葉惑的「古哈嵐傳奇」與中國國劇 209 aUH
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Richard Londraville卓
耀
William Butler Yeats had a life一long fascination with the myth of the Irish hero
Cuchulain. When Yeats was a young boy growing up in the northern coast town of Sligo,
he listened to the tales the Irish peasants told of the great Ulster champion of the Red
Branch. He could look up to see the ve月1 hills upon which Cuchulain was supposed to
have fought with the Sidhe,warrior-women of the spirit world,and he could stroll upon
a stretch of beach which the natives told him was the ve叮 Baile's strand upon which
Cuchulain fought with the sea.
Yeats was disenchanted with the Christianity of his time,and so it is not strange that
he was interested in the myths of his own culture. The poet was drawn to the tales of the
warrior who refused to serve any purpose other than his own. Yeats was pleased that there were so many versions of Cuchulain's life; it seems that each person who repeated the old
stories was likely to add his own interpretation,and Yeats was no different.
In Yeats's version of the Cuchulain cycle, we are shown the Irish hero in youth,
middle age, and appropriately, as Yeats himself was facing his last days, he wrote The
Death of Cuchulain. Although Cuchulain was traditionally supposed to be twenty-seven
when he died, in Yeats's version he seemed to age along with the poet. It is also fitting
that of the seven main treatments of the Cuchulain theme,the first (a poem) and the last
(a play) are titled The Death of Cuchulain.
Before I attempt to explain Yeats's interest in and use of Cuchulain,some general
explanation of his dramaturgy is appropriate. Although Yeats's fame is mainly as a poet,it
is no secret that he thought of himself as a playwright. But the early twentieth century idea
of playwright was at variance with the kind of drama that Yeats preferred. He eschewed
the realistic drama so popular at the time and chose instead a drama of ritual andmyste叮﹒
Yeats belongs to a great tradition of subjective art which has its representatives in
English literature but is not limited to any culture or naticJlality. In his search for an
210 教學與研究第五期
in several literatures and times. Whenever he found an idea which suited him,Yeats did
not hesitate to include it in his own world-view. In this manner he constructed his own myth.
By the nature of the subjective tradition from which he drew most ofhis ideas,Yeats's
personal mythology and esthetic tend to be heterodox. Any conscious exclusion of ideas might for him be movement toward objectivity. For Yeats objectivity meant a concern
with apparent outward reality, a concentration upon appearance instead of essence. He
believed that objectivity, instead of leading toward reality, rather led away from it by
fostering the delusion that definition captured the essence of an object or idea.
Abstrac-tions such as love or religion, for example,are certainly different for each of us; yet we
tend to submit to the dictionary when we wish to explain them. Communism and de-mocracy are complex ideas which we treat as readily identifiable and stable concepts. Such acceptance of the definition of the idea for the idea itself can close our minds to
further investigation,can make us deal in stereotypes. And stereotypes tend to blind us to
real ideas shaped by living minds. Yeats chose not to deal in stereotypes,not to close his
mind to further investigation.
Undoubtedly one of the appeals of unusual doctrines or systems to Yeats was that
they furnished him with symbols,either existing in the material or suggested by it. For
Yeats symbols were not an adornment to poetry but the basis of its function. He believed that he was living in an objective age which had all but destroyed the power of the word to
心communicate. Symbols gave him a means of penetration to a deeper level of awareness
by a deliberate challenge to the rational,“sensible," and sometimes careless assignment
of arbitrary, fixed values to objects and ideas which may be seen differently by different
individuals.
Yeats could not, as could a poet writing some decades earlier,presume a common
heritage of symbol among his readers; modern life had desensitized man to the point where
he had lost touch with his historical past. The industrial revolution had broken up families
so that there no longer was the passage of tradition from one generation to the next. But Yeats did believe· in an idea which transcended and encompassed all tradition: he believed
in a
“
greatmemoη, passing on from generation to generation"l which accounted for man'sreaction to symbols.
葉惡的「古哈嵐傳奇」與中國國劇
All sounds,all colours, all fonns, either because of their preordained energies or
because of long associati 凹, evoke indefinable and yet precise emotions,or,as I
prefer to think,call down among us certain disembodied powers,whose footsteps
over our hearts we call emotions:2
211
Yeats chose symbolism for the prime agent of his drama because he believed that it
might act as a key by which the inexpressible might be expressed. Ifthe word had become
decadent and had its meaning imprisoned by a dictionary,perhaps the very imprecision of
the symbol could again effect communication between men.
Symbolism, as important as it was to Yeats, was only a part of his lifelong search for
the fullest possible 盯tistic expression. He wanted to add to his poetry the kind of shared
emotion which the theatre-goer may experience from his presence in the audience of
like-minded people. He was aware that the printed page,the form with which we usually
associate literature,is in fact quite a late development. Literature existed for ages before
it was written down, and Yeats wanted to recapture some of the original power of the
spoken word.
When we are reading a book we are quite in the snare of words,and if they are
beautiful,one forgets the rest. The human side of it is not thrust before us as it
would be if a living man spoke to us,with a voice trembling with passion or
qui-vering with gayety. Out of the written book has come our decadence,our1i
tera-ture,which puts secondary things first.3
Yeats's concern is that we should not treat the printed word as the final expression of
the poet. The words of the poet need to be shaped,interpreted,by “a living man."
It is easy to understand the appeal of the theatre to a poet who was working with
symbols. Theatre gives added dimension because it appeals more immediately and more
completely than does print. Itinvolves the audience in a way which cannot be approximated
by the book. The senses are involved to a greater degree,and a person's response tends to
become less compartmentalized. His experiences expand from the printed page to the
spoken word,from the description to the dance,to the costume,to the mask.
The modern realistic drama, effective as it is in capturing the imagination of the
audience, still supports the fiction that we are peeping toms looking through an invisible
2. Yeats,‘'The Symbolism ofPoe訂y(1900),inEssays and Introductions(New York,1961),PP.156-57.
212 教學與研究第五期
fourth wall into the private lives ofhumans quite like ourselves. Yeats wanted a drama
that was not overheard,but one in which the audience was acknowledged and invited into
the play,much as the onlookers at a religious rite are invited to participate in the prayers.
For,
When man cannot dramatize himself,he cannot dramatize anybody. He can no
longer create great personages . . .. Itis because of the written book,in which we
speak:always to strangers and never with a living voice to friends,that we have lost
personal utterance.4
Theatre audiences of the early part of this century were used to direct representations
of characters working out their fates in the natural world. Such representations were
clearly not suited to Yeats's drama. Yeats believed that modern plays were not so much
immoral as ignoble. They did not take inio account man's capacity for the gr~at action.
Their concern with a temporal and local reality could only be misleading.
I do not call these modern plays immoral,and indeed I am inclined to think that
they far more often touch with the intellect and with the conscience some obscure
corner of life than appeal to what is merely gross. But I do think that these plays
will always stir the heart less nobly than plays which set before the imagination
men and women living in a more splendid and passionate world than our eyes
have seen,and speaking a loftier language than our ears have heard.s
Modern realistic drama was therefore not evil or even wrong; it was simply too close to the grubby facts of life for man to see himself as anything other than a chain of antecedent causes.
It is reasonable, then‘ that Yeats turned to mythology for the characters in his plays,
and he saw in Cuchulain an anti-self. Yeats had learned the theory of necessary
opposi-tion from his study of William Blake's poetry, and Cuchulain represented to Yeats
everything that he was not, a kid ofyang to hisyin. Yeats was attempting to
“
write apoetical play where eve叮 characterbecame an example of the finding or not finding of
what I have called the Antithetical Self.吋
This antithetical self, elsewhere in his work described as mask or antinomy,is a
poeti-4. Ibid. 5. Ibid,p.7.
葉慈的「古啥嵐傳奇 j 與中國國劇 213
cal attempt to deal with the paradoxes of life. Rather than shrink from our opposite,
Yeats believed we should embrace it, for only in that acceptance can we hope to find
anything of our real nature. Life is a continual reconciliation of opposites,and we must,as
Yeats suggests,realize that the human condition is uncertainty,and we should embrace this
uncertainty rather than search
“
irritably" for final answers.So Cuchulain, the warrior, the man of action,became the opposite of Yeats,the poet
and thinker.
I have chosen three plays and a fragment of a fourth to represent the Cuchulain cycle.
They are At the Hawk~ Well, On Baile~ Strand, The Only Jealousy of Erner, and The
Death of Cuchulain.
In At the Hawk
s
Well the young Cuchulain,not yet famous,comes to a barren placebecause he has heard that near it may be found a well of immortality. He finds an old man
near a dry well and a leafless hazel tree. The old man has wasted his life beside the well,
waiting for it to flow. Each time the well has filled,he has missed his chance to drink.
Excepting the old man,the only other creature near is a hawk-like woman,the Guardian
of the Well. In order that he may wait without competition
,
the old man tries to persuadeCuchulain to leave the well. The well gives signs that it may flow,and the Guardian begins
to dance. The old man falls asleep and Cuchulain is lured away from the well by the dance of the hawk-woman. Both Cuchulain and the old man miss the opportunity to drink from
the well, which has flowed in the meantime. 百Ie old man predicts a tragic destiny for
Cuchulain,and his prediction is immediately realized as the Guardian of the Well arouses
the warrior-woman Aoife and her troops. Cuchulain goes off to confront them as the
playends.
Now theart I long for is also a battle,but it takes place in the depths of the soul
and one of the antagonists does not wear a shape known to the world or speak a
rno此altongue. Itis the struggle of the dreamwi也出eworld.7
Yeats is speaking of the
“
anti-self" in thispassage,and the opposing forces ofCuchu-lain and the Old Man, of youthful enthusiasm and crabbed old age,correspond with the
“
struggle of the dream with the world." Although both fail,Cuchulain's failure ismagnifi-cent,a failure of daring too much,while the old man has lost his life by daring nothing at
7. W. B.Yeats,The Poet and the Actress,an unfmished dialogue of1915,quoted from RichardEllfuan,The Identity
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;}UO ;}UU;}PPlnoM UOIPB Al ;}A;} : ;}IoqMB uI P呵 Iun ;}qPlnoM UOIPBpUB lqiinoqlq;)IqM UI ;}JITB ;}qPlnoM H 'S;}Idpupdq;)ns 0l ii閃 P10;);)B P;}AH ;}JII BJO S;}m悶悶 od 臨E 主草草值ilb 宙海 9[ '6葉慈的「古哈嵐傅奇」與中國國劇
De伊s. I spit upon their short bodices,their stiff stays,their toes whereon they
spin like peg-tops,aboveallupon that chambermaid face. They might have looked
timeless, Rameses the Great,but not that chambermaid,that old maid history. I
spit ! I spit! I spit !
217
The play proper begins in medias res with Eithne Inguba bringing a message to the
embattled Cuchulain. It is a false message because Eithne is under the spell of Mae呃,
Queen of the Sidhe. But he is
“
for the fight" and chooses to go into battle at that momentrather than wait for reenforcements. He forgives Eithne and goes to fight. He is mortally
wounded during the battle,and tries to fasten himself to a pillar so that he may die on his
feet. Aoi缸,an incarnation of the hawk-woman fromAt the Hawk
s
Well,enters to applythe fmal blow
,
but she hesitates because she wants him to know who it is that kills him.She askes him how her son fought in On Baile
s
Strand. He replies:“
Age makes moreskillful but not better men." and bitterly recalls that it was the oath that he swore to be
loyal to Conchubar which caused him to fight and kill his only son. The only time in his
life when Cuchulain accepted another's reality resulted in the death of his son. At this
point,Aoife hears someone coming and hides.
The new arrival is the blind old man from On Baile
s
Strand. He is delighted to findCuchulain weak and dying,for he has been promised a twelve-penny reward if he brings
back Cuchulain's head to Queen Maeve 'sc位np.
Itis a consummate irony that the greatest fighting man in Ireland will meet his end on
the knife of a blind beggar, but Cuchulain, ready for anything that life brings him,simply
says
“
Twelve pennies !What better reasonfor 祖llinga man?"“
Thisis the Cuchu1ain,blinded by heroism,butchered by a clown,who is envisagedin the fmal song of the play
…
uming his place int~efolk memory of Irishtradi-tion with the occurrence of the Easter Rising of 1916:
What stood.inthe Post Office
With Pearse and Connolly?
What comes out of the mountain
Where men flIst shedth甜 blood?
Who thought Cuchu1aint也 itseemed
He stood where they had stood?8
218 教學與研究第五期
With his last verse of his last play, Yeats shows us that poetry is not an idle pastime,
but a vital force which changes lives and destinies of nations, for the Irish revolutionaries
who died in the battle of the Post Office said that the spirit of Cuchulain stood beside
them in their last fight. Nor was theirgest叮e ,which seemed so useless at the time,wasted.
Like Cuchulain's fight with the waves,it was the incident which caught the imagnation of
the world and eventually led to the Irish Free State.
The question remains: Why attempt these plays in the style of the Chinese opera?
Itis well known that Yeats modeled his plays after the Japanese drama,specifically because
he wanted to create a theatre of mysterious art,where supernatural beings could appear.
The conventions of scenery,mask,dance,music,and acting have strong parallels,as one
might expect, between Japanese and Chinese drama. What Yeats was looking for was a
model from ritual theatre for his own drama,and since he could find none in the West,he
turned to the East.
The arts which interest me, while seem姐g to separate from the world and us a
group of figures,曲lages, symbols,enable us to pass for a few moments into a
deep of the mind that had hitherto been too subtle for our habitation.9
Certainly the conventions of the Chinese theatre are appropriate to what Yeats had in
mind. The beautiful costumes, the conventions of acting,the music,and especially the
make-up and masks create exactly the effect he wanted. I will describe these effects in
order.
Scenery
InAt the Hawk:SWell,instead of the actual bare tree and well,which are easy enough
to represent on the stage,the chorus enjoins us to imagine the fust scene of the play,just
as the Chinese drama has the chairs and table at the rear of the set represent many different
things.--sometimes even tables and chairs.lO
Yeats's scenery is now in the mind of the audience, differing as each individual
in-terprets it. Anyone who has listened to a radio play can appreciate this effect,even for a
realistic setting. In the non-realistic Yeatsian drama it has even more power.
Music
Yeats was interested in the use of music in his plays almost from the beginning of his
8. W.B.Ye翎at忱s丸,
葉惑的「古哈嵐傳奇」與中國國劇 219
drama, but he did not fmd the kind of music he wanted until he turned to an eastern
model. He wanted simple instruments which would not overpower the speeches of the
actors. He always regarded music as something which accompanies and enriches the
spoken word,not as an element which has a discrete dramatic validity. Therefore 1 have
decided to use a combination of Chinese folk melodies and the instruments of the wen,
or civil part of the orchestra.
Costumes,Make-up,and Masks
羽田 costumes of the Chinese opera are a way of identifying types of characters,and
as such create the kind of economy of exposition which Yeats aimed for. No informed
member of the Chinese audience would ever confuse the costumes of scholar or a general,
for example.
But it is the masks for which Yeats had an especial fascination. He was always
interested in masks, particularly the idea of mask in occult literature. The masking that
he used in his theatre became,like most of his symbols,rich in associations which
tran-scendedspeci且c times and cultures. As Peter Ure explains,
. . . the immobility and austerity of the mask substitute for flesh an artifact,a dead
face which.is more alive,like the golden bird of Byzantium,because it is unchanging
and because it is liberated from time and the sensual music.l l
In the Chinese opera,的 in the Japanese Noh, the mask allows the audience quickly to
identify the type of character represented. For Yeats,the mask served to remove his drama
from the limitations of temporal reality. There is no living face to remind the audience of
the actor's humanity,and when the character being portrayed is a hero like Cuchulain,no
actor's face could be quite as satisfactory as a mask. As Yeats says,
We are accustomed to faces ofbronze and marble,and what could be more suitable
than that Cuchulain, . .. a half-supernatural,legendary person,should show us a
face, . .. molded by some distinguished artist? . . . .Itwould be a stirring adventure
for a poet and an artist workingtoge也erto create once more heroic or grotesque
types 曲的,keeping always an appropriate distance from life,would seem an image
of these profoundemotions 曲的 existonly in solitude and silence.12
10. PeterU時,W. B. Yeats(New York,1964),p.90.
220 教學與研究第五期 Dance
One of the most striking elements in the plays of Yeats is the dance; its climactic
function focuses the audience's attention upon it as the highest moment in the drama. It
is the summation and the quintessence of all the arts. Since dance involves the whole
being,it is more than the words which describe it. Itrepresents for Yeats the unification
of intellect with emotion,demonstrated by the similarly unified action of the dance. Who,
indeed,can tell the dancer from the dance or the artist from his 訂t?
The place of dance in his plays is obvious. Since the dance involves the whole body,
since it is both pictorial and sculptural,it is the ideal medium to bridge the gap between
the time and space arts. Dancing becomes not alone the quintessence of the arts,but the
culmination of them all,a spontaneous manifestation of an inWard emotion.
The dance which exists in the Chinese opera is particularly congruent with Yeats's
ideas. The restrained and suggestive dance of the Chinese drama provides the opportunity
for the highly symbolic expression of inner emotion.
Acting
The Chinese audience is informed mosteconomica,lly by certain gestures and actions
of the actors.
Stepping over the threshold and opening and closing the old-fashioned double doors leading into a Chinese house are acted out with perfect mimic action. ...
The gait assumed by an actor is also meaningful. A noble lady walks with grace
and dignity; theflirtswayssu昆estively in her gaudy costume; fighters stalk; scholars
pace thoughtfully; clowns scurry; and officials stride with a grand manner.13
Yeats wanted exactly this effect from his actors as another means by which he could reenforce the non -realistic nature of his drama. At one point he half-seriously considered putting the players of the Abbey theatre in barrels so that he could better control their actions.
Finally, I must add a note of caution. What I will be presenting is not Chinese opera,
but IHsh plays done in the style of the CMn帥 OP?也 I 吋I use the conventions which I
deem appropriate and' omit those which do not seem to be fitting. What I am attempting
is a joining of two dramatic forms which seem to me to be especially compatible. Yeats
intended that his plays represent the soul and mind of his people,combining art,culture
葉慈的「古哈嵐傳奇」與中國國劇 221
and spirit in one presentation. Since his model is from the East,I believe it is appropriate
that I return to the source of his inspiration. Like all experiments,it must risk failure.
Whatever successithas must be judged by the way in which it forces you to look with new
222 教學與研究第五期
READING LIST
Yeats,W. B.Essays. New York: The Macmillan Co.,1924.
· Explorations. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1962.
· Four Plays for Dancers. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1921.
· Mythologies. New York: The Macmillan Co.,1959.
· The Variorum Edition of the Plays of W. B. Yeats, eds. Russell K. Alspach
and Catherine Alspach New York: The Macmillan Co., 1966.
Clark, David. W. B. Yeats and the Theatre of Desolate Reality. Dublin: Dolmen Press,
11965.
Dolby,William.A History ofChinese Drama. New York: Barnes and Noble,1976.
Huang,Josephine. Classical Chines Plays. Taipei: 1972.
Nathan, Leonard. The Tragic Drama of William Butler Yeats: Figures in a Dance. New