懷麓堂詩話

Huáilù táng shīhuà 懷麓堂詩話

Remarks on Poetry from the Hall of Embracing the Foothills by 李東陽 (撰)

About the work

The Huáilù táng shīhuà 懷麓堂詩話, in one juǎn, is the principal poetic-theoretical statement of Lǐ Dōngyáng 李東陽 (1447–1516), Mid-Míng Grand Secretary and leading voice of the Chálíng 茶陵 poetic school. The title is taken from Lǐ’s studio name, “Huáilù” (literally “embracing the foothills [of Yuèlù 嶽麓 mountain]”). The work consists of unnumbered short critical entries — anecdotes, judgments on individual lines, and statements of poetic doctrine — concerned chiefly with two themes: (i) tonal-prosodic regulation (fǎdù yīndiào 法度音調), and (ii) the rejection of piāoqiè mónǐ 剽竊摹擬 — plagiaristic mimicry of Táng models. Lǐ’s position, as the Sìkù editors note, sat between the early-Míng Táigé 臺閣 style and the rising “Former Seven Masters” (前七子 Qiánqīzǐ): he both prepared the ground for Lǐ Mèngyáng 李夢陽 and Hé Jǐngmíng 何景明’s Archaist programme and was its first victim, since their critique of yàngǔ 贋古 (“fake-archaism”) landed squarely on Lǐ’s own gǔ yuèfǔ compositions. The work is therefore central evidence for the transition from the Táigé to the Qiánqīzǐ sensibility in early-Míng shīhuà.

Tiyao

Huáilù táng shīhuà, one juǎn. By Lǐ Dōngyáng of the Míng. Dōngyáng’s Dōngsì lù 東祀録 (KR2k0151) is already catalogued. Before Lǐ and Hé emerged, Dōngyáng was in fact the senior figure of the Táigé presiding over literary authority. His discussion of poetry stresses fǎdù (regulation) and yīndiào (tonal mode), and inveighs strongly against the vice of plagiaristic mimicry. The men of his day held him as their master. When Lǐ and Hé came forward, the style began to change; but the disease of fake-archaism was precisely what Dōngyáng had reproved, so posterity has on the whole disparaged the latter and praised the former. The discussions in this collection generally hit the meaning of the ancients; though the sānmèi of the poet’s craft is not fully on display here, they are also the deeply-felt words of a man who knows the bitter and the sweet of it.

Yáo Xīmèng 姚希孟’s Sōngyǐng jí 松癭集 carries a colophon to this book saying: Lǐ Chángshā’s poetry takes balance-and-stability for its ruling principle, and the Yǎnzhōu (Wáng Shìzhēn 王世貞) mocked his archaic yuèfǔ as resembling a primary-school history chrestomathy; yet his discussions of poetry are quite eager and savoury — at that time the gentlemen of the literary forest mostly took poetry as their business, and the volume records how Péng Mínwàng 彭民望, Xiè Fāngshí 謝方石 and others traded judgments with him with great frankness, so that reading it one can still see the fēngzhì of the elders. Examining the wording, his (Yáo’s) view is not quite favourable to Dōngyáng. But when Wáng Shìzhēn lambasted Xīyá’s yuèfǔ, it was in his young man’s hot-blooded years; in his old age, in the colophon to Xīyá yuèfǔ, he himself recanted his earlier verdict. Xīmèng’s citation therefore does not carry enough weight. Only Dōngyáng’s habit of indulgently praising his son Zhàoxiān 兆先 — a touch of the Wáng Fúzhì 王福畤 ailment (the Táng father who shamelessly puffed his own children) — is the one blemish.

Lín Xuàn 林炫’s Zhīyán yú lù 巵言餘錄 says: in the Chénghuà period (1465–1487), Xià Hóng 夏宏 of Gūshú 姑熟 made a centonist’s collection, the Liánjǐn jí 聯錦集. The Huáilù táng shīhuà records the lines “kè zuì yǐ wú yán, qiū qióng zì xiāng yǔ” — “the guest is drunk and silent now; only the autumn cricket murmurs to itself” — as Gāo Jìdí 高季迪 (Gāo Qǐ)‘s lines, and accuses Hóng of having fabricated the attribution under others’ names. Today the Liánjǐn jí is not extant; but Lín Xuàn and Lǐ Dōngyáng were both Zhèng-dé-era men, and the text they saw should not have differed — possibly Dōngyáng simply mis-remembered.

Lately Bàoshì 鮑氏 (Bào Tíngbó 鮑廷博)‘s Zhībùzú zhāi 知不足齋 edition of this work has printed a note below Pǔ Yuán 浦源’s “Yún biān lù rào Bā shān sè, shù lǐ hé liú Hàn shuǐ shēng” couplet, saying: Sòngshī jìshì (presumably KR4i0062) treats these two lines as a ghost-poem. Today, examining the Sòngshī jìshì’s wording, the lines attributed to Wú Jiǎn 呉簡 are indeed identical (with one or two characters slightly different) — but Lì È 厲鶚’s source there is the Jīngmén jì lüè 荆門紀畧, a book by Hú Zuòbǐng 胡作柄 of the Kāngxī 戊戌–己亥 years (1718–19), full of trivial and groundless miscellany, hardly to be set against Dōngyáng’s word; besides, the same Pǔ Yuán anecdote also appears in Dū Mù 都穆’s Nánháo shīhuà 南濠詩話, so it must rest on a real source. How does one know that the Jīngmén jì lüè did not on the contrary pick up Yuán’s couplet and fabricate it into a ghost-poem? — One should not trust new gossip so lightly that one straightway doubts the old records. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 46, 9th month (1781). Director-General Compilers: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Director-General Collator: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Huáilù táng shīhuà is the central document of Mid-Míng poetics and the prose counterpart to Lǐ Dōngyáng’s poetic collection Huáilù táng jí 懷麓堂集 (KR4d0179). Its core doctrine is twofold. First, fǎdù yīndiào — poetry, qua one of the six arts, is essentially musical, and the test of a poem is whether its tonal-prosodic regulation harmonizes the natural pitches of speech (rén shēng hé) into a properly modulated whole. Second, lǎocōng yúnwěn 老成勻穩 (mature balance, even cadence) — Lǐ’s positive ideal: a poet should aim for yì yuǎn (distant intent) and dàn (plain flavour) rather than nóng (rich congestion), should avoid the late-Táng vice of ǎirén kàn chǎng 矮人看場 (the dwarf craning at the show, i.e. derivative judgment), and above all should reject piāoqiè mónǐ — the mechanical lifting of Táng diction that the Táigé poets had begun to slip into and that Lǐ Mèngyáng and Hé Jǐngmíng would later turn into doctrine. The work is, in this respect, the earliest substantial Míng shīhuà to put tonal-prosody (shēngdiào 聲調) at the centre of poetic theory — a thread that runs through the MíngQīng shīhuà tradition (the Shēngdiào pǔ of Zhào Zhíxìn 趙執信, KR4i0060, and the Tánlóng lù of the same author, KR4i0061, are its direct continuators) and culminates in Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎’s KR4i0058 shényùn 神韻 theory.

The composition window is the last fifteen-odd years of Lǐ’s life. The book postdates his major Táigé work (after his elevation to Senior Grand Secretary in 1505 he had little time to compose) and is universally treated as the fruit of his late years; the citation of Pǔ Yuán’s couplet — Pǔ Yuán being a Hóng-zhì-era figure — and the mature tone confirm a late-Hóng-zhì or early-Zhèng-dé composition. The bracket 1500–1516 is the standard scholarly judgment.

Transmission. Two recensions are critical: (a) the Sìkù one-juǎn recension catalogued here (V1482.7), based on a Míng print; (b) the Zhībùzú zhāi 知不足齋 edition by Bào Tíngbó (late Qiánlóng), which the Sìkù editors discuss in their tíyào. A separate Zhèng-dé-era manuscript circulated under the variant title Huáilù táng shīhuà jiǎnmǐ 懷麓堂詩話揀蜜 with slightly different sequencing.

Translations and research

• Daniel Bryant, “Li Tung-yang’s Theory of Poetry”, Bulletin of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy (Academia Sinica) 6 (1995): 137–168 — the principal English-language study of Lǐ’s shī-huà, with extensive translation.
• Owen, Stephen. Readings in Chinese Literary Thought. Harvard University Press, 1992 — pages on Lǐ Dōng-yáng’s shī-huà in the context of Míng-Qīng critical history.
• Lǐ Qìng-lì 李慶立 and Sūn Shēn-quán 孫慎權, Huái-lù táng shī-huà jiào-shì 懷麓堂詩話校釋. Bĕijīng: Rénmín wénxué, 2009. The standard critical edition, with collation against the Bào Tíng-bó recension and full annotation.
• Liào Kě-bīn 廖可斌, Míng-dài wén-xué fù-gǔ yùn-dòng yán-jiū 明代文學復古運動研究. Bĕijīng: Shāngwù, 2008. Treats Lǐ Dōng-yáng as the transitional figure between Tái-gé and Qián-qī-zǐ.
• Zhōu Mǐn-jié 周敏傑, Lǐ Dōng-yáng yán-jiū 李東陽研究. Shàng-hǎi: Shàng-hǎi gǔ-jí, 2005.

Other points of interest

The tíyào makes the work’s reception-history unusually transparent: Yáo Xīmèng of the late Míng disparaged it; Wáng Shìzhēn of the Hòuqīzǐ generation mocked Lǐ’s archaic yuèfǔ in youth and recanted in old age; the Sìkù editors of 1781 defend Lǐ against Lì È’s Sòngshī jìshì (KR4i0062) and Hú Zuòbǐng’s Jīngmén jì lüè. This four-stage reception arc is itself a miniature history of late-Míng and Qīng poetic taste.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §27 (literary criticism), §41.5 (Míng literary biography).
• Wikidata Q11108580 (懷麓堂詩話).
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào