中国园林和十八世纪英国的艺术风尚

Chinese Gardens and English Taste in the Eighteenth Century

本期发表的老一辈学者范存忠先生的论文《中国园林和十八世纪英国的艺术风尚》是一篇跨学科研究的比较文学论文。范先生学识渊博,三十年代起就从事比较文学研究。此文可供关心如何从事比较文学的跨学科研究的同志借鉴。

In my article on the beginnings of the influence of Chinese culture in England,published in Foreign Language in December 1982,I touched upon the beginning of English interest in Chinese gardens in the late 17th-century.The prevailing style of gardening in Europe in the late 17th-century was the formal garden of the French or Dutch type,characterized by regu- larity and symmetry.Sir William Temple,emi- nent statesman,wrote about the formal garden in his essay Of Gardening(1785).But,perhaps from curiosity,he discoursed on the irregular garden of China as contrasted with the regular one of Europe.In a remarkable passage,he in- troduced the word'sharawadgi'(that is irregu- lar beauty.)as the characteristic of the Orien- tal style.In that article I said that Temple could hardly have seen how influential his intro- duction of the idea of'sharawadgi'was to become in the generations to come.In the fol- lowing pages I attempt to show how the aesthetic quality of journalists,poets and architects as a revolt against the formal and trim in gardening in the 18th-century.