差异性:20世纪英国作家建构的二重性中国形象

Otherness:the Paradoxical Chinese Images Construction by the 20th Century British Writers

对于罗素、迪更生、毛姆等20世纪英国作家而言,中国是一个未知的具有差异化的世界。与喧嚣、骚乱的西方物质空间不一样,中国的物质空间是“优美”“秀丽”“原始”的;与崇利轻义、主张天人对立的西方人文空间不一样,崇义轻利、推崇中正平和的中国人文空间是和谐的;与自我与他人、个人与社会关系对立、紧张的西方社会空间不一样,以仁义道德作为衡量人与人关系标准的中国社会空间充满浓郁的人情味。同时,在罗素等作家笔下的中国物质、人文、社会空间中,都共时态地包纳了相互矛盾、对立的事物或因素。这种对中国空间二重性的呈现,与罗素等复杂的文化观念有重要关系。

In the 20century,China was a totally unknown and differentiated world for the British writers like Bertrand Arthur William Russell and Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson. They believed that the physical space in China was “beautiful”,“quiet”,and “primitive”in contrast to the noisy and turbulent west world;the humanistic space in China was harmonious which respected the balance and peace,different from the west world that valued wealth over virtue as well as put man and nature in opposite positions;the social space in China was full of goodwill and kindness which used benevolence and morality as a standard to measure the relationship between people,unlike the west society in which the relationship between individuals were sharp and tense. However,writers,such as Russell,also described contradictory and mutually opposed items synchronically in the Chinese physical,humanistic,and social spaces. There is no doubt that this kind of presentation revealed the duality of Chinese space which was closely associated with Russell and other writers’ complex cultural conceptions.