Abstract:

This article examines Zhu Guangqian’s cross-cultural interpretive translation of yixiang and its role in constructing modern Chinese aesthetics. Drawing on the indigenous resources of traditional yixiang poetics, Zhu interpreted and integrated Western aesthetic concepts from distinct theoretical traditions, including Kant’s Idee, Croce’s intuizione (intuition) and immagine (image), Hegel’s Bild, and Schopenhauer’s Vorstellung. Zhu’s interpretive translation of yixiang transcends a model of literal terminological equivalence and constitutes a cross-cultural reconstruction of knowledge grounded in an indigenous traditional category. Adopting an interpretive translation mechanism of “subsuming heterogeneous concepts under an indigenous category, reorganizing disparate concepts, and constructing a modern theoretical system, ” Zhu incorporated Western intellectual resources from diverse traditions into an interpretive framework centered on yixiang. He thereby transformed yixiang from an experiential aesthetic concept in traditional Chinese poetics into a core category of modern aesthetics that integrates aesthetic genesis, artistic creation, and formal construction. This cross-cultural practice of interpretive translation demonstrates that modern Chinese aesthetics is not a simplistic transplantation of Western aesthetic thought. Rather, through the reciprocal interpretation of Chinese and Western cultures, traditional aesthetic categories achieve modern transformation and a modern aesthetic system with distinctive indigenous characteristics gradually takes shape.

Key words: Zhu Guangqian, yixiang, cross-cultural interpretive translation, formation of categories, modern Chinese aesthetics