二十世紀的悲傷：陳世驤與楊牧的「時代」

The Sadness of the 20th Century: Chen Shih-Hsiang and Yang Mu’s “Era”

本文透過陳世驤致楊牧書信（1965-1971），將時間向前、後延伸，在各自的經歷、相遇的契機、共同的提問、傳承與啟發的過程中，探索彼此學術論著背後的發想與撰述的意圖。從「史詩」這共同議題發端，陳世驤提出傳統中國的「抒情傳統」，根據超越文體類別的「詩」、「興」原型，聚焦文化符號形式，進一步思索文化與國家的分合，尤其針對1918年與1958年中國兩次民歌運動，提醒詩歌創作與群體性必須保持警覺的距離。楊牧早透過艾略特詩作，省思第一次世界大戰後綿延的蒼白與空虛，1966年以來在反戰、厭戰的當代價值視域下，更體認「二十世紀的悲傷、恐懼與焦慮，成為普遍的而且是跨種族的（universal and interracial）」存在，1970-80年間，楊牧不論是建立「周文史詩」系列，或者幾乎同時期完成的「台灣源流」系列，都希望藉由可以談論一切的「技術」，揭示文本敘事所隱含的倫理意義，以及一種「超越國族的世界感」。

This article analyzes letters sent from Chen Shih-Hsiang to Yang Mu between 1965-1971, doing so in order to understand the ideas and intentions that lay behind the academic work of these two scholars. Temporally, the article shifts backwards and forwards in time, examining the individual experiences of each of these figures, the opportunities they had to come into contact with one another, the common questions they raised, and their processes of cultural inheritance and inspiration. Working outward from the question of the “epic” as a literary form, Chen Shih-Hsiang proposed the there was a “lyrical tradition” within the larger overall Chinese literary tradition, reflecting on the unity and division that existed between culture and nation in doing so. He grounded his reflection on this question in a consideration of aesthetic archetypes from the Chinese tradition such as Shi and Xing, which themselves cut across different textual forms and genres, focusing on the semiotic forms of culture. In particular, Chen discussed two important folklore movements in modern Chinese history, one from 1918 and the other from 1958, reminding readers that poetic creation had to maintain a vigilant distance from collectivist demands. Yang Mu considered the question of the sense of cultural emptiness and lethargy that emerged after the First World War, doing so via a reading of T.S. Elliot's poetry. Influenced by the values of the anti-war and non-war movements that emerged after 1966, Yang Mu came to understand “the sadness, the fear, and the anxiety in the twentieth century is universal and interracial.” Between the years 1970 and 1980, regardless of whether it was in his establishment of the “Weniad” series, or in his “Taiwan origins” series that he completed at almost the same time, he employed a comprehensive discussion of literary “technique” to reveal the ethical import inherent within textual narrative, exploring a “sense of the world that transcended the national collective.”