西方对汉语的想象:韦伯、费诺罗萨、庞德(英文)

Western Fantasies of Chinese: Webb, Fenollosa, Pound

自古以来,西方人热衷于探求"理想语言"的基本特征,希腊文化传统和基督教传统概莫能外。中国文化引起西方关注之初,西方即开始围绕汉语展开关于理想语言的想象。本文通过审视两位对汉语心怀景仰的作家——于 1669 年写成了西方首部汉语研究著作的约翰·韦伯和在费诺罗萨影响之下以其关于汉语的思想和英译汉诗对英语文坛产生无法估量影响的埃兹拉·庞德,探讨西方围绕汉语对理想语言展开的种种想象。

In the West there has been much speculation about the characteristics of an ideal language, both in the Greek tradition and the Christian. As knowledge of China came to the West＇s attention, fantasies of an ideal language started to become focused on Chinese, which seemed to have powers exceeding those of Western languages. This paper will examine two writers who suffered strongly from Chinese-envy, John Webb, who wrote in 1669 the first book on Chinese published in the West, and Ezra Pound, whose ideas about and translations from Chinese, partly via Fenollosa, have had incalculable influence on English letters.