book while attacking its Chán framing.

The standard modern critical edition is Guō Shàoyú 郭紹虞, Cānglàng shīhuà jiàoshì 滄浪詩話校釋 (Rénmín wénxué, 1961; rev. 1983) — the indispensable scholarly text, with full apparatus.

Translations and research

  • Stephen Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought (Harvard, 1992), 391–420 — annotated complete English translation of Shī biàn with selections from the other sections and substantial critical commentary.
  • Richard John Lynn, “Orthodoxy and Enlightenment: Wáng Shìzhēn’s Theory of Poetry and its Antecedents,” in W. Theodore de Bary, ed., The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism (Columbia UP, 1975), 217–270 — traces the Cānglàng’s reception by the Qīng Shén-yùn school, with extensive translation.
  • Richard John Lynn, “The Talent–Learning Polarity in Chinese Poetics: Yan Yu and the Later Tradition,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 5 (1983): 157–84.
  • Günther Debon, Tʻs’ang-lang’s Gespräche über die Dichtung: ein Beitrag zur chinesischen Poetik (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1962) — complete German translation with commentary.
  • Guō Shàoyú 郭紹虞, Cānglàng shīhuà jiào-shì 滄浪詩話校釋 (Rénmín wénxué, 1961; rev. 1983) — the standard modern Chinese critical edition.
  • Chén Bóhǎi 陳伯海, Yán Yǔ hé Cānglàng shīhuà 嚴羽和滄浪詩話 (Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1980).
  • Cài Jìnxiáng 蔡鎮楚, Cānglàng shīhuà tàn-yuán 滄浪詩話探源 (Húnán jiào-yù, 1985).
  • Owen, Stephen, “The Cultural Tang (650–1020),” in Kang-i Sun Chang and Stephen Owen, eds., The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature (Cambridge, 2010), vol. 1 — situates the Cānglàng’s Táng-periodization in long perspective.
  • Féng Bān 馮班 (1602–1671), Yán-shì jiū-miù 嚴氏糾繆 (in Dùnyín zá-lù 鈍吟雜錄) — the principal Qīng critique.

Other points of interest

The Chán-poetry analogy — Lùn shī rú lùn Chán 論詩如論禪 — is the most contested element of the book. Qiánlóng’s own preface to the WYG edition strongly attacks it as ahistorical (since Bodhidharma’s Chán post-dates the Shūjīng’s “shī yán zhì”). The doctrine of miàowù 妙悟 (“marvellous awakening”) and the famous similes — língyáng guàjiǎo, wújì kěqiú 羚羊挂角無迹可求 and shuǐzhōng zhī yuè, jìngzhōng zhī xiàng 水中之月鏡中之象 — became the touchstones of Míng–Qīng poetic criticism and remained essential to the Shényùn school. The Cānglàng’s sharp downgrading of Sòng poetry as merely yìlùn wéi shī 議論為詩 (poetry written as argument) initiated a long-running debate about Sòng-versus-Táng poetic value that has continued into the modern Chinese literary academy. Mention should also be made of Yán’s typology in Shī fǎ of the jiǔ pǐn 九品 — gāo, gǔ, shēn, yuǎn, cháng, xiónghún, piāoyì, bēizhuàng, qīwǎn — which influenced Sīkōng Tú’s heir-tradition through the Èrshísì shī pǐn 二十四詩品.

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