Textual Research into Variants of Willow Catkins inThe Song of the Water Dragonby ZHANG Zhifu

In ZHANG Zhifu's The Song of the Water Dragon, there is a textual variant in the verse that praises willow catkins ( yanghua). In the third line, they are written as “the willow catkins lightly flying and dancing, dotting the green woods, but devoid of talent and sentiment. They are untalented in a poem by HAN Yu who is a well-known poet in Tang Dynasty. They also alternatively are depicted as “the willow catkins lightly fly, dotting the green woods, and who says they are devoid of talent and sentiment？” Critics in Ming and Qing Dynasties, such as ZHUO Renyue and WAN Shu, noticed this textual variant and proposed different viewpoints. However, contemporary scholars mostly consider the former version as the correct one. By examining the dissemination path and textual evolution of this verse in anthologies both from Song and Ming Dynasties, this paper speculates that the term luanwu(dancing in disorder) was mixed when GU Congjing engraved the verse in the Classified Ci-poem from a Thatched Cottageduring Ming Dynasty. A comprehensive analysis is conducted from various perspectives, including textual variation, text interpretation, and prosodic norms. It is concluded that the line should be rendered as “(The willow catkins) gracefully dance, and they, like embellishment, paint the green woods. No such remark as “they are untalented and apathetic”. The rendition proposed in this paper is closer to the original form of the work.