山水百家言(九) 大观园 美人繁花的乐土

Grand-view Garden as a Haven for Belles and Blossoms

萧驰博士现任教于新加坡国立大学中文系,长期从事中国文学和比较文学研究,专注于魏晋思想与中国诗学、中国古典诗学与思想史、中国诗学与佛教以及明清文人文化与小说,特别是《红楼梦》的研究。已发表多部中英文专著,包括:《佛法与诗境》(北京:中华书局,2005)、《中国抒情传统》(台北:允辰文化事业股份公司,1999)、《中国诗歌美学》(北京:北京大学出版社,1986)。本文选自他的英文版著作《中国园林作为诗意的归所:石头记通考》(密西根州立大学,2001)第六章"大观园——美人繁花的乐土"。尽管《红楼梦》中的大观园是虚构的,但它依然是世界园林史中不可或缺的一部分。它不仅为人们展示了明清园林构筑规划的详情,更为重要的是传达了园林中日常起居的生活信息。在今天关于中国园林价值的大讨论中,我们已经对文人园的视觉、空间和建筑特色有了很多研究,但对传统中国园林的生活、日用和功能性价值的研究做得还远远不够。中国文人们在园林里除了休闲活动以外到底还做些什么?山石、花木、流水、亭台是不是就是中国园林艺术的全部?丰富的中国艺术和文学史料已经促使许多在西方的艺术史学家和汉学家们对中国花园景观文化进行更为全面的审思。略举两例:士大夫们的"园记"中关于园林别业的描写常常涉及到乡村景色和农业生产,以山水见长的文人画(比如明代文徵明的31景《拙政园图》)描画了许多现存苏州园林中见不到的丰富的自然景象。这些不仅令人想到山水观与城市化进程之间的互动,同时更强调了园林不仅仅是设计和园艺,而且与历史上一人一地文化传统和社会经济的演变有着千丝万缕的联系。明清是江南文人园林的兴盛期。萧博士对大观园的研究将花园的兴衰放到皇朝末年危机四伏的士大夫文化的大背境下,通过对大观园与另外两种中国古典文学中常见的园林类型——女性化的才子佳人园和男性化的高人逸士园——的比较,作者指出大观园既是二者的综合,在价值论上又是对二者的超越。最后,文章向读者进一步提出:"美人繁花的大观园是如何成为男性诗人遁隐园的象征呢?在这种性别转换的表象之下的文化架构又是什么呢?"

Dr. Xiao Chi teaches at the Department of Chinese Studies in National University of Singapore. He specializes in Chinese Literature and Comparative Literature, with emphases on Chinese poetics related with thought of Wei-Jin period, classical Chinese poetics related with intellectual history, Chinese poetics and Buddhism, and Ming-Qing period literati culture and novels, in particular Dream of the Red Chamber. He has published many books in Chinese, including Buddhism and Poetics (2005), Chinese Tradition of Lyric Expression (1999), The Aesthetics of Chinese Poem (1986). This article was originally published in his English book, The Chinese Garden as Lyrical Enclave: A Generic Study of the Story of the Stone (Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2001), as Chapter Six titled 'Grand-view Garden as a Haven for Belles and Blossoms'. Even though fictional, the Grant-view Garden is an indispensable part in the history of Chinese garden. What it brings to light to today's scholarship is not merely its detailed information on the physical design of a Ming-Qing period garden, but also its unique insights into how a grant garden was lived in by a prosperous family in imperial China. In the heated contemporary debates about the value and heritage of traditional Chinese scholar's garden, we have paid much attention to their visual, spatial and architectural features while not enough efforts have been put in studying the living, utilitarian and functional aspects of gardens in traditional China. What were the other activities in a scholar's garden beside leisure? Rockery, plants, water and architecture are these all that the Chinese art of garden is about?Among academics working in Western context, rich sources from Chinese art and literature have stimulated scholars in the fields of art history and sinology to approach Chinese garden history from a more comprehensive view. Just give two quick examples: literati writings of gardens, yuanji, had often described their gardens as rural and productive estates; landscape paintings of gardens, such as Wen Zhengming's album of 'Garden of The Unsuccessful Politician' with 31 views, had depicted sites utterly different from what is seen today. This makes one wonder about the relationship between the Chinese sense of landscape and the process of urbanization. It also confirms that gardens were not merely about forms and horticulture but closely tied to cultural and social-economic changes in a longer history of the people and the place. Dr. Xiao's study on the Grand-view Garden reexamines the connotations of a private garden against the deepening cultural crisis of the literati in the late imperial period, a period that was also marked by the flourish of scholar's gardens in Jiangnan. His comparison between the academia and two other types of 'literary gardens'--the feminine garden of passionate lovers and the masculine garden of the poet-recluse—has led to the conclusion that the Grand-view Garden was both a thematic fusion of the two types and axiological transcendence of them. Finally, the article raises further questions 'how is it possible that a garden of blossom and belles stands for a garden of male poet-recluse? What is the cultural framework that underlies this cross-gendered representation?'