From a Commentary on Yu-Xi-Sheng’S Poetry to Commenting on a Collection of Li Yi-Shan’S Poems: a Study of Ji Yun’S Commentary on Li Shang-Yin’S Poetry(1/2)

I am executing the 107th Annual Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology “A Study on the Relationship between the Comments of ‘The Two Fengs of Haiyu’ and Ji Yun on A Collection of the Tunes of Talent and Those on Li Shang-Yin’s Poems” (107-2410-H-008-049-). When I tracked the relationship between Ji Yun and Li Shang-Yin’s poetry, I found that Ji not only “began my [his] poetic studies with The Collection of Yu-Xi” (“The Preface to The Poetry Anthology of Two Camphor Trees”) but also started his career of poetry commentary at the age of 27 by writing A Commentary on Yu-Xi-Sheng’s Poetry. He wrote Commenting on A Collection of Li Yi-Shan’s Poems when he was 39 and the content of this book is not quite the same as that of the Commentary. The book was later collected in Ji’s Ten Books of the Mirror-Smoke Hall but did not spread widely and was little known. Having this book, The Institute of History and Language, Academia Sinica lent it to Shin Wen Feng Publishing Company for photocopy, and the photocopy was included in The Third Volume of A Collection of Series and published in 1996. So far, the academic circles have still not fully utilized this book. Most of discussions on Ji and Li’s poetry only focus on the Commentary; they rarely mention the Commenting or even confuse the two books. In fact, the two books are different in time by twelve years: the former is a work of Ji’s youth and is a selection while the latter is Ji’s final conclusion in his later years and is a complete collection. To understand the full picture of Ji’s discussions on Li’s poetry, it is necessary to consider the Commenting and also take the Commentary into consideration. Accordingly, this project plans to scrutinize in sequence the discourses of the Commentary and the Commenting and carefully compare their similarities and differences, in a 2-year period. I hope to dynamically sketch Ji’s process of interpreting Li’s poems, deepen connotations and achievements of his poetics about Li, place it in the context of acceptance of Li’s poetry in the Qing dynasty or even the overall history of acceptance of Li’s poetry, and reassess its academic position and value.