共产主义条件下中国诗歌的隐喻与意识外文翻译资料

Metaphor and the Conscious in Chinese Poetry under Communism By S. H. CHEN

Poetry as I understand it flows through history and in collaboration with real life.

-Boris Pasternak.

Proletarian art and literature . . . as Lenin said are 'a wheel and a screw' in the whole revolutionary machine. Therefore the position of art and literature in relation to the whole revolution under the Party is definitely set and well affixed. They are obediently to serve the revolutionary task defined by the Party at any given period of the revolution.

-Mao Tse-tung.

COMMENTING on literature as a human record, Goethe once called it 'The fragment of fragments: The smallest part of what has been done and spoken has been recorded; and the smallest part of what has been recorded has survived.' I find this observation a very sobering and instructive reminder for a discussion of Chinese poetry under Com- munist rule. Goethe was speaking of literature in general. And poetry, formally at least, being but one of its branches, is by deduction a fragment of ' the fragment of fragments.' Over a decade many things have been accomplished under the regime. Many deeds have been done, immense work of material reconstruction has been completed, and more is in process, on the debris of destruction of comparable quantity; and unfathomable tribulations, pains and frustrations in soul and body are felt and muttered, as well as the hue and cry of zeal and enthusiasm exclaimed among massive crowds.

A moments reflection on the magnitude of all these in the actual life of over six hundred million people should place whatever printed word we obtain as poetry in the right perspective and proportion. Whatever has survived severe censorship and embargo, though trickling to us cumulatively in millions of words as poems and songs, would still appear precious tiny bits of refractions of a gigantic human phenomenon. The phenomenon being a contemporary, living reality imminently concerning our life, we may become too eager and seize upon these refractional bits to pass judgment on, or imagine we were seeing directly that reality as a whole. Or, contrarily, if taking poetic expressions literally for actual life is below the intelligence of most people who care for poetry, there is still another pitfall. Different traditions breed different aesthetic prefer- ences. If we attempt to treat the Chinese poetry in question as human data, we have to submit that it is produced under unprecedented con- ditions, and intended for a different kind of purpose and appeal. It would be all too easy to criticise, reject, or laugh out of countenance the poetic efforts produced under changing circumstances of which we know but very little and have experienced even less. What we would so ill-treat might indeed be poor or downright bad verse, but might we not have dismissed them too rashly, for the wrong reasons, and therefore miss what we should be looking for?

I have. learnt to reflect thus while writing earlier for The China Quarterly a short study which I called 'Multiplicity in Uniformity: Poetry and the Great Leap Forward.' 1 The title I hoped would some- how signify a quality, even though this was the hardest to recognise off hand, because it was the impressiveness and significance of the tremen- dous quantity of the mass products of a ' multi-million poem ' movement that was dealt with, a movement conducted among the vast population under intensive, uniform political direction. To discern quality before the exercise of judgment I believe is the first obligation of literary study, even though our ultimate aim may be to gain some understanding of the political and social life that has produced the works. Taste may incline us toward attraction or repulsion as an immediate reaction, but it should not be allowed to hold too long its all too often wayward sway. It should be at least suspended, so that we can contemplate and analyse the quality once it is recognised. Quality is what we with our faculties trained in literary and historical discipline want to distil from the precious ' survivals' that have come to us now, and that will have to stand the test and ravages of much longer time. A historical perspective in our mind will aid us with enough detachment to deal with our materials not only in reference to past standards, but also with a view of how they may look in the future. Our immediate task of distillation, on the other hand, be it surely from 'the fragment of fragments' of much greater doings and happenings, may by its very nature of concentration on the essence of a poetic work, hold a microscopic picture. It will be the sharper the more it deals with the particular, and may thus reveal at least a segment of Chinese mental state of being, that by inference may the more effectively cast some light on the whole today.

In this article I will therefore attempt to discuss Chinese poetry under Communism by drawing enough attention to those elements which since the dawn of literary criticism have been recognised as the quintessential basis for the distinction of poetic quality, especially the making of metaphor. Here metaphor is meant in its broad sense of poetic function,which will often include also the simile, regardless of the merely formal syntactical distinction. Along with metaphor, image will naturally come under consideration both for its mediatory function as a vehicle to convey the idea, and more importantly for its effect of fusing the idea and the object so that some verses or whole poems attain the vividness and concretion of poetically imagised representation of life. When such vivid image is achieved, and we translate it back into terms of the actual life it represents, it is then a symbol, and we are attempting a symbolic interpretation. Furthermore, poetic form, though it is difficult to discuss by exemplifications i

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