俞樾〈病中囈語〉詩的一種新解釋

Abstract

俞樾〈病中囈語〉出現之後，人們對它的真偽不大敢論定。陳寅恪在〈俞曲園先生病中囈語跋〉中，則認為俞樾〈病中囈語〉這一組詩是預言詩，有些人甚至紛紛以晚清到中共的史事來印證。本文認為，俞樾從1890年代開始，在政治思維上有新的發展，即認為「封建」是救世的萬靈丹。這樣的政治思維，既有顧炎武、王夫之等人的思想淵源，也可能有清末流行的政治思想的影子。從此一角度出發，即能理解這九首詩，不可能是偽詩，第二至第四首的部分是俞樾依順著清末的變局所預言的未來發展，第五首至第九首的部分，則反映了其生命後期的倒溯式政治思維。晚清舊式經學家的思想，常被經學考證所遮蓋而不為人們所察知，藉由對俞樾的〈病中囈語〉重新詮釋，可以讓我們看到各種微妙的位移與變動。

Since their circulation, the authenticity of the nine poems entitled ＂Somniloquies in Sickness＂ (bingzhong yiyu) had remained uncertain. The authorship has been widely recognized only after a 1930s study by Chen Yinque, who regarded the poems as Yu Yue`s prophetic predictions of the future. Many readers also have inserted political events from the late Qing to the Communist China, pushing further the interpretation of these poems as prophesies. This article contextualizes the poems with Yu`s political thought developed in the 1890s. Drawing from ideas of late Ming thinkers like Gu Yanwu and Wang Fuzhi, as well as new concepts popularized among his late Qing contemporaries, Yu saw the restoration of the ancient feudal system as the panacea to rescue the world in crisis. Seen in this light, the poems indeed match the intellectual concerns of Yu during his lifetime. No. 2 to 4 contain speculations based on transformations Yu encountered in the late Qing period; No. 5 to 9 reflect the retrospective political thinking Yu developed in his later years. By this new interpretation of ＂Somniloquies in Sickness,＂ I not only bring attention to the otherwise obscure political ideas among late Qing scholars of classics, but also reveal the subtle, but no less important, re-positionings and changes in the period.