Wǔdài shīhuà 五代詩話
Remarks on Poetry of the Five Dynasties by 鄭方坤 (刪撰)
About the work
The Wǔdài shīhuà 五代詩話, in ten juǎn, is a Five Dynasties (907–960) shīhuà of complex three-stage authorship: (1) Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎 (1634–1711) drafted the original framework but did not complete it before his death; (2) Sòng Bì 宋弼 later supplemented and printed the unfinished manuscript on the basis of additional sources, though (as the Sìkù editors note) his fidelity to Wáng’s own bibliographic horizon was limiting; (3) Zhèng Fāngkūn 鄭方坤 (1700–1780) — having acquired Wáng’s surviving draft from a member of the Lìchéng Zhū family — comprehensively re-edited the work, removing 216 entries from Wáng’s original 642, adding 789 new entries, for a final total of 1,215. Zhèng’s editorial method was modelled on Sòng Xiáng 宋庠’s Guóyǔ bǔyīn and Wú Shīdào 吳師道’s Bǔzhèng Zhànguó cè: each added entry is appended below the original entry under the same rubric. The work as preserved in the Sìkù (V1486.2) is therefore principally Zhèng’s redaction.
Tiyao
Wǔdài shīhuà, ten juǎn. By Zhèng Fāngkūn of our dynasty. Fāngkūn’s Quánmǐn shīhuà (KR4i0063) is separately catalogued. Originally Wáng Shìzhēn had wanted to compose a Wǔdài shīhuà and had only drafted it without completion. His disciples, eager to honour the master’s lectures, took the incomplete manuscript and transmitted it in copy; the lacunae were severe, and the format especially loose. Sòng Bì had once supplemented its omissions and printed it; but Bì all his life faithfully followed Shìzhēn, refused to read books his master had not consulted, and so still missed much in older texts.
Later Fāngkūn obtained Shìzhēn’s surviving draft from the Zhū family of Lìchéng (Lìchéng Zhūshì 厯城朱氏); finding it unfinished, he gathered material from various books and entirely supplemented and corrected it. From the original 642 entries he removed 216, added 789, for a total of 1,215 entries. All the additions follow the format of Sòng Xiáng’s Guóyǔ bǔyīn and Wú Shīdào’s Bǔzhèng Zhànguó cè — each appended under the original entry by rubric.
The arrangement is: juǎn on the dynastic rulers and royal clan, 1; on the Central-Court [Five Dynasties] proper, 1; on Southern Táng, 1; on Former and Later Shǔ, 1; on WúYuè and Southern Hàn, 1; on Mǐn (Fújiàn), 1; on Chǔ and Jīngnán, 1; on palace-women, transcendents, ghosts, and the monastic order, 1; on Daoist sages and ghosts/oddities, 1; miscellaneous, 1.
There are matters where Zhèng follows the flaws of the original. The original had recorded Luó Yǐn’s “Xiè biǎo” (memorial of thanks), Yīn Wénguī’s “Qǐ shì” (advancing-the-matter) — these are parallel-prose four-and-six documents, unrelated to poetic chanting. Likewise the Lǐ-family “Library of Tàiyuán” draft-call-to-arms; Hé Níng’s Língchī fú (the “stupid talisman”); Sāng Wéihàn’s iron-cast inkstone; Xú Yín’s Xiànguò Dàliáng fù — all directly miscellaneous matters with no relation to poetry. To delete them wholesale would have been thorough cleaning; yet Lǐ Hòuzhǔ’s colophon to Huáisù’s calligraphy — also unrelated to poetry — Zhèng records and does not omit. The original had listed Fāng Gàn 方干, Zhèng Gǔ 鄭谷, Táng Qiú 唐球 etc., who connect upward to the Táng — these Zhèng has now stripped out; but Sīkōng Tú’s 司空圖 refusal to accept Liáng office and Hán Wò’s 韓偓 not having eaten Mǐn salary — by the precedent of calling Táo Qián a Jìn-period man — these are still Táng men, and listing them under the Five Dynasties is a violation of the period-line. As for Pān Shènxiū 潘慎修’s offered poem to Sòng Tàizōng and Liú Jiān 劉兼’s Chángchūnjié poem — Sòng-matter and Sòng-men — being conflated in is even more spreading.
Also: Sū Shì演陌上花, Cháo Bǔzhī’s Fāngyí qū, Lǐ Shū’s inscription on the tomb of Emperor Zhōu Gōngdì, Sòng Huīzōng’s calligraphy of Bái Jūyì’s lines — though they chant of Five Dynasties matter, they are not Five Dynasties men, and to roll them in en bloc would mean that those who chant of Wáng Zhāojūn should all be entered in the Hàn poetic record, and those who compose on the Quètái terrace should all be entered in the Wèi collection — there is no such precedent across history. The tān duō wù dé (greed for multitude, striving to get all) — Fāngkūn himself has admitted this.
As for the line “Jiāngnán Jiāngběi jiù jiāxiāng” — the Jiāngbiǎo zhì attributes it to Yáng Pǔ; Mǎ Lìng’s NánTáng shū attributes it to Lǐ Yù. The poem mocking Sòng Qíqiū for the death of his son — the Mèngxī bǐtán attributes it to an old blind musician; the Tiáoxī yúyǐn cónghuà (KR4i0014) attributes it to Lǐ Jiāmíng. Cases of this kind are too many to list, and Zhèng records both attributions before and after without cross-referring and without adjudicating — also lax.
Yet the gathering is plentiful: the lost matter and trivial events of the Five Dynasties are here all but exhausted in the search. Compared with Shìzhēn’s original book, this is by far more comprehensive. It is therefore truly a resource on which poetry-discussants may draw. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 43, 5th month (1778). 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 Wǔdài shīhuà is the principal pre-modern shīhuà anthology for the Five Dynasties period and the most substantial single Qīng study of Five-Dynasties poetic culture, with particular attention to the Southern courts (Southern Táng, Former / Later Shǔ, WúYuè, Southern Hàn, Mǐn, Chǔ, Jīngnán) where the poetic record of the period chiefly survives. Its complex authorship — Wáng Shìzhēn’s unfinished draft, Sòng Bì’s first supplementation, Zhèng Fāngkūn’s final comprehensive redaction — is itself part of the work’s interest, and the Sìkù tíyào’s careful three-stage account is essential to understanding the text.
Authorship. (1) The original framework was drafted by Wáng Shìzhēn during his late years, presumably as a companion-piece to his other regional and period anthologies (compare his work with Tángxián sānmèi jí KR4h0257); the draft was unfinished at his death in 1711. (2) Sòng Bì 宋弼 (a Wáng disciple, jìnshì 1737) supplemented the missing entries from sources available to him and printed the work. The Sìkù editors’ criticism of Sòng — that he refused to read anything Wáng had not read — is harsh but not unfair. (3) Zhèng Fāngkūn acquired Wáng’s original draft from the Lìchéng Zhū family (probably the family of Zhū Bí 朱緋, jīnshì 1715, and his descendants) and produced the present comprehensive redaction. The composition window for Zhèng’s redaction is 1750–1778 (the Sìkù submission date).
The arrangement is geographical-political rather than strictly chronological: ruler-and-royal-clan first, then the Central Plains Five Dynasties, then in successive juǎn the southern courts in canonical order (Southern Táng > Former / Later Shǔ > WúYuè + Southern Hàn > Mǐn > Chǔ + Jīngnán), then thematic juǎn for palace-women and the religious orders, with miscellanies at the end. This is the standard pre-modern Five Dynasties geography and follows the precedent of Ōuyáng Xiū’s Wǔdài shǐ jì 五代史記 (KR2a0017).
Source method. Zhèng’s editorial method — appending supplementary entries below the original under the same rubric — was modelled on Sòng Xiáng’s Guóyǔ bǔyīn and Wú Shīdào’s Bǔzhèng Zhànguó cè. This is a remarkable adoption of jīngxué commentarial procedure for an anthology of shīhuà. The transparency of authorship is high: the reader can see which entries are original Wáng and which are Zhèng supplements.
Period-line problems. The Sìkù editors’ principal criticism — apart from Zhèng’s failure to delete the parallel-prose miscellanea, and his inclusion of non-poetic anecdotes from the original draft — concerns the period boundary. Late-Táng figures who refused Liáng or Mǐn office (Sīkōng Tú, Hán Wò) are still Táng men and should not appear under the Five Dynasties. Early-Sòng figures (Pān Shènxiū, Liú Jiān) had Five-Dynasties precedence but their canonical poetic identity is Sòng. The further difficulty — Zhèng’s inclusion of Sòng-era poems on Five-Dynasties subjects — the Sìkù editors dispatch with the elegant analogy: “those who chant of Wáng Zhāojūn should all be entered in the Hàn poetic record.” The editors’ verdict: thorough in gathering, lax in adjudication.
Translations and research
- Wáng Shì-zhēn 王士禎 (orig.); Zhèng Fāng-kūn 鄭方坤 (red.); Liú Wén-zhōng 劉文忠, ed. Wǔ-dài shī-huà. Bĕijīng: Rénmín wénxué, 1989 — the standard modern critical edition.
- Guō Shào-yú 郭紹虞, ed. Qīng shī-huà 清詩話, 2 vols. Shàng-hǎi: Zhōnghuá, 1963 — includes Zhèng’s prefatory matter.
- Anna Shields, Crafting a Collection: The Cultural Contexts and Poetic Practice of the Huajian ji 花間集 (Collection from among the Flowers) (Harvard Asia Center, 2006) — uses the Wǔ-dài shī-huà as a major source.
- Stuart H. Sargent, The Poetry of He Zhu (1052–1125) (Brill, 2007) — frequent citation.
- Lín Yǐng-míng 林映明, Zhèng Fāng-kūn yán-jiū 鄐方坤研究. Bā-Shǔ shū-shè, 2011.
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located on the work as a whole.
Other points of interest
The Wǔdài shīhuà is the only major shīhuà in the Sìkù tradition with a layered three-stage authorship visibly preserved on the page, and is therefore a special case-study for the editorial reception of incomplete masters’ drafts in late-imperial scholarship. The Wáng Shìzhēn manuscript that Zhèng obtained from the Lìchéng Zhū family does not survive independently; Zhèng’s redaction is the only witness.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §27 (literary criticism); §16.2 (Five Dynasties / Ten Kingdoms historiography).
- Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
- Wikidata Q11108538 (五代詩話).