看雲集 (梁實秋) 頁29
陳世襄在序文中說出這樣的故事
".....胡適之正在加州柏克萊本校講學
濟安寫信給適之先生
託轉約我為他寫文章
適之先生的熱心援手是可以想像的.....
當時我隨便問: 寫點那一類的文章好呢
適之先生毫不猶豫的回答
他們還是應該多翻譯一些西洋名著看看
我已經寫信跟他說了
實秋先生也可以幫忙.....
文學雜誌初幾期
其中果然有胡先生的翻譯
--《夏濟安選集》台北志文出版社初版,1971年, 頁7 / 辽宁教育出版社,2001
夏濟安先生"白話文與新詩"中曾嘆此consent 有時的意思是"依"
可是學生都只記字典說的'同意"
Shih-Hsiang Chen, Oriental Languages: Berkeley
1912-1971 | |
Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature |
Shocked disbelief gave place to
an aching sense of loss when Shih-Hsiang Chen's many friends learned of
his death in swift
consequence of a heart attack. His vigor of body
and spirit, his perennial warmth and enthusiasm had seemed to promise
long
continuance of his service to literary
scholarship.
Shih-Hsiang Chen was born into the world of
letters which remained always his ambiance. The place of his birth was
Peking,
the year 1912, the first of the new Republic.
His grandfather, the man who formed his calligraphic style, was the poet
Chen
Shao-wu; his father, Chen Shu-ping, a man of
letters; his two uncles a chin-shih and a chu-jen
respectively. It followed inevitably that his early education from
private tutors should be in the rigorous classical tradition.
When, in 1929, he enrolled at Peking University
he had his own contribution to bring to the search for a new synthesis
for
which the preceding years of hectic iconoclasm
had cleared the way.
At Peita he studied Chinese and English literature, graduating B. Litt. in 1935. In the following year appeared the first anthology of English translations from the poets of the “Literary Revolution,” the fruit of collaboration between Shih-Hsiang (still in his early twenties) and Harold Acton. But Shih-Hsiang's principal activities in these years were as a contributor of poems, stories, and critical articles to the literary journals.
After teaching in Peking, and then at National Human University, Shih-Hsiang came to the United States in 1941 to study and instruct at Harvard and Columbia. In 1945 he was appointed to the faculty of the Department of Oriental Languages of the University of California at Berkeley, where he remained for twenty-six years until his death.
Two dimensions of Shih-Hsiang's work as a teacher and research scholar at Berkeley call for special notice. First, as a man intensely involved in the fate of literature in the contemporary world, he stressed the continuity of the Chinese tradition. Residence in the United States
― 21 ―
did not disrupt his contact with literary
groups and periodicals as well as universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong,
and young
poets had reason to be thankful for his interest
and encouragement. An institutional expression of his contemporary
concerns
was his initiation and direction of the Current
Chinese Language Project of the Center for Chinese Studies at Berkeley,
which
fostered the valuable “Studies in Chinese
Communist Terminology” by, among others, Miss Li Ch'i and the late Hsia
Tsi-an,
a dear friend whose premature death profoundly
distressed Shih-Hsiang.
The second unique contribution Shih-Hsiang made
had a breadth of geographic space to complement that of historical time.
His
knowledge of Western literatures, but above all
his faith that linguistic and national barriers crumbled when poets
spoke
to each other from the heart, drew him into the
burgeoning groves of comparative literature. In more recent years he
established
at Berkeley almost single-handedly a remarkably
productive program of comparative study between Chinese and Western
literatures.
In the deepest consciousness of his cultural heritage Shih-Hsiang undertook studies of the noblest and most challenging monuments of the Chinese tradition, the Book of Songs, the Li-Sao, Lu Chi's Wen-fu. His essays on these subjects display the most acute poetic sensibility together with a fruitful blending of critical and philological methods, both Chinese and Western. His interpretation of Tu Fu's poem on the “Pa-chen-t'u” (the English version of the article is entitled “To Circumvent the `Design of Eightfold Array' ”) is a model of creative and evocative exegesis. It is a major loss to scholarship that Shih-Hsiang's lifelong thinking on poetry cannot now find the more comprehensive expression he had planned.
Many honors came to Shih-Hsiang Chen. Those to which he responded most gratefully, one feels, were the recognitions of his standing in the international fraternity of letters: delegate status at the IIIe Biennale Internationale de Poesie at Knokke-le Zoute, Belgium, in 1956; the invitation ten years later to conduct a faculty seminar at Kyoto University; the chairmanship of a session of the International Symposium on Poetry at Expo 67 in Montreal; John Hall Wheelock's dedication to him of his new volume of poems, Dear Men and Women (which involved Shih-Hsiang in a United Nations ceremony in the poet's honor).
But distinctions sat easily upon
him, merely brightening the eyes that twinkled always through the cloud
of pipesmoke. Shih-Hsiang
lives on in memory, not just as the name beneath
the title of the indispensable article on the origins of the Chinese
word
for poetry or the pioneer study of the mainland
poets of the 1950s; not just as the distinguished speaker before the
stellar
gathering; (with his inimitable eccentricities
of English, despite the mellifluousness of his written
― 22 ―
style, he would still assure us that he
had “asked his colleagues for their advices”). He is the warm,
ever-encouraging voice,
all but disembodied behind the incredibly
cluttered desk. He is the genial host, laughing beside his exquisite
wife Grace
on the pine-fragrant terrace. He is the flautist
whose notes accompany a clear young voice raised in an ancient
folksong,
to delight the friends who loved him and who
made the house on Highgate the gracious setting for the poem which was
his life.
John C. Jamieson
Cyril Birch
Yuen Ren Chao
*****
https://www.google.com.tw/webhp?tab=mw#q=+Ch%27en+Shih-hsiang
Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton CBE (5 July 1904 – 27 February 1994) was a British writer, scholar and dilettante
http://news.bbc.co.uk/chinese/trad/hi/newsid_1050000/newsid_1055800/1055801.stm
2000年12月05日 格林尼治標準時間12:03北京時間20:03發表
艾克敦: 胡同裡 的最後貴族
英國貴族文人哈羅得艾克敦爵士(Sir Harold Acton) 是一次大戰後牛津大學青年文人中“最有希望的人物”。
一九三二年艾克敦離歐到日本。日本不對他的口味,軍國主義氣焰囂張。他雖是遠離政治的人,但不能在這種氣氛中欣賞日本文物。因此他立即轉到中國,發現中國的一切都很熟悉,因為他早就熟讀韋利譯的白居易,翟理斯譯的莊子,理雅各譯的儒典。
北京大學的溫源寧和張歆海立即把他帶入了北大的知識份子的圈子,過從者梁宗岱、袁家驊、朱光潛等人皆為一時之選。一九三三年起他受聘於北大,教英國文學, 立即與學生中的一批青年詩人教上朋友。當時二十歲左右的陳世驤、馮廢名、林庚、李廣田、何其芳、陳夢家都在北大。其中十八歲的卞之琳給艾克敦的印像最深, 卞體弱、□腆、矜持,只有談詩論文時才激動得滿臉通紅,但艾克敦認為卞的詩最有氣質。
艾克敦教英國文學,在北京的英國人中也引出很多非議,他教的是“有修養”的教授們認為是走火入魔的艾略特的長詩《荒原》和勞倫斯的小說《查特萊夫人的情人》,並鼓勵學生寫論艾略特的論文,這是第一次有人在中國認真地宣講歐美現代派文學。
艾克敦聲稱他不愛古人愛今人,在Cathay 與China 中他選擇後者。從試譯卞之琳的詩開始,艾克敦與陳世驤合作翻譯了中國現代詩的第一本英譯。這個選本的確獨具慧眼,尤其詩人們還都那麼年輕,剛開始寫作生涯,這是往往使編者受到歷史的嘲笑最難的事。
但是從今天回顧,艾克敦的批評眼光極準。而且據一些評者看來,艾克敦基於自己丰厚的文學修養,"譯出"了一些中國詩人的風格淵源,徐志摩的《雪花的快樂》譯文讀來酷似濟慈,而邵洵美的詩譯文幾乎可以出自道森手筆。
英語系主任溫源寧與文學院院長胡適不合,溫辭職。據慣例,全體教授應辭職以示“共進退”。但艾克敦太熱愛這工作,未提辭呈。胡適給艾克敦留了點面子,把他的任課壓到了一星期一堂。但不久胡適親自訪問了艾克敦,請他將英國詩。
艾克敦在京時據說同時進行六項翻譯,他與美國的中國戲劇專家阿靈頓(L.C.Arlington)合作,把流行京劇三十三折譯成英文,集成《中國名劇》一 書,1937年出版,收有《長□坡》、《汾河灣》、《法門寺》、《群英會》、《奇雙會》、《金鎖記》、《捉放曹》等。這工程很困難,但艾克敦是京戲迷,與 程硯秋、李少春等人交往。美國女詩人、《詩刊》主編哈麗特.蒙羅二度訪華時,艾請她看京戲,鑼鈸齊鳴,胡琴尖細,蒙羅無法忍受,手捂著耳朵倉皇逃走,艾克 敦對此有一解:西方人肉食者鄙,因此需要安靜,中國人素食品多,因此愛熱鬧。“我吃了幾年中國飯菜後,響鑼緊鼓對我的神經是甜蜜的安慰。在陰暗的日子裡 只有這種音樂才能恢復心靈的安寧。西方音樂在我聽來已像葬禮曲。”
一九三六年左右,艾克敦開始寫長篇小說《牡丹與馬駒》(Peonies and Ponies), 在京英美人的生活,寫得入木三分。小說中的美國婦人“不遠萬里住到中國來,卻整天泡在西人的雞尾酒會裡,似乎唯一的目的是等待又一次拳亂,過過性虐待 癮”。小說中說:“真應當再來一次拳亂,清清氣氛。”
不可否認此書有洩憤情緒,正如艾克敦自己承認,他後來寫《一個愛美者的回憶錄》,也是為了回答英人圈子對他“生活放蕩不規”的指責,這種指責使英政府在二次大戰中不敢派他回重慶擔任外交職務,艾對此十分氣憤。
一九三九年回到英國。七年的中國生活使他的親友發現他“談話像中國人,走路像中國人,眼角也開始向上飄”。
離開中國使艾克敦結束了“一生最美好的歲月”。二次大戰後艾克敦移居意大利,潛心做那不勒斯波爾旁王族的歷史研究。他傷心的看到“這一番輪回中已回不到北 京”去國之思,黍離之悲,使他找到陳世驤共同翻譯《桃花扇》以排遣懷鄉病。他們的翻譯直到七十年代陳世驤作古之後才由漢學家白之整理出版*。
“愛美者”(Aesthete)是旁人調侃艾克敦的稱呼,自王爾德之後,這個詞在英國尤其是在文化人中已有同性戀的暗示。艾克敦自號不諱,並認為北京是愛美者的最後的樂園。的確,二三十年代的中國文化人的圈子沒有西方那種道德上的矯飾和苛刻,而中國文化的確會令他心醉。
*The Peach Blossom Fan (with Ch'en Shih-Hsiang), Berkeley, University of California Press, 1976.
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