工业文明的忧思——卡莱尔《旧衣新裁》主旨的解读

Worries of Industrial Civilization——Interpretation of the subject of Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle

《旧衣新裁》(Sartor Resartus)修辞隐喻,语意晦涩,用意让人困惑不解。长期以来批评界一直在尝试各种解释,其中最主要的是语言隐喻说。然而,结合卡莱尔的社会背景、时代特征,透过语言的隐喻性,就会发现《旧衣新裁》的思想主旨相当明确,锋芒直指社会的黑暗、民众的贫困、贵族的腐化、教会的虚伪和功利主义的盛行等问题,并且指出这些都缘于工业革命、政府放任、科技发展和人性异化,并希望通过禁欲主义、重树宗教信仰、工作崇拜、偶发事件、凤凰涅槃等形式给予解决。

It is difficult to understand Sartor Resartus which uses lots of metaphors in writing. People feel at a loss in understanding its real intentions. Criticists have long tried to explain it in different ways,in which the metaphorical explanation is the most popular one. However,by permeating the metaphors and taking the social background and era features into consideration,we find the main ideas of Sartor Resartus are quite definite,which probe directly into such problems as the dark sides of the society,the poverty of common people,the corruption of the aristocrat,the hypocrisy of the church and the prevalence of utilitarianism,and point out that all thses arise from the industrial revolution,the indulgence of the government,the development of science and technology and the dissimilation of humanity,and hope to solve these problems by means of asceticism,re-establishment of faith,working worship,events and Phoenix-cremation.