由「宇宙詩」想「宇宙人」——從孔子與巴士卡爾的名句談起

From Cosmic Poetry to Cosmic Person: On Quotes from Confucius and Blaise Pascal

本文藉由梁宗岱〈說「逝者如斯夫」〉所提及的孔子「逝者如斯夫，不舍晝夜」，以及巴士卡爾（Blaise Pascal）「這無窮的空間底永恆的靜使我悚慄」兩句詩，討論其中牽涉的「宇宙詩」（cosmic poetry）以及相關的「宇宙人」（cosmic person）議題。尤其1919 年以降，在第一次世戰後反啟蒙、反科學理性的風潮中，透過宗白華、梁宗岱詮釋孔子「逝者如斯」，梁宗岱、梵樂希（Paul Valéry）論辯巴士卡爾「永恆的靜」，凸顯感情、直覺不只對於詩人人格養成上是必要的，感情、直覺的體驗尤為突破機械論、物質科學而重新認識宇宙之必要，同時，這個新宇宙觀或人生觀也正是詩人感情的「理智」及其實現的所在。

This study engages with two different ruminative verses- Confucius’ “It Passes On Just Like This, Not Ceasing Day or Night” （逝者如斯夫，不舍晝夜）, which Liang Zong-dai’s discusses in his essay “Regarding ‘It Passes on Just Like This,’” as well as Blaise Pascal’s “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me”- in order to explore the concept of cosmic poetry and the related idea of the cosmic person. Particular in the years following 1919, amidst a rising tide of anti-enlightenment and anti-rationalist thought that came to prominence following World War One, Liang Zong-dai and Zong Bai-hua’s readings of this quote from Confucius, as well as the debate that Liang had with the French poet Paul Valéry regarding Psacal’s “eternal silence,” worked to highlight that feeling and intuition- which have long been regarded as crucial to the making of a poet - are in fact an essential part of a new cosmic vision that breaks away from both mechanical philosophy and materialist science. At the same time, this new view on life and the universe is in fact the emotional “reason” of the poet as well as the space in which such reason is realized.