二つの「指南錄」自序

Abstract

The Account of the Southwards Pointing Compass 指南録 is a poetry collection by the famous Song 宋 loyalist Wen Tianxiang 文天祥. A rare characteristic of this work is that it contains two prefaces, both written by the author himself: the Former Preface 前序 and the Latter Preface 後序. The purpose of this paper is to examine the reason for this double preface. When we compare the two prefaces we notice that their first sections resemble each other closely in vocabulary as well as sentence structure, and that the Latter Preface contains more features typical of a preface than the Former Preface. It is thus difficult to imagine that both prefaces were already present within the original work. In the formation of Account of the Southwards Pointing Compass we can discern three stages: Firstly, the descriptions that Wen recorded in real time during his escape from the Yuan 元 army. Secondly, the poetry that Wen, together with the Former Preface, appended to these descriptions to form a total of three fascicles. And lastly, the addition of another fascicle of poetry and the Latter Preface. Taking into consideration the earlier comparison between the two prefaces we can conclude that the Latter Preface was originally written to replace the Former Preface. There is evidence that the Account of the Southwards Pointing Compass started circulating soon after its completion. We find one of the earliest references to it in the Sacrificial Eulogy for the Yet-Living Prime Minister Wen 生祭文丞相 in which the author Wang Yanwu 王炎午 quotes some passages of the work in order to persuade Wen Tianxiang to commit honourable suicide. I thus surmise that, although the Former Preface had already been replaced by the Latter Preface, it were the people surrounding Wen Tianxiang like Wu Yanwu who, during the process of copying and transmitting the Account of the Southwards Pointing Compass, added once more the Former Preface as one of the remaining manuscripts of the great loyalist.