Fàngwēng cí 放翁詞
Lyrics of the Liberated-Old-Man by 陸游 (撰)
About the work
The Fàngwēng cí 放翁詞 is the one-juǎn Sìkù-extracted cí collection of Lù Yóu 陸游 (1125–1210; zì Wùguān 務觀, hào Fàngwēng 放翁 — “Liberated Old Man”), the supreme post-southern-crossing shī-master and one of the most prolific authors of Chinese literature (over 9,000 surviving shī). Lù’s cí — by his own assessment a yúshì 餘事 (“by-work”) next to his shī — survive at roughly one-percent the volume of his shī, in two juǎn originally appended to the Fàngwēng quánjí KR4d0192; this volume is the Máo Jìn 毛晉 standalone extraction, re-checked against his earlier two-juǎn in-collection cutting, with one or two newly-added tune-pieces and corrected line-order. Liú Kèzhuāng 劉克莊 criticized Lù for “carrying his book-bag” (heavy allusion); Yáng Shèn 楊慎 praised the qiānlì (finely-decorative) pieces as resembling Qín Guān 秦觀 and the xióngkuài (bold-fast) as resembling Sū Shì 蘇軾. The collection famously suppresses the Hán Tuōzhòu 韓侂胄 Mǎntóu huā late-life cí (with the line fēi shàng jǐnyīn hóng zhòu 飛上錦裀紅皺) — Lù’s effort to disavow his post-1203 attachment to Hán; though the catalog of the Wèinán jí KR4d0192 also excludes the Nányuán yuègǔquán jì, the Tíyào notes drily that suppression “could not prevent the verse from circulating among contemporaries — let this be a warning.”
Tiyao
Fàngwēng cí, one juǎn, by Lù Yóu of the Sòng. Yóu has the NánTáng shū and other works separately catalogued. Mǎ Duānlín 馬端臨’s Jīngjí kǎo records Fàngwēng cí in one juǎn; Máo Jìn cut a Fàngwēng quánjí with appended chángduǎnjù in two juǎn; the present text is also Jìn’s cutting, again merged into one juǎn — a separately-circulating edition. The colophon at the end says: “My family-cut Fàngwēng quánjí already had the two-juǎn chángduǎnjù; one or two tunes were missing and the line-order was scattered; now correcting and entering into the famous-houses series.” So the present is more precise than the collected-works version. Lù’s lifetime energy was all on shī; cí-composing was his by-work; hence transmitted cí reach only one percent of the shī collection. Liú Kèzhuāng 劉克莊 said his “always-carrying the book-bag is to be regretted”; Yáng Shèn 楊慎 said his finely-decorative resembles Huáihǎi [Qín Guān 秦觀] and his bold-fast resembles Dōngpō 蘇軾. On balance, Yóu wanted to ride post-horse between the two houses; he therefore has parts of each but cannot reach either’s pinnacle. Above all the shī-poet’s diction stays close to yǎ (the elegant); it differs from the cí-poet’s yědàng (musical-flirtatious). His strengths and weaknesses are both present here. — Yè Shàowēng’s Sìcháo wénjiàn lù records that Hán Tuōzhòu, fond of Yóu’s attaching to him, brought out his beloved Four Ladies (one nicknamed “Head-Full-of-Flowers”) and demanded a cí; the line fēi shàng jǐnyīn hóng zhòu 飛上錦裀紅皺 (“flew onto the brocade cushion, the red wrinkling”) is now not in the collection — Yóu in old age compromised his integrity and lost his name to Tuōzhòu, was satirized by the qīngyì purists; Yóu himself knew the error and dropped the draft. The Nányuán yuègǔquán jì not included in the Wèinán jí KR4d0192 is the same kind. Yet his suppression could not stop contemporary transmission — let this stand as a warning.
Abstract
The transmitted Fàngwēng cí descends through Máo Jìn’s late-Míng standalone cutting. Modern editions: Xià Chéngtāo 夏承燾 and Wú Xiónghé 吳熊和, Fàngwēng cí biānnián jiàozhù 放翁詞編年校註 (Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1981) is the standard critical edition with full chronological dating; the collection reconstructs around 145 cí. The corpus reads as a slim shadow of Lù’s vast shī-output, but contains some of the supreme single cí of the Southern Sòng: the Chāi tóu fèng · Hóng sū shǒu 釵頭鳳·紅酥手 (Shàyīnyuán, Shàoxīng 25 / 1155, on his cousin-wife Táng Wǎn 唐婉) — the supreme love-elegy of the Chinese cí-tradition — and the Bǔ suàn zǐ · Yǒng méi 卜算子·詠梅 (turning on língluò chéng ní niǎn zuò chén, zhǐ yǒu xiāng rú gù 零落成泥輾作塵，只有香如故 / “fallen to mud, ground into dust, only the fragrance remains as before”). Lù’s late patriotic-recall cí (the Xiéyáng cǎo tù dài 漁家傲 Shīzhōu àn tradition) are read as the cí parallel to his most famous shī (Shū fèn, Shí yī yuè sì rì fēng yǔ dà zuò, Shì ér).
Translations and research
- Michael S. Duke, Lu You (Twayne, 1977) — the standard English-language critical study; covers the cí.
- Xià Chéng-tāo 夏承燾 and Wú Xióng-hé 吳熊和, Fàng-wēng cí biān-nián jiào-zhù 放翁詞編年校註 (Shàng-hǎi gǔ-jí, 1981) — the standard critical edition.
- Burton Watson, trans., The Old Man Who Does as He Pleases: Selections from the Poetry and Prose of Lu Yu (Columbia, 1973).
- Stephen Owen, “Lu Yu,” in V.H. Mair, ed., The Columbia History of Chinese Literature (Columbia, 2001).
Other points of interest
The Chāi tóu fèng · Hóng sū shǒu — composed in Shàoxīng 25 / 1155 when Lù, age 30, by chance met his divorced first wife Táng Wǎn at the Shàyīnyuán garden in Shàoxīng (their separation forced by his mother years earlier) — is the canonical Chinese love-elegy. Táng’s matching reply, with the closing jiǎopà fènpà, lèi tòng huā xuǎn fù 角怕分怕，淚痕花宣否, follows; Táng died shortly after. Lù returned to the same Shàyīnyuán wall sixty years later and composed two final juéjù commemorating the encounter — among the most cited single anecdotes of Chinese literary biography. The Tíyào’s discussion of the Mǎntóu huā / Hán Tuōzhòu suppression is one of the most articulate Sìkù statements about author-self-censorship of late-life political missteps.
Links
- Quán Sòng cí 全宋詞 (Lù Yóu)
- Wikipedia 陸游
- Wikidata Q707157