文／史景遷
陶淵明〈詠貧士〉七首的開篇之作最為膾炙人口。該詩旨在傳達回歸田園生活的寂聊，以及陶淵明本人的徬徨無依，「遲遲出林翮，未夕復來歸。」兩句尤其佳。歷代文人雅士的品評，無不認為陶淵明這首詩不僅喻指自己，也暗喻所處朝代的崩潰。張岱亦以組詩七首唱和陶淵明，順治三年秋天，他在風雨淒然之時提筆，特別提及要跟「諸弟子」分享，張岱當時基於安全理由將之送往城東山中。
陶淵明〈詠貧士〉第一首如下：
萬族各有託，孤雲獨無依；曖曖空中滅，何時見餘暉。
朝霞開宿霧，眾鳥相與飛，遲遲出林翮，未夕復來歸。
量力守故轍，豈不寒與飢？知音苟不存，已矣何所悲。
張岱的唱和雖仿效陶淵明，不過換了一個重要隱喻：陶淵明的不祥之雲成了螢火蟲，在霏霏淫雨中光芒終於熄滅。張岱寫道：
秋成皆有眾，秋螢獨無依。空中自明滅，草際留微暉。
霏霏山雨濕，翼垂不能飛。山隈故盤礡，倚徙復何歸。
清當晚至，豈不寒與飢？悄然思故苑，禾黍忽生悲。
無論張岱是否誇大境況的淒涼──逃離紹興後，他說，所有家當僅存「破床碎几，折鼎病琴，與殘書數帙，缺硯一方而已」──他始終感受到昔日世界的牽繫。張岱並未吐露一六四○年代後期的生活細節，不過到了順治六年（一六四九年），他已決心重返紹興。
此番還鄉，人事全非。是因方國安的手下也好，遭當地強梁打劫也罷，或新朝滿清官員要他為兩度支持魯王付出代價，總之張岱已是無家可歸。順治六年十月，張岱在紹興龍山後麓賃租一塊地，這裡曾是他卜居、讀書、賞燈、觀雪的地方，他常與祖父張汝霖偕遊的「快園」同樣在此。兒少時代的快園宛如人間天堂，其名取自在此讀書為一大快事：其間果樹茂密，池塘廣闊，花木扶疏、圍牆拱立，景致之開展，彷彿人信步在卷軸上。在明朝滅亡前的繁盛年代，擁有一座園子還能取得豐厚的投資報酬。張岱寫道，快園裡池廣十畝，養魚魚肥，鮮橘可易絲綢，甘藍、甜瓜、桃、李一天可賣一百五十錢──真可謂「閉門成市」。不過，等張岱賃居於此，快園早已一片荒蕪。當年快意的讀書人杳然不復見，家族四散飄零。張岱說他得親自修葺這敗屋殘垣，然而造景的木石格局有何深意就無法索驥了。張岱以戲謔之說告訴老友，快園之名，證實了中國人「名不副實」的成語。這就好比「孔子何闕，乃居闕里；兄極臭，而住香橋；弟極苦，而住快園。」
張岱後來又寫了一首詩，套玩數字鋪陳出家人好不容易團圓，但他已不配稱為一家之主的感受：
我年未至耆，落魄亦不久。奄忽數年間，居然成老叟。自經喪亂餘，家亡徒赤手。恨我兒女多，中季又喪偶。十女嫁其三，六兒兩有婦，四孫又一笄，計口十八九。三餐尚二粥，日食米一斗。昔有負郭田，今不存半畝。敗屋兩三楹，堦前一株柳。
讀者自當知曉，「一株柳」本是形容詩人陶淵明一生多舛，然而問題是人多不見得就勢眾，張岱就言：
吾譬吾一家，行船遇覆溺。
順著這個比喻，他又說：
各各宜努力。手足自踤阹，方能不汆入。
如何望我援，乃共拉我褶。
沈淪結一團，一人不得出。
張岱大可像別人那樣怨天尤人，不過他從不成天自艾自憐。漸漸熬了幾年，總算又得見老友，有時也有一些意外之喜──譬如總是對張岱情深意重的陳夫人，她是山民弟之妻，性情溫厚懇切，是張岱時常探望之人。陳夫人雖年過半百，不過只要張岱登門拜訪，必親手款待佳餚，以長輩之禮事之。
那些追隨魯王的，則殉國天人永隔；連畫家陳洪綬也於順治九年（一六五二年）病逝，再也無法把酒言歡。倒是祁止祥，這位多年的至交老友，也是祁彪佳的兄長，他在祁彪佳自盡後於臺州為魯王效力，留著性命要說出真相，他懷裡揣著心愛的寵物迦陵鳥「阿寶」，躲避擄掠的亂民和土賊，步行兩週才返回紹興。
作者：史景遷
譯者：溫洽溢
出版社：時報出版
出版日期：2016年8月16日
張岱自一六五○年代（順治七年）之後，又號「六休居士」，他在快園裡跟人談到此：「粗羹淡飯飽則休；破衲鶉衣暖則休；頹垣敗屋安則休；薄酒村醪醉則休；空囊赤手省則休，惡人橫逆避則休。」
張岱的境界顯然超脫了從絢爛歸於平淡，能對平凡處之淡然。只是，流離時曾錄而為文一一存於《夢憶》的家族憶往，似乎還無法遠去，特別是仲叔張聯芳、堂弟燕客，以及談最多的祖父、父親，都還在快園裡留與後人談論遐思。
出於這種種背景因素，教張岱動心起念，考慮撰述三部精簡但又不失細緻的家族傳記：一部以直系血親為主，上起高祖，下迄父親（卒於崇禎六年）；一部以三位族叔為傳主；最後一部則是擴及歷代的五位族人，上起族祖，下迄堂弟。
張岱撰述這三部家族傳記時，僅在寫三位叔叔的第二部有附上短序交代用意。張岱說：「仲叔死七年，三叔死十年，七叔死三十六年，而尚未有傳，則是終無傳也已。人之死而寂寂終無傳者有之矣。惜乎吾三叔者，皆可傳之人也。」其仲叔張聯芳可確信卒於崇禎十七年（一六四四年），而這部家傳成書於順治八年（一六五一年），以書成之日為基準，便可知能幹的三叔張炳芳卒於崇禎十四年（一六四一年），才華橫溢但狂放不羈的七叔張燁芳則卒於萬曆四十三年（一六一五年）。
張岱繼續說道，這三位叔叔「有瑜有瑕。言其瑜，則未必傳；言其瑕則的的乎其可傳也。解大紳曰：『寧為有瑕玉，勿作無瑕石。』然則瑕也者，正其所以為玉也。吾敢掩其瑕，以失吾三叔之玉乎哉？」
●本文摘自時報出版《前朝夢憶：張岱的浮華與蒼涼》
作者簡介：史景遷 Jonathan D. Spence
一九三六年出生於英國，是國際知名的中國近現代史專家，自一九六五年於美國耶魯大學歷史系任教，二○○八年退休。著作極豐，包括《追尋現代中國》、《雍正王朝之大義覺迷》、《太平天國》、《改變中國》、《康熙》、《天安門》、《曹寅與康熙》、《胡若望的疑問》（以上由時報文化出版）、《大汗之國：西方眼中的中國》（商務）、《婦人王氏之死》（麥田）、《利瑪竇的記憶宮殿》（麥田）。
Zhang Dai (张岱; pinyin: Zhāng Dài, courtesy name: Zhongzhi (宗子), pseudonym: Tao'an (陶庵)) (1597 - 1689) was a Ming Dynasty writer.
Born in Ming Dynasty Wanli 25th year (1597 AD) in Shanying County of Zhejiang province, China. He died in Qing Dynasty Kangxi 28th year (1689 AD) at age 93.
Zhang Dai is known as the greatest essay writer in Ming dynasty. He was a prolific writer. He wrote more than thirty books covering literature and history. However only a few remain today.
Zhang Dai's most famous books are:
- Tao An Meng Yi (陶庵梦忆 Reminiscences in Dreams of Tao An), written ca. 1665.
- Xi Hu Meng Xun (西湖梦寻 Search The West Lake in Dreams)
Reviewed by CHRISTOPHER BENFEY Jonathan Spence pieces together the life and work of a prolific 17th-century Chinese historian.
前朝夢憶 台北 時報 2009
China Passage
Illustration by Dan Page
Many years after the traumatic events that cut his long life in two — and which left, as he put it, his “country destroyed, family routed, no home left to go to” — the 17th-century Chinese historian and essayist Zhang Dai had a dream. As Jonathan D. Spence writes in his beautiful new book, dreams of the “accidental discovery of a previously secret and hidden world” had long “lain at the very center of Chinese sensibility.” But Zhang’s imaginary wonderland was not a realm of peace and eternal peach-blossom spring; it was, instead, a secret library concealed in “a hermitage of rock”: “Shelves full of books are all around me. Opening the different volumes I take a look, and find the pages covered with writings in unknown scripts — tadpole traces, bird feet markings, twisted branches. And in my dream I am able to read them all, to make sense of everything despite its difficulty.”
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RETURN TO DRAGON MOUNTAIN
Memories of a Late Ming Man.
By Jonathan D. Spence.
332 pp. Viking. $24.95.
The puzzling traces that Zhang, as a wide-awake historian, tried to decipher turned on one central question: What noxious combination of internal rot and external threat had led to the fall of the Ming dynasty after more than two centuries of relative stability? Like other famous “before and after” dates — 1066, 1789, “on or about December 1910” — 1644 loomed in retrospect as historically inevitable. And yet, at the time, no one predicted the collapse of such a durable regime, least of all Zhang and his well-placed family, who had served for generations in the upper levels of the government bureaucracy.
Spence points out that the late Ming was a period of cultural ferment, permeated by a “sense of joy and stylishness.” Sinecures in obscure wings of the elaborate ruling apparatus allowed ample time for other pursuits, from the frivolous to the profound. A spirit of bold and eclectic innovation influenced everything from landscape painting to Buddhism to the education of women. “Intercultural adventures” abounded as Jesuit missionaries like Matteo Ricci, the subject of a brilliant previous book by Spence, introduced new ideas. Zhang’s grandfather dryly remarked that one Western religious tract “had the power to make stupid people more intelligent, but it could also make intelligent people more stupid.”
Lanterns were Zhang’s particular passion — “lanterns of translucent crystal, lanterns festooned with beads, lanterns of paper coated with crushed sheep horn, lanterns highlighted with paintings picked out in gold, lanterns with dangling tassels” — though he also found time for tea tasting, cockfighting and his own Crab-Eating Club. During a rare snowfall, Zhang hired a boat and boatman to take him out on a lake at dusk: “The only shadowy forms one could make out on the lake surface were the ridged scar of the long embankment, the lone dot of Lake’s Heart Pavilion, the mustard seed that was our boat, and the two grains of rice that were on the boat.” On such occasions, Spence notes, Zhang was highly attuned to “the ways a moment blossomed and flourished.”
During the early chapters of “Return to Dragon Mountain,” Spence’s readers may feel as if they have strayed into one of Italo Calvino’s “invisible cities,” an exotic lost China of beguiling patterns and symmetries. On a Buddhist pilgrimage, Zhang describes mountains that “rose and fell like furious waves” and “great waves like moving mountains, cliffs of ice and boulders of snow.” During these early years, Spence observes, “much of life, for Zhang Dai, was spectacle, and the great truths for him remained aesthetic ones.”
This attitude was easy to maintain for a wealthy aristocrat whose family was enriched by farm revenue and government largesse. But then came the unthinkable, as a military coalition of tribes from along the Korean border, calling themselves the Manchus, collaborated with disaffected Chinese to occupy the capital city, Beijing, and inaugurated the Qing dynasty. While Zhang remained loyal to the feckless last Ming ruler and briefly served (without distinction) in the imperial forces, he could hardly be called a resistance fighter. As Spence remarks in his somewhat muted account of this gloomy period, “Zhang Dai made no claims to be a war hero.” Instead, he took to the hills, a scholar-recluse on the move, “hair hanging wild” and often starving, his only sustenance derived from manuscripts and memories.
The books Zhang worked on during his three years in hiding and after his return to his homeland, Dragon Mountain — this time as a struggling tenant farmer rather than a landed aristocrat — were restlessly inventive. In addition to his epic history of the Ming dynasty, which he extended to include its ignominious collapse, Zhang experimented with many genres and forms. In earlier years he had written a book called “Night Ferry” in which he compiled, like a Chinese E. D. Hirsch, all the names and facts — some 4,000 in all — that a traveler would need to know to carry on a sophisticated conversation. He also wrote a book about “historical gaps” in which he explored what had been left out of official accounts of past events. Here he compared the truth to a lunar eclipse in which the dark spots of the moon could be discerned indirectly.
While living in exile, however, Zhang found himself circling back in memory to the places and experiences of his own past. In his Proustian “Dream Recollections of Taoan,” he evoked, in the random order in which they occurred to him, “the shimmer of serried lanterns in the night,” the sounds of the zither, “the rancid smell of sacrificial meat, the reflective silence of a courtesan,” and so on. Thus it was, Spence concludes, that “the greatest catastrophe of his life, the fall of the Ming, ... turned out to be the key to unlock the chambers of his mind and allow the accumulated memories to come bursting out.”
Spence describes Zhang Dai as an “excavator,” someone who “tried to get into the deep and dark places” of memory. The same could be said of Spence himself. He is marvelously tactful in allowing Zhang an aura of mystery — “it is hard to catch the essence of Zhang Dai,” he confesses. He resists making facile comparisons to other writers or other times (the parallels with Calvino and Proust are mine), anchoring us firmly in a 17th-century landscape and mindscape. In “Return to Dragon Mountain,” Spence has himself opened an unsuspected world of “tadpole traces” and “bird feet markings,” a magic-lantern realm lost until now and movingly retrieved.
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