钱钟书的英文
T’ien Hsia Monthly, August, 1935, P37.
Tragedy in Old Chinese Drama
By Ch’ien Chung-shu
The critical pendulum has once more swung back and there are signs
that our old literature is coming into favour again. Knowing persons
have also told us that there is just at present even a craze for our
old literature among foreigners and that our old drama especially has
all the cry in the West. We are quite proud to hear these things.
That our old drama should lead the way of the craze need not surprise
us; for, though the real power of drama, as Aristotle says in his
Poetics, should be felt apart from representation and action, drama
can for that very reason appeal to the majority of persons whose
interest does not rise above mere representation and spectacle.
Moreover, our old drama richly deserves the epithet “artificial”
which Lamb applies to the comedy of manners. To Western readers
surfeited with drab realism and tiresome problem-plays our old drama
comes as “that breathing-place from the burthen of a perpetual moral
questioning” which must be as refreshing as (say) Barrie’s pleasant
fancy and pathos after an overdose of Pinero and Jones. But whatever
value our old dramas may have as stage performances or as poetry,
they cannot as dramas hold their own with great Western dramas. In
spite of the highest respect for the old dramatists, one cannot
sometimes help echoing Coleridge’s wish as regards Beaumon and
Fletcher that instead of dramas, they should have written poetry,
i.e. poetry in the broad sense inclusive of tzŭ (詞) and ch’ü (曲)
as well. I say this without the least prejudice, because I yield to
none in my enthusiasm for our old literature and would definitely
range myself on the side of the angels and the ancients, should a
quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns break out in China.
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