'The Lament for the South': Yu Hsin's 'Ai Chiang-Nan Fu'

243 Pages·1980·2.86 MB·English

by  William T. Graham

Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature and Institutions
General Editors
Patrick Hanan and Denis Twitchett
THE LAMENT FOR THE SOUTH'
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'The Lament for the South?
YU HSIN'S 'AI CHIANG-NAN FIT
WILLIAM T. GRAHAM, JR
Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Languages
and Literatures, Ohio State University
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE
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SYDNEY MELBOURNE
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© Cambridge University Press 1980
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1980
This digitally printed version 2008
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Graham, William T
The lament for the South - Yu Hsin's Ai
Chiang-nan fu.
(Cambridge studies in Chinese history,
literature, and institutions)
1. Yu, Hsin, 513-581. Ai Chiang-nan fu.
2. China - History - Liang dynasty, 502-557 - Poetry.
I. Yu, Hsin, 513-581. Ai Chiang-nan fu. English.
1980. I. Title.
PL2668.Y8A734 895.1T2 79-50503
ISBN 978-0-521-22713-1 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-10186-8 paperback
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 The historical background 4
2 The fu in the Six Dynasties 21
3 'The Lament for the South' 49
4 Commentary 104
Appendix I: Historical and biographical sources 163
Appendix II: Yu Hsin's career 166
Appendix III: Editions and commentaries 170
Appendix IV: The date of the'Lament' 173
Appendix V: Yii Hsin and Ssu-ma Ch'ien 175
Appendix VI: Two Sui shu anecdotes 177
Appendix VII: Genealogy 179
Notes 180
Bibliography 199
Character glossary 210
Index 224
To J. R. Hightower
PREFACE
I began work on Yii Hsin in 1970 and submitted a thesis on the 'Lament'
to Harvard University as part of the requirements for a Ph.D. degree in
1974. Some portions of that thesis, much revised, are included in this book.
The 'Lament' turned out to be a good deal more difficult than anticipated;
convinced that it must make more sense than it seemed to, I spent the four
years of thesis work, and much of the time since then, reading Six-Dynasties
history and literature. Professor J. R. Hightower, my thesis director, patiently
read and*corrected a number of drafts, and Dr. Achilles Fang, who had tried
for years to teach me classical Chinese, also agreed to act as a reader of the
thesis. I would like to record my indebtedness to both of them. Professor
Hightower has also gone over various drafts of this book and suggested many
improvements; to him the work is dedicated. A number of others have
discussed the 'Lament' with me or read the draft in whole or in part, they
include Professors Florence Chao, Francis Cleaves, Patrick Hanan, William
Hung, Yan-shuan Lao, T. Y. Li, Denis Twitchett, J. T. Wixted, L. S. Yang,
and Y. S. Yu. Mr. George Potter and Miss Deborah White of the Harvard-
Yenching Library have very kindly helped me to obtain books.
It seems particularly appropriate that a book on the 'Lament' should
appear at this time; according to the theory of the late Professor Ch'en
Yia-k'o, 1978 would be the fourteen-hundredth anniversary of the writing
of the'Lament'.
September 22, 1978 W.T.G.

INTRODUCTION
Few Chinese writers have distinguished themselves in as many genres as Yu
Hsin (513—81). Yu's lyric poetry is fully equal to that of Hsieh Ling-yun
(385—433), for example. His parallel-prose writings are considered models
of that form, so much so, in fact, that his name has become more or less
synonymous with parallel prose.1 Finally, Yu's fifteen surviving fu, or poems
in irregular meter, include several works of the first rank, and one of them,
The Lament for the South' ('Ai Chiang-nan fu'), is probably the finest fu
ever written. It is mainly with the 'Lament' that this book is concerned.
After a long period of neglect, there are signs of renewed interest in
fu. Most of the studies have been devoted to the earlier works, but there have
also been occasional forays into the Six-Dynasties period;2 these later fu,
shorter and more accessible than the great showpieces of the Han, are likely
to prove more attractive to the Western reader. Chiang Yen's (444—505)
'Regret',3 one of the best Six-Dynasties fu, is no more difficult than Su Shih's
(1037—1101) 'Red Cliff,4 for example, and a student in second-year literary
Chinese can read either one with ease. The same cannot be said of the works
of Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju (c. 179-117 B.C.).
The 'Lament' is unusually long for its period, about the same length as
Ssu-ma's 'Rhapsody on the Shang-lin Hunting Park'.5 It is also more difficult
than the 'Regret'; one would not recommend it to second-year language
students. I believe, however, that its difficulties are sometimes exaggerated.
It is remarkably free of the obscure vocabulary that turns the 'Shang-lin'
into a dictionary exercise. There are, to be sure, a good many allusions, and
the subject is an unusually complicated one for a/w, but it simplifies matters
if we remind ourselves of the fact that, however atypical of the genre, the
'Lament' remains a/w.
Yu Hsin, of course, did not have a monopoly on allusions. Ssu-ma himself
says at one point, in Watson's translation: 'A [coachman as clever as] Sun
Shu grasps the reins; A [warrior as brave as] Lord Wei stands beside him.6'
These are allusions of a sort, if only on a very low level. The context tells us
that Sun Shu must have been a famous charioteer, which is all we need to