竹山詞

Zhúshān cí 竹山詞

Bamboo-Mountain Lyrics by 蔣捷 (撰)

About the work

The Zhúshān cí 竹山詞 is the personal cí collection of Jiǎng Jié 蔣捷 (c. 1245 – c. 1305+), the last xiánchún-era jìnshì (1274) and one of the canonical Sòngmò sì dà jiā 宋末四大家. One juǎn in the Sìkù arrangement, it survives through Máo Jìn’s 毛晉 Jígǔ gé 汲古閣 edition. Jiǎng’s cí are technically dense and tonally elegiac, perfected in their use of the xiǎolìng 小令 and middle-length tunes; the corpus is also noted for occasional displays of formal tour de force — entire pieces in which every closing line of every stanza ends with the same particle. The Sìkù editors place him in the same line as Liú Yǒng 柳永 and Zhōu Bāngyàn 周邦彥 for prosodic discipline but tonally on the side of the late-Sòng yímín.

Tiyao

Zhúshān cí, one juǎn, by Jiǎng Jié of the Sòng. Jiǎng’s zì was Shèngyù 勝欲, self-styled Zhúshān; a man of Yíxīng. Under the Déyòu reign-period he once ascended to the jìnshì degree; after the fall of the Sòng he hid his tracks and would not serve, ending his life thus. This collection is the edition cut by Máo Jìn’s Jígǔ gé. At the head of the volume stands a colophon dated Zhìzhèng yǐsì (1365) by the Húbīn Sǎnrén 湖濵散人, which says that the manuscript was obtained from the house of Táng Shìmù 唐士牧, and that although it has not been finally edited, no piece has been lost — most likely it still resembles the old text transmitted from the Yuán. Its diction is refined and deep, and its prosody is harmonious and flowing — a true standard-bearer for the song-craft (yǐshēngjiā 倚聲家). Now and then he allows himself ingenious effects (狡獪): in the Shuǐlóng yín 水龍吟 piece “Calling-back the Soul of the Fallen Plum” the closing word of every line throughout uses the character xiē 㱔; and in the Ruìhè xiān 瑞鶴仙 piece “Birthday for the Hall of Eastward Window” every closing word uses yě 也 — yet above the empty word the rhyme is still observed; this is the borrowed pattern of shī and Sāo (Shījīng and Lísāo), and is not to be classed with the entirely unrhymed (and so virtually prose) verses of Huáng Tíngjiān 黃庭堅 and Zhào Chángqīng 趙長卿. In another case, the Yìngtiāncháng 應天長 piece is annotated as “matching the rhyme of Qīngzhēn” [周邦彥], yet the first half-stanza’s line Zhuǎn cuì lóngchí kuò 轉翠龍池闊 stops at five characters whereas Zhōu Bāngyàn’s piece has Zhǐ shì yètáng wú yuè 止是夜堂無月, which is six; and in the latter half Mán yǒu xì lóngpán 澷有戲龍盤 is again only five, where Zhōu has Yòu jiàn Hàngōng chuán zhú 又見漢宫傳燭, again six — these must be drop-out errors in the cutting. Likewise Qínyuán chūn 沁園春 has Juéshèng zhūlián shílǐ lóu 絶勝珠簾十里樓 where the cutter has inserted a stray “迷” 迷 above 樓; Yùlóu chūn 玉樓春 has 明朝與子穿花去 where 花 was miscut as 不; Xíngxiāngzǐ 行香子 has 奈雲溶溶 where 何 has been inserted under 奈; Fěndiéér 粉蝶兒 has 古今來人易老 where the character 來 has dropped out; Cuìyǔ yín 翠羽吟 has 但留殘月掛蒼穹 where 月 and 蒼 have dropped — all manifestly corrupt. The Tángduōlìng 唐多令 graphed as Tángduōlìng 糖多令 (“Sugar-much-tune”) is especially good for a laugh. The piece to Xǐqiānyīng 喜遷鶯* given here in revised form has, compared with the Yuán-era text, distinctly less fēngyùn 風韻 — it is probably not the version Jiǎng finally settled on; the Cítǒng 詞統 reproaches him with this, justly enough, but is mistaken when it ascribes that revised piece to Shǐ Dázǔ 史達祖. — Compiled, Qiánlóng 46 / 1781, 9th month, by Zǒngzuǎnguān 紀昀, 陸錫熊, 孫士毅, Zǒngjiàoguān 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Zhúshān cí corresponds to the Zhúshān cí one juǎn recorded by Yuán-era bibliographic notes and inherited into Máo Jìn’s Jígǔ gé Liùshí jiā cí 六十家詞 — the textual line on which the WYG version depends. The Zhìzhèng yǐsì (1365) colophon by Húbīn Sǎnrén attests that the text was already in the possession of the Yuán scholar Táng Shìmù, who transmitted it more or less intact. The 1365 terminus ante quem and Jiǎng’s jìnshì date of 1274 give the assumed window of composition as roughly the last quarter of the 13th century into the early Yuán. Two of the most famous cí in the SòngYuán canon are in this collection: Yúměirén 虞美人 “Tīng yǔ” 聽雨 (“Listening to Rain”) and Zhāngpāo 賀新郎 “Bǐng jiǎ luò qū” (the “broken-jade” piece). Modern textual collation runs through Táng Guīzhāng’s Quán Sòng cí (1965, rev. 1999), with corrections made by Wǔ Zhāo 武肇 and others. The corpus is conventionally read as a final flowering of the cí in the line opened by Jiāng Kuí 姜夔, with Jiǎng’s tonal range running from the elegiac and historically reflective (the yímín themes) to the formally playful (the tour-de-force pieces remarked on in the Tíyào).

Translations and research

• Táng Guī-zhāng 唐圭璋 et al., eds., Quán Sòng cí 全宋詞 (Zhōnghuá shū-jú, 1965; rev. 1999) — collated text of Jiǎng Jié’s surviving cí.
• Lin Shuen-fu, The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K’uei and Southern Sung Tz’u Poetry (Princeton, 1978) — situates Jiǎng Jié in the Jiāng Kuí line.
• Yè Jiā-yíng 葉嘉瑩, Jiā-líng tán cí 迦陵談詞 and related essays — substantial close readings of Jiǎng Jié’s most famous pieces.
• Stuart Sargent, “Tz’u,” in Victor H. Mair, ed., The Columbia History of Chinese Literature (Columbia, 2001), 314–336 — survey including Jiǎng Jié as a Sòng-mò sì dà jiā.

Other points of interest

The famous Yúměirén 虞美人 “Shǎonián tīngyǔ gēlóu shàng” 少年聽雨歌樓上 (“In my youth I heard the rain on the song-tower”) in this collection is one of the most-anthologized single pieces of Sòng cí, structuring a life in three stages of overheard rain. The Tíyào’s catalogue of Sìkù-edition typos (糖多令, 樓-with-迷, 何-inserted under 奈, etc.) is also a useful index of how thoroughly the late-Yuán manuscript had been mis-engraved by Máo Jìn’s late-Míng cutters.

Links

• Quán Sòng cí 全宋詞 (ctext.org)
• Wikipedia 蔣捷
• Wikidata Q1004027 (Jiǎng Jié).