Kēxuě cí 珂雪詞
Bridle-Bell-and-Snow Lyrics by 曹貞吉 (撰)
About the work
The Kēxuě cí 珂雪詞 is the personal cí collection of Cáo Zhēnjí 曹貞吉 (1634–1698), one of the leading early-Kāngxī cí-revival poets. Two juǎn: 134 pieces in juǎn 1, 105 in juǎn 2, with an additional eight tunes catalogued under bǔyí 補遺 but lost in transmission. Cáo is the only Qīng cí-poet whose own collection was admitted into the Sìkù; the editors single him out as a particularly meritorious modern voice. Stylistically he stands between the Yángxiànpài 陽羨派 of Chén Wéisōng — densely allusive, energetic, háofàng 豪放 — and the Zhèxīpài 浙西派 of Zhū Yízūn — refined, learned, modeled on Jiāng Kuí / Zhāng Yán; the Sìkù tíyào reads him as drawing on both without imitating either.
Tiyao
Kēxuě cí, two juǎn, by Cáo Zhēnjí of the present dynasty. Zhēnjí has the Kēxuě shī KR4d0492, separately catalogued; the present book is its shīyú (i.e. cí) component. The upper juǎn contains 134 pieces, the lower 105. The general catalogue prefixed to the volume lists bǔyí of Bǔsuànzǐ 卜算子, Làngtáoshā 浪淘沙, Mùlánhuā 木蘭花, Chūncǎo bì 春草碧, Mǎnjiānghóng 滿江紅, Bǎizì lìng 百字令, Mùlánhuā màn 木蘭花慢, Táichéng lù 臺城路, etc. — eight tunes in all — recorded but missing texts; these were probably appended at the volume’s end and lost in binding. Cáo’s cí are largely qiānmián qīnglì (delicate, woven, clean, pretty), with deep affective lodgings; in the old tunes he laces new meaning, and so does not need to mimic Zhōu Bāngyàn or Liǔ Yǒng nor walk in step with Hándān: he attains a sound register of his own — for his natural genius runs especially close to this craft. Chén Wéisōng’s jí contains a preface to Cáo’s yǒngwù cí which says: “Ten pieces composed; sufficient to a thousand autumns. Zhào Míngchéng’s Jīnshí lù is humbled by such fine writing; Guō Hóngnóng’s Shānhǎijīng admits its inferiority to such elegant work.” Although this is the praise of a friend, not without exaggeration, in modern cí-craft Cáo is indeed a major master. In the old printed text each tune’s end carried evaluative comments by Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎, Péng Sūnyù 彭孫遹, Zhāng Cháo 張潮, Lǐ Liángnián 李良年, Cáo Xūn 曹勲, Chén Wéisōng, etc. — the late-Míng wénshè (literary-society) practice, peculiarly disagreeable; we have deleted all of these, the better to give the eye and ear rest. The bare work shall stand for what it is. — Qiánlóng 46 / 1781, 9th month.
Abstract
The Kēxuě cí was originally cut in the late 1670s or early 1680s under multiple late-Kāngxī editions, with apparatus of evaluative commentary by Wáng Shìzhēn and Chén Wéisōng’s circle (a feature of the Yángxiànpài / Guǎnglíng school’s printing culture). The Sìkù editors deliberately strip out the apparatus, leaving the bare cí; in that respect the WYG is a re-edition rather than a faithful reproduction. The 239 pieces preserved make Cáo one of the most prolifically transmitted Qīng cí-poets; the corpus is conventionally read for its yǒngwù sequences (the ones Chén Wéisōng praised) and for the biānsài 邊塞 (“frontier”) group, a Qīng adaptation of Sòng frontier-themed cí. The window 1660–1698 is Cáo’s adult working span; he died in office in Kāngxī 37 / 1698.
Translations and research
- Yán Dí-chāng 嚴迪昌, Qīng cí shǐ 清詞史 (Jiāng-sū gǔ-jí, 1990) — major chapter on Cáo Zhēn-jí.
- Quán Qīng cí 全清詞 (Nán-jīng dà-xué) — collated text of the Kē-xuě cí.
- David R. McCraw, Chinese Lyricists of the Seventeenth Century (Hawaii, 1990) — substantial Western-language study of the early-Qīng cí revival in which Cáo is a key figure.
Other points of interest
The Kēxuě cí is the only Qīng-period cí collection accepted into the Sìkù on its author’s own merit; all other Qīng-era cí books admitted are either anthologies (Zhū Yízūn’s Cízōng KR4j0075, Sūn Mò’s Shíwǔ jiā cí KR4j0076) or scholarly treatises (詞律 KR4j0087 etc.). The strip-out-evaluative-comment editorial decision is also instructive for the Sìkù’s general aversion to wénshè-style apparatus.