第4章　新英格蘭超驗主義?愛默生?梭羅

4.1　復習筆記

In 1836 Emerson’s Nature came out which made a tremendous impact on the intellectual life of America. Nature’s voice pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England Transcendentalism, the summit of American Romanticism.

1936年愛默生的《論自然》問世，它如平地驚雷，震撼了美國文化思想界。《論自然》把美國浪漫主義推向了一個新的階段，即它的高潮階段——英格蘭超驗主義階段。

I. New England Transcendentalism（新英格蘭超驗主義）

In the 1830s and 1840s some New Englanders , not quite happy about the materialistic-oriented life of their time, formed themselves into an informal club, the Transcendentalist Club, and met to discuss matters of interest to the life of the nation as a whole. They expressed their views, published their journal, the Dial, and made their voice heard. The club with a membership of some thirty men and a couple of women included Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller. Most of them were teachers or clergymen, radicals who reacted against the faith of Boston businessmen and the cold, rigid rationalism of Unitarianism. The word “Transcendental” was not native to America; it was a Kantian term denoting, as Emerson put it, “Whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought.”

19世紀三、四十年代一些新英格蘭人對當時盛行的物質主義極其不滿，他們聚集在一起組成非正式的“超驗主義俱樂部”，討論文學、哲學及國家生活的形勢趨向。他們出版專刊《日晷》向世人宣傳他們的主張。俱樂部成員約有三十幾個男性和兩個女性。其中包括愛默生、梭羅、阿爾科特及富勒等人。他們多為教師或牧師。他們針砭波士頓人的信條，抨擊唯一神論理性主義的冷酷、古板。“超驗主義”一詞并非美國本土詞匯，它是個康德哲學詞匯。它如愛默生所說，表示“任何屬于直覺意識范疇的思想”。

1．Major features（主要特征）

(1) The Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. The Oversoul was an all-pervading power for goodness, omnipresent and omnipotent, from which all things came and of which all were a part. This represented a new way of looking at the world. It was a reaction to the eighteenth Newtonian concept of the universe. It was also a reaction against the direction that a mechanized, capitalist America was taking, against the popular tendency to get ahead in world affairs to neglect spiritual welfare.

(2) The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual. To them the individual was the most important element of society. The ideal type of man were the self-reliant individuals. The individual soul communed with the Oversoul and was therefore divine. This new notion of the individual and his importance represented a new way of looking at man. It was a reaction against the Calvinist conception of total depravity, against the process of dehumanization that came in the wake of developing capitalism.

(3) The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the spirit or God. Things in nature tended to become symbolic, and the physical world was a symbol of the spiritual. This in turn added to the tradition of literary symbolism in American literature.

(1) 超驗主義者強調精神，或超靈，認為這是宇宙間至為重要的存在因素。超靈是一種無所不容、無所不在、揚善抑惡的力量，是萬物之本、萬物之所屬。這是一種新的世界觀。他反對10世紀的機械宇宙觀，反對美國朝著機械化、資本主義化的方向發展，反對美國人沉湎于發財致富而忽略精神生活的世風。

(2) 超驗主義者強調個人的重要性。他們認為個人是社會的最重要的組成因素。理想的人是自立自強的人。個人靈魂與上帝交流，因而具有神性。這種關于人及其重要性的新觀點反映出對人的新評價。它反對加爾文教義中的徹底的墮落，反對資本主義上升階段的非人性化現象。

(3) 超驗主義者以全新的目光看待自然，認為自然界是超靈或上帝的象征。自然界萬物皆具有象征性，外部世界是精神世界的體現。這又加強了美國文學中象征主義的傳統。

2．Sources（理論來源）

New England Transcendentalism was the product of a combination of foreign influence and the American tradition.

(1) Idealistic philosophy of Germany and France.

(2) Oriental mysticism.

(3) American Puritanism.

新英格蘭超驗主義是國外和國內各種因素融合的產物。

(1) 法國和德國的唯心主義。

(2) 東方神秘主義。

(3) 美國清教主義。

II. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)（拉爾夫·瓦爾多·愛默生）

1．Life（生平）

Emerson was the descendant of a long line of New England clergymen. When he was still a child, the family fortune fell. He went to Harvard. Later he embraced Unitarianism and became a Unitarian minister to the Second Church of Boston. But not for long, he found the rationality of Unitarianism intolerable and left his job. He went to Europe and brought back with him the influence of European Romanticism. He formed an informal Transcendentalists’ club with some friends and edited for a time the Transcendentalist journal, the Dial, to explain their ideas. He became the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism. During his lifetime he was considered one of the two or three best writers in America, and certainly the most influential among his contemporaries. He was the prophet of his age and exerted great influence on Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne and others in varying degrees.

愛默生生于新英格蘭一個顯赫牧師之家。幼年時家道中落。他曾在哈佛大學就讀。后接受唯一教教義，并成為波士頓第二禮拜堂唯一教牧師。不久，因對該教一些古板儀式持異議而辭職。赴歐洲旅行時受到歐洲浪漫主義的影響。回國后跟朋友結成非正式的“超驗主義俱樂部”，編輯超驗主義專刊《日晷》，傳播超驗主義思想。他是新英格蘭超驗主義最杰出的代言人。他生前被認為是美國最頂尖的兩到三個作家之一，是同時代最富影響力的哲學家和文豪。他是那個時代的先知，對梭羅、惠特曼、霍桑等作家產生了不同程度的影響。

2．Analysis of major works（主要作品分析）

◆Nature《論自然》

(1) Published in 1836, Nature is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism.

(2) In this book, Emerson emphasizes the transcendence of the “Oversoul”. He holds the universe is composed of Nature and Soul. He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man, and advocates a direct intuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature.

(3) The spiritual God is operative in the soul of man, and that man is divine. The divinity of man became a favorite subject in lectures and essays. Each man should feel the world as his, and the world exists for him alone. Emerson’s message was eventually self-reliance. His self-reliance was an expression, on a very high level, of the buoyant spirit of his time.

(4) Nature is the emblematic of God. It mediates between man and God. A natural implication of Emerson’s view on nature is that the world around is symbolic.

(1) 《論自然》發表于1836年，它通常被認為是新英格蘭超驗主義的圣經。

(2) 在這本書中，愛默生強調超靈無處不在。他認為宇宙由自然和人類靈魂組成。自然是最純潔無暇的。能夠圣化人的心靈。倡導人們直接體驗自然界無處不在的上帝。

(3) 神圣的上帝存在于人的靈魂之中，因而人也是神圣的。人的神性成為愛默生演講和寫作摯愛的話題。每個人都應認為世界是屬于他的，世界只為他而存在。愛默生要傳達的思想是“自助”。在深層次上講，“自助”是時代上升精神的反映。

(4) 自然是上帝的象征，他協調人和上帝的關系。愛默生關于自然的觀點表明，人類周遭的世界具有象征意義。

◆“The American Scholar”《美國學者》

“The American Scholar” has been regarded as “America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence.”

Emerson tried to say that the Americans should write about here and now instead of imitating and importing from other lands. He called on American writers to write about America in a way peculiarly American. Emerson’s importance in the intellectual history of America lies in the fact that he embodied a new nation’s desire and struggled to assert its own identity in its formative period.

《美國學者》被譽為“美國思想文化領域的獨立宣言”。

愛默生認為美國人應停止模仿和引進外國文學，轉而描繪此時此地的美國。他號召美國作家以美國人獨有的方式進行創作、描繪美國大地。愛默生在美國文化思想史上的重要性在于他體現了處于上升階段的美國渴望擁有自己獨有的身份并愿為之努力奮斗。

III. Henry David Thoreau (1917-1862)（亨利·大衛·梭羅）

1．Life（生平）

Thoreau was a renowned New England Transcendentalist. He was a friend of Emerson and his junior by some fourteen years. Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He went to Harvard at 17. After graduation, he made friends with Emerson and embraced his ideas. In 1845 he moved in a cabin on Walden Pond and lived there in a very simple manner for a little over two years. During his stay in Walden, he went back occasionally to his village, and on one visit he was detained for a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll-tax he thought unjust. This inspired him to write his famous essay, “Civil Disobedience”. He wrote about his experience in the famous book, Walden, after he moved back to Concord.

He was one of the three great American authors of the nineteenth century who had no contemporary readers and yet became great in the twentieth century, the other two being Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson. And he became a major voice for nineteenth-century America, now better heard perhaps than Emerson’s. His influence goes beyond America. His status was placed in the Hall of Fame in New York in 1969.

梭羅是著名的新英格蘭超驗主義者。他是愛默生的好友，比愛默生小14歲。他出生于馬薩諸塞州的康科德鎮。17歲時進入哈佛大學學習。大學畢業后跟愛默生成為好友并開始接受了愛默生的思想。1845年他搬進瓦爾登湖畔的一座小木屋，過了兩年多簡樸的隱居生活。這期間他不時去附近的村子，一次他因拒絕交稅而被拘留了一夜。這激發他寫成了著名的政論文 《非暴力反抗》。回到康科德后，梭羅根據兩年多在瓦爾登湖的生活經歷寫成了著名的《瓦爾登湖》。

在美國文學史上生前備受冷落、在20世紀才贏得盛名的19世紀偉大作家有三位，即梭羅、梅爾維爾和艾米麗·迪金森。現在梭羅被認為是19世紀重要的作家。文學評論家認為他的文學成就高于愛默生。1969年，梭羅的塑像被放進了紐約的“名人館”。

2．Major Works（主要作品）

A Week On the Concord and Merrimack Rivers《康科德和梅里馬科河上的一周》

Walden《瓦爾登湖》

“Civil Disobedience”《非暴力反抗》

“A Plea for John Brown”《為約翰·布朗請命》

3．Analysis of major work（主要作品分析）

◆Walden《瓦爾登湖》

Thoreau’s masterpiece, Walden, is a great Transcendentalist work. It is a faithful record of Thoreau’s reflections when he was in solitary communion with nature, an eloquent indication that he not only embraced Emerson’s Transcendentalist philosophy but went even further to illustrate the pantheistic quality of nature. Walden can be many things and can be read on more than one level.

(1) It is a book about man, what he is, what he should be and must be. Thoreau holds that the most important thing for men to do with their lives is to be self-sufficient and strive to achieve personal spiritual perfection. Thoreau has been regarded as a prophet of individualism in American literature.

(2) In this book, Thoreau was very critical of modern civilization. Modern civilized life has dehumanized man and placed him in a spiritual quandary.

(3) Furthermore, the book is full of ideas expressed to jostle his neighbors out of their smug complacency. He records how he tries to minimize his own needs on Walden Pond. He holds that spiritual richness is real wealth. One’s soul might not help one to get up in the world, but it will help make real progress in self-improvement.

(4) Thoreau went to the woods to experiment a new way of life for himself and for his fellowmen. And he felt that he came out of it a better man, reborn and reinvigorated. Thus, regeneration became a major thematic concern of Walden and it also decided its structural framework.

梭羅的代表作《瓦爾登湖》是一部超驗主義巨作。他忠實地記錄了梭羅獨自與自然界交流時的反思。它表明梭羅不僅接受了愛默生的超然主義哲學，而且進一步親身實踐闡明自然界的泛神特性。《瓦爾登湖》包羅萬象，可以從多種角度去解讀。

(1) 它是一本關于人的書，闡述人應該而且必須成為什么樣的人。梭羅認為生活中最重要的事情是自給自足，努力實現精神上的完美。梭羅被譽為美國文學史上個人主義的先導。

(2) 在該書中梭羅猛烈抨擊了現代文明。他認為現代文明生活使人失去了人性，將人置于精神上的困境。

(3) 此外，該書表明梭羅希望國人擺脫自鳴得意、沾沾自喜的情緒。他記錄了自己在瓦爾登湖上盡量將個人需求降到最低的情況。他認為精神上的富有才是真正的富有。人的精神或許不能幫助人飛黃騰達，卻有助于人在自我完善的過程中取得真正的進步。

(4) 梭羅去森林居住目的是為自己和同胞們實驗一種新的生活方式。他從林中出來時獲得了重生，整個人面貌煥然一新。重生成為《瓦爾登湖》中重要的主題之一，并且決定了該書的結構框架。