愛情如死之堅強－－試論周瘦鵑早期翻譯哀情小說的美感特質與文化意涵

“For Love Is as Strong as Death”: On the Aesthetics and Cultural Connotations of Zhou Shoujuan’s Early Translations of Melancholy Romance

民國初年，哀情小說盛行，故事主題多為自我犧牲和「為情而死」，其悲劇結局打破了傳統才子佳人小說大團圓的慣例，顯示出西方翻譯小說之影 。鴛鴦蝴蝶派「哀情巨子」周瘦鵑在五四前夕即已譯介了諸多當代西方通俗言情小說，這些小說的主題、情節設計和場景安排等方面皆突破了中國古典小說的格局，而周瘦鵑更經由刪減改寫、修飾人物個性、渲染豔情、誇大形容和添加感嘆等翻譯策略來建構一種獨特的哀情話語。這些翻譯文本融合了西方小說對愛情與死亡的浪漫呈現，以及中國文學的抒情美感，為讀者營造出一個極具吸引力的、擁有巨大激情能量的唯美世界。在此，愛情的地位儼然超越了一般的倫理規範，展現了對個人主體性的追求。

During the 1910s, melancholy romances were in fashion in China. These sad love stories deviated from the clichéd happy endings of traditional Chinese “scholar and beauty” romances and centered on self-sacrifice and dying for love－themes that were clearly inspired by translated Western stories. Before the May Fourth literary movement, Zhou Shoujuan 周瘦鵑, a Mandarin Duck and Butterfly writer known as the “master of melancholy romance,” had already translated numerous contemporary Western popular love stories into Chinese, most of them belonging to the melancholy romance category. By various translation strategies, such as adapting the original texts, modifying the characters, embellishing the erotic-sentimental ambience, hyperbolizing descriptions, and adding exclamations, along with the melodramatic presentations of love and death, Zhou created a highly charged fictional world of romantic passions and beauty that was extremely attractive to contemporary Chinese readers. The themes, settings, and plot designs of Zhou’s translations of Western melancholy romance are rather different from classical Chinese novels. They celebrate self-sacrificial acts between lovers and depict deathbed scenes (especially for characters who die for love) as self-indulging explosions of passion rather than extensive consuming processes entangled with realistic details or moral lessons. Therefore, Zhou’s translations of melancholy romance introduce a new vision of love: here, love is exalted above traditional Chinese morality and ethics, thus representing a deep longing for the individual’s independent subjectivity.