李欧梵多次提到苏州大学的范伯群教授，称道他多年来他对于中国近现代通俗小说的研究。他主编了两套丛书《民初都市通俗小说（十卷）》(台湾：业强出版社，1993)和 《中国近现代通俗作家评传丛书（十二卷）》(南京：南京出版社1994)，还有《中国近现代通俗文学史》(南京：江苏教育出版社，2000。)
2006年12月29日星期五
2006年12月23日星期六
Truth--Nietzsche 尼采 (2)
尼采的这段话，说的是何谓“真理”。
A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms: in short a sum of human relations which became poetically and rhetorically intensified, metamorphosed, adorned, and after long usage seem to a nation fixed, canonic and binding; truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions. (Nietzsche, “On Truth and Falsity in Their Ultramoral Sense” (1873), in The Complete Works of Nietzsche, 2:180
一支由比喻、借喻、和拟人化修辞所组成的流动大军：简而言之，是经由修辞和艺术手法所强化处理、变形和修饰的人类关系总和。它们经过长时间的使用，俨然成为环环相扣的神圣王国。真理是让人忘记它们是虚幻的虚幻。
A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms: in short a sum of human relations which became poetically and rhetorically intensified, metamorphosed, adorned, and after long usage seem to a nation fixed, canonic and binding; truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions. (Nietzsche, “On Truth and Falsity in Their Ultramoral Sense” (1873), in The Complete Works of Nietzsche, 2:180
一支由比喻、借喻、和拟人化修辞所组成的流动大军：简而言之，是经由修辞和艺术手法所强化处理、变形和修饰的人类关系总和。它们经过长时间的使用，俨然成为环环相扣的神圣王国。真理是让人忘记它们是虚幻的虚幻。
2006年12月22日星期五
My Favorite of Nietzsche 尼采 (1)
中文部分，都是自己的翻译。
To set prices, measure values, think up equivalences, to exchange things—that preoccupied man's very first thinking to such a degree that in a certain sense it's what thinking is.
—Nietzsche
价格的设定、价值的衡量、思考对等物、交换——从人最初具有思维以来，这些东西就深深地占据着人的头脑。从某种程度上说，它们是思维的本质。
——尼采《论道德的谱系》
《孟子•滕文公下》
孟子谓戴不胜曰：“子欲子之王之善与？我明告子。有楚大夫于此，欲其子之齐语也，则使齐人傅诸？使楚人傅诸？”曰：“使齐人傅之。”曰：“一齐人傅之，众楚人咻之，虽日挞而求其齐也，不可得矣；引而置之庄岳之间数年，虽日挞而求其楚，亦不可得矣。与，平声。咻，音休。戴不胜，宋臣也。齐语，齐人语也。傅，教也。咻，讙也。齐，齐语也。庄岳，齐街里名也。楚，楚语也。此先设譬以晓之也。
2006年12月9日星期六
Our first department chair, John Fryer (1839-1928)
傅兰雅（John Fryer），出生于英国肯特郡海斯镇（Hythe, Kent）一穷苦牧师家庭。翻译家，传教士。在将19世纪西方科学引入中国方面，他的成就无人可比。从1868年起到1896年二十八年时间，他在清政府的重要洋务机构，江南制造局任翻译馆的主管。与中国同事一起，傅兰雅翻译了大量科学与工程学读本，经手的翻译超过百种。1874年，参与创办中国第一所科学学校——格致书院；1875年主编创办了近代中国第一份科学杂志——《格致汇编》；1885年创办近代中国第一家科技书店——格致书室。清廷为表彰傅兰雅，特赐他三品头衔。详情参见王扬宗：《傅兰雅与近代中国的科学启蒙》（科学出版社，2000）。另外值得一提的是，1896年傅兰雅离开江南制造局，去了美国加州大学，执教于伯克利（Berkeley），一直到1914年75岁才退休。其间他创立了东方语言系（Department of Oriental Languages），成为第一任系主任。此系现在名为“东方语言与文化系”（Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures），也是笔者做博士研究的地方。在遗嘱里，他把自己超过两千册的个人手稿和藏书捐赠给加州大学，成为加大收集东亚图书的开端。后来在1947年发展成为加大伯克利分校（UC Berkeley）的东亚图书馆（East Asian Library）。
2006年12月7日星期四
中国孩子在1904年美国圣路易的世博会 (Chinese kids, St. Louis World's Fair 1904)
1904年，美国举办圣路易博览会（Louisiana Purchase Exposition - St. Louis World’s Fair），中国亦受邀参加。虽然这不是中国第一次参加博览会，却是满清政府有史以来最重视的一次，破天荒派溥伦贝子赴会。这一次清政府绕开了由洋人把持的海关，并花巨资修建了具有浓郁民族风格的中国村和中国展馆。照片里是前来为中国馆凑数的中国孩子。
2006年12月6日星期三
Franco Moretti (2)
Page 21
Few things have been so exhilarating for aesthetic studies—and so fatal to their empirical solidity—as Hegel’s marriage of philosophy of history with idealist aesthetics. In the Aesthetics, every historical epoch has in essence one ideal content to ‘express’, and it gives ‘sensible manifestation’ to it through one artistic form. It was practically inevitable that—following the argument in reverse—once one had defined a rhetorical form one felt authorized to link it directly to the idea—single, solitary, resplendent—in which a whole epoch is supposedly summed up. Inevitable, and wrong—or at least, nearly always. Although from time to time moments of extraordinary intellectual and formal compactness occur, as a rule the opposite happens in history, and no system of values has ever been able to represent a Zeitgeist without being challenged by rival systems.
Moretti, Franco. “The Soul and the Harpy” in Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms. trans. Susan Fischer, et al. London: Verso, 1983, pp. 1-41.
Few things have been so exhilarating for aesthetic studies—and so fatal to their empirical solidity—as Hegel’s marriage of philosophy of history with idealist aesthetics. In the Aesthetics, every historical epoch has in essence one ideal content to ‘express’, and it gives ‘sensible manifestation’ to it through one artistic form. It was practically inevitable that—following the argument in reverse—once one had defined a rhetorical form one felt authorized to link it directly to the idea—single, solitary, resplendent—in which a whole epoch is supposedly summed up. Inevitable, and wrong—or at least, nearly always. Although from time to time moments of extraordinary intellectual and formal compactness occur, as a rule the opposite happens in history, and no system of values has ever been able to represent a Zeitgeist without being challenged by rival systems.
Moretti, Franco. “The Soul and the Harpy” in Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms. trans. Susan Fischer, et al. London: Verso, 1983, pp. 1-41.
quotations of Franco Moretti (1)
最近我越发觉得 Franco Moretti 对我的研究很有用，特别是今后的研究。应该细看他的书。也巧。中午在Free Speech Cafe 读 Moretti，很自然地想起曾经向我大力推荐的法语系 Hampton 教授。果然看到了他也在买饭，一见面我就从书包里拿出 The Soul and the Harpy，其实是今天才又翻出来的。一年多没见了。有多巧。说明我和 Moretti 有学术缘份，来日方长。
Page 19
It is impossible to deny that human society is a multifarious, complex, overdetermined whole; but the theoretical difficulty obviously lies in trying to establish the hierarchy of different historical factors. the solution to this problem is, in turn, broadly an historical, empirical one. In an essentially agrarian society, climatic changes will have a far greater importance than in a basically industrial one. If the majority of the population is illiterate, the written culture will oscillate between playing a wholly negligible part and having an overwhelming and traumatic function (as the printing of the Bible demonstrated). If, on the other hand, everyone is able to read, the written culture is unlikely to turn up such extreme effects, but in compensation it will become the regular and intimate accompaniment to every daily activity.
As historical periods change, then, the weight of the various institutions, their function, their position in the social structure change too. When, therefore, the historian of literary forms begins to look for those extra-literary phenomena which will help him (whether he knows it or not) orient and control his research, the only rule he can set himself is to assess each instance carefully….
Let us take the knowledge of state structures and politico-juridical thought. This will be very helpful—and theoretically ‘pertinent’—for analyzing tragic form in the age of
Page 20
absolutism, but it will be a lot less so for studying comic form in the same period. In the eighteenth century it will remain important for analyzing the ‘satiric’ form of the novel, and yet be almost totally irrelevant for analyzing the ‘realist’ novel. Or again, a study of sexual prohibitions and certain dream symbols deriving from them can provide many suggestions about the literature of terror and practically nothing about detective fiction of the same decade. Conversely, the emotional reactions to the second industrial revolution will be pertinent to the analysis of science fiction, rather less so to that of detective fiction, and quite insignificant for the literature of terror.
… The different institutions of history have uneven rhythms of development, and in this respect the primary task of criticism is to outline the evolution of its own area of analysis, even if this leads it to move away from or contradict periodizations operating elsewhere. The reconstruction of a unified historiographical map is a subsequent, and typically interdisciplinary, problem. But it can be successfully tackled only if one possesses knowledge corroborated against the specific criteria of each particular area.
A final point of specification, even if the scope of the argument makes it superfluous: an extra-literary phenomenon is never more or less important as a possible ‘object’ or ‘content’ of a text, but because of its impact on systems of evaluation and, therewith, on rhetorical strategies. The phenomenon of popularized science is not ‘part’ of detective fiction because the detective works ‘scientifically’ (which is true enough but banal). Rather, we can say (taking a greater risk) that ‘science’ enters crime fiction by way of a particular semiotic mechanism (the decipherment of clues) and a narrative function reserved for it alone (the final denouement). If we analyse these two rhetorical choices further (and increase the risk
Page 21
of being wrong even further) we can say that the decipherment of clues presupposes that ‘science’ is identified with an organicist ideology based on the ‘common-sense’ notion that differences in status cannot be altered; that the ending of the detective novel sketches an image of temporality where ‘science’, instead of being an activity which solicits some sort of ‘progress’, plays a drastically stabilizing role, guaranteeing the immutability of the given social order, or at least reducing its changes to a minimum.
Moretti, Franco. “The Soul and the Harpy” in Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms. trans. Susan Fischer, et al. London: Verso, 1983, pp. 1-41.
Page 19
It is impossible to deny that human society is a multifarious, complex, overdetermined whole; but the theoretical difficulty obviously lies in trying to establish the hierarchy of different historical factors. the solution to this problem is, in turn, broadly an historical, empirical one. In an essentially agrarian society, climatic changes will have a far greater importance than in a basically industrial one. If the majority of the population is illiterate, the written culture will oscillate between playing a wholly negligible part and having an overwhelming and traumatic function (as the printing of the Bible demonstrated). If, on the other hand, everyone is able to read, the written culture is unlikely to turn up such extreme effects, but in compensation it will become the regular and intimate accompaniment to every daily activity.
As historical periods change, then, the weight of the various institutions, their function, their position in the social structure change too. When, therefore, the historian of literary forms begins to look for those extra-literary phenomena which will help him (whether he knows it or not) orient and control his research, the only rule he can set himself is to assess each instance carefully….
Let us take the knowledge of state structures and politico-juridical thought. This will be very helpful—and theoretically ‘pertinent’—for analyzing tragic form in the age of
Page 20
absolutism, but it will be a lot less so for studying comic form in the same period. In the eighteenth century it will remain important for analyzing the ‘satiric’ form of the novel, and yet be almost totally irrelevant for analyzing the ‘realist’ novel. Or again, a study of sexual prohibitions and certain dream symbols deriving from them can provide many suggestions about the literature of terror and practically nothing about detective fiction of the same decade. Conversely, the emotional reactions to the second industrial revolution will be pertinent to the analysis of science fiction, rather less so to that of detective fiction, and quite insignificant for the literature of terror.
… The different institutions of history have uneven rhythms of development, and in this respect the primary task of criticism is to outline the evolution of its own area of analysis, even if this leads it to move away from or contradict periodizations operating elsewhere. The reconstruction of a unified historiographical map is a subsequent, and typically interdisciplinary, problem. But it can be successfully tackled only if one possesses knowledge corroborated against the specific criteria of each particular area.
A final point of specification, even if the scope of the argument makes it superfluous: an extra-literary phenomenon is never more or less important as a possible ‘object’ or ‘content’ of a text, but because of its impact on systems of evaluation and, therewith, on rhetorical strategies. The phenomenon of popularized science is not ‘part’ of detective fiction because the detective works ‘scientifically’ (which is true enough but banal). Rather, we can say (taking a greater risk) that ‘science’ enters crime fiction by way of a particular semiotic mechanism (the decipherment of clues) and a narrative function reserved for it alone (the final denouement). If we analyse these two rhetorical choices further (and increase the risk
Page 21
of being wrong even further) we can say that the decipherment of clues presupposes that ‘science’ is identified with an organicist ideology based on the ‘common-sense’ notion that differences in status cannot be altered; that the ending of the detective novel sketches an image of temporality where ‘science’, instead of being an activity which solicits some sort of ‘progress’, plays a drastically stabilizing role, guaranteeing the immutability of the given social order, or at least reducing its changes to a minimum.
Moretti, Franco. “The Soul and the Harpy” in Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms. trans. Susan Fischer, et al. London: Verso, 1983, pp. 1-41.
2006年12月3日星期日
摘自晚清的一篇幻想小说 (Highjacked Modernity)
當此之時。余心中所有一切歡娛快樂之感情。早已付諸九霄雲外。無何有之鄉矣。故雖欲強顏為笑。總不可得。惟時覺懮心忡忡。驚悸恐怖而已。非但不能稍自寬解。且憂悶之餘。反而自憐自憫。懊悔欲死。不覺深自痛責曰。噫﹑余何人斯。彼何人斯。而竟不加深察。而同至於此耶。彼工師者。外國人也。非我族類。其心必異。彼老悖者。癲癇之人也。彼自身且不惜。更何有於余。嗟乎。余何辜。乃遭斯厄。蓋余此去。必死無疑。雖然。人孰無死。死亦常事耳。不過遲早之間耳。第此非余所自創之事業。與余有何關涉。而乃無端犧牲其生命耶。
读罢有一种中国被“现代”所劫持的感觉，就好像此篇小说里叙事者所乘“宇宙飞船”,其航向不是他的主观意识所能主宰的。驾驶是外国人，发明家也是外国人。这哪如列子般的御风而行那样坦然？在“现代化的飞船上”，加速腾飞的过程必须分秒不差，而且充满了风险。
读罢有一种中国被“现代”所劫持的感觉，就好像此篇小说里叙事者所乘“宇宙飞船”,其航向不是他的主观意识所能主宰的。驾驶是外国人，发明家也是外国人。这哪如列子般的御风而行那样坦然？在“现代化的飞船上”，加速腾飞的过程必须分秒不差，而且充满了风险。