“外师造化,中得心源”——胡适翻译拜伦《哀希腊》的报国思想研究

“In Emulation of Nature and yet Being Imbued with One's Own Inner Being”——Patriotism as HU Shih's Motive for Undertaking to Retranslate The Isles of Greece

英国浪漫主义诗人拜伦的激励希腊人民反抗土耳其奴役的《哀希腊》诗不啻于一篇讨伐外族侵略者的战斗檄文,对于全世界受压迫的民族而言,具有普适的借鉴价值与鞭策意义,故而在内忧外患的近代中国被有志之士不断译介。其中,民国初年远在美国留学的青年胡适继晚清梁启超、马君武、苏曼殊的译介之后,也在拜伦的译介史上增添了浓重的一笔。留美期间,胡适充满了强烈的爱国主义精神。他的目标是做国人的导师,引领中国文化思想界的航向,再造中国的文明,建立民主自由国家。把胡适1914年翻译拜伦《哀希腊》的事件置放在他爱国思想体系的坐标中进行定位,清晰地廓示出译者胡适蕴含其中的"执笔报国"思想。

British romanticist poet Lord Byron's The Isles of Greece, with its sympathetic depiction of the Greek people's revolt against Ottoman enslavement, is an impassioned call for national independence and has since its writing become a source of inspirations for oppressed peoples around the world. It is small wonder that the poem had been translated and retranslated throughout modern China's formative years(1840-1949) by leading Chinese intellectuals such as LIANG Qichao, MA Junwu, SU Manshu and, in particular, HU Shih. HU Shih took upon himself the task of retranslating this poem into Chinese during the early days of his overseas study in USA. What had motivated him in undertaking such an unenvious job – given the fact that several notable Chinese versions of the same poem by China's then best-known men of letters had already been in circulation – is the patriotic fervor that his experiences of overseas study had aroused in him, as well as the goal he had by then set for himself, i.e., to become an enlightener for the general public of his country. To play a major role in steering the development of Chinese culture and thought, restructuring Chinese civilization and establishing a free democratic nation was what he had envisioned as the ultimate aim for his literary and scholarly productions. It is within such a framework that HU Shih's works as a translator, and his retranslation of The Isles of Greece in 1914 in particular, can best be understood and appreciated.