論李曼瑰劇作中的公私虛實辯證：以《時代插曲》、《淡水河畔》與《阿里山的太陽》為討論核心

The Dialectics of the Public and Private, Reality and Fiction in Li Mangui’s Plays: A Critical Focus on Interlude of the Times, By the Tamsui River, and The Sun of Alishan

本文以李曼瑰遷台前後改寫之《時代插曲》，以及其冷戰時期的重要代表作《淡水河畔》與《阿里山的太陽》為討論核心，檢視其劇作在不同歷史時空下，私領域與公領域、道德與政治、慾望與國族之間的辯證轉化。相較於過往將李曼瑰定位為「服務黨國意識形態」之劇作家的單一詮釋，本文指出，其劇作並未完全淪為政治宣傳工具，而是在高度政治化的非常時期中，透過家庭倫理、情感抉擇與庶民日常的書寫，開啟一個介於現實政治與戲劇虛構之間的「模糊地帶」。
《時代插曲》遷台前的抗日版本與遷台後的反共版本，呈現出在意識形態置換下「敵人」的變動，卻也顯露出人物人性結構與私領域慾望的高度連續性；政治在此不以正面對抗的方式入場，而是潛伏於日常倫理抉擇之中，形成公私、虛實交錯的戲劇場域。《淡水河畔》則透過赴美出走、美元想像、黑幫暴力與犧牲倫理，建構一則冷戰台灣的政治寓言，顯示資本、階級與地緣政治如何滲透家庭結構與青年命運。《阿里山的太陽》進一步將「出走／留下」的抉擇轉化為本土倫理的象徵性完成，呈現李曼瑰在冷戰框架內部逐步浮現的情感性「本土轉向」。
本文主張，李曼瑰的戲劇書寫一方面深受基督信仰與家國大義影響，另一方面卻又持續以女性書寫的私領域細瑣，鬆動宏大政治敘事的絕對性，形塑出一種「去政治化的政治」。在此結構中，政治不再僅以敵我對立的形式出現，而是轉化為人物內在的道德掙扎與慾望搏鬥。透過重新梳理李曼瑰劇作中政治與美學的辯證關係，本文試圖為台灣戲劇史中威權時期文藝與意識形態的複雜關係，提供一種非二元對立的重新理解視角。

Focusing on Li Mangui’s Interlude of the Times—revised before and after her relocation to Taiwan—alongside her seminal Cold War-era works By the Tamsui River and The Sun of Alishan, this article examines the dialectical transformations between the private and public spheres, morality and politics, and individual desire and national identity within her dramatic oeuvre across shifting historical and spatial contexts. Moving beyond conventional, unidirectional interpretations that label Li simply as a playwright who“serves party-state ideology,”this study argues that her plays do not merely lapse into political propaganda. Instead, amid highly politicized times of crisis, Li utilizes narratives of family ethics, emotional choices, and subaltern daily life to carve out a“gray zone”suspended between real-world politics and dramatic fiction.
The pre-relocation anti-Japanese version and the post-relocation anticommunist version of Interlude of the Times demonstrate how the identity of the“enemy”shifts alongside changes in state ideology. Yet, they simultaneously reveal a profound continuity in the characters’psychological structures and private desires. Here, politics enters the stage not through direct confrontation, but as an undercurrent latent within everyday ethical decisions, thereby creating a dramatic arena where the public and private, the real and the fictional, intertwine. Furthermore, By the Tamsui River constructs a political allegory of Cold War Taiwan through tropes of American migration, the imaginary of US aid, gangster violence, and the ethics of sacrifice, illustrating how capital, class, and geopolitics permeate family structures and the destinies of youth. Finally, The Sun of Alishan translates the choice of“leaving versus staying”into a symbolic realization of local ethics, capturing an affective“local turn”that gradually surfaced within Li’s writing under the Cold War framework.
This article contends that while Li’s dramatic writing is heavily informed by Christian faith and national righteousness, it continuously employs the minutiae of the private sphere characteristic of feminine writing to unsettle the absolutism of grand political narratives, ultimately shaping a form of“depoliticized politics.”Within this structure, politics no longer appears strictly as binary friend-or-foe antagonism; instead, it is sublimated into the internal moral struggles and conflicts of desire within the characters. By re-mapping the dialectical relationship between politics and aesthetics in Li Mangui’s plays, this article seeks to offer a non-binary perspective for understanding the intricate relationship between literature, art, and ideology during the authoritarian period in Taiwanese theater history.