重构门多萨的“金蛇王权”想象——论16世纪中西关系史的形象塑造

Reshaping González de Mendoza's“Chinese Golden Serpent Kingship”:On the Image Reconstruction of the Sino-Western Relations in the 16th Century

如何把龙这一中国文化负载词翻译到印欧语境中,是困扰了中外译者几个世纪的难题。16世纪的西班牙汉学家门多萨曾用“金蛇”(serpiente dorada)来表征中国皇帝的权力符号。尽管现下汉语学人也关注到了早期汉学家使用“蛇”来翻译“中国龙”的转码策略,但他们普遍认为这是一种两害相较取其轻的权宜之策,却忽视了两者在中世纪语境下都具有浓重的负面意涵。因此,问题的关键并非是“蛇”的负面文化冲击力轻于“龙”,而在于龙是以基督教的异族暴君形象存在于16世纪欧洲文化记忆之中的,而建构这样一种异质文化形象背离了《中华大帝国史》的同一化书写立场。与此同时,作者的同一化意图又被巧妙地编码进了乌托邦式的想象之中,从而形成了一种新的文化模式。从中西方遭遇之语境下的具体政治经济经验中解读,这种新文化形态是16世纪中西关系史进程的一种历史折射。

How to translate the Chinese culture-loaded word龙into Indo-European languages,has puzzled translators for centuries.The Spanish sinologist Juan González de Mendoza used“golden serpent”to represent the power symbol of the Chinese emperor in his History of the Kingdom of China in the 16th century.Although Chinese scholars have also paid attention to the misplaced cultural transcoding,they generally considered it as a gesture of respect from the Europeans to China,pointing out that the“snake”is less than“dragon”in European culture.However,they ignore that both of them have strong negative connotations in the Middle Age.Therefore,the problem is not that the cultural taboo meaning of“snake”is lighter than that of“snake”,but the dragon existed as a synonymous with heathen tyrants in the European collective cultural memory.And shaping such an anti-Catholicism heterogeneous cultural image deviated from the euphemistic evangelical purpose of his writing of China.This is why Mendoza abandoned the use of“dragon”to construct the symbol of the supreme power of the Chinese emperor.Besides,this evangelical writing intention is realized between the tension of ideology and utopia.Furthermore,based on the global political and economic experience in the 16th century,this new cultural model formed by him has reproduced the Sino-Western relations at that time.