迄今為止,「楊牧學」不乏對中國古典文學及英國浪漫主義的研究,然而希臘羅馬並沒有得到全面或深入的關注。本文探討希臘羅馬古典文學在楊牧詩及詩學中的重要意義。在綜述了學者楊牧與西方古典傳統相關的論述之後,本文按時間順序分析五首最具代表性的詩作:〈給雅典娜〉、〈味吉爾〉、〈平達耳作誦〉、〈希臘〉和〈歲末觀但丁〉。楊牧對希臘羅馬材料的創造性運用可以歸納為兩類。第一,改寫傳統裡被邊緣化或定型的角色;在此意義上,詩人的古典新解是一種現代主義式的批判和顛覆。第二,詩人巧妙地將中國文學文化傳統融入希臘羅馬材料,發揮了跨文化互文性的作用。作為一位擁有深厚中西學養的學者和詩人,楊牧呈現的中西古今「同時性」正是艾略特所說的現代主義式的「歷史感」。
Thus far, the study of Yang Mu has paid much attention to the relations between his work and Chinese classics on the one hand, and English Romanticism on the other. However, ancient Greek and Romanliterature is relatively understudied. This paper examines the significance of Greco-Roman materials in the poetry and poetics of Yang Mu. Following an overview of Yang's scholarship related to the Western classical tradition, the article focuses on five representative poems in chronological order: "To Athena," "Virgil," "Pindar's Ode," "Greece," and "Reading Dante at Year's End." Yang's creative appropriations of Greco-Roman materials fall into two categories: 1. rewriting characters that are traditionally marginalized or stereotyped, which constitutes a form of Modernist critique and deconstruction; and 2. skillful integration of Chinese literature and culture into Greco-Roman materials, which is a kind of cross-cultural intertextuality. As a scholar and poet well versed in Chinese and Western literary traditions, Yang Mu displays a contemporaneity that evokes the Modernist sense of history that T.S. Eliot theorized.