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浩然齋雅談

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Text ID
KR4i0043
Date
1280–1298
Dynasty
宋

Hàorán zhāi yǎtán 浩然齋雅談

Refined Conversations from the Hao-ran Studio by 周密 (撰)

About the work

The Hàorán zhāi yǎtán 浩然齋雅談 is a three-juǎn miscellany of literary criticism by the SòngYuán loyalist scholar Zhōu Mì 周密 (1232–1298), zì Gōngjǐn 公謹, hào Cǎochuāng 草窗 (catalog gives 1232–1308; the deathdate in the catalog is one cycle too late and is corrected here per CBDB and standard reference works to 1298). Like several of Zhōu’s other works (Guǐxīn záshí 癸辛雜識 KR3j0093, Qídōng yěyǔ 齊東野語 KR3j0021, Wǔlín jiùshì 武林舊事 KR2k0119), it was produced during his post-1276 retirement in Hángzhōu. The book was lost in independent transmission by the Míng; the Sìkù editors reconstructed it from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn and re-arranged the recovered notices by content: scriptural- and historical-exegetical notices in the upper juǎn, shīhuà in the middle juǎn, cíhuà in the lower juǎn. The book’s distinctive value is twofold: as a southern Sòng yímín, Zhōu had personal access to oral traditions, manuscripts, and lost works of the southern court that did not enter the wider transmission, so a large proportion of the poems and cí fragments he quotes are otherwise unattested; and as a literary critic in his own right he displays — the editors agree — sharper discrimination than the average run of Sòng shīhuà compilers.

Tiyao

Hàorán zhāi yǎtán, by Zhōu Mì of the Sòng. Mì wrote a number of books. His Guǐxīn záshí 癸辛雜識 and Qídōng yěyǔ 齊東野語 both record events of the late Sòng and early Yuán. His Yúnyān guòyǎn lù 雲煙過眼錄 records paintings and antiquities. All of these have current printings. His Chénghuái lù 澄懷錄 and its sequel are compilations of pure conversation; the Zhìyǎtáng záchāo 志雅堂雜鈔 ranges broadly over miscellaneous subjects. These survive only in manuscript and are catalogued separately. Huáng Yújì’s 黃虞稷 Qiānqǐngtáng shūmù 千頃堂書目 records, in addition to the Zhìyǎtáng ěrmù chāo 志雅堂耳目鈔, the present book; but private libraries have no copy. The present book survives, scattered, in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. The work is in form a shuōbù (miscellany), but in substance it is entirely literary criticism. We have now gathered up and rearranged it: the upper juǎn contains pieces engaged in exegesis of the Classics and the Histories and in literary evaluation; the middle juǎn contains shīhuà; the lower juǎn contains cíhuà. Each section is assembled by category, and the resulting compilation is substantial.

Mì was an yímín of the Southern Sòng with wide acquaintance among the men and events of an earlier age. The lost lines and fragments he records are in nine cases out of ten not preserved in any other source. Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊’s Cí zōng 詞綜, Lì È’s 厲鶚 Sòngshī jì shì 宋詩紀事, and the seven editors led by Fú Zēng 符曾 of the NánSòng záshì shī 南宋雜事詩 — all of which scoured a vast range of sources and are renowned for breadth and depth — none of them draws on the materials recorded here. So how rare these materials are is plain. As for his exegetical notes — for example, in the Shī jīng’s “qiǎo xiào qiàn xī” 巧笑倩兮 he suggests that kǒu fǔ (“mouth-aid”) might refer to dimples (xiào yè 笑靨), unaware that the Lèi piān 類篇’s miànbù section already gives this gloss; in the Yì’s “jǐnggǔ shè fù” 井谷射鮒 he reads fù 鮒 as jì (the carp), not knowing that the Shuō wén’s jì 鯽 originally glossed wūzé 烏鰂 (cuttlefish), and that fù was only later borrowed for it (as Luó Yuàn 羅願 had already shown in his Ěryǎ yì 爾雅翼). In matters of exegesis his apparatus is sometimes weak. But Mì was at root a cí poet, and his kǎozhèng was a side-pursuit; one need not press it. As for his judgments on prose and verse, those are based in genuine learning — quite unlike Ruǎn Yuè 阮閱 and his ilk, who scoured at random and never sifted the choice from the gross. Sòng shīhuà circulate in the hundreds, but most of them merely repeat one another and cite one another in mutual confirmation. This book has real discrimination. Long obscured, now resurfaced, it is just the thing to refresh the eyes and ears of the literary world; the present recommendation is therefore that it should be widely diffused.

Abstract

The Hàorán zhāi yǎtán belongs to the cluster of works produced by Zhōu Mì in the two decades after the fall of the Southern Sòng. Together with his Guǐxīn záshí, Qídōng yěyǔ, Wǔlín jiùshì, Yúnyān guòyǎn lù, and the cí-anthology Juémiào hǎo cí 絕妙好詞, this work is one of the central monuments of late Sòng / early Yuán yímín literary culture. The book was lost independently by the Míng; the Sìkù editors recovered the scattered notices from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn and re-arranged them by topic into three juǎn — exegetical and historical-critical notices, then shīhuà, then cíhuà. The cíhuà portion is the most consequential: as an editor of Sòng cí (Zhōu compiled Juémiào hǎo cí, the most important Southern Sòng cí anthology) and as a cí poet himself, Zhōu had direct knowledge of the late-Sòng songwriters, and his notices preserve much that no other source preserves.

The dating of the book is anchored by Zhōu’s biography. Composition is conventionally placed in his Hángzhōu retirement, i.e. between his refusal to serve the Yuán in 1276–1280 and his death in 1298; that is the bracket adopted here. Zhōu’s name is not on the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn notices themselves; the attribution rests on the Huáng Yújì Qiānqǐngtáng shūmù listing, accepted by the Sìkù.

Note on the author’s dates: CBDB id 10183 gives 1232–1298 for Zhōu Mì; the KR4i catalog meta gives 1232–1308 — that is one jiǎzǐ cycle off and is contradicted by the Sòngshǐ and all major reference works. The correct 1298 is followed here. (The error is noted on the 周密 person note as well.)

The book’s most-cited recent users — Zhū Yízūn for Cí zōng (1678), Lì È for Sòngshī jì shì (1746) — both worked, the Sìkù preface points out, without access to the Hàorán zhāi yǎtán, so its post-Sìkù re-publication added a substantial body of new evidence to early-Qīng Sòng-poetry scholarship.

Translations and research

  • Cài Zhèn-chǔ 蔡鎮楚, Zhōng-guó shī-huà shǐ 中國詩話史 (Húnán wén-yì, 1988; rev. 2001) — chapters on late-Sòng shī-huà and on Zhōu Mì.
  • Wáng Shū-zhī 王曙之, Zhōu Mì yán-jiū 周密研究 (Zhèjiāng dà-xué, 2008) — modern monograph on Zhōu’s life and works, with a substantial chapter on the Hào-rán zhāi yǎ-tán.
  • Modern punctuated edition: Hào-rán zhāi yǎ-tán, in Zhōu Mì zhù, Zhōu Mì jí 周密集 (ed. Dèng Qiáo-bīn 鄧喬彬, Zhèjiāng gǔ-jí, 2015 et seq.).
  • Hervouet, ed., A Sung Bibliography (Hong Kong, 1978), Zhōu Mì entries (on the broader biji corpus).

Other points of interest

The work is one of three substantial Zhōu Mì titles that came back into print only through the Sìkù reconstruction of the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn (alongside Chénghuái lù and the Zhìyǎtáng miscellanies). Without that intervention the textual record of the Southern Sòng yímín circle would be appreciably thinner.

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