《文心雕龍》中“文”的多重含義及劉勰文學理論體系的建立
Authors: 蔡 宗齊 
Published: February 2023

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.
本文探討劉勰是如何將其文論體系的各個不同層面巧妙地組織到“文”的多重含義中去的。首章《原道》借鑒了《繫辭傳》對卦畫之“文”的評説，將文章的全體歸結爲“道”的體現。接着，《徵聖》和《宗經》有意區分開聖人之“文”和先秦以禮爲中心的“文”的觀念，並完全以漢代的文字理論來重新解釋後者。通過這種颠倒時代的解釋方式，劉勰試圖爲“文”勾畫出一個顯赫的傳承譜系，上可推溯至《易經》的神秘卦畫，經由五經確立其原形，一路演變至於孔子身後各種唯美文學和非唯美文體將“文”的發展推至巅峰。劉勰的“文道”關係論決定了《文心雕龍》四至二十五章評述各種文體的大方向。因爲他認爲文對道的體現作用依賴書寫符號或圖形之“文”，所以很自然地傾向於強調書，輕視言，從而將書面寫作的重要性置於口頭創作之上。在討論三十六種不同文體時，劉勰試圖通過深入探討“文理”關係與“文情”關係來區分兩大文章類型的各自特徵。一方面，他以“明理”爲非唯美文體的標誌，另一方面則以“盡情”爲唯美文體的特徵。二十六至四十九章集中探討了六個對理解唯美文體至關重要的理論問題，其中涉及了“文、情”之間的動態互動關係。劉勰幾乎是完全基於這種互動關係來看待作者的素質對作品的影響、創作和閱讀的過程，以及文學發展歷史的。
最後，我們可以將《文心雕龍》中“文”多層含義比作一個巨大的蛛網，通過這個語義之網的妙用，劉勰成功地建立起一個龐大的概念系統，以文原道的觀念居中，向四面輻射，衍生出無數與之相承的理論，涉及文化與文學傳統關係、文體演化、口頭與書面創作關係、唯美文學與非唯美文章的關係，創作與接受過程，作者與讀者素質，及文學史諸方面。雖然劉勰稱不上所有這些理論的首創者，但是在將如此衆多的理論統一，並综合在一個強調文原道、書勝於言、文理契合及文情交融的文學理論體系中這一點上，劉勰無可置疑是第一人。由於這一份貢獻，劉勰便當之無愧於他在中國文論史上所獲得的崇高地位。
This article has revealed a neat dovetailing of wen’s multiple meanings with the entire echelon of Liu Xie’s critical views. This dovetailing results from Liu Xie’s persistent efforts to exploit the multivalence of wen to accommodate and legitimize his critical views. In Chapter 1 he adapts the “essentialist” view of wen as magico-cosmic symbols developed in the “Great Commentary” to make his broad claim for literature as the embodiment of the Dao. In Chapters 2 and 3, he deliberately disassociates the wen of the sages from the established pre-Han ritual-centered notion of wen and reinterprets it solely in the Han and post-Han sense of writing. With this deliberate anachronistic use of wen, he aims to establish a grand lineage of literature, extending from its genesis in the graphic cosmic symbols of the Changes through the establishment of its archetypal forms in the Five Classics to its full flowering of belletristic and non-belletristic genres in post-Confucian times. His view of the wen and Dao sets the direction for his survey of genres in Chapters 4-25. Believing that the potency of wen as the Dao’s embodiment depends on its graphic forms (graphic symbols and writings), Liu Xie is naturally disposed to foreground writing (shu) at the expense of speech (yan) and accordingly privilege written over spoken genres. In the course of discussing the 36 major genres, Liu Xie also elaborates on the wen’s relationship with li (principle) and qing (emotion) in an effort to distinguish the features of two broad categories of writing. While the revelation of li is the defining feature of non-belletristic genres, he contends, the expression of emotion is that of belletristic genres. In Chapters 26-49 Liu Xie looks into the dynamic interplay of wen with qing as he discuss the six major theoretical subjects essential to our understanding of belleslettres. It is almost solely in light of the interplay of wen and qing that Liu Xie evaluates the impact of the author’s qualities, describes the creative and receptive process, and assess the developments of literary history.
The multivalence of wen in the Literary Mind may be compared to a giant web with the notion of “patterning” lying at its center and extending into diverse realms. By deftly utilizing this web of meanings, Liu Xie has successfully set up a grand conceptual framework that ramifies from his central claim of wen as the embodiment of the Dao to include his views on the relationship between cultural and literary traditions, on the development of genres, on the distinctions between oral and written, non-belletristic and belletristic genres; on the creative and receptive processes; on the author’s and the reader’s qualities, and on literary history. Although Liu Xie is hardly the first to formulate views on any of those subjects, he is nevertheless the very first to integrate such a broad range of views into a critical system characterized by its emphasis on the embodiment of the Dao in wen, on the primacy of writing, on the perfect matching of wen and li, and on the fusion of wen and qing. For this feat he truly deserves the pre-eminence accorded him in the Chinese critical traditions.