Guī yú cí 歸愚詞
Lyrics of [the] Return-to-Foolishness by 葛立方 (撰)
About the work
The Guī yú cí 歸愚詞 is the one-juǎn Sìkù cí collection of Gě Lìfāng 葛立方 (fl. 1135–1164; zì Chángzhī 常之, hào Guī yú lǎorén 歸愚老人), son of Gě Shèngzhòng 葛勝仲 of KR4j0021. The Yùnyǔ yángqiū 韻語陽秋 (his shīhuà) is separately catalogued; this is the cí-only volume. The Sìkù compilers identify the Gě father-son pair (Shèngzhòng / Lìfāng) and the Yàn father-son pair (Yàn Shū / Yàn Jǐdào 晏殊 / 晏幾道) as the two great Sòng cases of cumulative father-son cí-fame. The judgment of Gě Lìfāng’s cí-style is reserved: “much plain narration, little clear-new turning” — not at the front rank — “but on the whole not falling outside the Sòng standard form; preserved as a cí-house in itself.” The Tíyào offers extended Cí lǜ KR4j0087-based corrections of two tunes mis-titled in Máo Jìn 毛晉’s cutting: Yǎn ér méi (= Cháo zhōng cuò) and Yǔ zhōng huā (= Yǔ zhōng huā màn, missing màn in title).
Tiyao
Guī yú cí, one juǎn, by Gě Lìfāng of the Sòng. Lìfāng has the Yùnyǔ yángqiū separately catalogued. This Guī yú cí in one juǎn agrees with Chén Zhènsūn 陳振孫’s Shūlù jiětí. Among Sòng writers, father-son fame in cí-composition only Yàn Shū 晏殊 / Yàn Jǐdào 晏幾道; after that, Lìfāng and his father Shèngzhòng 葛勝仲 are the most distinguished. Yet his cí is mostly plain narration, low on clear-new turning. On the whole it does not fall outside the Sòng standard form; transmitted long, preserved as a cí-house in itself. Máo Jìn 毛晉 once said the Yǔ zhōng huā and Yǎn ér méi in the collection do not match the tune-rule, but dared not alter — examining other cí collections, Yǎn ér méi is in fact a mis-name for Cháo zhōng cuò (cf. Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修’s Píngshān lánkǎn yǐ qíng kōng tune to which it can be cross-referenced); as to Yǔ zhōng huā tune Lìfāng has two cí paralleling rhymes — no errors at all; collating against Cí lǜ KR4j0087 one sees that the title has dropped a màn character; this tune has been written by Jīng Táng 京鏜 and Xīn Qìjí 辛棄疾; Lìfāng’s opening three lines can be read alongside Xīn’s; in lines 4 and 5 Jīng and Xīn both do 5+4, Lìfāng does 6+3 — though slightly differing all are 9-character; the remaining lines are identical in character-count and in flat-oblique pattern — undoubtedly Yǔ zhōng huā màn; Jìn had not checked thoroughly. As for Mǎn tíng fāng in ten pieces: in the back-half’s second-line two-character slot some use rhyme and some do not (some directly write a five-character line); examining Sòng cí for this tune, the two characters have no fixed form: Huáng Tíngjiān 黃庭堅’s Shāngǔ cí KR4j0006 uses rhyme, Chéng Gāi 程垓’s Shūzhōu cí KR4j0009 does not; Lìfāng’s two forms are both legitimate, not a transmission divergence.
Abstract
The transmitted Guī yú cí descends through Máo Jìn’s cutting; modern editions (the Quán Sòng cí of Táng Guīzhāng 唐圭璋) preserve a corpus of around 41 cí. Gě Lìfāng’s birth date is not precisely recorded; his death is Lóngxīng 2 / 1164 (per the Sòng huìyào and his official record). Jìnshì of Shàoxīng 8 / 1138; reached Lìbù lángzhōng (Vice-Director of the Ministry of Personnel); demoted for opposing Qín Guì 秦檜; restored under Xiàozōng but retired to Yángxiàn 陽羡 (Yíxīng) where he died. The Gě father-son line (Shèngzhòng / Lìfāng) preserved the Yuányòu literary heritage continuously into the Southern Sòng and is one of the principal cases of multi-generational cí-house transmission in the canon.
Translations and research
- Táng Guī-zhāng 唐圭璋 et al., Quán Sòng cí 全宋詞 (Zhōng-huá shū-jú, 1965; rev. 1999), vol. 2 — collated corpus.
- Wáng Zhào-péng 王兆鵬, Sòng nán-dù cí-rén yán-jiū 宋南渡詞人研究 — includes Gě Lì-fāng.
Other points of interest
The Tíyào’s detailed Cí lǜ collation of the Yǎn ér méi / Cháo zhōng cuò and Yǔ zhōng huā / Yǔ zhōng huā màn tune-name confusions is a textbook example of Sìkù use of Wàn Shù 萬樹’s Cí lǜ (1687) — published before the Sìkù by some 95 years — as a critical apparatus for prosodic disambiguation.