好像是chinese literature 的drama那一节吧?个人翻译,其中的一些拉丁及法语术语均经查询维基百科后推敲译出,或与标准翻译略有出入,望谅解。戏剧(改革?)运动受到了阻塞,争论的焦点也因插曲以及救赎而变得模糊。在这个心理上的关键时刻,这些悲剧作家们对于及时停止并如何妥善处理这件事上,不约而同地变得无能为力。“舞台上繁琐的情节拖累了整部作品",这种情况一直延续到戏曲情节中的“正义”的出现,之后,一切的剧情安排又都似乎变得理所应当。尽管喜剧的情节及结构有了很大提高,但是戏剧中逻辑上的不合理及过于巧合的情节在剧中依然十分频繁。这种极不现实的巧合导致了情节的脱节,而剧作者为故事中心而设置的这种”正义主角是无所不能的“情节也被堂而皇之的广泛采用。但在当时,大多数,甚至所有的这类情节,根本不是为了使作品具有讽刺效果,或者是为了营造一种讽刺的故事背景而产生的。这种语言上的出色技巧被广泛认为是低俗的,就像是弗洛伊德评价Tendenzwitz的那样,”一心想要揭穿性行为内在的怪异和荒谬“。14。这类情节很少是mot de situation 或 mot de caractère,并且经常不顾艺术性,也不考虑道德上是否适当,而被强加在作品中。15。这甚至还演变为一种语言风格,试图借此表达纯洁而简明的含义,就像英语文学中,leigh hunt在他的论文wit made easy所嘲讽的那样。中国人认为,在一个戏剧中,诗歌的美感是高于一切的。一代编剧大使李渔就因诗艺平平而被低估。中国人有着对于紧凑戏剧结构的热衷,但却并未创造一批能深刻反映当时民生及社会现象的作品,这在文学史史上也稍显神秘色彩。后来王国维大胆的提出,元朝时的一些作品完全可以排入当时世界上最伟大的戏剧作品之列。17,不过拥有广博学识,并且对唯意志论美学有着深刻研究的王国维,却并不是一个优秀的评论家。曾经深入研究并盛赞中国戏剧“赵氏孤儿”为剧作典范的richard hurd有足够的资格来说明,这部作品其实并未达到古希腊剧作家sophocles的作品electra那样的高度,18 并最终放弃了继续在那上面投入更多的热情与精力。19。王国维所高度评价的这些戏剧,其内容中都包含优美的诗句,但除了一些略带戏谑的学术味道之外,并没有一点悲剧色彩。白仁甫的《梧桐雨》,就像《安东尼和克里奥帕特拉》以及《all for love》一样,都描述了为爱亡国的主题。皇帝最爱的人在第三次判决中死亡,将整个残酷的审判抛给她的情人。皇帝整日借酒消愁不能自拔,任由无力回天的痛苦一点点的侵蚀那颗破碎的心。皇帝懦弱无能,好色成性,整日放任自流,游走在堕落的边缘。他曾因所爱的情妇而亡国,之后在极度空虚的时候又试图通过丢下她的情人来夺回整个国家。他既没有决绝选择的勇气与果断,也缺乏将两者同时拥有的智慧与能力。乱世出英雄,那个年代的他也注定只能成为一个悲哀的人物。20 另外的两部戏剧,关汉卿的《窦娥冤》和(纪君祥《赵氏孤儿》,则在充满诗意的圆满结局和流芳百世中落幕。
The dramatic movement is clogged and the issue confused by episodes and ”reliefs”.The tragedians all showed a constitutional inability to stop at the psychological moment and leave well enough alone. “Superfluous lags the play on the stage” until poetic justice is rendered and everything is again for the best in this truly best of all possible worlds.Though the comedies are better constructed, the violation of logic and probability is still too frequent.The long arm of coincidence is stretched to the point of dislocation, and the shabby device of deus ex machina is shamelessly exploited.There is little or none of comique de caractère, plenty of comique de situation and most of all comique de mots. This verbal wit is largely ribald, what Freud calls Tendenzwitz, bent upon exposing the inherent grotesqueness and ridiculousness of sexual behavior.14 It is rarely mot de situation or mot de caractère and often put into the mouths of the characters with a total disregard of dramatic as well as moral propriety.15 At its worst it becomes word—catching pure and simple, the sort of thing in English which Leigh Hunt parodied in his essay Wit Made Easy.16The Chinese valued the beauty of poetry in a play above everything else.A master of stagecraft like Li Yü(李渔)was underrated because he was an indifferent versifier.That the Chinese with their love of finished form, should have produced plays which are sprawling invertebrate masses of dialogue and action, is a literary mystery.The late Wang Kuo-wei(王国维) boldly asserted that some of the dramas written in the Mongol dynasty are worthy of the company of the greatest tragedies of the world.17 But Wang Kuo-wei, with all his Chinese scholarship and assiduous study of Schopenhauerian aesthetics, is a poor critic.Richard Hurd who elaborately proved the Chinese play The Orphan of the House of Chao(《赵氏孤儿》)as showing ”an identity of composition ”with the great Greek tragedies, was wise enough to say that it falls short of the excellence of Sophocles's Electra,18 and eventually recanted his youthful enthusiasm for it.19 The plays praised by Wang Kuo-wei all contain beautiful poetry but they are not tragic except in the journalese sense of the epithet.Pei Jen-fu’s lyrical drama Rain in the Trees(白仁甫《梧桐雨》), like Antony and Cleopatra and All for Love, deals with the theme of a kingdom lost for love. 问题补充:The emperor’s mistress dies in the third act, leaving a whole act to her imperial lover to pine and whine and eat away in impotent grief the remains of his broken heart.The emperor is a weak, feckless and selfish sensualist who drifts along the line of least resistance.He loses the world for loving his mistress and then gives up his mistress in the vain attempt to regain the world.He has neither character enough to be tom between two worlds nor sense enough to make the best of both worlds.Far from being of the stern stuff of which tragic heroes are made, he can at best only be a pathetic figure.20 The other two plays, Kuan Han-ch'ing's A Girl's Martyrdom(关汉卿《窦娥冤》)and Chi Chün-hsiang's The Orphan of the House of Chao(纪君祥《赵氏孤儿》), end with ample poetic justice and almost universal jubilee.