詩話補遺

Shīhuà bǔyí 詩話補遺

Supplementary Remarks on Poetry (to the Shēng’ān shī-huà) by 楊愼 (撰)

About the work

The Shīhuà bǔyí 詩話補遺, in three juǎn, is the supplementary shīhuà of Yáng Shèn 楊愼 (1488–1559), composed during his long exile in Yúnnán (1524–1559) and edited posthumously by his disciple Cáo Mìng 曹命. It is the companion to Yáng’s larger and earlier Shēng’ān shīhuà 升庵詩話 (the foundational text, which his disciple Yáng Dázhī 楊達之 had had printed during the master’s lifetime). Together the two works form the most substantial Míng shīhuà corpus by a single author. Where the Shēng’ān shīhuà is the primary monument of Yáng’s poetic criticism, the Bǔyí gathers material accumulated after the first compilation: judgments of individual lines, philological clarifications, anecdotes about Táng and Sòng poets, and Yáng’s characteristic display of remembered erudition.

The work’s special interest lies in the conditions of its composition. As the Sìkù editors note, “Shèn was at his place of exile with no books or files to consult, and wrote everything from his belly’s library (fùsì 腹笥).” This makes the Bǔyí simultaneously a witness to Yáng’s prodigious memory — the largest of any Míng bóxué scholar — and a source of errors which the Sìkù editors enumerate (mis-attributions, garbled quotations, geographical confusions). The editors’ final verdict is balanced: “his comprehensive learning is still beyond all other Míng writers — discard the flaws and keep the jade, the gatherable matter is in no way scant.”

Tiyao

Shīhuà bǔyí, three juǎn. By Yáng Shèn of the Míng. Shèn’s Tángōng cóngxùn 檀弓叢訓 KR3a0083 and other works are already catalogued. He also composed the Shēng’ān shīhuà, which his disciple Yáng Dázhī printed. The present work is what Shèn wrote after his banishment to Yúnnán, compiled and arranged by his disciple Cáo Mìng. While in exile, Shèn had no books to consult, and his writing depended only on his “belly’s library.” Hence, when he claims that the Sòng edition of Dù Fǔ’s collection has, in the Lìrén xíng 麗人行, the two lines “Zúxià hé suǒ yǒu? Hóngqú luówà chuān dèng yín” — this has already been corrected by earlier critics.

As for his statement that the Bóhǎi and Běihǎi lands (i.e. the Bohai commandery) refer to the modern Hāmì 哈密, Fúyú 扶餘, and the Chinese Cāngzhōu 滄州 and Jǐngzhōu 景州 (both named Bóhǎi) — these were all qiáozhì names (transplanted commandery-names for refugee populations) borrowed in the southerly reign — Shèn does not know that Hāmì lies in the west and Fúyú in the east, and have no relation to each other; while the Cāng/Jǐng region all borders the sea, so it also bears the names Yíngzhōu 瀛州 and Yínghǎi 瀛海, and calling them qiáozhì is entirely contrary to the facts. Again: xiāng yún 香雲 (fragrant cloud) and xiāng yǔ 香雨 (fragrant rain) both originate in Wáng Jiā 王嘉’s Shíyí jì 拾遺記, yet he quotes Lǐ Hè 李賀 and Yuán Zhěn 元稹’s poems for them; he also misreads Lú Xiàng 盧象’s “yún qì yǎo liú shuǐ” line, mistaking qì for xiāng (i.e. 香 / xiāng for 氣 / qì) — citations of this sort are sloppily made.

Yet for comprehensive learning and broad penetration, he is still above all the writers of the Míng. To strip away the flaws and keep the jade — the gatherable matter is in no way scant. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 46, 10th 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 composition window of the Bǔyí coincides with Yáng Shèn’s Yúnnán exile (1524–1559). Yáng had been beaten with court rods and banished in 1524 for his leading role in the Dàlǐ yì 大禮議 protest; he never returned to the capital, even after his sentence had legally expired, and remained in Yúnnán until his death in 1559. The Shēng’ān shīhuà proper was composed and circulated within the first phase of the exile (the disciple Yáng Dázhī’s printing is securely pre-mortem). The Bǔyí gathers material accumulated after that printing — hence the title Bǔyí “Supplementary leftovers” — and was edited into its present three-juǎn form by Cáo Mìng. Whether the final editorial pass postdates Yáng’s death is not certain, but Cáo Mìng’s involvement places it firmly in Yáng’s late exile years.

The peculiar interest of the Bǔyí is the testimony it bears to Yáng Shèn’s working conditions. The remoteness of Yúnnán meant Yáng had no access to the great Sòng-and-Yuán libraries he had used in the capital. The Sìkù editors’ phrase “zhuóshū wéi píng fùsì zhōng” — writing books relying only on his belly’s library — is a famous formulation for the methodological pathology of exile-period scholarship. Yáng’s errors (the spurious “Sòng-edition Dù Fǔ” reading; the geographical conflation of Bóhǎi commandery with Hāmì; the xiāng yún / xiāng yǔ mis-attribution) are diagnostic of working from imperfect memory rather than reference. Yet what the Sìkù editors call his gāibó yuāntōng (comprehensive learning and deep penetration) is, even with these flaws, recognized as exceeding any other Míng shīhuà author.

The work is in three juǎn. Juǎn 1 covers shījīng down through the Six Dynasties and Táng. Juǎn 2 concentrates on Táng poetry (where Yáng’s specialism is greatest). Juǎn 3 covers SòngYuánMíng down to Yáng’s own contemporaries, with substantial material on Sìchuān-local literary history.

Translations and research

• Wáng Dà-hòu 王大厚, ed. Shēng’ān shī-huà xīn jiān-zhèng 升庵詩話新箋證. 3 vols. Bĕijīng: Zhōnghuá, 2008 (cited in Denecke et al., Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature, 2017). The standard critical edition, combining the Shēng’ān shī-huà proper with the Bǔ-yí, fully annotated.
• Wú Wén-zhì 吳文治, ed., Míng shī-huà quán-biān 明詩話全編. Nán-jīng: Jiāng-sū gǔ-jí, 1997 — collected Míng shī-huà.
• Adam Schorr, “Connoisseurship and the Defense against Vulgarity: Yang Shen (1488–1559) and his Work”, Monumenta Serica 41 (1993): 89–128 — the principal English-language study of Yáng’s literary persona, with discussion of the shī-huà.
• Wāng Yǒu-jūn 王有均, Yáng Shèn yán-jiū 楊慎研究. Bā-Shǔ shū-shè, 2003.
• L. Carrington Goodrich and Chao-ying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography, vol. 2, pp. 1531–1535, s.v. “Yang Shen” (entry by Lienche Tu Fang).

Other points of interest

The Bǔyí is one of the most important Míng documents of the practice of bóxué under conditions of book-deprivation. Together with Yáng’s contemporary lexicographical works (preserved as KR1j0044–0045 in Sìkù), it constitutes the principal evidence of how a high-Míng zhuàngyuán recreated a Hànlín scholar’s working library from memory across thirty-five years of southern exile. The Bǔyí’s critical fortune was high in the late Míng and early Qīng — Wáng Shìzhēn 王世貞 and Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎 both cite it as a major source — and dimmed somewhat in the Qiánjiā era when the kǎozhèng movement found Yáng’s loose method of citation an embarrassment.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §27 (literary criticism); §41.5 (Míng literary biography).
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Wikidata Q56261541 (詩話補遺).