面对现代性的焦虑——霍桑作品中的城市意象

The City Images in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Works

霍桑许多作品的城市意象是充满物欲、荒凉、颓败、令人压抑的,表现出对现代文明影响之下、在城市文明的加速发展之中的人生状态的深入叩问。那是作家内心感受的描摹。作家以自我强烈的主观性透入城市生活,使城市表现为物理意义上的空间呈现,也是社会性的呈现,是一种文学或文化上的结构体。他的创作审美地展现了人怎样在现代性宏大叙事的冲击下走上失去家园的不归路,表现了作家对人性、人的存在、人生终极问题的探寻,充满着对人前途命运的疑问、焦虑。

The city images in many of Nathaniel Hawthorne's works are materialistic,bleak,collapsing and depressing,reflecting the author's profound exploration into man's living in modern times and urbanization in the fast paces.They present the author's feelings of the city life,showing his strong subjective penetration of the city and making it a literary structure or a cultural structure;it is a spatial presentation in physical sense,but more a social one,revealing aesthetically how man,affected by the grand narratives of modernity,is sent into the homeless state and onto the road again for ever searching for home.They embody the author's quest of man's nature,man's existence and ultimate questions of life,showing his doubt about and anxiety over man's future.