A scholar's 40 years, over 15 million words. The Complete Compilation of Tang and Five Dynasties Poetry has finally become a document | Tang Poetry | Scholar
"For the past decade or so, every night when I came out from the small path at the north gate of Fudan, I saw withered trees and leaves rustling down. In spring, they flourished again, withered again, and turned green again. And so year after year has passed." Chen Shangjun, a senior professor of humanities at Fudan University, said, "Finally completing this book, my heart is very anxious and I have no absolute confidence. But it is a great honor for a person to accomplish such a thing in their lifetime and contribute their modest efforts to the cultural accumulation of the country and the nation."
On August 22nd, the last day of the Shanghai Book Fair welcomed a heavyweight event, with a three person discussion and reader sharing session on "The Complete Compilation of Tang and Five Dynasties Poetry" held in the Friendship Hall. The 100 "Trial Readers" of the Complete Compilation of Tang and Five Dynasties Poetry were distributed in a short period of time, and readers read and flipped through them. Some people gently placed this orange book on their luggage.
The "Trial Reading Book" includes Du Mu's parts from Volume 715 to 721 of the Complete Compilation of Tang and Five Dynasties Poetry. "More than 200 pages, and the entire book is 200 times its size," said Chen Shangjun, the editor.
The Complete Compilation of Tang and Five Dynasties Poetry is a summary work of Chen Shangjun's research on Tang poetry for more than 40 years. The book has over 1200 volumes, over 15 million words, and includes nearly 4000 poets and more than 55000 Tang poems. It has conducted a detailed and comprehensive sorting of existing Tang poetry literature. At present, all the manuscripts have been submitted to Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, entering the editing and proofreading stage, and are expected to meet with readers at the end of this year or early next year.
Chen Shangjun's research on Tang poetry began in the early 1980s. At first, he compared the basic literature of Tang poetry with the Qing Dynasty's "Complete Tang Poetry" and found that there were still a large number of documents that were not used by previous scholars when collecting and organizing Tang poetry, resulting in problems such as missing or mistakenly collecting Tang poetry, missing author biographies, and errors in poetry recording. He realized the importance of comprehensively and meticulously reorganizing Tang poetry, providing people with a reliable and convincing integrated literature on Tang poetry. He began to use various means to collect and discover information and literature, and reviewed and investigated them one by one. This job has been done for forty years. During this period, important works on the compilation of Tang Dynasty literature, such as "Complete Compilation of Tang Poetry" and "Complete Compilation of Tang Literature", were successively published. This "Complete Compilation of Tang and Five Dynasties Poetry" undoubtedly spent the most effort.
The most well-known and largest collection of Tang poetry among the public is the "Complete Collection of Tang Poetry" compiled by Qing Dynasty scholars during the Kangxi period. Although this book greatly promoted the research on Tang poetry for the next three hundred years, it itself has many problems. Although it is called "Complete", there are still a large number of Tang poems that have not been collected; Although it was named as a collection of Tang poetry, it also mistakenly collected many poems from previous or future generations. The Complete Compilation of Tang and Five Dynasties Poems, compared to the Qing Dynasty's Complete Compilation of Tang Poems, has corrected more than 5000 errors and reissues; More than ten thousand lost works have been supplemented. More importantly, the compilation of "The Complete Collection of Tang Poetry" in the Qing Dynasty mainly relied on the collection of Tang poetry from previous dynasties. Apart from being briefly supplemented, it mainly simplified and unified the style, so it is impossible to trace and proofread the collected Tang poems one by one; The Complete Compilation of Tang and Five Dynasties Poetry has almost edited every poet and Tang poem included one by one. The basic principle is the concept that Chen Shangjun has always upheld - "returning to the position of the Tang people" - that is, to exhaust literature, trace Tang poetry back to its original appearance as much as possible, and then collate it with important collections and collections from previous dynasties to clarify the trajectory of changes in the appearance of Tang poetry texts.
"This book has laid a solid literary foundation for the study of Tang Dynasty literature and can also provide a new paradigm for the compilation of ancient books." Professor Luo Shijin from the School of Literature at Suzhou University, who has participated in the compilation of all Tang poetry and all Tang literature, summarized the "Complete Compilation of Tang and Five Dynasties Poetry" in sixteen words, stating that it is "grand in scale, unprecedentedly complete, dedicated in life, and immeasurable in merit.". "When readers read this book, they first look at the Tang poetry text, then at the verified poet's deeds, and finally at the author's research insights. Luo Shijin described Chen Shangjun's work as' capricious', stating that 'some annotations are several times longer than the original text, and such capriciousness is necessary for academic pursuits.'"
"Decades of hard work, this is the dedication of a scholar's wisdom and physical strength, as well as the dedication of time and talent. In Mr. Chen, we see 'perseverance and success'. This book is his account of his academic career, as well as his account of inheriting excellent traditional Chinese culture. If this effort is worth it, it must be done!" Xu Jun, an ancient book publishing expert and Dunhuang poetry literature research expert, former executive director of Zhonghua Book Company, described "The Complete Compilation of Tang and Five Dynasties Poetry" as "a masterpiece of 15 million words completed by one person, with a volume that may be unprecedented. Chen Shangjun is like a literature engineer, this masterpiece. The publication not only had a huge impact on the inheritance, dissemination, and research of Tang Dynasty literature, but also will become a model of Chinese classical literature compilation
"We live in a fortunate era, where with the advancement of technology, people have become more and more convenient to obtain literature and academic achievements. These literature and academic achievements are the wisdom of our predecessors. Gathering these wisdom crystals, we can present them to the world in a reliable manner, allowing readers to share academic research results and understand the vastness and profoundness of traditional Chinese culture." Chen Shangjun said, "Throughout life, we strive to move forward and make this book a good one."
"My mood is not 'accomplished', but rather as uneasy as the song 'Tomorrow I will marry you'. Nevertheless, I hope to have a revised version in my lifetime and have the opportunity to make it more accessible to the general public." Chen Shangjun said in conclusion, "Thank you to my wife for decades of support."
