“空中楼阁”的势力场域——李渔《十二楼》与小说的近代进路

The Force field of “Air Castle”: Li Yu's Twelve Towers and the modern approach of novels

李渔把代表其小说创作高峰的《十二楼》称为"空中楼阁",不光体现他对园林设计的嗜好,也凝聚着他的文学以虚构为核心的主张。小说中亭台楼阁成为规训身体和道德的空间装置,而李渔采用反讽和戏仿的解构策略,在政治与美学的协商中表达了对自由爱情的同情,重申了晚明的浪漫精神。另一方面对园亭楼居的描绘渗透着当时兴盛的园林美学的符码,表现了李渔的天人合一的理想、人与自然的奇妙观赏,也给小说结构和风格带来美学上的突破。"空中楼阁"犹如各种文学与文化力量交涉、对冲或融合的势力场域,映现出明末清初急剧变动的时代精神,而李渔沿着"文人小说"的进路,以其多元开放的理论和实践使小说成为一种既能负载与更新文学传统、又能展示其独立身份的最富活力与时代性的文学样式。

Li Yu calls Twelve Towers,which represents the peak of his novel creation,the "Air castle".It reflects not only his aspiration for architectural design,but also his opinion that literary writing should be fictional rather than realistic.In describing towers,pavilions,walls,or gates as spatial apparatuses imprinted with political and moral codes,Li Yu penetrates or deconstructs them by irony and parody to celebrate free love and marriage among young couples.Under the harsh reign in late Ming and early Qing dynasty,Li Yu inherits the romantic spirit developed in late Ming dynasty through his smartly negotiating with the mainstream cultural powers.The fictional structures imbued with the aesthetic of garden designing favored by most literati since the mid-Ming reflect Li Yu’s ideal of harmony between Heaven and humans and his idea about fantastic visions in natural landscapes,and results in artistic innovation of his fiction.The"air castle"as the"force fields"in Walter Benjamin’s term is mixed with contested literary and cultural trends in seventeenth-century China,on which Li Yu,one of the most talented writers of the time,escalates the statue of fiction,in theory and practice,as a crowning genre in literary hierarchy,exerting great influence in later centuries.