“为文全在气盛”——曾国藩古文艺术特色探析

The Vital Importance of Being Mighty in Writing——Exploration of the Artistic Characteristic in Zeng Guo-fan's Classical Prose

明清八大家之一的曾国藩作为桐城派中兴大将,传承古代文学理论"文气说",创造性地提出"为文全在气盛"的观点,并认为"气"或指先天的气质,或指人的精神力量,更多是指文章的气势神韵。曾氏在古文创作中,开拓"气盛"途径,通过声调铿锵、排偶句式、倔强个性、文章内容显现出来。曾国藩把"气盛说"扩展为"众艺相通说",再扩大为"四象说",超越方苞"义法说",无怪乎成为桐城派"中兴之明主"。

As one member of eight prose masters of the Ming and Qing Dynasties and the outstanding member in Tongcheng School's second prosperity,Zeng Guo-fan inherited ancient literature theory of mighty prose and proposed creatively the theory of the vital importance of being mighty in writing.In his opinion,'being mighty' could consist of inborn temperament and human being's mentality,and to a great extent it should consist of the writing's power and charm.In his creation of classical porse,Zeng Guo-fan created new means of being mighty to reveal the personality and writing's content such as impassioned tone and parallelism.Since he expanded his theory to the theory of similarity between all arts and to Sixiang theory,which surpassed Fang Bao's Yifa theory,no doubt he was regarded as the leading member in Tongcheng School's second prosperity.