第4章 新英格兰超验主义•爱默生•梭罗
4.1 复习笔记
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年爱默生的《论自然》问世，它如平地惊雷，震撼了美国文化思想界。《论自然》把美国浪漫主义推向了一个新的阶段，即它的高潮阶段——英格兰超验主义阶段。
I. New England Transcendentalism（新英格兰超验主义）
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世纪三、四十年代一些新英格兰人对当时盛行的物质主义极其不满，他们聚集在一起组成非正式的“超验主义俱乐部”，讨论文学、哲学及国家生活的形势趋向。他们出版专刊《日晷》向世人宣传他们的主张。俱乐部成员约有三十几个男性和两个女性。其中包括爱默生、梭罗、阿尔科特及富勒等人。他们多为教师或牧师。他们针砭波士顿人的信条，抨击唯一神论理性主义的冷酷、古板。“超验主义”一词并非美国本土词汇，它是个康德哲学词汇。它如爱默生所说，表示“任何属于直觉意识范畴的思想”。
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) 超验主义者强调精神，或超灵，认为这是宇宙间至为重要的存在因素。超灵是一种无所不容、无所不在、扬善抑恶的力量，是万物之本、万物之所属。这是一种新的世界观。他反对10世纪的机械宇宙观，反对美国朝着机械化、资本主义化的方向发展，反对美国人沉湎于发财致富而忽略精神生活的世风。
(2) 超验主义者强调个人的重要性。他们认为个人是社会的最重要的组成因素。理想的人是自立自强的人。个人灵魂与上帝交流，因而具有神性。这种关于人及其重要性的新观点反映出对人的新评价。它反对加尔文教义中的彻底的堕落，反对资本主义上升阶段的非人性化现象。
(3) 超验主义者以全新的目光看待自然，认为自然界是超灵或上帝的象征。自然界万物皆具有象征性，外部世界是精神世界的体现。这又加强了美国文学中象征主义的传统。
2．Sources（理论来源）
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.
新英格兰超验主义是国外和国内各种因素融合的产物。
(1) 法国和德国的唯心主义。
(2) 东方神秘主义。
(3) 美国清教主义。
II. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)（拉尔夫·瓦尔多·爱默生）
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.
爱默生生于新英格兰一个显赫牧师之家。幼年时家道中落。他曾在哈佛大学就读。后接受唯一教教义，并成为波士顿第二礼拜堂唯一教牧师。不久，因对该教一些古板仪式持异议而辞职。赴欧洲旅行时受到欧洲浪漫主义的影响。回国后跟朋友结成非正式的“超验主义俱乐部”，编辑超验主义专刊《日晷》，传播超验主义思想。他是新英格兰超验主义最杰出的代言人。他生前被认为是美国最顶尖的两到三个作家之一，是同时代最富影响力的哲学家和文豪。他是那个时代的先知，对梭罗、惠特曼、霍桑等作家产生了不同程度的影响。
2．Analysis of major works（主要作品分析）
◆Nature《论自然》
(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) 《论自然》发表于1836年，它通常被认为是新英格兰超验主义的圣经。
(2) 在这本书中，爱默生强调超灵无处不在。他认为宇宙由自然和人类灵魂组成。自然是最纯洁无暇的。能够圣化人的心灵。倡导人们直接体验自然界无处不在的上帝。
(3) 神圣的上帝存在于人的灵魂之中，因而人也是神圣的。人的神性成为爱默生演讲和写作挚爱的话题。每个人都应认为世界是属于他的，世界只为他而存在。爱默生要传达的思想是“自助”。在深层次上讲，“自助”是时代上升精神的反映。
(4) 自然是上帝的象征，他协调人和上帝的关系。爱默生关于自然的观点表明，人类周遭的世界具有象征意义。
◆“The American Scholar”《美国学者》
“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.
《美国学者》被誉为“美国思想文化领域的独立宣言”。
爱默生认为美国人应停止模仿和引进外国文学，转而描绘此时此地的美国。他号召美国作家以美国人独有的方式进行创作、描绘美国大地。爱默生在美国文化思想史上的重要性在于他体现了处于上升阶段的美国渴望拥有自己独有的身份并愿为之努力奋斗。
III. Henry David Thoreau (1917-1862)（亨利·大卫·梭罗）
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.
梭罗是著名的新英格兰超验主义者。他是爱默生的好友，比爱默生小14岁。他出生于马萨诸塞州的康科德镇。17岁时进入哈佛大学学习。大学毕业后跟爱默生成为好友并开始接受了爱默生的思想。1845年他搬进瓦尔登湖畔的一座小木屋，过了两年多简朴的隐居生活。这期间他不时去附近的村子，一次他因拒绝交税而被拘留了一夜。这激发他写成了著名的政论文 《非暴力反抗》。回到康科德后，梭罗根据两年多在瓦尔登湖的生活经历写成了著名的《瓦尔登湖》。
在美国文学史上生前备受冷落、在20世纪才赢得盛名的19世纪伟大作家有三位，即梭罗、梅尔维尔和艾米丽·迪金森。现在梭罗被认为是19世纪重要的作家。文学评论家认为他的文学成就高于爱默生。1969年，梭罗的塑像被放进了纽约的“名人馆”。
2．Major Works（主要作品）
A Week On the Concord and Merrimack Rivers《康科德和梅里马科河上的一周》
Walden《瓦尔登湖》
“Civil Disobedience”《非暴力反抗》
“A Plea for John Brown”《为约翰·布朗请命》
3．Analysis of major work（主要作品分析）
◆Walden《瓦尔登湖》
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.
梭罗的代表作《瓦尔登湖》是一部超验主义巨作。他忠实地记录了梭罗独自与自然界交流时的反思。它表明梭罗不仅接受了爱默生的超然主义哲学，而且进一步亲身实践阐明自然界的泛神特性。《瓦尔登湖》包罗万象，可以从多种角度去解读。
(1) 它是一本关于人的书，阐述人应该而且必须成为什么样的人。梭罗认为生活中最重要的事情是自给自足，努力实现精神上的完美。梭罗被誉为美国文学史上个人主义的先导。
(2) 在该书中梭罗猛烈抨击了现代文明。他认为现代文明生活使人失去了人性，将人置于精神上的困境。
(3) 此外，该书表明梭罗希望国人摆脱自鸣得意、沾沾自喜的情绪。他记录了自己在瓦尔登湖上尽量将个人需求降到最低的情况。他认为精神上的富有才是真正的富有。人的精神或许不能帮助人飞黄腾达，却有助于人在自我完善的过程中取得真正的进步。
(4) 梭罗去森林居住目的是为自己和同胞们实验一种新的生活方式。他从林中出来时获得了重生，整个人面貌焕然一新。重生成为《瓦尔登湖》中重要的主题之一，并且决定了该书的结构框架。