黑塞与审美主义

Hermann Hesse and Aestheticism

具有国际影响的德语作家赫尔曼.黑塞在借鉴东方古代智慧以探求西方现代性困境的出路时,也秉承着西方文学本身的传统。这一传统除较为明显的浪漫主义外还有审美主义,但以往研究对此不够关注。审美主义是唯美主义运动的发展和扩大,在德国的代表是尼采,黑塞直接受他影响,在文学生涯最初阶段的各方面,如艺术趣味、文学写作和偶像崇拜等都有充分表现。但审美主义日益暴露出自己的弱点,导致黑塞迅速与其决绝,而转向以人格完善为核心的人文关怀。尽管如此,黑塞以后的小说创作和思想理念中,仍保留着审美主义的潜在痕迹。

Hermann Hesse （1877--1962） is a famous German writer, whose novels influenced the world widely and produced a Hesse boom in the U. S. , Japan and then China in the 20th century. In his works where can be found his admiration for Eastern wisdom and Chinese culture, Hesse referred to Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and ancient magic thoughts while adopting them in order to resolve the ideological crisis of Western civilization. At the same time he still carried on the heritage or tradition of the native literature, of which besides well-noticed Romanticism there is aestheticism. The domestic study on the latter, however, is far from being sufficient. Aestheticism developed and expanded from the aesthetic movement of the late 19~h century, which emphasized autonomy for art in reaction against the market law and money worship of the bourgeois society. Nietzsche was the representative for this movement in Germany. Beginning from his youth Hesse rejected modern rationalism and technology civilization, which made him acquire an affinity to aestheticism. He accepted Nietzsche＇s tenet readily, believing that the morality for artists should be established through aesthetic experience. The traces of aestheticism can be seen in Hesse＇s early literary practice. For example, he argued that as regards taste the aesthetic view was first and determinative to enable life to become a kind of art with pleasure and love. He disliked realistic literature, and his writings in the Tuebingen and Basel years were purely aesthetic and splendid in style. He even regarded Nietzsche as his idol. But aestheticism gradually exposed its weaknesses, namely, underlining sensation and combining itself with the modern consumer economy more and more closely. Hence Hesse made an important choice. He broke away from aestheticism quickly and turned to humanist thoughts for the goal cultivating a full and perfect personality. This turn was clearly reflected in his later works. The same was true of his talk in his remaining years, in which he only mentioned anti-nationalism based on Christianity, Chinese wisdom and humanist scholar J. Burckhardt in terms of the ideological influences he had accepted during his whole life. Aestheticism and Nietzsche thus stayed away from his spiritual outlook. Nevertheless, however, aesthetic elements still stayed in his later novels with aesthetic and sensitive experience as repeated themes. The ideal of fulfilled humanity and perfect personality he advocated, instead of repelling sense and sin, contained and then transcended them. The Einheit （unity） as he adopted as his belief, though universal and unique, kept the richness and colorfulness in all the original state.