中國「藝術」的流轉－「藝術」辭彙概念轉變初探

「藝術」一詞在今日常被用來翻譯英文的「art」或「arts」，然而在中國古代卻常指「技巧」、「才能」，特別是關於中國傳統醫卜方面的專業知能，非今日所指「具美學概念的『藝術』」，如繪畫、雕塑、音樂、戲劇等。中外學者皆討論過中國「藝術」辭彙在概念上的轉變，但卻成少有專門研究追溯該詞的使用及所蘊含的概念。考量文獻資料類型複雜（叢書、筆記、文集等），本文主要使用正史文獻追溯「藝術」辭彙的概念及使用，或許並不全面，但其由官方編篡的特性，相對具代表性、權威性，透過本文分析仍可了解中國的「藝術」辭彙原義，具美感「藝術」類型的發展，並從漢語辭彙發展的角度討論十九世紀「藝術」概念的轉變過程。

關鍵字

藝街；美術；美學；漢語辭彙；中日交流

並列摘要

The Chinese word yishu is often translated into English as ”art” or ”arts” today. However, the term yishu used in the dynastic histories often refers to skills - especially on divination and medicine rather than art/s with aesthetic concept as its modern definition, such as painting, calligraphy, sculpture, music, drama, and so on. It is widely known that the translation of yishu in the sense of beauty is a modern concept derived from the West via Japan in the mid-nineteenth century, and soon the characters of geijutsu in Japanese, yishu in Chinese, returned to China and were used to indicate art/s with aesthetic meaning. Although this is a known fact, not much research has been done on examining the changing context of the term yishu in the long history of China. Reviewing the term yishu also generates another issue of how ancient Chinese considered art with aesthetic sense. This paper, thus, attempts to clarify the changing concept of yishu in China, and, meanwhile, studies idea of aesthetics and art in imperial China. Considering various types and quantities of textual sources (e.g. collectanea, reading notes, collected literary works and so on), this research uses dynastic histories as primary textual sources to survey the long history of the concept of art and various meanings of yishu in imperial China. This study may be limited in scope, but the dynastic histories, sponsored by imperial governments, are comparatively representative and authoritative. Hence, my attempts to clarify the original meaning of yishu and its modern meaning-art with the aesthetic sense, especially during the transition period of the 19th century, are considered accomplished.