释古雅

An Interpretation of Classic Elegance

王国维以西方美学优美和崇高二分为背景,提出了古雅范畴。但百余年来,与他的意境说或境界论相比,这一范畴并没有引起学界的足够重视。从历史看,古雅传统对中国美学史的影响具有纵贯性。尤其中唐以降,它日益占据主导地位,主要表现在诗文、书画和古器物三个领域。其中,唐人对古雅的推崇主要基于文学、经学之士试图借此重建儒家对于中国政治、文化的主导地位;宋人的古雅起于以金石证经补史,随之使器物雅赏在宋、元、明三代逐渐强化。清人的古雅则脱不了明末清初心学向实学转向的背景,后经乾嘉朴学、嘉道金石学而进入美学。清朝晚期,金石学进一步泛化为古器物学,器物认知与器物雅赏交相辉映。这一此起彼伏的复古潮流,赋予了时间和历史经验审美价值,使对中华民族人文传统的追忆和复现成为重大美学问题,从而也使古雅成为理解中国中古和近古美学精神的重要概念。

Wang Guowei put forward the category of“classic elegance(guya)”in the context of Western aesthetics’“beauty”and“sublimity.”However,for over a hundred years this category attracted much less attention from scholars than his theory of artistic conception or theory of realm.Historically,the concept of classic elegance has had a continuous influence on Chinese aesthetics.Especially since the mid-Tang,it has been increasingly dominant in the areas of poetry,painting and calligraphy,and ancient artifacts.The Tang admiration for classic elegance was mainly based on the attempts of scholars of literature and the classics to rebuild Confucian dominance in politics and culture.The Song advocacy of it started from supplementing the history of the classics with epigraphy,and this trend was strengthened through the Song,Yuan and Ming dynasties.The Qing concept of classic elegance could not resist the late Ming and early Qing turn from the school of the mind to the school of statecraft(learning of practical use to society).Subsequently the plain learning of the Qianlong-Jiaqing reigns and the epigraphic learning of the Jiaqing-Daoguang reigns took on an aesthetic character.In the late Qing,the study of epigraphy was further generalized to the study of ancient artifacts,with knowledge and appreciation of artifacts illuminating one another.The vicissitudes of the movement to return to the past endowed time and historical experience with aesthetic values that made the recalling and reappearance of the Chinese cultural tradition a major aesthetic issue.Classic elegance thus became an important concept for understanding the aesthetic spirit of China’s mid-and late-antiquity.