草堂詩話

Cǎotáng shīhuà 草堂詩話

Poetry Talks from the Thatched Hut by 蔡夢弼 (撰)

About the work

The Cǎotáng shīhuà 草堂詩話, in two juǎn, is the first surviving Chinese shīhuà devoted entirely to a single poet — Dù Fǔ 杜甫 (712–770). The title refers to Dù Fǔ’s residence in Chéngdū during his Shǔ years (759–765), and is the same name borne by the great Sòng Dù Fǔ commentary of the same author Cài Mèngbì 蔡夢弼 of Jiàn’ān 建安, the Dùgōngbù cǎotáng shījiān 杜工部草堂詩箋 (50 juǎn, completed in Jiātài 嘉泰 1201–1204; long lost in China, partially preserved in Japan). The shīhuà gathers two hundred and more items of Sòng critical commentary on individual Dù Fǔ poems and on Dù Fǔ as poet, drawing chiefly on the Yùnyǔ yángqiū 韻語陽秋 of Gě Lìfāng 葛立方 (KR4i0028) but also on the Lěngzhāi yèhuà 冷齋夜話 of Huìhóng 惠洪, the Hòushān shīhuà of Chén Shīdào KR4i0009, the Tiáoxī yúyǐn cónghuà of Hú Zǐ KR4i0024, and many of the smaller Northern-Sòng shīhuà. The opening rubric of the work is “Míngrú jiāhuà” 名儒嘉話 (“good remarks of distinguished Confucians”) — establishing the canonical-Confucian framing of Dù-Fǔ-as-shīshèng that would dominate the next four centuries of DùFǔ commentary. The book is the earliest surviving Sòng monograph on Dù Fǔ criticism (the related Shīpìn 老杜詩評 of Fāng Dàoshēn 方道深 and of Fāng Dàochún 方道醇 and 方銓 are all lost) and as such is a primary source for the formation of the DùFǔ canon.

Tiyao

Cǎotáng shīhuà, in two juǎn, by Cài Mèngbì of Jiàn’ān, Sòng. The opening title is “Míngrú jiāhuà” 名儒嘉話; the book has more than two hundred items. Mèngbì had also written the Dùgōngbù cǎotáng shījiān; the latter has long been lost, only this work surviving. The Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì records “Fāng Dàochún 方道醇, Jí zhūjiā LǎoDù shīpíng 集諸家老杜詩評, five juǎn” and “Fāng Quán 方銓, Xù LǎoDù shīpíng 續老杜詩評, five juǎn”; Chén Zhènsūn’s 陳振孫 Shūlù jiětí 書錄解題 records “Pútián Fāng Dàoshēn 莆田方道深, Jí zhūjiā LǎoDù shīpíng 集諸家老杜詩評, one juǎn” plus a continuation in one juǎn; it also records a Dù shī fāhuī 杜詩發揮 in one juǎn. Only Fāng Dàoshēn’s book is now visible — in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典; the rest do not survive. But Fāng Dàoshēn’s book is fragmentary and miscellaneous and cannot be drawn on; not as good as this book in its detail and completeness. Recent Dù-commentaries cite this book at most a dozen times each — clearly none of them has seen the full text. This recension was held by Huì Dòng 惠棟 of Wúxiàn 吳縣 — a rare survival in any case. The old recension binds together with the Dùgōngbù niánpǔ 杜工部年譜 of Lǔ Yīn 魯訔 and Zhào Zilì 趙子櫟, with Lǔ Yīn’s single preface at the head of this work — because the book includes a colophon by Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎, earlier than Mèngbì, the editor ordered them so. Lǔ’s and Zhào’s two niánpǔ are now entered separately in the biographical category. We have moved Lǔ Yīn’s preface back to the head of the niánpǔ to restore the original order, and no longer carry it in front of this book. (Imperial editorial colophon, Qiánlóng 43 / 1778.)

Abstract

Cài Mèngbì’s two works on Dù Fǔ — the Dùgōngbù cǎotáng shījiān (a fifty-juǎn variorum poetic commentary, completed in the Jiātài reign and published with prefaces dated Jiātài 4 / 1204) and the Cǎotáng shīhuà (the present two-juǎn compilation of critical remarks) — are companion volumes. The shījiān is the line-by-line commentary; the shīhuà is the prefatory and synthetic critical statement, drawing together the verdicts of two centuries of Northern and Southern Sòng readers on what Dù Fǔ achieved as a poet. The dating of the shīhuà (notBefore 1200, notAfter 1210) follows the dating of the parent shījiān; the shīhuà could not have been completed appreciably earlier than the shījiān, and Cài was no longer publishing after the first decade of the thirteenth century.

The book is a treasury of Sòng DùFǔ criticism, organized as a thematic anthology rather than poem-by-poem. The Sìkù editors note that Cài drew most heavily on Gě Lìfāng’s Yùnyǔ yángqiū 韻語陽秋 (KR4i0028), which Gě had completed in Shàoxīng 17 (1147). Substantial passages are also drawn from the Lěngzhāi yèhuà of Huìhóng, Hú Zǐ’s Tiáoxī yúyǐn cónghuà, the Hòushān shīhuà of Chén Shīdào, the Yúyǐn cónghuà of Hé Wèn 何汶, the Èrlǎotáng shīhuà of Zhōu Bìdà (KR4i0032), and the Shīhuà zǒngguī of Ruǎn Yuè (KR4i0012). Cài’s editorial method is to set comparable judgements side by side and arrange by topic — Dù Fǔ as historian-of-the-times (shīshǐ 詩史), Dù Fǔ as ethical poet (yīfàn wèicháng wàngjūn 一飯未嘗忘君, “never a meal did he forget his ruler”), Dù Fǔ’s metrical innovations (the SānLǐ 三吏 and SānBié 三別), Dù Fǔ’s late Kuízhōu 夔州 verse, Dù Fǔ in comparison with Mèngzǐ (LǎoDù sì Mèngzǐ 老杜似孟子). The result is the most concentrated and the most theoretically aware Sòng critical statement on Dù Fǔ; the modern DùFǔ critical tradition through the Yuán, Míng, and Qīng owes its main interpretive categories to this book and to Gě Lìfāng’s parent Yùnyǔ yángqiū.

Transmission of the Cǎotáng shīhuà is fragile. The Sòng impression is lost; the Sìkù editors recovered the text from a manuscript copy in the Huì Dòng 惠棟 (1697–1758) collection in Wúxiàn. The opening of the Sìkù recension preserves the original framing rubric “Míngrú jiāhuà” 名儒嘉話 and the Sìkù editors’ adjudication of the old binding-order with Lǔ Yīn’s and Zhào Zilì’s two DùFǔ niánpǔ. The standard modern critical edition is Wú Wénzhì 吳文治, Sòng shīhuà quánbiān 宋詩話全編, vol. 6 (1998), and Sūn Wēi 孫微, Qīngdài Dùshī xué shǐ 清代杜詩學史 (QíLǔ shūshè, 2004) contains the most detailed modern bibliographic discussion. The lost Dùgōngbù cǎotáng shījiān is the most consequential text-philological complement; partial Sòng impressions of the shījiān survive in Japanese collections (the Sūnyīn ed., the Yǐsùmiào sukke-mai ed.) and were the basis of the 1962 Zhōnghuá reprint.

Translations and research

• Wú Wén-zhì 吳文治, ed., Sòng shīhuà quán-biān 宋詩話全編, vol. 6 (Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1998).
• Dīng Fúbǎo 丁福保, ed., Lì-dài shī-huà xù-biān 歷代詩話續編 (1916; Zhōnghuá repr. 1983).
• Sūn Wēi 孫微, Qīng-dài Dù-shī xué shǐ 清代杜詩學史 (Qí-Lǔ shū-shè, 2004) — covers the reception of the Cǎo-táng shīhuà in Qing Dù-Fǔ studies.
• Zhōu Cǎiquán 周采泉, Dù jí shū-lù 杜集書錄 (Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1986) — the standard bibliography of Dù-Fǔ commentaries, with extensive section on Cài Mèngbì.
• Eva Shan Chou, Reconsidering Tu Fu: Literary Greatness and Cultural Context (Cambridge UP, 1995) — uses the Sòng-Cài commentary tradition as foundation for the modern critical reception.
• Stephen Owen, tr., The Poetry of Du Fu (De Gruyter, 2016) — the complete English translation; consults Cài’s shī-jiān throughout.
• David R. McCraw, Du Fu’s Laments from the South (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1992) — uses Cài’s commentary tradition.

Other points of interest

The pairing of the shīhuà with the shījiān — a one-author critical commentary paired with a one-author monographic shīhuà — is itself novel; Cài Mèngbì invented the format, which is the model for all later Chinese single-author shīhuà (Hú Zhènhēng’s 胡震亨 Tang-yīn guīqiān 唐音癸籤 partly, then Qián Mùzhāi’s LǎoXuéān bǐjì 老學庵筆記 sections on Dù Fǔ, and many more). The shīhuà’s opening framing rubric “Míngrú jiāhuà” 名儒嘉話 — explicitly placing Dù Fǔ’s reception in the orbit of the Sòng míngrú (distinguished Confucians) rather than the literati at large — is one of the clearest statements anywhere of the late-Sòng moralisation of Dù Fǔ as shīshèng (poet-sage).

Links

• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Wikipedia 蔡夢弼
• Wikidata: no firm entry.