Shěnshì Yuèfǔ zhǐmí 沈氏樂府指迷
Shěn’s Bewilderment-Guide to the Music Bureau by 沈義父 (撰)
About the work
The Yuèfǔ zhǐmí 樂府指迷 (whence the catalog’s title Shěnshì Yuèfǔ zhǐmí to distinguish it from the Tūntūn 屯田 and other namesakes) is the principal Chúnyòu-era theoretical statement on cí: a short treatise in 28 entries by Shěn Yìfǔ 沈義父, laying out the technique of song-craft as a student of Wú Wényīng (hào Mèngchuāng 夢牕) would have learned it. The volume’s most influential single observation — that the deflected-rising tones (qùshēng) are the most critical in cí-line construction, and that píngshēng can substitute for rùshēng but shǎngshēng cannot — is the textual foundation on which Wàn Shù 萬樹 later built the prosodic system of his Cílǜ KR4j0087. The treatise also pursues a more controversial poetics of avoidance: when speaking of peach one must use Hóngyǔ 紅雨 or Liúláng 劉郎 (Liú Yǔxī); when speaking of willow one must use Zhāngtái 章臺 or Bààn 㶚岸; when speaking of curtain Yíngōu 銀鉤; when speaking of tear Yùzhù 玉筋; when speaking of hair Lǜyún 綠雲; when speaking of fine-bamboo mat Xiāngzhú 湘竹 — these are the bú kě zhí shuō pò 不可直説破 rules (“must not be said directly”). The Sìkù tíyào mildly criticizes this as turning cí into a code of clichés; modern criticism is harsher.
Tiyao
(The Sìkù tíyào is appended at the close of the Bìjī mànzhì tíyào in the _000.txt for KR4j0078; we translate it here.)
Yuèfǔ zhǐmí, one juǎn. By Shěn Yìfǔ of the Sòng. At the head stands the author’s own colophon, which records: “In rényín autumn I first met Jìngwēng at the Zébīn; in guǐmǎo I met Mèngchuāng (Wú Wényīng) and we composed in exchange in our idle hours.” Rényín and guǐmǎo are Chúnyòu 2 and 3 — so Shěn is a Lǐzōng-reign figure. A Yuán-era colophon by Lù Fǔzhī in his Cízhǐ 詞旨 cites this book. But the volume is short — it can scarcely fill a fascicle — and there is no extant standalone copy. The present text is the version Chén Yàowén 陳耀文 appended to his Huācǎo cuìbiān KR4j0073; 28 entries in all. Shěn takes Zhōu Bāngyàn as his zōng (orthodox model); his theoretical positions are mostly on target. But where he writes “no two names may be paired up” (使如庾信愁多江淹恨極之類) — e.g. that a cí line should not put Yǔ Xìn’s chóu (sorrow) facing Jiāng Yān’s hèn (regret), even as cí-line balance — that is too rigid. And where he says “speak of peach with Hóngyǔ and Liúláng, of willow with Zhāngtái and Bààn, of curtain with Yíngōu, of tear with Yùzhù, of hair with Lǜyún, of fine-bamboo mat with Xiāngzhú” — and forbids saying directly what the cí is about — he was trying to avoid vulgarity, but it has tipped over into another kind of literary mannerism. Yet the entry on the supreme importance of qùshēng, and on the rule that píngshēng may substitute for rùshēng but shǎngshēng may not — that one is finely incisive at the most subtle level, and it is on this rule that Wàn Shù’s Cílǜ KR4j0087 is built. Again, the entry on the variation among old cípǔ: at one qiāng there may be two or three differences in character-count, or the jùfǎ (line-length) is unequal — that is because performance-teachers (jiàoshī) altered it, and the piāochàng tradition (extended song-form) added emphasis-characters. This shows that even Sòng cí were not always strictly xiélǜ (tonally regulated), and singers introduced their own additions and omissions; the rule in Wàn Shù’s Cílǜ that “qǔ has chènzì but cí has not” is, on this evidence, an over-simplification — Wàn has missed Shěn’s qualification. — Qiánlóng 46 / 1781, 10th month.
Abstract
The Yuèfǔ zhǐmí is the second of the two founding Sòng cí-treatises (with Wáng Zhuó’s Bìjī mànzhì KR4j0078). Where Wáng wrote a historical-prosodic survey, Shěn wrote a practical compositional handbook for cí in the Wú Wényīng / Mèngchuāng manner. The treatise survives only because Chén Yàowén embedded it in his Huācǎo cuìbiān KR4j0073; no independent copy is recorded. From the Sìkù the work was excerpted into its standalone catalogue position. Modern editors (Táng Guīzhāng) reconstitute the text and note that Shěn’s 28 entries are the principal practical evidence for Wú Wényīng’s compositional principles. The composition window 1242–1250 reflects Shěn’s recorded Chúnyòu dating. Critically, the Yuèfǔ zhǐmí is the source-text on which Wàn Shù’s Cílǜ (the Qīng cí-prosody monumental) is built — but the Sìkù tíyào’s mild correction of Wàn against Shěn (on the question of chènzì in song-performance) is itself one of the most important Sìkù-editorial interventions in cí-theory.
Translations and research
- Stuart Sargent, “Tz’u,” in Mair, ed., Columbia History of Chinese Literature.
- Lin Shuen-fu, The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition — uses the Yuè-fǔ zhǐ-mí as a major source for Wú Wén-yīng’s practice.
- Wú Xióng-hé 吳熊和, Táng-Sòng cí tōng-lùn — sustained discussion of the Yuè-fǔ zhǐ-mí.
Other points of interest
The “do not say peach directly; say Hóngyǔ or Liúláng” set of forbidden directness rules — Shěn’s most criticized doctrine — is itself a textbook of late-Southern-Sòng cí-mannerism, and Wáng Guówéi’s modern critique of late-Sòng cí as yǐcí hàiyì (sacrificing meaning to verbal cleverness) is in effect a hostile critique of Shěn Yìfǔ.