Tuìyán cí 蛻巖詞
Shed-Skin Cliff Lyrics by 張翥 (撰)
About the work
The Tuìyán cí 蛻巖詞 is the cí component of Zhāng Zhù 張翥’s collected works, separately catalogued as two juǎn in the Sìkù. Zhāng (1287–1368, zì Zhòngjǔ 仲舉, hào Tuìān 蜕庵) was the principal late-Yuán yǎcí poet, transitional between the late-Southern-Sòng Jiāng Kuí–Wú Wényīng line (whose tonal register he consciously imitated) and the Míng cí effacement. The collection preserves 133 cí, originally appended to the Tuìān shījí 蜕庵詩集 in the recension assembled by the monk Dàzhù 大杼 in 1366 and printed by the monk Zōnglè 宗泐 in 1377. Zhāng held office under the late Yuán as a senior compiler in the Hànlín, and is one of the major literary monuments of the dying Yuán: tonally restrained, deeply formal, full of dynastic-elegy.
Tiyao
Tuìyán cí, two juǎn, by Zhāng Zhù of the Yuán. Zhāng has the Tuìān shījí, separately catalogued; the present collection of cí was originally appended to that shī-collection but circulates as a separate roll. According to the Yuánshǐ biography of Zhāng, “he was strong in shī, but his short-and-long verse [cí] was especially fine. After his death he had no son, and his writings would not transmit; what is now transmitted is a 3-juǎn unit of yuèfǔ [songs] and regulated verse” — that is, in his own day the cí were bound with the shī. But “3 juǎn” is not what we have here. Checking the front of the shījí: there is a preface by the monk Láifù 來復 saying that in Zhìzhèng bǐngwǔ (1366) the monk Dàzhù 大杼 selected and cut his surviving manuscripts; there is also a colophon by the monk Zōnglè 宗泐 dated Hóngwǔ dīngsì (1377) saying he is now printing it for transmission. Thus Dàzhù’s editorial work was done in Zhìzhèng 26 (1366), the printing in Hóngwǔ 10 (1377); Sòng Lián and the others compiled the Yuánshǐ in Hóngwǔ 2 (1369), before they had seen this full text, hence their notice of a partial 3-juǎn recension. Láifù’s preface bears the title Tuìān shījí, and Zōnglè’s colophon says “the so-and-so juǎn of shījí of His Lordship Lúguó Zhāng” — both without one word on the cí. Yet Zōnglè says Dàzhù took the inheritor’s manuscripts, returned south of the Yangtze, and selected 900 pieces. The shī number 767; with 133 cí added, we reach the 900 — so the cí too are Dàzhù’s editing, except in some line of transmission the cí are appended, in others detached. Zhāng died at eighty-two; he still met Qiú Yuǎn 仇遠 (his master in shī-method); and he still corresponded with Ní Zàn 倪瓚, Zhāng Yǔ 張羽, Gù Āyīng 顧阿瑛, Tán Jiǔsháo 郯九韶, Fàn Sù 范素 and others. With his lifetime spanning the rise and fall of the Yuán, his shī is full of mourning for the times and grief at the chaos; his cí, by contrast, is wǎnlì fēngliú (elegant, charming, light-flowing), in the manner of the Southern Sòng. His Qínyuán chūn is annotated “Read Bái Tàisù’s Tiānlài cí KR4j0059; jokingly to his rhymes, in his manner” — for Bái Pǔ’s masters were the Sū Shì / Xīn Qìjí variants, whereas Zhāng’s masters were the late echoes of Báishí (Jiāng Kuí) and Mèngchuāng (Wú Wényīng); their schools are unalike, and that is what Zhāng meant. His Chūn cóng tiān shàng lái is annotated “Winter night at Guǎnglíng, with Sōngyúnzǐ 松雲子 we discussed the five tones, two halftones, and twelve modes, and adjusted them by playing the xiāo — clear and turbid, high and low, the cycle by which one note becomes the gōng of another; the lǜlǚ tuning principle came clear, refinement and vulgarity were sorted out” — by which one knows that on song-craft and tonal theory he had thought very deeply. — Qiánlóng 46 / 1781, 10th month.
Abstract
The Tuìyán cí descends through the 1366 Dàzhù selection, the 1377 Zōnglè printing, and the late-Míng / Jígǔgé line into the WYG edition. The 133-piece corpus represents the late-Yuán yǎcí tradition at its most accomplished. Zhāng Zhù’s cí are the principal late-Yuán document of the Báishí / Mèngchuāng (Jiāng Kuí / Wú Wényīng) line, in deliberate distinction from the SūXīn line followed by Bái Pǔ. The collection is also a major source for late-Yuán gōngtiáo 宮調 theory: the Chūn cóng tiān shàng lái piece preserves Zhāng’s own gloss on the wǔ yīn èr biàn shíèr diào system, which is one of the few late-Yuán statements on practical cí tonality. With Bái Pǔ’s Tiānlài jí KR4j0059, the Tuìyán cí is one of the two principal monuments of Yuán cí.
Translations and research
- Táng Guī-zhāng 唐圭璋, Quán Jīn-Yuán cí 全金元詞 (Zhōnghuá shū-jú, 1979) — collated text.
- John Timothy Wixted, Poems on Poetry: Literary Criticism by Yuan Hao-wen (Wiesbaden, 1982) — useful for the Jīn-Yuán cí line that Zhāng inherits.
- Stuart Sargent, “Tz’u,” in Mair, ed., Columbia History of Chinese Literature — brief but useful notice.