Yuèfǔ bǔtí 樂府補題
Supplementary Themes for the Music Bureau edited by 陳恕可 (輯)
About the work
The Yuèfǔ bǔtí 樂府補題 is the most politically charged late-Sòng cí anthology: a set of 37 cí in five yǒngwù 詠物 sequences, exchanged at five different gatherings of yímín poets in the years immediately following the Yuán conquest of the Southern Sòng (1276–1279). One juǎn; no editor’s name in the original. The five sets are: Dragon-Spittle Perfume 龍涎香 (8 cí to the tune Tiānxiāng 天香, at Wǎnwěi shānfáng); White Lotus 白蓮 (10 cí to Shuǐlóng yín, at Fúcuì shānfáng); Water-Shield 蓴 (5 cí to Mōyúér, at Zǐyún shānfáng); Cicada 蟬 (10 cí to Qítiānyuè, at Yújiān shūyuàn); and Crab 蠏 (4 cí to Guìzhī xiāng, at Tiānzhù shānfáng). The 14 named participants are Wáng Yísūn 王沂孫 (Yùsì, zì Shèngyǔ), Zhōu Mì 周密 (Píngzhōu, zì Gōngjǐn), Wáng Yìjiǎn 王易簡 (Tiānzhù, zì Lǐdé), Féng Yìngruì 馮應瑞 (Yáocuì, zì Xiángfù), Táng Yìsūn 唐藝孫 (Zǐyún, zì Yīngfā), Lǚ Tónglǎo 呂同老 (Yúnfáng, zì Héfǔ), Lǐ Pénglǎo 李彭老 (Wǎnwěi, zì Shāngyǐn), Chén Shùkě 陳恕可 (Wǎnwěi, zì Xíngzhī), Táng Jué 唐珏 (Júshān, zì Yùqián), Zhào Rǔnà 趙汝鈉 (Yuèzhōu, zì Zhēnqīng), Lǐ Jūrén 李居仁 (Wǔsōng, zì Shīlǚ), Zhāng Yán 張炎 (Yùtián, zì Shūxià), Qiú Yuǎn 仇遠 (Shāncūn, zì Rénjìn), and two anonymous. Modern scholarship reads the yǒngwù objects allegorically as figures for the lost Sòng — most influentially, Wáng Guówéi 王國維’s reading of the white-lotus pieces as allegorical lament for the desecrated Sòng imperial tombs.
Tiyao
Yuèfǔ bǔtí, one juǎn; no compiler’s name. All are exchange-pieces by Sòng-loyalist late-Sòng poets. In all the volume offers 8 pieces on dragon-spittle perfume, in the tune Tiānxiāng 天香; 10 on white lotus, in Shuǐlóng yín 水龍吟; 5 on water-shield, in Mōyúér 摸魚兒; 10 on cicada, in Qítiānyuè 齊天樂; 4 on crab, in Guìzhī xiāng 桂枝香. The named contributors are Wáng Yísūn, Zhōu Mì, Wáng Yìjiǎn, Féng Yìngruì, Táng Yìsūn, Lǚ Tónglǎo, Lǐ Pénglǎo, Chén Shùkě, Táng Jué, Zhào Rǔnà, Lǐ Jūrén, Zhāng Yán, Qiú Yuǎn — 13 in all — plus two unnamed. The volume is not recorded in any earlier bibliographic catalogue. At the head stands a preface by Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊 which says the volume came from a manuscript at Chángshú in the Wú household, was bought by Wāng Jìnxián 汪晉賢 from the Chángxìng collector, and cut to woodblock by Jiǎng Jǐngqí 蒋景祁 — i.e. it first became available in transmission in the Kāngxī era. Zhū’s preface further notes that there must originally have been more than just these exchange-pieces, and there must have been a preface giving the dates and occasions; that all is now lost. The conclusion is probably right — possibly an ink-mark manuscript circulated and a later hand entered it into book-form, hence the absence of a single founding preface or table of dates. — Qiánlóng 44 / 1779, 5th month.
The opening preface (by an anonymous Sòngyuán hand and the principal manifesto of the volume) reads: “The exchange-poets of the Yuèfǔ bǔtí are Yùsì Wáng Yísūn (zì Shèngyǔ), Píngzhōu Zhōu Mì (zì Gōngjǐn), Tiānzhù Wáng Yìjiǎn (zì Lǐdé)…” (the list continues, naming the 13 men, the 2 anonymous, the 5 gathering-houses, the 5 tunes, and noting that the 37 pieces are arranged into one juǎn). “Alas! these are all by leftover-subjects of the ZhàoSòng. — From the time the clouds darkened over the Five Kingdoms-bridge and the cuckoo cried at the divination, the tide stilled at the SānJiāng camp, the dust of the Jiāmǎ fields lay desolate, the late Emperor went his great journey, and the southern palace’s flutes-and-zithers fell silent, the prime-minister Jiǎ Sìdào could not return, the West-lake’s lamps and torches disappeared, the three-tones stone-drum and the foot-soldier Wāng’s frontier-pass-with-grief, the one juǎn of Jīntuó (Yuè Fēi’s collection) and the Wáng Zhāoyí pi-pa’s complaints — Gāotíng with its black-flag the trembling rhino-bow’s wall, Gělǐng with its blue-arrow-strewn brocade-coat-laden alleys — all gone. There are the old men of Línpíng and the Tiānshuǐ princes; bored, they take the by-name Wandering Gentleman; meaningfully, they style themselves Refugees. They drift like duckweed, who pities them? Letting themselves go among wine-flags and song-fans: a melancholy of nothing to lean on. They meet by chance at temples and pleasure-houses. Inside the candle’s burnt-tip there will be a wild remark; under the back-of-the-curtain’s smoldering incense there will be a slanting word. Drawing on the slightest cí-line to convey one’s intent, leaning on the xiǎolìng to make sound. This therefore is what came of it — Wēn Tíngyún’s pretty lines, no more than the idle chat of a Kāiyuán palace-woman; Zhào Chóngzuò’s new compilation, no more than Cáilǎo’s Mènghuá of forgotten matters.” (The preface continues, justifying the genre and naming the discovery and re-printing of the volume by Zhū Yízūn and the publisher Jiǎng Jǐngqí.)
Abstract
The Yuèfǔ bǔtí is the single most important yǒngwù anthology in Chinese literature, and the most explicitly political: every object — dragon-spittle perfume, lotus, water-shield, cicada, crab — has been read in modern scholarship as an allegorical figure for the lost Sòng dynasty and its desecrated emperors. The famous Wáng Guówéi 王國維 interpretation of the white-lotus pieces (1907) reads them as elegies for the Sòng imperial tombs at Shàoxīng, plundered by Yáng Liànzhēnjiā 楊璉真伽 in 1278 — an interpretation now broadly accepted as the proximate occasion of at least the white-lotus and cicada sets. The composition window 1278–1290 is consonant with both the tomb-desecration date and the participants’ biographies (Zhāng Yán 1248–1320; Wáng Yísūn d. c. 1290; Zhōu Mì 1232–1298). Textually, the volume was lost in the late Yuán / Míng and rediscovered in Kāngxī by Zhū Yízūn (at Chángshú, via the Wáng household) and cut to print by Jiǎng Jǐngqí. The Sìkù admits Zhū’s text. Modern annotated editions of major monographs (Cài Sōngyún 蔡嵩雲, Yuèfǔ bǔtí jiàojiān; Wú Xiónghé) treat the volume as one of the principal documents of Sòng-loyalist cí.
Translations and research
- Wáng Guó-wéi 王國維, Rén-jiān cí-huà 人間詞話 (1908) — the founding modern reading of the white-lotus sequence as Sòng-tomb elegy.
- Yè Jiā-yíng 葉嘉瑩, Jiā-líng tán cí — extended readings of the Yuè-fǔ bǔ-tí.
- Lin Shuen-fu, The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K’uei and Southern Sung Tz’u Poetry (Princeton, 1978) — situates the yǒng-wù school in the late-Sòng cí line.
- Charles Hartman, “Poetry,” in The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature (Cambridge, 2010), Vol. 1 — sustained treatment.
- Tāng Guī-zhāng 唐圭璋, Quán Sòng cí — collated text.
- Hé Lín 何林, Yuè-fǔ bǔ-tí kǎo-jiào (modern critical study).
Other points of interest
The political reading of the yǒngwù objects as figures for the desecrated Sòng imperial tombs is among the most famous interpretive moves in modern Chinese literary criticism — and itself a textbook case in how a stylistic mode (the late-Sòng yǒngwù) carries political content recoverable only through deep allegory.