纸上寻声:《絸斋论文》与明清古文“调法”说

Tracing the Rhythm among Characters:Jianzhai Lunwen and the Prosodic Studies on Guwen in Ming and Qing Dynasties

明清时期文章家好以"调法"论文,其中包含了对古典散文韵律特征的细部批评和理论建构,对今人的研究颇有启发。本文以清代张谦宜《絸斋论文》之"调法"说为中心,阐释传统文学批评中关于古文声调的论述。张谦宜整合了前人关于文章音节声调的分析,建立了"字—逗—句—段—篇"的结构层级,在各层分别用声响、节奏、错落、点缀等术语阐释"调法"的不同方面,其中既有侧重字句形式的"诵读韵律",也有兼及思想情感的"阅读韵律",为探讨古文的音节声气提供了丰富的理论资源。

Rhythm is a significant feature of literary works. In the Chinese literary tradition, while the versifi cation of classical poetry has been thoroughly studied by both premodern and modern scholars, the rhythmic and prosodic structure of ancient-style prose(guwen 古文), has yet to be explored. Unlike the regulated verse, in which the tonal attribute of ping 平 and ze 仄 basically determined the poetic meter, ancientstyle prose has no such characteristics to regulate its rhythm. What are the main rhythmic factors of ancient-style prose? How did the pre-modern scholars recognize and analyze such factors? This article aims to discuss the idea of diao(调, rhythm) in the studies of guwen by scholars in Ming and Qing dynasties, and to explore how this idea was applied in appreciating the beauty of classic prose. The term diao is quite ambiguous in traditional Chinese literary criticism, which can refer to the tone of a Chinese character, the structure of a sentence or even the coherence of a text. Focusing on the rhythm theory of Zhang Qianyi 张谦宜, a guwen critic living in the early Qing Dynasty, the author hopes to demonstrate how those different meanings of diao were integrated and synthesized. In his Jianzhai Lunwen(絸斋论文, Jianzhai’s Remarks on Prose), Zhang has applied a multi-level structure of "zi(字, character)-dou(逗, pause)-ju(句, sentence)-duan(段, paragraph)-pian(篇, text)" to elaborate the diaofa(调法, rhythmic method) of guwen prose. The article discusses not only Zhang’s defi nitions of diao and other related terms, that is, jiezou(节奏, phrasal rhythm), shengxiang(声响, sound), cuoluo(错落, asymmetry), and dianzhui(点缀, intersperse), but also his comments on the selected texts from Shiji(史记, Records of the Grand Historian), Hanshu(汉书, History of the Former Han), and works of other writers, to reveal the actual meanings of those terms in the critical practice. For instance, to explain the misuse of long sentences, Zhang points out three situations:(1) tongue twister, or repetition of simple prosodic patterns(typically a long string of 1-or-2-syllable words);(2) successive long sentences;(3) sentence lengthened by parallel clauses. He criticizes Mao Kun(茅坤) for his abuse of long sentences. To clarify the accurate meaning of them, as well as to get a better understanding of the prosodic eff ect of long sentences, the author takes several pieces from Mao’s writings as examples of those categories. For the texts that Zhang Qianyi briefly mentioned as the ideals of asymmetry, this article also provides detailed modern analysis, and attributes the asymmetric style to the synergy of phonetic property and syntactic structure. The 4-character pattern,for example, is usually recognized as symmetric and balanced prosodic structure. The successive use of 4-character phrases in a piece of Shiwei’s(士蒍) speech in the Zuozhuan(左传, The Zuo Tradition), however, is indeed asymmetric since the various syntax patterns have created prosodic diversity among the seemingly homogeneous 4-syllable structure. Through the interpretation of Zhang Qianyi’s theory, the author argues that syntactic rather than phonetic features have become the core concern for Ming and Qing scholars when they dealt with the prosodic features of guwen. Besides, defamiliarized expressions, which may delay the process of reading, are also regarded as factors related to the rhythm of prose.