钱锺书の英文作品《苏东坡的赋及其文学背景》

钱锺书の英文作品《苏东坡的赋及其文学背景》

SU TUNG-PO’S LITERARY BACKGROUND AND HIS PROSE-POETRY by Qian Zhongshu
   
   (Primarily written as a foreword to “Su Tung-Po’s Prose-poems” translated into English with Notes and Commentaries by C. D. Le Gros Clark, this is published here by kind permission of Mr. Le Gros Clark. Those who are interested in textual criticism may consult Mr. Wu Shih-ch’ang’s review in Chinese which appeared in The Crescent Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 3. –Ed.)
   
   Of the Sung dynasty, it may be said, as Hazlitt said of himself, that it is nothing if not critical. The Chinese people dropped something of their usual wise passiveness during the Sung dynasty, and “pondered, searched, probed, vexed, and criticized”. This intellectual activity, however, is not to be compared with that of the Pre-Chin period, the heyday of Chinese philosophy. The men of the Sung dynasty were inquisitive rather than speculative, filled more with a sense of curiosity than with a sense of mystery. Hence, there is no sweep, no daring, no roominess or margin in their intellectualism. A prosaic and stuffy thing theirs is, on the whole. This critical spirit revealed itself in many directions, particularly in the full flourish of literary criticism and the rise of the tao-hsüeh （道学）, that mélange adultere of metaphysics, psychology, ethics and casuistry.
    Literary criticism in China is an unduly belated art. Apart from a handful of obiter dicta scattered here and there, Liu Hsieh’s Literary Mind （刘勰文心雕龙） and Lo Chi’s A Prose-poem on Literature （陆机文赋） are the critical writings that count up to the Sung dynasty. There is Chung Yung’s Classification of Poets (钟嵘诗品) of course. But Chung Yung is a literary genealogist rather than a critic, and his method of simply dividing poets into sheep and goats and dispensing praise or dispraise where he thought due, is the reverse of critical, let alone his fanciful attempts to trace literary parentages(1). Ssu-Kung Tu’s Characterisations of Poetry (司空图诗品) is a different matter(2). Ssu-Kung Tu seeks to convey purely with imagery the impressions registered by a sensitive mind of twenty four different kinds of poetry: “pure, ornate, grotesque,” etc. His is perhaps the earliest piece of “impressionistic” or “creative criticism” ever written if any language, so quietly ecstatic and so autonomous and self-sufficient, as it were, in its being but it fails on that very account to become sober and proper criticism. It is not until the Sung dynasty that criticism begins to be practiced in earnest. Numerous “causeries on poetry” （诗话）are written and principles of literature are canvassed by way of commentaries on individual poets. Henceforth, causeries on poetry become established as the vehicle for Chinese criticism. One must note in passing that there do not appear professional critics with the rise of criticism. In those good old days of China, criticism is always the prerogative of artists themselves. The division of labour between critics and artists in the West is something that the old Chinese literati would scoff at. The criticism of Sung dynasty, like all Chinese criticismsbefore the “New Literature Movement” with the possible exception of Hsieh’s Literary Mind, is apt to fasten upon particulars and be given too much to the study of best words in best places. But it is symptomatic of the critical spirit, and there is an end of it.
     The Chinese common reader often regards the men of the Sung dynasty as prigs. Their high seriousness and intellectual and moral squeamishness are at once irritating and amusing to the ordinary easy-going Chinese temperament. There is something paralyzing and devitalizing in their wire-drawn casuistry which induces hostile critics to attribute the collapse of the Sung dynasty to its philosophers. There is also a disingenuousness in their attempts at what may be called for want of a better name, philosophical masquerade: to dress up Taoism of Buddhism as orthodox Confucianism. One need but look into Sketches in a Villa（阅微草堂笔记）and Causeries on Poetry in a Garden（随园诗话） to see what a good laugh these two coxcombs of letters, Chi Yuen （纪昀） and Yuan Mei （袁枚） have had at the expense of the Sung philosophers and critics respectively. Nevertheless ofe is compelled to admit that the Sung philosophers are unequalled in the study of mental chemistry. Never has human nature been subject to a more rigorous scrutiny before or since in the history of Chinese thought. For what strikes one most in the tao-hsüeh is the emphasis on self-knowledge. This constant preying upon itself of the mind is quite in the spirit of the age. The Sung philosophers are morbidly introspective, always feeling their moral pulses and floundering in their own streams of consciousness. To them, their mind verily “ a kingdom is”. They analyse and pulverize human nature. But for that moral bias which Nietzsche thinks to be also the bane of German philosophy, their vivisection of human soul would have contributed a good deal to what Santayna calls literary psychology.
     The poetry of the sung dynasty is also a case in point. It is a critical commonplace that the Sung poetry furnishes a striking contract to the T’ang poetry. Chinese poetry, hitherto ethereal and delicate, seems in the Sung dynasty to take on flesh and becomes a solid, full-blooded thing. It is more weighted with the burden of thought. Of course, it still looks light and slight enough by the side of Western poetry. But the lightness of the Sung poetry is that of an aeroplane describing graceful curves, and no longer that of a moth fluttering in the mellow twilight. In the Sung poetry one finds very little of that suggestiveness, that charm of a beautiful thing imperfectly beheld, which foreigners think characteristic of Chinese poetry in general. Instead, one meets with a great deal of naked thinking and outright speaking. It may be called “sentimental” in contradistinction to the T’ang poetry which is on the whole “na飗e”, to adopt Schiller’s useful antithesis. The Sung poets, however, make up for their loss in lisping naivete and lyric glow by a finesse in feeling and observation. In their descriptive poetry, they have the knack of taking the thing to be described sur le vif: witness Lo Yu (陆游) and Yang Wan-li （杨万里）. They have also a better perception of the nuances of emotion than the T’ang poets, as can be seen particularly in their Ts’u （词）, a species of song for which the Sung dynasty is justly famous(3). Small wonder that they are deliberate artists, considering the fact that they all have been critics in the off hours of their inspiration. The most annoying thing about them is perhaps their erudition and allusiveness which makes the enjoyment of them to a large extent the luxury of the initiated even among the Chinese.
    The interest of Su Tung-po for us lies in the fact that he does not share the spirit of his age. He seems to be born out of his due time and is nonetheless an anachronism for being himself unaware of it. To begin with, he is not critical in the sense that his contemporaries are critical. In the excellent of Su’s philosophy of art, Mr. C. D. Le Gros Clark has shown that Su goes to the root of the matter he turns from the work of the art to the mind of the artist: A poet, according to Su should “merge himself” with reality, and not content himself with the mere polishing of literary surfaces(4). Compared to this conception of the ontological affinity between the artist and Nature, the most meticulous studies in diction and technique of Su’s contemporaries dwindle into mere fussiness of the near-sighted over details. Again, Su has a rooted antipathy against the spiritual pedantry of tao-hsüeh that “unseasonable ostentation” of conscience and moral sense. He speaks disparagingly of the high talk about human nature and reason, and the inefficiency of those who model themselves upon Confucius and Mencius(5). He is also opposed to Cheng Yi (程颐), the leader the tao-hsüeh party in politics with a virulence almost incompatible with his otherwise genial and tolerant character(6). He is probably still in purgatory for these offences. Chü Hsi (朱熹) has condemned him several times in his writings(7) —— and, in a way, to be dispraised of Chü His is no small praise! Finally, as poet, he is comparatively the most “na飗e” among his “sentimental” contemporaries. Though on “native wood notes wild”, his poetry smells more of the perfume of books, as the Chinese phrase goes, than of the lamp oil. His stylistic feats seem rather lucky accidents than the results of sweating toil. He is much more spontaneous and simple in the mode of feeling than (say) Huang T’ing-chien (黄庭坚), who and Su are the twin giants in the Sung poetry. Ling Ai-hsüan （林爱轩） has put the contrast between Su and Huang in a nutshell comparable to Johnson’s epigram on the difference between Dryden and Pope. “Su’s poetry is manly and walks in big strides while Huang’s is woman-like and walks in mincing steps”(8). Has not Su himself also said that simplicity and primitiveness should be the criteria of good art(9)?
     Su’s strains are as profuse as his art is unpremeditated. He throws out his good things to the winds with the prodigality and careless opulence of Nature. Here’s God’s plenty indeed! He says of his own style: “My style is like a spring of inexhaustible water which bubbles and over-flows where it lists, no matter where. Running its course through the plains, it may glide along at the speed of a thousand li a day. When it threads its way through cliffs and mountains, one never knows beforehand what size it would assume to conform with these obstacles —— It flows where it must flow and stops where it must stop”(10). Elsewhere he repeats almost verbatim what he says here with the additional metaphor that our style should be like the floating cloud (11). It is significant that this simile of water with its association of fluidity and spontaneity recurs with slight variations in all criticisms of Su. To quote a few examples from his contemporaries will suffice: his brother Tsu-yu (子由) likens his style to a mountain stream young after rain(12); Huang Ting-chien, to the sea, tractless and boundless into which all rivers empty(13); Li Chi-ch’ing (李耆卿), to an impetuous flood（14）; Hsü Kai （许顗） to a big river(15). Thus the abiding impression of Su’s art is one of “spontaneous overflow”. Ch’ien Ch’ien-i （钱谦益） varies the metaphor by comparing Su’s style to quicksilver and draws the conclusion that the Taoist and Buddhist Naturalism must have been the formative influence in Su’s life and art(16) —— a conclusion Mr Le Gros Clark arrives at independently four centuries later.
    It is strange that this Naturalism which exercises a liberating influence upon Su should also form an important element in the harrowing, cut-and-dry Sung philosophy or t’ao-hsüeh. One is tempted to think that where the Sung philosophers are only naturalistic in “creed”, Su is naturalistic in “character”, Su is a spirit apart indeed!
     Famed in all great arts, Su is supreme in prose-poetry or Fu （赋）(17). In other species of writing, he only develops along the lines laid down by his immediate predecessors; but his prose-poetry is one of those surprises in the history of literature. Here is an art rediscovered that has been lost for several centuries. The whole T’ang dynasty is a blank as far as prose-poetry is concerned (18). The famous prose-poems by Han Yu （韩愈） and Liu Tsung-yuan （柳宗元） are all stiff-jointed imitative and second-rate. Ou-yang Hsiu （欧阳修） first shows the way by his magnificent Autumn Dirge (19), and Su does the rest. In Su’s hands,the Fu becomes a new thing he brings ease into what has hitherto been stately; he changes the measured, even-paced tread suggestive of the military drill into a swinging gait, even now and then a gallop; and he dispenses altogether that elaborate pageantry which old writers of fu are so fond of unrolling before the reader (20). He is by far the greatest fu-writer since Yü Sin （庾信）. While Yü Sin shows how supple he can be in spite of the cramping antithetical style of the Fu, Su succeeds in softening and thawing this rigid style, smoothing over its angularity and making the sharp points of the riming antitheses melt into one another. T’ang Tsu-his （唐子西） does not exaggerate when he says that in Fu Su “beats all the ancients”(21). The fag-end of a foreword is not the place for a detailed discussion of the literary qualities of Su’s Fu’s. Su’ usual freakishness, buoyancy, humour, abundance of metaphor are all there. But critics, while noting all these, have overlooked that which distinguishes his Fu’s from his other writings —— the difference in tempo. Su’s normal style is “eminently rapid”, as Arnold says of Homer, in his prose-poems, however, he often slackens down almost to the point of languidness as if he were caressing every word he speake. Take for instance the section in Red Cliff Part I beginning with Su’s question “Why is it so?” it moves with the deliberate slowness and ease of a slow-motion picture. What is said above does not apply, of course, to such sorry stuff as Modern Music in the Yen-ho Palace, On the Restoration of the Examination System, etc., which Mr Le Gros Clark has also translated for the sake of having Su’s prose-poems complete in English. They are written in the style empesé, being rhetorical exercises borrowed from “ambulant political experts”, as Mr Waley points out.
     There is, therefore, no better proof of Mr Le Gros Clark’s deep knowledge of Chinese literature than his choice of Su’s Fu’s for translation. Throughout the whole translation he shows the scruples of a true scholar and the imaginative sympathy possible only to a genuine lover of Su. His notes and commentaries are particularly valuable, and so much more copious and learned than Lang Yi (郎晔)s that even Chinese students will profit by them in reading Su’s prose-poems in the original. If the English reader still can not exchange smiles and salutes with Su across the great gulf of time so familiarly as the Chinese does, it is perhaps due to a difficulty inherent in the very nature of translation. It is certainly no fault of Su’s accomplished translator.

(1) See 叶梦得：石林诗话。王士祯：渔洋诗话 and 古夫于亭杂录， especially 陈衍：诗品评议。
(2) For a version of rather perversion of Characterizations, see Giles: A History of Chinese Literature. BK. V. Chap. 1.
(3) Mr Arthur Waley, however, thinks differently. (see 170 Chinese Poems. P. 31) In the same breath Mr Waley dismisses Su Tung-po’s poetry as “patchwork” and declares that “Su hardly wrote a poem which does not contain a phrase borrowed from Po Chu-i”. Whether or no this charge can be substantiated, a cursory glance into 冯应: Variorum Edition of Su Tung-po’s Poetical Work will show. But we must bear in mind that commentators are apt to give poets the credit of a memory as tenacious as their own. For the best account of the difference between Su Tung-po and Po Chu-i, see 罗大经：鹤林玉露。 Mr Waley say further that Su’s verse is valued by his countrymen chiefly for its musical qualities. On this point, Mr Waley is misled perhaps by some of Su’s “countrymen” who are not poetry-lovers.
(4) To Mr Gros Clark’s quotations from Su’s own writings illustrative of this philosophy of art, we may supplement quotations from poems like 书晁补之所藏与可画竹，吴子野将出家赠以扇山枕屏，次韵吴传正枯木歌筼筜欲绝句 etc.
(5) See答刘巨济书.
(6) For a succinct account of this party strife, see 宋史纪事本末卷四十五.
(7) Cf 朱子大全答程允夫书，答汪尚书书，答吕东莱书。
(8) Quoted in 王士祯：池北偶谈 and 袁枚：随园诗话。 Here is given only a loose translation.
(9) 书鄢陵王主簿所画折枝。 Quoted also in Mr Gros Clark’s Introduction.
(10) 东坡密语子瞻自论文。 Quoted in part by Mr Le Gros Clark in his Introduction.
(11) 答谢民诗书。
(12) 栾城集东坡先生墓志。
(13) 山谷诗集子瞻诗句妙一世乃云效庭坚体故次韵道之。
(14) 文章精义。
(15) 彦周诗话。
(16) 初学集读苏长公文，cf, 渔洋精华录读唐宋金元明诗各题一绝。
(17) See the section on “The Nature of the fu” in Mr Le Gros Clark’s Introduction.
(18) Cf. 包世臣：艺舟双楫答董普卿书 and 周星誉：鸥堂日记李蓴客语。
(19) See Giles: Gems of Chinese Literature p. 164, and Waley: More Traslations p. 105.
(20) Cf. 艾南英：天佣子集王子巩观生草序，章学诚文史通义文理篇 and 书坊刻诗话后。
(21) 强幼安：唐子西文录。

编者谨案：本文署名Chi’en Chung-shu，载《学文月刊》一卷二期（1934.6.1）第130至144页

Amendent
Hsü Kai （许顗）
国学论坛上有人提过:
“顗”念yi3,钱先生念了别字,