以“进取”瓦解“焦虑”:中西文化交流的新境界——《美国现代诗歌及其与中国的遭遇》评介

New Horizon in the Cultural Exchanges between China and the West:A Review of American Modernist Poetry and the Chinese Encounter

近现代以来,由于各种复杂的历史与社会原因,中国学界在与西方的交流之中往往表现得缺乏自信、颇为焦虑,最终导致一种曹顺庆所言的"失语症"现象。不过,近来也出了一批学者,他们在与西方同行的交流之中充满自信,乃至能够自如地运用非母语的英语与西方同行直接交流,由张跃军与斯图尔特·克里斯蒂联袂主编的《美国现代诗歌及其与中国的遭遇》一书就是一个很好的例证。该书的出版本身标志着中西学界交流的重大进步,具有重要的文化意义。此外,该书集中反映了中西学界对美国现代诗歌中中国形象思考的重要成果,对相关主题的研究具有重要的学术价值。

Scholars in China are often troubled, in modern times, by a sort of strong anxiety that is caused by the lack of confidence in communicating with their colleagues in the West, due to various complicated historical and social reasons, which are summed up in the phrase of ＂Aphasia＂ by a famous Chinese Scholar, Cao Shunqing. Yet there is emerging a group of scholars in China who, as confident as western scholars, are engaged in fluent exchanges of academic views with their Western colleagues in the language of English, as exemplified by American Modernist Poetry and the Chinese Encounter, edited by Zhang Yuejun and Stuart Christie. Thus the emergence of this book, as a symbol of encouraging progress achieved in communication between the Chinese and Western academic worlds, is itself of important cultural significance. Besides, the book also demonstrates many insightful ideas reflecting on presentation or representation of the ＂China＂ image in modem American poetry, which is, indeed, a masterpiece of this kind so far in the academic worldi both in China and in the West.