“死是永生的门”杂考

A Miscellaneous Textual Research on“Death the Gate of Life”

20世纪40年代,巴金和他的好友缪崇群以《死》为共同标题写了散文,都将“死是永生的门”这句话放在开头部分。经过一番考查,基本推断这句话来自依据《新约圣经·马太福音》的弥尔顿《失乐园》中一段话。其实,这句话在20世纪20年代郭沫若、蒯斯曛等作家的作品中也作为重要的观念之表象而被使用,不能说是仅仅反映巴金和缪崇群个别生死观的引用。我们可以从如此现象看出,在宁肯牺牲个体生命也要换取更大利益的功利主义生死观占到主流的话语空间中,在一种形而上的、非功利的“真理”(如“爱情”)上认出堪与独一无二的形而下价值即“生命”相抗衡之价值的观念(对于“死”的憧憬)构成了一股不容忽视的潮流。从某种意义上说,这可以说是中国文学深入现代领域的一个标志。探索巴金和缪崇群所引用一句话的来源此一琐碎考据为出发点,揭示以生死观的多样性为切入的文学史新视角之可能性。

In the 1940s,Ba Jin and his close friend Miao Chongqun wrote essays under the common title“death”,and both placed the phrase“death the gate of life”in the opening section.According to the research,it can be basically deduced that this phrase comes from a passage in Milton’s Paradise Lost,which is based on the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament.In fact,this quote was also used as an important conceptual representation in the works of Guo Moruo,Kuai Sixun and other writers in the 1920s,so it cannot be said to be a quote that merely reflects the individual views of life and death of Bajin and Miao Chongqun.We can see from such a phenomenon that in a discourse space dominated by the utilitarian concept of life and death,in which one would rather sacrifice one's life for a greater value(such as nation,state,people,revolution and or so),one recognizes a metaphysical,non-utilitarian“truth”such as“love”as being comparable to the metaphysical value of“life”,and such idea constitutes a trend that cannot be ignored.In a sense,this(the longing for“death”)can be regarded as a merck-marle that Chinese literature has departed from tradition and penetrated into the realm of modernity.This paper aims to take the trivial investigation of the origin of the phrase quoted by Bajin and Miao Chongqun as a starting point,and suggest the possibility of a new perspective on literary history that takes the diversity of concepts of life and death as an entry point.