“现代之眼”中的传统戏曲--20世纪一二十年代中西比较视野中的戏曲评判

Traditional Opera in the Eye of Modernity:A Critique of Opera in the Chinese-Western Comparative Vision in the 1910s and 1920s

不同于新文化运动中《新青年》主笔基于社会效用全面推崇西方写实话剧、彻底否定中国传统戏曲,以宋春舫、余上沅为代表的两代学贯中西的戏剧理论家坚持戏剧本位、秉持跨文化理念,从西方现代主义艺术新潮出发重新评判中国旧剧,聚焦其象征精神、表现性特质和形式主义美学,揭示出中国传统艺术蕴含的“先锋”“现代”因子,纠正新文化运动戏剧改良对西方现代思想畸重启蒙现代性及现实主义的偏颇,转而以后起的先锋(审美)现代性勾联古今、中西文化艺术,在完整的中西比较视野中阐释以戏曲为代表的中国传统艺术的美学规律和意蕴精髓。宋、余的研究不仅标志了20世纪中国戏剧理论的高度,更揭示出民族文化艺术“现代化”与“中国化”问题之间的复杂纠葛。

Unlike the chief editors of La Jeunesse(《新青年》)in the New Culture Movement,who comprehensively advocated Western realistic drama and completely rejected traditional Chinese opera,the two generations of modern drama theorists represented by Song Chunfang(宋春舫)and Yu Shangyuan(余上沅)with thorough Chinese learning and Western learning,adhered to the basic positioning of drama,upheld the concept of cross-culture,and reevaluated the traditional Chinese opera from the perspective of the new wave of Western modernist art.Focusing on its symbolic spirit,expressive qualities and formalist aesthetics,they revealed the“Avant-garde”and“modern”factors contained in traditional Chinese art,and corrected the bias that overemphasized Enlightenment Modernity and realism in Western modern thought,which was caused by the theatrical improvement in the New Culture Movement.And then,they turned to the emerging Avant-garde modernity to link up ancient and modern Chinese and Western arts and cultures,and to expound the aesthetic laws,implications and essences of the traditional Chinese art represented by opera in a comprehensive comparative vision of the East and the West.The research made by Song Chunfang and Yu Shangyuan not only marked the height of Chinese drama theory in the 20th century,but also revealed the complex entanglement between the“modernization”and“Sinicization”of China’s national art and culture.