Jīngxī línxià ǒután 荊溪林下偶談
Casual Talks beneath the Trees at Jīngxī by 吳子良 (撰)
About the work
The Jīngxī línxià ǒután 荊溪林下偶談, in four juǎn (reduced from an earlier eight by the Míng editor Yáo Shìlín 姚士粦), is a shīhuà-cum-essay collection by Wú Zǐliáng 吳子良 (zì Míngfǔ 明輔, hào Jīngxī 荊溪, jìnshì 1226), a Línhǎi 臨海 disciple of the great Yǒngjiā-school 永嘉學派 philosopher Yè Shì 葉適 (Shuǐxīn 水心, 1150–1223). The book is anomalous within Sòng shīhuà in two respects. First, its main interest is prose criticism — lùn wén 論文 — rather than poetry. Second, it has a strong school affiliation: every page betrays Wú’s loyalty to Yè Shì, whose prefaces, epitaphs, and colophons it cites and defends in detail. The book is a key document of the philosophical climate of late-Sòng Yǒngjiā at the moment when Yè Shì’s gōnglì 功利 (“utility-statecraft”) tradition had begun to flow into the literary field via Yè’s literary heirs Wú Zǐliáng and Chén Qíqīng 陳耆卿. The conventional date 1226 (catalog meta) reflects the year of Wú’s jìnshì and the apparent terminus of major composition, though parts of the work post-date Yè Shì’s death (1223) and reflect a long meditation on Yè’s late, self-correcting opinions about the Late-Táng influence in Sòng poetry.
Tiyao
Jīngxī línxià ǒután, in four juǎn. The author’s name is not given on the title. From the item discussing “those who love to slander in prose” (好罵) we learn that his surname was Wú; the book repeatedly elevates Yè Shì 葉適 [Shuǐxīn]. Yáo Shìlín’s 姚士粦 colophon — checking against the Shuǐxīn jí 水心集 — found only the six verses of “jíshì jiān xiè Wú Mínbiǎo Xuānyì” 即事兼謝吳民表宣義 and the letter “Dā Wú Míngfǔ” 答吳明輔; he could not be sure these were the same man. The Yuán anonymous Nánxī shīhuà 南溪詩話 cites this book once as “Wú Zǐliáng Jīngxī línxià ǒután”. Chén Lì’s 陳櫟 Qínyǒutáng suílù 勤有堂隨錄 says: “Chén Yúnchuāng’s [筠窗] name was Qíqīng 耆卿, zì Shòulǎo 壽老. Wú Jīngxī’s name was Zǐliáng 子良, zì Míngfǔ 明輔. Both took Shuǐxīn as their model for prose.” Thus this book is unambiguously by Zǐliáng. Zǐliáng was a native of Línhǎi 臨海, jìnshì of Bǎoqìng 2 (1226); he rose to Fiscal Intendant of Húnán and Vice-Director of the Court of the Imperial Treasury. His separate Jīngxī jí is now lost; only the single quatrain on the sunflower is preserved in Chén Jǐngyí’s 陳景沂 Quánfāng bèizǔ qiánjí 全芳備祖前集. This book consists entirely of his remarks on poetry and prose, many of them quite precise. His record of Yè Shì’s epitaph for Xú Dàohuī 徐道暉, his preface for Wáng Mùshū 王本叔’s poetry, and his colophon to Liú Qiánfū 劉潛夫 [= Liú Kèzhuāng]‘s poetry — all carry Yè’s late self-corrective opinions repudiating the Late-Táng manner, and Wú gathers them all carefully. His critical insight is far above the run of his contemporaries. The old recension had eight juǎn; this one has only four, and this is probably Yáo Shìlín’s collapsing of the original. (Imperial editorial colophon, Qiánlóng 46 / 1781.)
Abstract
Wú Zǐliáng’s book is one of the most theoretically engaged of the late-Sòng shīhuà. The principal subject is Yè Shì’s poetics — Yè was at once the most consequential Yǒngjiā philosopher of his generation and a leading critic of the Sìlíng 四靈 (Yǒngjiā Four-Spirits) school of late-Sòng Late-Táng imitators (Xú Zhào 徐照, Xú Jī 徐璣, Wēng Juàn 翁卷, Zhào Shīxiù 趙師秀). Yè’s surviving critical writings — especially the prefaces and epitaphs that Wú quotes — show that toward the end of his life he came to regret his earlier patronage of the Sìlíng and to reject the Late-Táng template they had popularized. Wú’s distinctive contribution is to gather these scattered Yè Shì self-corrections and weld them into a coherent critical position: Late-Táng affectation is to be rejected; the prose model is the Han-Wei-Six Dynasties classical tradition received through Yè Shì’s reading of the LǎoZhuāng and the Shǐjì; in poetry, the model should be the early-Táng and ShèngTáng but without the Chán-flavored mysticism of Yán Yǔ 嚴羽’s Cānglàng KR4i0035 (which Wú does not name but with which his Yǒngjiā position is implicitly at odds).
The four-juǎn form is, as the Sìkù editors note, almost certainly a Míng abridgement of an original eight-juǎn recension by Yáo Shìlín 姚士粦 (1559–c. 1641). The pre-Sìkù transmission is fragmentary: the work is cited by name once in the Yuán anonymous Nánxī shīhuà and once in Chén Lì’s Qínyǒutáng suílù, but otherwise survives chiefly through the Sìkù archival recension. The standard modern editions are in Dīng Fúbǎo’s Lìdài shīhuà xùbiān and Wú Wénzhì’s Sòng shīhuà quánbiān.
Translations and research
- Dīng Fúbǎo 丁福保, ed., Lì-dài shī-huà xù-biān 歷代詩話續編 (1916; Zhōnghuá repr. 1983).
- Wú Wén-zhì 吳文治, ed., Sòng shīhuà quán-biān 宋詩話全編, vol. 9 (Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1998).
- Zhōu Mèngjiāng 周夢江, Yè Shì yǔ Yǒngjiā xué-pài 葉適與永嘉學派 (Zhèjiāng gǔjí, 1992) — situates Wú Zǐliáng as a literary heir of Yè Shì.
- Hilde De Weerdt, Competition over Content: Negotiating Standards for the Civil Service Examinations in Imperial China (1127–1276) (Harvard Asia Center, 2007) — context for the late-Sòng Yǒngjiā school’s interest in gǔwén.
- No substantial monograph dedicated specifically to the Jīngxī lín-xià ǒu-tán located.
Other points of interest
The book is the principal late-Sòng witness to Yè Shì’s mature critical opinions, several of which are otherwise preserved only as scattered fragments. Wú Zǐliáng’s defense of Yè Shì’s late repudiation of his own earlier patronage of the Yǒngjiā Sìlíng — the four Late-Táng-imitating poets of Wēnzhōu whom Yè had once promoted — is a central case-study of late-Sòng critical self-correction. Wú’s Jīngxī jí is otherwise lost; his only surviving original verse is the single sunflower quatrain in Quánfāng bèizǔ qiánjí KR3l0014.
Links
- Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
- Wikidata: no entry.