模仿与世界文学——论两首中文诗的英文仿作

Imitation and World Literature:English Pastiches of Two Chinese Poems

本文聚焦李白与西毒何殇两首中文诗的英文仿作,探讨模仿这一行为在文学的跨文化传播与世界文学身份构建中的重要意义。庞德《河商之妻:一封信》以及甘索《父亲的拖拉机》与其中文原作在文本上的异同表明,模仿并非复制,而是一种有生产能力的文学行为,可以传递原作中的文学元素,用一种变形的方式使其在新的文化语境中得以延续。针对西方汉学界一度盛行的对当代中国文学模仿西方文学的焦虑,本文认为在当代全球语境下,中外文学相互模仿是一种常态。这一模仿行为正是构建世界文学的过程,各国文学都从中受益,因而这种模仿的焦虑是完全没有必要的。

Focusing on the English pastiches of two Chinese poems by Li Bai and Xidu Heshang,this article explores the significance of imitation in the cross-cultural transmission of literature and the construction of the world literature identity.The textual similarities and differences between the two pastiches—Ezra Pound’s“The River-Merchant’s Wife:A Letter”and Vangile Gantsho’s“Her Father’s Tractor”—and their Chinese originals demonstrate that imitation is not duplication,but rather a productive literary act,which delivers the literary elements in the original to a new cultural context where they can survive in a transformed state.In response to the once-prevailing“anxiety”of Western sinologists over contemporary Chinese literature imitating Western literature,this paper argues that,in the context of globalization,it has been a common phenomenon in Chinese and foreign literature to imitate each other.This imitating act is a process of constructing world literature which benefits every national literature.Thus,this anxiety of imitation is entirely unnecessary.