龚鹏程对话海外学者第一百一十四期：在后现代情境中，被技术统治的人类社会，只有强化交谈、重建沟通伦理，才能获得文化新生的力量。这不是谁的理论，而是每个人都应实践的活动。龚鹏程先生遊走世界，并曾主持过“世界汉学研究中心”。我们会陆续推出“龚鹏程对话海外学者”系列文章，请他对话一些学界有意义的灵魂。范围不局限于汉学，会涉及多种学科。以期深山长谷之水，四面而出。

马丁·普赫纳教授（Professor Martin Puchner ）

哈佛大学戏剧教授、英语和比较文学教授

龚鹏程教授：您好。我也是个写文学史的人，所以特别佩服您的《文字世界：故事塑造人的力量，历史，文明》。您用十六幕文学故事（从荷马到哈利波特，包括源氏物语、堂吉诃德、共产党宣言）说明它们如何塑造世界历史，视野宏阔，而且直指核心。请谈谈您在书中选择了哪些东亚故事?为什么会做出这些选择?

马丁·普赫纳教授：龚教授，您好。这是很难挑选的：我可以采用的故事有太多。我在中国部分加入了一节关于孔子的文章，含括弟子们记录下大师言行的这一模式。在这一节中，我谈到了儒家经典以及经典和科举制度是如何出现的。我清楚地记得，在我到访南京时，来到了当时学生们参加考试的地方。那是个冬天，非常冷，号房对着风敞着，但学生们却要像这样关在屋里三日写作、睡觉和吃饭。令人印象深刻。

总的来说，我选择的主要标准，是说明书写技术的作用。这也是为什么中国如此重要（以及为什么我很高兴这本书被翻译成中文），在这里，纸张和印刷这两种最重要的技术被发明。我用世界上现存最古老的印刷文本《金刚经》的中文译本来说明这一点。在这两项发明的影响下，越来越多的文化被塑造，因此我对此十分关注。在造纸方面，下一个向中国造纸商学习造纸秘诀的文明是阿拉伯世界，巴格达成为新的造纸中心。纸通过阿拉伯世界进入欧洲，正好赶上约翰·古腾堡重新发明印刷术。重新发明：我一直强调这一点。西方仍然有太多人相信古腾堡发明了印刷术。

此外，我还用了一章的篇幅介绍了紫式部的《源氏物语》，这是世界文学史上早期最伟大的小说之一。我也对中国文化如何影响日本以及日本如何慢慢演变出自己独特的写作文化感兴趣。

It was very difficult to pick and choose: there were so many stories I could have used. From China, I included a section on Confucius as part of a pattern of master teachers whose students write down their words and sayings. In that section, I talk about the Confucian Classics and how that canon emerged as well as the Imperial exam system. I remember vividly, when visiting Nanjing, the area where students had to take the exam. It was winter, very cold, and the booths were open to the wind, and yet students had to spend three days writing and sleeping and eating cooped up like that.Very impressive.

Overall, my main selection criterium was to illustrate the role of writing technologies. This was why China was so important (and why I was so happy that the book was translated into Chinese), the place where the two most important technologies, paper and print, were invented. I illustrated this with a section on the Chinese translation of the Diamond Sutra, the oldest surviving printed text in the world. I then follow both inventions as they shaped more and more cultures. In the case of paper, the next culture to learn the secret of papermaking from Chinese paper makers was the Arab world, with Baghdad becoming a new center of papermaking. From the Arabic world paper then entered Europe, just in time for the re-invention of print by Johann Gutenberg. Re-invention: I always stress this point. There are still too many people in the west who believe that Gutenberg invented print.

Later in the book, I devote a chapter to Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji, one of the early great novels in world literature. I was also interested in how Chinese culture influenced Japan and how Japan slowly evolved its own distinct writing culture.

龚鹏程教授：二十世纪是个分崩离析的时代，“艺术”都争着脱离文字、文学以寻找自己的独立性，并开始自造塑造世界历史的故事。艺术学校、科系、书刊、展览、会议都不约而同的躲开了文学。您在关于世界文学史的书中探讨了技术如何决定故事的叙述方式。我们现在处于世界文学的哪个阶段，与过去相比如何？

马丁·普赫纳教授：从 4000 年的文学史来看，我们正经历着一个罕见的历史时刻，在这一时刻，新技术正在改变故事的书写方式、传播方式以及阅读方式。我写这本书的主要动机之一是回顾历史，研究早期的转折点，即新技术引发类似剧变的时刻。这样的时刻，除了美索不达米亚的第一个文字发明外，还有我先前提到的中国人发明的纸和印刷术；字母表的发明；而且还发明了不同的书写格式，例如平板、卷轴和书籍。 最后，我研究了这些技术发明如何催生新的类型，例如框架叙述故事集（如 1001 夜）和小说。

通过这段历史，很明显与互联网和电子书相关的一些新奇事物其实不是那么新奇了。例如，我们再次在平板上书写，在大多数书写文化中，平板早已被卷轴取代。我们再次向下滚动我们的电脑页面，尽管卷轴已经在两千多年前被书籍这种新的格式所取代。

此外，现今新技术引发的许多相关焦虑与过去的并没有太大的不同。埃及的抄写老师担心新一代学生不再关心书写——那是三千年前的事了。苏格拉底担心写作会削弱我们的大脑并导致误解——本质上是一种假新闻。

说了这么多，我预测一些关于我们当前面临的真正新影响。我认为我们的写作革命将改变我们对作者身份的观念。在印刷革命时期，要成为职业作家仍然很难，门槛很高。这意味着相对较少的作家能够拥有大众读者。这种情况正在改变中：在互联网时代，每个人都可以成为作家。

When seen from the perspective of 4000 years of literature, we are living through a rare moment in history, one in which new technologies are changing how stories are written down, how they circulate, and how they are being read. One of the main motivations for my book was to go back in history and study earlier inflection points, moments when new technologies caused similar upheavals. Such moments include, besides the first invention of writing in Mesopotamia, the Chinese inventions of paper and print I mentioned above; the invention of the alphabet; but also the invention of different writing formats such as tablets, scrolls, and the book. Finally, I studied how these technological inventions led to new genres such as frame-tale story collections (like the 1001 Nights) and novels.

Using that history, it becomes clear that some of the novelties associated with the internet and ebooks aren’t so novel after all. For example, we are writing on tablets again, after tablets had long been abandoned for scrolls in most writing cultures. And we’re once again scrolling down our computer screens even though scrolls had been given up for a new format, the book, two thousand years ago.

Also, many of the anxieties we have connected to new technologies are not so different. Egyptian scribal teachers worried that a new generation of students didn’t care about writing anymore—that was three thousand years ago. And Socrates worried that writing would diminish our brains and lead to misunderstandings—essential a form of fake news.

Having said all that, there are some genuinely new effects I predict about our current moment. I think our writing revolution will change our ideas of authorship. During the print revolution, it was still difficult to become a professional author, a high bar. This meant that relatively few authors could enjoy a mass readership. This is changing: in the internet era, everyone can be an author.

龚鹏程教授：在您的《为一个变化的星球而文学》一书中，您从世界文学的角度看待气候变化。世界文学中有哪些具影响力的故事可以作为气候变化故事的资源或范本?

马丁·普赫纳教授：在《为一个变化的星球而文学》中，我提出了两种叙述故事的方法。第一种是批判性阅读，把文学史视为人类面对环境时的态度的记录。几乎所有的世界文学文本中都包含了关于自然、文明与荒野的关系、农业、城市空间、技术和资源开采的假设。我采用的主要例子是《吉尔伽美什史诗》，世界文学史上最早的较长文本之一。《吉尔伽美什史诗》讲述了后来出现在《希伯来圣经》和《旧约》中的洪水故事，这场灾难性的洪水几乎毁灭了地球上所有的生命。这种世界末日的场景仍然塑造着今天的好莱坞灾难片。《吉尔伽美什史诗》记录了，并在一定程度上证明了城市建设导致的森林砍伐。在阅读古今文献时，着眼于人类如何改变环境，可以对导致我们走上气候变化之路的思维模式产生重要的见解。

在第二部分，我从这种阅读中吸取教训，为未来做准备。什么样的故事能帮助我们建立一种不同的环境关系，并鼓励集体行动?我专注于较少使用的故事类型;包括喜剧。我还关注到了我们倾向于确定气候变化下的受害者和罪魁祸首;以及哪些文本——包括《共产党宣言》——可以帮助我们发展集体行动的意识。

In Literature for a Changing Planet I propose two approaches to storytelling. First, a program of critical reading that takes the history of literature as a record of human attitudes toward the environment. Almost any text of world literature includes assumptions about nature, the relation between civilization and wilderness, agriculture, urban space, technology and resource extraction. My main example is the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest longer texts of world literature. The Epic of Gilgamesh features the story of the flood that later appears in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, the catastrophic flood that wipes out almost all life on earth. This kind of apocalyptic scenario still shapes Hollywood disaster movies today. The Epic of Gilgamesh also records and to some extent justifies deforestation as a consequence of city building. In reading ancient and modern texts with an eye toward how humans has been transforming their environment can yield important insights into the frame of mind that has put us on the path of climate change.

In the second part, I draw lessons from this kind of reading for the future. What kind of stories will help us develop a different relation to the environment and encourage collective action? I focus on lesser used story types; including comedy. I also think about our predilection for identifying victims and villains of climate change; and what texts—including the Communist Manifesto—can help us develop a sense of collective agency.

The larger point is that we humans are story-telling animals. Stories play a major part in how we see the world and our place within it. Climate change will require us to make fundamental changes in how we live. This means that we need to read existing stories critically and learn to tell new stories.

龚鹏程教授：您是 Rotwelsch语言的专家，这是一种鲜为人知的地下流动语言。您是怎么学会Rotwelsch语的?这种语言如何塑造了您对地下流动小偷的看法?

马丁·普赫纳教授：这本书对我来说是一个不同寻常的项目，部分原因是这对我来说是非常私人的。我小时候从我叔叔那里学到了这个不起眼的小偷行话，叫做Rotwelsch，他对这个词很着迷。这并不是因为他是一个流动的小偷，而是因为他对这种独特的语言着迷。这种语言结合了德语、意第绪语、希伯来语、罗姆尼语（辛提语和罗姆语的语言）和其他欧洲语言。作为一个诗人和作曲家，他把这种语言融入到自己的诗歌中，并把世界文学中的一部分翻译成这种语言（尽管几乎没有人能真正读懂它）。他向我介绍了 Rotwelsch，从而使我对语言产生了浓厚的兴趣，并最终引导我学习了比较文学。

直到很久以后，我才发现叔叔对这种语言的迷恋在一定程度上与历史赎罪有关：说 Rotwelsch 语的人是首批被纳粹送往集中营的人之一。他的父亲，也就是我的祖父，是纳粹党员。作为历史学家，这位祖父甚至将 Rotwelsch 攻击为“不纯的”和“犹太人的”语言。在这本书中，我讲述了这种迷人的语言的历史，这是了解中欧地下流动的窗口。同时，我整理了我家族的历史，从攻击Rotwelsch的祖父到想把它从遗忘中拯救出来的叔叔。

所以这是一本解决移民、语言和政治交叉问题的书；它探讨了一种纯粹的口语，以及它是如何通过像我叔叔这样的人变成文学的；以及少数群体如何发展他们自己的隐语来建立社区和生存。当我开始这个项目时，我确信Rotwelsch 是不同寻常和独一无二的：这也是最初吸引我的原因。由于我从叔叔那里继承了关于这种语言的档案，我认为我应该使用这些材料。但在项目结束时，我意识到 Rotwelsch 实际上是通用的：它说明了我们为什么以及如何使用语言。这样，这项研究就变成了一本关于语言为何重要的书。

This book project was an unusual one for me, in part because it is very personal. I learned this obscure thieves’ argot called Rotwelsch as a child from my uncle—who was obsessed with it. Not because he was an itinerant thieve but because he was fascinated by this unusual language, a combination of German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Romani (the language of Sinti and Roma), and other European languages. A poet and composer, he incorporated this language in his own poetry and translated portions of world literature into this language (even though almost no one could actually read it). He introduced me to Rotwelsch and thereby instilled in me a fascination for languages and ultimately led me to study comparative literature.

Only much later did I discover that part of my uncle’s fascination with this language had to do with historical atonement: Rotwelsch speakers were among the first people to be sent to concentration camps by the Nazis. His own father, my grandfather, was a member of the Nazi party. A historian, this grandfather even attacked Rotwelsch as an “impure” and “Jewish” language. In the book I provide the history of this fascinating language, a window into the itinerant underground of Central Europe. At the same time, I weave in the history of my family, from my grandfather, who attacked Rotwelsch, to my uncle, who wanted to rescue it from oblivion.

The result is a book that addresses the intersection of migration, language, and politics; it explores a purely spoken language and how it became literary through people like my uncle; and how minority groups develop their own argots to build community and for survival. When I began this project, I was convinced that Rotwelsch was unusual and unique: this is what first drew me to it. And since I had inherited an archive on this language from my uncle, I thought I should use it. But by the end of the project, I realized that Rotwelsch was actually universal: it spoke to why and how we all use language. In this way, this study became a book about why language matters.

龚鹏程，1956年生于台北，台湾师范大学博士，当代著名学者和思想家。著作已出版一百五十多本。

办有大学、出版社、杂志社、书院等，并规划城市建设、主题园区等多处。讲学于世界各地。并在北京、上海、杭州、台北、巴黎、日本、澳门等地举办过书法展。现为中国孔子博物馆名誉馆长、台湾国立东华大学终身荣誉教授、美国龚鹏程基金会主席