聲調譜

Shēngdiào pǔ 聲調譜

A Tonal-Prosodic Manual by 趙執信 (撰)

About the work

The Shēngdiào pǔ 聲調譜, in three juǎn, is Zhào Zhíxìn 趙執信 (1662–1744)‘s systematic treatise on the tonal-prosodic regulation of regulated verse (lǜshī) and old-style poetry (gǔtǐ). It is the principal technical handbook of Qīng-era poetic prosody and was the founding text of an entire eighteenth-century shēngdiào sub-genre (the Shēngdiào pǔ shí 聲調譜拾遺 of Wēng Fānggāng 翁方綱, the Shēngdiào pǔ tú shuō of Wú Sháo 吳紹, and others). Zhào composed it after his expulsion from office in 1689 in the famous Chángshēng diàn 長生殿 incident (attending a play by Hóng Shēng 洪昇 during the imperial mourning for Empress Tóng 佟皇后), having spent his early retirement studying Táng poetry to extract systematically what his estranged teacher Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎 would not teach: the empirical tonal rules underlying the genre.

Tiyao

Shēngdiào pǔ, three juǎn. By Zhào Zhíxìn of our dynasty. Zhíxìn, zì Zhòngfú 仲符 (the standard biographical record gives Shēnfú 伸符; the Sìkù tíyào here reads Zhòngfú — preserved as it stands but flagged as a probable typographical variant), hào Qiūgǔ, late-life hào Yíshān lǎorén — a man of Yìdū 益都 (Shāndōng). Jìnshì of Kāngxī jǐwèi (1679; the standard record gives 1685 — the tíyào’s jǐwèi is a slip for yǐchǒu 乙丑 1685), held office as Senior Assistant Reader of the Right Document Bureau (右春坊右贊善 Yòuchūnfáng yòuzànshàn).

Zhíxìn had once asked Wáng Shìzhēn about shēngdiào; Shìzhēn was stingy and would not speak. Zhíxìn thereupon laid out the various Táng poets’ collections, lining them up and ferreting them out, and finally got the method. He therefore wrote this book.

His rules: in old-style verse, the third character (in five-syllable lines) and the fifth character (in seven-syllable lines) are the load-bearing graphs, with the upper and lower flanking characters playing balancing roles. In the main: three level-tones in succession is the orthodox form. The “four-level cadence” — as in Lǐ Shāngyǐn’s “yǒng shén shèng gōng shū zhī bēi” — and the “two-level cadence” — as in Sū Shì’s “bái yú zǐ xiè bù lùn qián” — are called “luòdiào” 落調 (fall-tones). The Bóliáng form and four-line rhyme-switching forms are not bound by this rule.

In regulated verse, when the level-deflected balance is recovered within one line, this is the “single deflection” (dānào 單拗) — exit-line type as in Dù Fǔ’s “qīngxīn Yǔ Kāifǔ” 清新庾開府, paired-line type as in Wáng Wéi’s “mù qín xiāng yǔ huán” 暮禽相與還. When the level-deflected balance is recovered across two lines, this is the “double deflection” (shuāngào 雙拗) — as in Xǔ Hún’s “xī yún chū qǐ rì chén gé, shān yǔ yù lái fēng mǎn lóu” 溪雲初起日沈閣，山雨欲來風滿樓. The other variant rules can all be derived by extension; the opening and closing couplets that are not parallel-matched are not bound by this rule.

His exposition is quite precise. Only the tonal markings he gives for Lǐ Hè’s Shí’èryuè yuèfǔ are unintelligible; and the Gǔ yùn tōng zhuǎn 古韻通轉 appended at the volume’s end, whose argument is especially absurd, was a fabrication by his disciples. We have now specifically excised it. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 42, 8th month (1777). 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 Shēngdiào pǔ is the principal technical document of Qīng poetic prosody and the manifest counter-monument to the shényùn programme of Wáng Shìzhēn. Where Wáng’s shīhuà (Yúyáng shīhuà, Shīyǒu shīzhuàn lù KR4i0059) had taught poetry as the cultivation of shényùn through engagement with High-Táng masters, Zhào’s contention is that the regulated genres rest on empirically demonstrable tonal rules — that shényùn without shēngdiào is impossible to teach and impossible to learn.

The biographical origin of the work is preserved in the Sìkù tíyào’s most famous sentence: “Zhíxìn had once asked Shìzhēn about shēngdiào; Shìzhēn was stingy and would not speak.” Zhào, who had been Wáng’s nephew-by-marriage and disciple in the 1680s, broke with him after the 1689 Chángshēng diàn incident — and, denied access to the master’s craft secrets, set about reverse-engineering them from the Táng poetic record. The result is the most systematic treatment of píngzè (level-deflected) prosody in the entire Chinese tradition.

Method. Zhào’s procedure is to scan Táng poems character by character, marking the tonal value of each graph in red (the title-meaning of pǔ 譜 — “musical score, tabulation”), and to extract rules from the patterns observed. The main results: (1) for old-style verse (gǔtǐ shī), the load-bearing graphs are the third character in five-syllable lines and the fifth in seven-syllable lines, with three consecutive level tones (三平 sānpíng) as the orthodox form and the four-level (四平 sìpíng) or two-level cadences as marked deviations (luòdiào); (2) for regulated verse, the ào 拗 (deflection) corrections — both single and double — that allow apparent rule-violations to be regularized.

Composition window. Zhào composed the Shēngdiào pǔ in his long retirement after 1689. The work was substantially complete by the early eighteenth century — Zhào’s later writings cite it as authoritative — but final editorial passes (and the disciples’ apocryphal Gǔ yùn tōng zhuǎn appendix that the Sìkù editors excised) may extend to the time of his death in 1744. The bracket 1689–1744 is the standard scholarly judgment.

Eighteenth-century reception. The Shēngdiào pǔ became the technical reference for Qīng poetic composition and supplied the prosodic foundations that the shényùn school had not articulated. Wēng Fānggāng’s Shēngdiào pǔ shí (after 1750) is a direct continuation. The Sìkù editors’ editorial deletion of the Gǔ yùn tōng zhuǎn appendix (a fabrication by Zhào’s disciples) is preserved in the Sìkù recension and is the textually responsible decision: the appendix attempts to extend Zhào’s tonal-prosodic framework into ancient-rhyme studies, a domain it was never designed to address.

Translations and research

• Guō Shào-yú 郭紹虞, ed. Qīng shī-huà 清詩話, 2 vols. Shàng-hǎi: Zhōnghuá, 1963 — includes the Shēng-diào pǔ.
• Wáng Xiǎo-shū 王曉舒, Zhào Zhí-xìn shī-xué yán-jiū 趙執信詩學研究. Shàng-hǎi: Shàng-hǎi gǔ-jí, 2013. The principal modern monograph.
• Wú Hóng-yī 吳宏一, Qīng-dài shī-xué chū-tàn 清代詩學初探. Tái-běi: Mù-tóng, 1976; rev. 1986, ch. 4 — Zhào Zhí-xìn versus Wáng Shì-zhēn.
• Zhāng Jiàn 張健, Qīng-dài shī-xué yán-jiū 清代詩學研究. Bĕijīng: Bĕi-jīng dà-xué, 1999, ch. 3.
• No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.

Other points of interest

The Shēngdiào pǔ is one of the two principal documents of Zhào’s break with Wáng — the other being the Tánlóng lù 談龍錄 (KR4i0061). Where the Tánlóng lù attacks Wáng’s shényùn on theoretical grounds, the Shēngdiào pǔ effectively replaces it with a workable empirical method. The pair should be read together as Zhào’s two-volume reply to his teacher.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §27 (literary criticism); §50.2 (early-Qīng prosody).
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Wikidata Q11108620 (聲調譜).