東坡詞

Dōngpō cí 東坡詞

Lyrics of Dōng-pō by 蘇軾 (撰)

About the work

The Dōngpō cí 東坡詞 is the standard one-juǎn gathering of the cí of Sū Shì 蘇軾 (1036–1101), the writer who, more than any other, made the cí a fully literary form. The Sìkù tíyào offers the canonical periodization that has anchored every history of the cí since: from the late Táng and Five Dynasties through to Liǔ Yǒng 柳永, the form was governed by qīngqiē wǎnlì 清切婉麗 (“clear-cut, restrained, refined”); Liǔ Yǒng then broke the form open as Bái Jūyì 白居易 had broken the shī; Sū Shì then broke it open a second time as Hán Yù 韓愈 had once broken the shī, opening the road for Xīn Qìjí 辛棄疾 and the bold (“háofàng 豪放”) line that defines half the canon thereafter. The transmitted text is Máo Jìn 毛晉’s, descending from a Jīnlíng manuscript and pruned of intruder pieces by Huáng Tíngjiān 黃庭堅, Qín Guān 秦觀, Liǔ Yǒng, and others — though, as the Tíyào concedes, the pruning is incomplete.

Tiyao

Dōngpō cí, one juǎn, by Sū Shì of the Sòng. Shì has the Yì zhuàn and other works separately catalogued. The Sòng shǐ Yìwénzhì records Shì’s cí in one juǎn; Mǎ Duānlín 馬端臨’s Jīngjí kǎo gives two juǎn. The present text was cut by Máo Jìn; his colophon notes that he “obtained the Jīnlíng cut-print, and the inserted pieces by Sū, Huáng, Qín, and Liǔ have all been deleted.” The pruning is nonetheless incomplete: the Yángguān qū 陽關曲 three pieces opening the volume have already been entered in the shī collection — these are the farewell quatrains for Lǐ Gōngzé 李公擇; their note “sing them in the Xiǎo Qínwáng 小秦王” means that this was a Táng way of singing shī (since the Xiǎo Qínwáng tune is close to the juéjù); the Sòng forgot the practice, so one borrows the metric. That is not a separate cí-tune called Yángguān qū. If there had been such a tune, with its own gong-lǜ, why borrow Xiǎo Qínwáng? Collecting these as cí is over-zealous. As for the Niànnú jiāo 念奴嬌 in the collection: Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊’s Cí zōng KR4j0075 follows the Róngzhāi suíbǐ and Huáng Tíngjiān’s hand-copy, changing làngtáo jǐn 浪淘盡 to làng shēngchén 浪聲沈, and duōqíng yīngxiào wǒ, zǎo shēng huáfà 多情應笑我早生華髪 to duōqíng yīng shì xiào wǒ shēng huáfà 多情應是笑我生華髪, on the grounds that làngtáo jǐn does not scan and that the duōqíng line ought to break 4+5. But examining Máo Gān 毛幵’s own Niànnú jiāo — suàn wú dì lǎngfēng dǐng 算無地閬風頂 — that too reads zè píng zè in the relevant slot; how can it be called unscanning? Shí Xiàoyǒu’s piece has jiǔchóng pín niàn cǐ, gǔnyī huáfà 九重頻念此衮衣華髪; Zhōu Zǐzhī’s 周紫芝 piece has báitóu yīng jìdé, zūnqián qīng gài 白頭應記得尊前傾葢: both also break 4+5. Jìn rejected Zhū’s emendations and kept the old reading — a sound move. — From the late Táng and Five Dynasties on, cí took the qīngqiē wǎnlì mode as its standard; with Liǔ Yǒng came one transformation, as the shī tradition had its Bái Jūyì; with Sū Shì came another, as the shī had its Hán Yù — opening thereby the Southern-Sòng Xīn Qìjí line. Tracing source and current one cannot but call it a biàngé 變格 (variant mode), but one cannot call it ungifted. Hence even today it stands beside the Huājiān line, and neither can be displaced. — Compiled, Qiánlóng 44 / 1779, 3rd month, by Zǒngzuǎnguān 紀昀, 陸錫熊, 孫士毅; Zǒngjiàoguān 陸費墀.

Abstract

The transmitted Dōngpō cí is the Máo Jìn Jígǔgé one-juǎn form derived from a Jīnlíng print; behind it stands a tangled Northern-/Southern-Sòng transmission with at least three competing recensions (Dōngpō yuèfǔ 東坡樂府 in 2 juǎn, Dōngpō cí in 1 juǎn, Dōngpō cí in 3 juǎn). Modern critical editions — Lóng Yúshēng 龍榆生, Dōngpō yuèfǔ jiān 東坡樂府箋 (1936; rpt. Zhōnghuá shūjú); Zōu Tóngqìng 鄒同慶 and Wáng Zōngtáng 王宗堂, Sū Shì cí biānnián jiàozhù 蘇軾詞編年校注 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 2002) — establish a working corpus of about 362 cí. The most-cited piece, Niànnú jiāo · Chìbì huáigǔ 念奴嬌·赤壁懷古 (Huángzhōu, 1082), is the locus classicus of the háofàng manner; Shuǐdiào gētóu · Bǐngchén zhōngqiū 水調歌頭·丙辰中秋 (Mìzhōu 1076) is the most-quoted zhōngqiū cí in Chinese; Jiāng chéng zǐ · Yǐmǎo zhèngyuè èrshí rì jì mèng 江城子·乙卯正月二十日記夢 (1075, for his deceased wife Wáng Fú 王弗) is the canonical mourning-cí. Sū’s cí are dated across the whole of his post-1071 career (Hángzhōu, Mìzhōu, Xúzhōu, Huángzhōu, Yángzhōu, Huìzhōu, Dànzhōu), and the bracket notBefore 1071 / notAfter 1101 reflects the documented composition window.

Translations and research

• Ronald C. Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (Harvard University Asia Center, 1994) — the standard English-language critical biography, with extended treatment of the cí.
• Stuart Sargent, “Su Shi (Su Shih),” in V.H. Mair, ed., The Columbia History of Chinese Literature (Columbia, 2001) — survey overview.
• Lóng Yú-shēng 龍榆生, Dōng-pō yuè-fǔ jiān 東坡樂府箋 (Shàng-hǎi gǔ-jí, 1958; reissued multiple times) — the foundational modern annotated edition.
• Zōu Tóng-qìng 鄒同慶 and Wáng Zōng-táng 王宗堂, Sū Shì cí biān-nián jiào-zhù 蘇軾詞編年校注 (Zhōng-huá shū-jú, 2002) — chronological critical edition.
• Burton Watson, trans., Selected Poems of Su Tung-p’o (Copper Canyon Press, 1994) — includes English translations of several major cí.
• Lin Yutang, The Gay Genius: The Life and Times of Su Tungpo (John Day, 1947) — older popular biography, still cited.
• Michael A. Fuller, The Road to East Slope: The Development of Su Shi’s Poetic Voice (Stanford, 1990) — focused on the shī but indispensable for the unitary reading of Sū.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tíyào’s formulation of the biàngé 變格 model — Liǔ as the Bái Jūyì of the cí, Sū as its Hán Yù — became the canonical historiography of the form, repeated through Wáng Yìqīng 王奕清’s Yùdìng cí pǔ KR4j0086 and into the modern textbooks; the present Tíyào is its earliest fully articulated statement. The collection’s Niànnú jiāo · Chìbì is the most-anthologized single cí in Chinese literature.

Links

• Quán Sòng cí 全宋詞 (Sū Shì)
• Wikipedia 蘇軾
• Wikidata Q188504