宗教经验与文学创作——以奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》为例

Religious Experience and Literary Creation——St.Augustine's Confessions as Sample

宗教对文学的影响毋庸讳言,但当前对于宗教经验与文学创作的关系的研究较为薄弱。奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》表明,研究其语言修辞艺术是了解他将宗教经验转换为文学创作源泉的关键。这为研究宗教文学和宗教文学史提供了有益的启示:在研究宗教徒的文学作品时,要考虑其文学创作所受到的信仰实践的影响,其作品往往会带上宗教的意图。因而,在文学创作中,作为宗教徒的文学家会在作品框架的建构、内容的选择、艺术手法的使用等各方面表现出与非宗教徒文学家很大的差异,奥古斯丁详尽、细致地描述其两次宗教经验而忽略很多个人生活细节的做法就是最好的例证。对于宗教文学史的研究来说也是如此,不仅仅要研究这些宗教徒作家创作了什么,还要研究他们所选择的创作内容、语言表达与其信仰之间的关联以及作品的宗教品性是以什么样的方式体现出来的。

It is needless to say that religions have profound influence on literature.But the current research about the relation between religious experience and literary creation is very weak.Augustine＇ s Confessions made it clear that his language rhetoric art is the key to understanding how Augustine converted his religious experience into the source of literary creation.This provides a very useful inspiration for the study on literary history of religion and religious literature.In studying religious literature,not only have we to study what the religious believers write,but also we have to study the content and language expression of the works as well as the way in which their religious character is manifested.