“李白抱月”——论爱尔兰剧作《黄河中的月亮》中的中国意象

“Li Po’s Embrace of the Moon”: The Chinese Image in the Irish Play The Moon in the Yellow River

《黄河中的月亮》是爱尔兰剧作家丹尼斯·詹斯顿1931年创作的剧本,剧中的核心意象"李白抱月"一直为学界所忽视。一方面,经由英美新诗运动的跨文化传播,"李白抱月"是20世纪初"中国风"在爱尔兰的延续例证;另一方面,"李白抱月"更是詹斯顿以东方意象隐喻其政治态度和文化主张的借力,是1930年代爱尔兰文化政治语境下的变异接受。李白的政治失意和沉醉放浪的浪漫气质与爱尔兰激进民族主义者的政治失意、悲情失控的暴力行为形成虚妄和徒劳的共情呼应,使该剧成为詹斯顿对爱尔兰民族主义政治表达的一首挽歌。

The Moon in the Yellow River is a play written by Irish playwright Dennis Johnston in 1931. The key image in the play, “Li Po’s Embrace of the Moon,” has long been neglected by scholars. On the one hand, the image proves the sustaining presence of Chinoiserie,through the cross-cultural propagation in the Anglo-American New Poetry Movement, in the early 20 th-century Ireland and, on the other, indicates not only Johnston’s use of the Eastern image as a metaphor of his political attitude and cultural proposition, but also a disguised acceptation in the context of the Irish culture and politics in the 1930 s. The fact that Li Po’s political failure and romantic temperament, as indicated by his indulgence in alcoholism and vagrant behavior, had a resonance, though delusional and futile, with the radical Irish nationalists’ political disappointment and their tragic and incontrollable violent behavior seems to have turned the play into Johnston’s elegy for the Irish nationalistic politics.