民族悲剧美学的丰碑——陈瘦竹悲剧学思想新探

Chen Shouzhu’s Thoughts on Tragedy: a Monument of Tragedy Aesthetics in China

与西方视“悲剧”为“艺术皇冠”不同,温柔敦厚的儒雅气质和乐天知命的人生态度导致中国悲剧学长久缓行在直觉水平。然20世纪中国的现实和艺术,充满悲剧意味,作为民族现代悲剧美学家的陈瘦竹,富有创见地将古今中外悲剧艺术相接通,予以知性和情感观照。他以崇高为悲剧之本质内涵,依此透析英雄悲剧、平凡人物的悲剧和错误造成的悲剧三者迥然不同的美学风格,并强调悲剧中乐观豪迈的因素。晚年的陈瘦竹潜心研究荒诞派戏剧、存在主义等悲剧理论,全面阐发现代化潮流给悲剧艺术带来的巨大变化,深刻揭示现代悲剧新趋势,比如以悲剧崇高征服和超越苦难,悲喜因素的混同交融和“富有诗的目的”等。陈瘦竹坚持从现实关切、社会冲突中寻求悲、悲剧和悲剧快感的合理解答,作为一个“世界主义者”,他鄙弃偏于一隅的闭门造车,主张“东张西望”“兼收并蓄”,可信性、科学性是陈瘦竹悲剧美学的重要出发点,由此他实现对现代悲剧美学原则的重大发展。

Different from the western concept of“tragedy”which is regarded as“the crown of arts”,Chinese tragedy studies has long remained at an experience-based level due to its moderate,honest nature of gentility and carefree,optimistic attitude towards life.Nevertheless,China’s reality and arts in the 20th century was marked with tragic overtones.As a Chinese aesthete on modern tragedy,Chen Shouzhu has insightfully related Chinese and foreign arts from ancient to contemporary times,and reflected on both intellectually and sentimentally.He takes sublimity as the nature of tragedy,and according to which he anatomizes three distinct aesthetic styles of tragedies,including tragedies on heroes,ordinary men,and tragedies caused by mistakes;and with which he also emphasizes optimistic and heroic spirits in tragedy.In later years,the aesthete dedicates himself into the study of absurdist drama and existentialist theory on tragedy,and offers comprehensive explication on modernization’s influence on tragic art.He also lays bare the emerging trends of modern tragedy,including the conquest and transcendence of tragic sublime over suffering,the mixture of tragic and comedic elements,and“intentions enriched with poetic features”.Chen persists to seek answers to melancholy,tragedy,and tragic pleasure from observation of realities and social conflicts.As a believer of cosmopolitanism,Chen despises studies that are behind closed doors and regionally confined,and advocates“looking east and west”and“incorporate things of diverse nature”.Chen takes credibility and scientific approach as an important starting point of his aesthetics of tragedy,and from which he made great advancement in principles of modern tragic aesthetics.