Xīhé cíhuà 西河詞話
Xī-hé Discourses on Cí by 毛奇齡 (撰)
About the work
The Xīhé cíhuà 西河詞話 is the cíhuà of Máo Qílíng 毛奇齡 (1623–1716, zì Dàkě 大可, hào Xīhé 西河), the great early-Qīng polymath, Bóxué hóngcí of 1679, and author of more than 230 separate scholarly works. Two juǎn in the surviving form; per the editor’s own Xīhé héjí xùmù the work was originally in four juǎn, of which two are lost — Máo would not “qiǎng bǔ” 強補 (forcibly supplement) and published the half he had. The cíhuà covers the history and theory of cí, with a particular interest in the prehistory and the transformation into qǔ and dramatic verse. Máo’s strongest entries are the technical-prosodic discussion of cí-rhyme (the Shěn Qùjīn cíyùn 沈去矜詞韻 entry, called “jīnghé” — finely cut — by the Sìkù); his analysis of Xīn Qìjí 辛棄疾 and Jiǎng Jié 蔣捷 as a biédiào 別調 line distinct from the Zhōu Bāngyàn / Jiāng Kuí orthodoxy; and his historical narrative of how cí evolved into the zájù dramatic genres of the SòngYuán. The Sìkù tíyào notes some specific factual errors (Máo treats Zhào Lìngzhì 趙令畤, zì Délín 德麟, as a late-Sòng figure though Sū Shì’s collected works prove him to have been a contemporary), but admits the Xīhé cíhuà as a substantive contribution.
Tiyao
Xīhé cíhuà, two juǎn. By Máo Qílíng of the present dynasty. Qílíng has the Zhòngshì Yì KR1a0193 separately catalogued. According to the Xīhé héjí xùmù, this work was originally in 4 juǎn; the 2 missing juǎn he would not artificially supplement, hence he published only the surviving half. Qílíng’s gōng (proficiency) at tiáncí (filling words to tune) is greater than at shī; and cí is in any case a xiǎojì (minor craft) that sprouted in the Táng and matured in the Sòng — one cannot pretend to find ancient sources for it or write gāolùn (lofty theory). So what he writes here does not float into the irrelevant. His discussion of Shěn Qùjīn’s cíyùn is uniquely well-cut; his treatment of Xīn Qìjí and Jiǎng Jié as a biédiào line shows a deep understanding of cí’s source-and-flow. Only when he traces cí far back to the Six Dynasties — saying that Bào Zhào’s Méihuā luò should equally count as cí — well, the Hàn náogē 鐃歌 already had long-and-short-line; should náogē therefore count as the origin of cí? Again, his interpretation of Xīxiāngjì 西廂記’s xiàngnǚ pèifū 相女配夫 — saying it means xiàng 相 in the Sòngdài cífǎ sense, “to scrutinize, to assess” (a meaning that survives in modern dialect) — but then citing Sūn Fù’s xiàngnǚ bùyǐ jià gōnghóu, nǎiyǐ jià Shāngǔ shuāilǎo line as if it were prime-minister-xiàng, of which it is not — that is forced. And his sketch of how cí and qǔ turned into stage-performance — line by line, the beginnings and ends — is extremely comprehensive, but his statement that “late-Sòng An-dìng-jùn-wáng Zhào Lìngzhì first composed the Shāngdiào gǔzǐcí and so set the Xīxiāng drama on its course” — well, Lìngzhì is the Zhào Délín referred to in Sū Shì’s collected works, that is no “late-Sòng man” — this is mildly careless. Yet from the Sòng onwards there have been many shīhuà writers; cíhuà writers are fewer. This volume, though not as full as Xú Qiú’s 徐釚 Cíyuàn cóngtán KR4j0085 for breadth of reference, is still useful for conversation. We therefore prune away the shīhuà part and keep the cíhuà. — Qiánlóng 46 / 1781, 9th month.
Abstract
The Xīhé cíhuà was composed during Máo’s adult working life — his floruit runs from c. 1660 to his death in 1716. The transmitted text is half its original length; per Máo’s own statement in the Xīhé héjí xùmù, two of the original four juǎn are lost. The work’s principal contributions are: (a) the technical analysis of Shěn Qùjīn’s Cíyùn — the founding statement of Qīng-era cí-rhyme philology; (b) the placement of Xīn Qìjí and Jiǎng Jié in a biédiào line that resists the Zhèxīpài’s Jiāng Kuí orthodoxy (Máo here writes against Zhū Yízūn’s then-dominant theory); (c) the historical narrative of how cí evolves into SòngYuán zájù. The work is the second-tier Qīng cíhuà after Xú Qiú’s Cíyuàn cóngtán KR4j0085. Modern Qīng cíhuà scholarship (Wáng Wěiyī) treats the Xīhé cíhuà as the principal early-Kāngxī cí-theoretical work outside the Zhèxīpài line.
Translations and research
- Yán Dí-chāng 嚴迪昌, Qīng cí shǐ 清詞史 — discussion of the Xī-hé cí-huà.
- Wáng Wěi-yī 王偉勇, Qīng-dài cí-xué pī-píng shǐ.
- David R. McCraw, Chinese Lyricists of the Seventeenth Century — context for the cí-theoretical landscape Máo Qí-líng intervenes in.
Other points of interest
Máo Qílíng’s argument that Xīn Qìjí and Jiǎng Jié represent a biédiào (alternative line) — written in deliberate opposition to the Zhèxīpài’s canonization of Jiāng Kuí — anticipates, by a century, the Chángzhōupài’s mid-Qīng overthrow of the Zhèxīpài and is one of the most prescient theoretical interventions of the early Qīng.