The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition Vol. 2

出版者:The John Hopkins University Press

作者:Eds. Antony Cuda & Ronald Schuchard

页数:992

价格:0

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9781421406770

具体描述

The Perfect Critic, 1919-1926, Volume 2 of The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot, documents Eliot's emergence as an authoritative and commanding critical voice in twentieth-century letters. The essays and reviews in this volume, most of which were never republished or collected after their first appearances in periodicals, trace the swift and astonishing arc of his rise to international prominence as an incisive critic of literature and culture, an avant-garde poet, and an editor of a successful and celebrated London journal. These seven years register the seismic shift in modern poetry that comes with the publication of The Waste Land (1922), and they witness the appearance of Eliot's first collected volume of verse, Poems, 1909-1925 (1925).

Eliot composed not less than 130 essays, reviews, and letters during this brief time, publishing in venues as various as The Athenaeum, The Times Literary Supplement, La Nouvelle Revue française, The Dial, and Vanity Fair. Such a period of intense creativity and prolific critical writing is all the more remarkable when considered against the backdrop of the extraordinary upheavals in his personal life: the unexpected deaths of his father and sister, the dismal mental and physical health of his wife Vivienne, and Eliot's own psychological breakdown and treatment. The volume features a thorough historical introduction that describes the dynamic and challenging circumstances, both personal and professional, that faced him as he began to establish his critical reputation in London literary circles and beyond.

The Perfect Critic gathers together an impressive and widely unknown body of work, but it includes also several of Eliot's most influential and enduring essays—“Tradition and the Individual Talent,” “Hamlet,” “The Metaphysical Poets,” and “Ulysses, Order, and Myth”—now edited and annotated by Anthony Cuda and Ronald Schuchard. These magisterial early works furnish us with the signal concepts and phrases that have made Eliot's criticism a permanent feature of monographs, syllabi, and anthologies, including the “extinction of personality,” the “objective correlative,” the “dissociation of sensibility,” and the “mythical method.”

The Perfect Critic includes a previously unpublished essay, “A Neglected Aspect of Chapman,” as well as the contents of two influential prose volumes published during the period, The Sacred Wood (1920) and Homage to John Dryden (1924). It also contains newly edited versions of the eight Clark Lectures that Eliot delivered in 1926 for the prestigious series at Trinity College, Cambridge.

作者简介

Anthony Cuda, associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, is the author of The Passions of Modernism: Eliot, Yeats, Woolf and Mann (2010). He has published articles on Eliot, Yeats, and Heaney, and his reviews of contemporary poetry have appeared in The Washington Post Book World, The New Criterion, FIELD: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, and elsewhere. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the T. S. Eliot Society and a regular lecturer at the T. S. Eliot International Summer School.

Ronald Schuchard, the Goodrich C. White Professor of English, Emeritus, at Emory University, is the author of award-winning Eliot's Dark Angel (1999) and The Last Minstrels: Yeats and the Revival of the Bardic Arts (2008). The editor of Eliot's Clark and Turnbull lectures, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry (1993), he is co-editor with John Kelly of The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, Volume 3 (1994), Volume 4 (2005), winner of the MLA's Cohen Award for a Distinguished Edition of Letters, and Volume 5 (forthcoming). A former Guggenheim fellow and founder-director of the T. S. Eliot International Summer School (2009-2013), he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

用户评价

翻开这本书的这部分文集，给我的直观感受是，艾略特在这里展现了他作为一名文化评论家的“外科医生”本色，下刀精准，毫不留情。他对于诗歌创作过程的剖析，尤其是那种将诗人视为“催化剂”而非纯粹情感宣泄口的理论，彻底颠覆了我过去对浪漫主义的某些浪漫想象。我尤其欣赏他对诗歌语言“意象”与“意义”之间张力的处理，他似乎总能在一堆看似晦涩的词句中，找到那个最核心的、支撑起整个思想结构的骨架。举例来说，在某一篇讨论现代戏剧局限性的文章中，他对于“虔诚”在舞台上如何被庸俗化的批判，那种夹杂着失望和坚守的复杂情感，简直像一根细针刺入当代文化肌理。这本书的装帧和排版也相当考究，使得如此密集的文本不至于显得过于拥挤，这对于需要反复参照脚注和原文的读者来说，是一种体贴。不过，即便如此，我还是得承认，有些论述的跳跃性非常大，尤其是在他从文学批判转向宗教辩护的过渡地带，感觉就像是突然从一条平坦的柏油马路被抛上了一条崎岖的山路，需要读者自己去补足中间缺失的逻辑桥梁。但正是这种“言之未尽”和“意在言外”，才更显出这位智者的深不可测。它不是在喂养你，而是在设置谜题，让你自己去寻找钥匙。

我对这本集子的印象，主要集中在艾略特如何将“宗教”和“诗歌”这两个看似疏离的领域进行精密的编织上。在这里，他不再是一个旁观者，而是深入到神学和形而上学的核心地带进行探讨。那些关于“道成肉身”的文学隐喻，以及他如何看待基督教信仰对西方文明的基石作用，其论证的严密性，甚至可以媲美专业的宗教学者。然而，对于一个非教徒读者来说，这段阅读体验是极具挑战性的，因为他所依赖的许多前提是内化的、是基于深厚信仰的，这使得他在解释某些艺术现象时的跳跃性，显得对于“局外人”不够友好。我发现自己不得不频繁地进行“反向工程”，试图从他的结论推导出他所依赖的信仰基础，这无疑增加了阅读的难度，但同时也带来了一种智力上的刺激——仿佛被邀请参加了一场只有精英才能参与的高难度辩论赛。而且，不同于他早期的诗歌批评那样侧重于形式分析，这里的散文更倾向于一种宏大叙事，将文学置于整个西方文明的兴衰图景中去考察。这种体量巨大的思考，让人不禁感叹，一个人的头脑可以承载多少重量级的议题。

这部文集的第二卷，坦率地说，是一次深度潜水，将我带入了艾略特思想版图更为幽暗、也更具挑战性的角落。我本以为自己对这位二十世纪文学巨擘的散文已经相当熟悉，毕竟《荒原》和《交谈者》已经占据了我书架上显眼的位置，但这里的选篇，尤其是那些探讨文化衰退和宗教哲学的论述，着实让我感到有些喘不过气来。他对于“传统”的界定，那种近乎严苛的、要求艺术家必须在历史的重量下进行创作的视角，读起来让人既感到振聋发聩，又隐隐生出一种时代疏离感。我花了相当长的时间去咀嚼那些关于“客观性”和“去人性化”的段落，它们并非是那种容易消化的随笔，更像是精心构造的论证迷宫。尤其是有几篇关于欧洲知识分子困境的文章，那种语调的冷峻和预见性，让人不禁要停下来，环顾四周，看看我们身处的这个时代是否也正在步入他所描绘的那个文化真空期。这不仅仅是文学批评，它更像是对现代精神状态的诊断书，诊断结果是痛苦而精准的。在阅读过程中，我必须不断地去查阅注释，因为艾略特时不时会抛出一个十九世纪末的政治典故或是鲜为人知的古典学引用，这些细节的密集度，对普通读者来说，构成了不小的阅读壁垒。然而，一旦你跨过那道门槛，你获得的洞察力是无与伦比的，它迫使你重新审视自己对“意义”和“秩序”的理解。总而言之，这不是一本可以放松时阅读的书，它要求你投入全部的智力资源，去与一个大师的思辨进行贴身肉搏。

这本书的第二卷，让我切实体会到艾略特后期思想的沉稳与暮气。与早年那种激昂的、反叛性的评论姿态相比，这里的文字显得更加内敛、更具教诲意味，像是一位饱经风霜的长者，试图为年轻一代指明一条“正道”。我特别留意了其中几篇关于“教育目的”和“知识分子责任”的论述，他对于教育被工具化、被娱乐化趋势的忧虑，即便在今天看来，也具有惊人的先见之明。他强调的“文化整体性”，即艺术、宗教和政治必须在一个统一的道德框架内运作的理念，是全书的核心论点。这种对“整体”的执着，使得他的批评视野极为开阔，但同时也带来了一种强烈的排他性。我发现自己时常在赞叹其文字的精准之美和逻辑的密不透风，但内心深处又隐隐抗拒那种全盘接受其世界观的要求。这就像面对一位德高望重的导师，你必须保持谦逊，但同时也要保留质疑的权利。总而言之，这是一部需要反复阅读、慢慢消化的“思想酱料”，它不像快餐文学那样能立刻提供满足感，而是需要读者付出时间，才能从中提炼出真正属于自己的营养。

说实话，这卷散文读起来，更像是一场漫长而优雅的、对“失落的精致感”的挽歌。艾略特在这里描摹的那个世界，充满了对上个世纪末贵族式知识氛围的怀念，而对新兴的、大众化的文化形式则持有一种近乎本能的排斥。这种情绪贯穿始终，让你清晰地感受到一种坚守的孤独感。我特别留意了那些关于“文学史观”的论述，他如何巧妙地将过去的作品纳入到一个不断演进的评价体系中，那种“共时性”的理论，简直是文学史研究方法上的一个里程碑。但同时，我也有个小小的困惑，他的批评标准似乎过于依赖于他自己构建的那个“纯净”的文化土壤，对于后来的多元化思潮，似乎预设了一种难以逾越的审美鸿沟。这使得部分章节读起来，带有明显的时代局限性，尽管这种局限性恰恰也是他魅力的来源——他拒绝迎合，宁愿站在时代的对立面，用古老而坚固的词汇构建起自己的堡垒。我把这本书放在床头已经有一段时间了，不是因为读不完，而是因为每次读完一篇，都需要留出足够的沉思时间，否则就好像辜负了作者那字斟句酌的每一个词语。它像一坛陈年的波尔多酒，需要时间去醒酒，去体会其中复杂的回味。