| 英文摘要 |
This article re-discusses the matter of image in traditional Chinese poetry, a subject which in particular attracted Sinology of the 1970s. In returning to Chinese poetics, the concept image is contextualized within the trinity of yan 言, xiang 象, and yi 意. The author first follows the approach “to look at xiang by finding yan” 尋言以觀象 and defines the nature of the nouns used for shanshui 山水 (literally, “mountains and rivers”) images in verse. By applying the recent studies of Chinese linguistics to his research, the author determines that at the time, the nouns used in writings of literati to designate numerous entities are mainly set nouns, which denote things that may not necessarily be individual but have a define shape or outline in the spatial dimension. When using an extremely simplified adjectival character, or zi 字, to modify a set noun, the poet was not in pursuit of achieving an accurate or detailed description. Nevertheless, for the poets, this kind “incompleteness” became one of their most important artistic means, which derived from the same origin of the vague greatness of xiang within the thought of ancient thinkers. The article inspects how the various phenomena of incompleteness assisted in creating an obscure and vast space in poetry. Considering the use of mass nouns was gradually increasing during the Middle Ages, the author moves on to discuss this kind of image in the third section. By exploring how mass nouns are compounded with set nouns as well as how two adjectival characters with the meaning of vagueness are compounded as nouns, this article contends that de-accurization and dematerialization were used to designate the poets’ perception regarding something similar to “field” within modern physics. Nevertheless, this awareness in terms of aural form is exactly what we see in jing 境, or the indistinct and limitless inscape of poetry, which could become “visible in the mind by finding xiang” 尋象以觀意. In conclusion, the present article by referring to the development of Chinese landscape paintings of the same period discusses “the intellectual revolution of the creation of nature” within Chinese art. |