臺灣五十年代末到七十年代初兩種文化錯位的現代詩

Two Modernist Poetries in the Period between mid- 1950's and mid-1970's in Taiwan

本文試圖指出五十到七十年代初，臺灣現代詩兩種文化錯位的現象。其一，是一九四九年以後，大陸來臺詩人群寫的詩，呈現雙重錯位的鬱結：一方面是承受五四以來文化虛位的痛楚，另方面則是面對不可知的未來，所產生的孤絕禁錮感、游疑不定、放逐、夢幻、恐懼等思緒，而為了與當時反共、鎮壓的社會體制對抗，詩人遂轉向內心求索，找尋一個新的「存在理由」，試圖通過美的創造來建立一個價值統一的世界。當時的詩人們，有意無意問採取了一種「創造性的晦澀」、「多義性的象徵」、「借語／借聲」的表達方式，如洛夫、瘂弦、商禽、辛鬱、管管、張默、大荒、余光中、葉維廉等人，都可當作代表。其二，是所謂「跨語言的一代」，係指從日本統治時期跨入國民黨政府時期的詩人們，他們面臨從日文到中文創作的錯位，但也企圖加以轉化，例如從日本詩人的「新感覺派」作風，汲取營養，創作新詩；而面對「文化失語症」和執政者的鎮壓手段，他們以「創造性的模稜棱性」和美學的建構，作為抗衡的論述，如林亨泰、錦連、桓夫等人，都可當作代表。這兩類詩人都應用了西方現代主義的技巧來完成他們對政治、社會、歷史動蕩下的心理投射，但前者已表現鬱勃澎湃的詩風，後者的表現應也可期許，相信屬於歷史失憶的「被扭曲的悲哀」這一種歷史意識重建後，應該也會產生磅礡沉鬱的詩。 The two modernist poetries produced by the poets of the 1955-1975 in Taiwan were extremely agonized in their quest for a new cohesive center. Both poetries found strategies from Western modernist poetry since Baudelaire to complete their projects of inscribing the angst and certainty from sudden rupture of sensibility brought about by the Nationalist-Communist war. For the poets that came to Taiwan, they found themselves suddenly cut off from the central seat of Chinese culture. Hesitating between the fear of a possible total breakdown of Chinese culture and of a threateningly uncertain future, they experienced a deep sense of futility. 'How can a torrent fashion an image of the upside down?' (Ya Hsien), 'How difficult it is to make a black crystal of no substance!' (Shang Ch'in), 'But on craggy precipices/ Or, on rocky ruins of a long wall/ What can we make of the world?' (Yip) What were they to make of this drastic change in feeling, destiny, life and Chinese culture in the midst of metaphysical and physical exile? They turned inward to seek for a new sense of existence by attempting, through creativity, to come up with a world (even if it were only aestheticl) of coherent values as a way to defy the disintegrating reality around them, to defy, in the words of Lo Fu, 'their merciless destinies against which writing poetry is a form of revenge.' There is also this to consider: In spite of the label of Free China, the years from 1950's to as late as mid-1970's must be considered as full of ambiguities. Because of the Cold War repressive mentality, which forbade outright expression of hopelessness about the return to Mainland China, and because of residual despotism which censored anything resembling criticism of the party or government, much of this poetry was crouched in the language of metaphors and symbolism of plurisignification via what I call 'creative ambiguity': ' ... pupils move behind the eyes /Toward directions people dare not talk about:/ I am indeed a sawed-off bitter peartree/On whose annual rings you can still hear clearly winds and cicadas.' (Lo Fu) 'I want to see the land of Lu/ Mount Tortoise hides it/ I have no axe and hatchet/ To Mount Tortoise what can I do?' (Yip) Thus, we find these poets caught in a double sense of futility: Their impotence, their inability to resurrect Chinese culture to match its glorious past, a task they picked up from their immediate predecessors, and their hesitation in a spiritual limbo are present everywhere. Their poetry is brimming with hidden themes or motifs of nostalgia, exile, nightmarish war memories, haunting grips of tradition, anxiety, solitude, expectancy, fears and doubts. Another kind of cultural displacement was created through the control of language by the Nationalist government. Less then two years after they resettled in Taiwan, they banned the use of the Taiwanese dialect in all media as well as the Japanese which is the only expressive language the native Taiwanese poets learned and used in their creativity, having been ruled under Japanese occupation for 50 years. They were deprived the much needed 'transition' for change. This is tantamount to cutting out their tongues. Indeed many poets were literally silenced. Those how made it to writing in Mandarin, the official medium for writing, have been affected by a series of suppressive events; the February 28, 1957 massacre of nativist writers, and the dissolution of the Silver Bell Literary Society. Lin Heng-tai's two versions of one poem, one written freshly after the event/s betrays strong traces of political unrest, whereas the rewritten one rewritten later, using what I called 'creative ambiguity', appear to be free from all traces of political references, although the poem is full of uneasiness and tension.