文学与市场——乔治·吉辛的城市观念与文化想象

Literature and Market——George Gissing's City Concept and Cultural Imagination

当代中国的都市化进程重演了一百多年前英国所遭遇的众多问题,在这个意义上说,英国人的现代经验既是英国的,同时也是我们自身的组成部分。在当代中国的语境中重读维多利亚晚期重要的城市小说家乔治·吉辛,会使我们跳出以往资本主义与社会主义意识形态的分野,发现许多跨越政治文化的共同经验。诸如中下层阶级的崛起对于文学、文化状况的影响,经济压迫与男性气的衰落,创作性艺术家的沦落和艺术的商品化等等。具有强烈精英意识的乔治·吉辛以古典人文主义思想为基点,揭示了文学的市场化对于文学、学术乃至文化和文明的负面影响。在他看来:现代城市毁坏了哲学、艺术和文学存在的条件,而这正是整个社会乃至文明向粗鄙和平庸退化的表征。

Many obstacles that Britain came across during the urbanization process over one hundred years ago are now challenging China＇s urbanization. In this sense, the British modem experience is both Britain＇s and part of our own. In the context of contemporary China, reading works of George Gissing, an important city novelist in the late Victorian Era, will help us no longer be restrained to the old distinction between capitalist and socialist ideologies but find much shared experience beyond political culture, including the influence of the rising middle class on literature and culture, the relation between economic oppression and the decline of man- liness, the degeneration of creative artists and the commercialization of art, etc. With strong elite consciousness, George Gissing, based on classical humanism, demonstrates how the marketization of literature negatively affects literature, academia, culture and civilization. According to him, the modem city destroys the existence condition for philosophy, art and literature, which exactly symbolizes the degradation of the whole society, even civilization, to becoming vulgar and average.