秇圃擷餘

Yìpǔ xiéyú 秇圃擷餘

Gleanings from the Garden of the Arts by 王世懋 (撰)

About the work

The Yìpǔ xiéyú 秇圃擷餘 (the title-graph 秇 is an early form of 藝 yì, “art”), in one juǎn, is the shīhuà of Wáng Shìmào 王世懋 (1536–1588), younger brother of the Hòuqīzǐ (Later Seven Masters) leader Wáng Shìzhēn 王世貞 (1526–1590). Within the Hòuqīzǐ school it is the principal shīhuà not authored by the school’s leadership but standing inside its orbit, and its main value — recognized in the Sìkù preface — is the early, sober diagnosis of the mimetic disease (piāoqiè 剽竊) that the school’s High-Táng programme was generating. Wáng Shìmào avoids polemic, treats Lǐ Mèngyáng 李夢陽 and Hé Jǐngmíng 何景明 respectfully but with reservation, praises Xú Zhēnqīng 徐昌穀 and Gāo Shūsì 高子業 (the two minor Qiánqīzǐ poets whose work he thinks will outlast the school’s vogue), and predicts that within a few decades the High-Táng cult will be “swept away” — a forecast that proved exactly correct in the rise of the Gōngān 公安 school around 1600.

Tiyao

Yìpǔ xiéyú, one juǎn. By Wáng Shìmào of the Míng. Shìmào’s Mǐnbù shū (KR2k0238) is already catalogued. This compilation discusses poetic technique in a miscellaneous manner. In general the main drift takes his elder brother Shìzhēn’s positions as its master, but the book was completed after the Yìyuàn zhī yán 藝苑卮言 (Wáng Shìzhēn’s principal critical work) and already feels the dribblings-out of the Archaist disease.

Hence, even while warmly praising Hé Jǐngmíng and Lǐ Mèngyáng, he says in one place: “Our dynasty has surpassed the Sòng and continued the Táng; precisely because a handful of heroes have grasped the sānmèi of using sources, only — I am afraid that some decades hence there will surely be those who, weary, will sweep them away; the source-spilling and end-stretching has done this.” In another: “Lǐ Yúlín 李于鱗 (i.e. Lǐ Pānlóng 李攀龍)‘s seven-syllable regulated verse is bold and resonant; my elder brother pushed his chariot, and within the four seas would-be poets all plagiarize and crib, falling over each other in muddled imitation, to the point that one is sickened.” In another: “I have observed that when one first sets a topic, the shénqíng is not engaged — one already has a kind of supply-and-deliver language, dreading the difficulty but turning aside and using these stock lines to fill the count. Only if one breaks through this barrier — sinking into thought, the truth suddenly arrives — do the zhǒngzhǒng zhēn xiàng (all the true forms) appear.” In another: “Xú Chánggǔ 徐昌穀 and Gāo Zǐyè 高子業 are both adept at making art of their limitations: Xú wins by lofty rhyme, Gāo by deep feeling; in another thousand years, while Lǐ and Hé will rise and fall, these two gentlemen will never be silenced.”

All these are words that do not partake in the dǎngtóng fáyì (factional partisanship); his judgment of Zhèng Jìzhī 鄭繼之 is also calm and just. He cannot be lumped together with the boastful talk of the Seven Masters. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 46, 4th 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 Yìpǔ xiéyú is a relatively brief but historically significant shīhuà whose importance lies in its position within the Hòuqīzǐ programme. Wáng Shìmào occupies a unique vantage: he is the closest possible interpreter of his elder brother’s literary doctrines, and yet not their captive. The work was composed after his brother’s principal critical statement, the Yìyuàn zhī yán 藝苑卮言 (datable to the 1560s in successive recensions), and the Sìkù editors’ phrase “shū zài Yìyuàn zhī yán zhī hòu, yǐ shāo jué mógǔ zhī liúbì” — “the book was completed after the Yìyuàn zhī yán and already perceptibly feels the trickle-down of the imitative disease” — establishes the relative chronology.

Composition window. Wáng Shìmào’s jìnshì dates to 1559, his death to 1588. The Yìpǔ xiéyú must postdate his elder brother’s Yìyuàn zhī yán (which, in its successive recensions, was substantially complete by the early 1570s) and predate Wáng Shìmào’s own death in 1588. Internal references to figures in their literary maturity by the 1570s and 1580s, and the work’s mature tone, place it in his later career; the bracket 1573–1588 is the standard scholarly judgment.

Critical position. The Yìpǔ xiéyú operates as a tactical critique from within the Hòuqīzǐ citadel. It will not break with Wáng Shìzhēn’s High-Táng commitments, but it diagnoses the school’s two pathologies — piāoqiè (plagiarism of Táng diction) and gōngjǐ yìngfù 供給應付 (the use of canned supply-and-deliver formulae to fill out a topic) — and praises minor Qiánqīzǐ figures Xú Zhēnqīng 徐禎卿 (Chánggǔ) and Gāo Shūsì 高叔嗣 (Zǐyè) over the school’s headliners Lǐ Mèngyáng and Hé Jǐngmíng. The forecast that the school will be “swept away” within decades was made good by Yuán Hóngdào 袁宏道 袁宏道 and the Gōngān school in the 1590s. The Sìkù editors single out this restraint approvingly: “he does not utter the words of factional partisanship.”

The work is one juǎn, structured as unnumbered entries running from general doctrinal pronouncements to specific judgments on individual Míng poets. It is the principal source for Wáng Shìmào’s own poetic theory and an important corrective document for the historical record of the Hòuqīzǐ.

Translations and research

• Wú Wén-zhì 吳文治, ed., Míng shī-huà quán-biān 明詩話全編. Nán-jīng: Jiāng-sū gǔ-jí, 1997 — includes the Yì-pǔ xié-yú.
• Daniel Bryant, “The Poetics of the Hòu Qī Zǐ”, Bulletin of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy (Academia Sinica) 8 (1996): 1–34. The principal English-language study; treats Wáng Shì-mào’s Yì-pǔ xié-yú as the school’s most self-aware critical document.
• Wāng Yī-juàn 汪義娟, Wáng Shì-mào yán-jiū 王世懋研究. Bā-Shǔ shū-shè, 2010.
• L. Carrington Goodrich and Chao-ying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography, vol. 2, pp. 1399–1405, s.v. “Wang Shih-chen” (entry mentions Shih-mao as the younger brother).

Other points of interest

The variant graph 秇 (an early form of 藝 yì) in the title is preserved in the Sìkù recension and reflects Wáng Shìmào’s antiquarian taste. The work is sometimes referenced under the equivalent title Yìpǔ xiéyú 藝圃擷餘 with the modern graph.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §27 (literary criticism); §41.5 (Míng literary biography).
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Wikidata Q11108622 (秇圃擷餘 / 藝圃擷餘).