中譯第一首「英」詩－－艾儒略「聖夢歌」初探

The First 'English' Poem Translated into Chinese: A Preliminary Study of Giulio Aleni's Shengmeng ge

本文共分四節，分別探討明末耶穌會譯詩《聖夢歌》的四個層面。此詩乃艾儒略偕門人張賡共譯於福建泉州，時為崇禎十年（l637）。首節重點為《聖夢歌》原作的形成，並及譯作取用的中詩聲韻問題。《聖夢歌》的拉丁原文寫於十二、三世紀之交，通稱《聖伯爾納的異相》，但作者卻是當時一位英國教士，也寫於今天的英格蘭。就此而言，《聖夢歌》可謂第一首中譯的「英」詩，是明末耶穌會士首度「自覺性」的文學翻譯的成果。本文第二節對比《聖夢歌》與《聖伯爾納的異相》，認為艾儒略或因聲韻故，所以所譯詩確如所述乃「粗譯」為之。在歐洲中世紀，《聖伯爾納的異相》盛名遠播，是系譜龐大的所謂「身體與靈魂的辯論詩」中最重要的一首，所以《聖夢歌》中譯，意義別具。第三節論《聖夢歌》的接受，討論對象為其時中國的基督徒。他們往往取《莊子》或《列子》的夢觀加以比較，最後才發覺《聖夢歌》的重點並非「人生如夢」，而是「人生如實」，所以世人得善其生以免在最後審判中遭判淪落地獄。本文最後一節回到英國「身體與靈魂的辯論」的傳統，論其在十七世紀－亦即《聖伯爾納的異相》轉為《聖夢歌》之際－的發展，並由是時耶穌會華南教區聖夢頻傳的角度試窺艾儒略何以中譯《聖夢歌》的原因。史上「英」詩中譯的首例，或與明末教會的夢文化及其時福建教難也有關。This paper, in four sections, discusses four related aspects of the Shengmeng ge, a debate poem translated into Chinese by Giulio Aleni in collaboration with Zhang Gen in Fujian in 1637. The first section focuses on the formative stages of the Shengmeng ge and how its antecedents were later transformed into the Royal Debate in Britain, from which were taken the Latin original of the Shengmeng ge, generally known as the Visio Sancti Bernardi, yet written by an unknown British priest at the turn of the twelfth century, and its counterpart in Medieval English. The second section explores the translated text against the Visio Sancti Bernardi and finds that Aleni did translate it 'roughly' primarily due to the limitations of Chinese prosody. The Visio Sancti Bernardi is generally supposed to be the most popular debate poem between the body and soul in Medieval Europe, and the Shengmeng ge can be taken as the first rendered and thus transported poem from England into China. The third section considers the reception of the Shengmeng ge in China and focuses on Chinese Christians' response to the translated poem as expressed in their prefaces and epilogues. The Christians' initial responses to this poem were highly influenced by traditional Chinese attitudes toward dreaming. Thus the Chinese topos of 'life as a dream' is echoed in those readings of the Shengmeng ge. This notwithstanding, as Christian readers interpreted more closely the translated song, their views changed to more closely approximate Western understandings of the Visio Sancti Bernardi: The poem was composed primarily to reflect the Christian fear of the Last Judgment. The final section returns to the British development of the poetic debate between body and soul. In addition to comparing Chinese and Western dream literatures, this section relocates the Visio Sancti Bernardi in the context of English metaphysical poetry in the seventeenth century, since no translated debate poems other than the Shegmeng ge can be found in imperial China.