“收缩是美德”?——由T.S.艾略特的晚期风格思考晚期现代主义

“Contractility Is a Virtue”?:Reflections on Late Modernism Through T.S.Eliot’s Late Style

诗人T.S.艾略特热衷于在青年时想象并模仿老年。本文自此切入,将对老年的模仿视作现代主义伪装成传统、并自内突破的隐喻。无论是艾略特早年将创新吸纳进传统文学建制的非个人化诗学,还是他以内收为特征的晚期风格,都可以统摄在这一套借史谋新、将新入史、以新话语改写历史的策略中。同时,将艾略特收缩的晚期风格纳入晚期现代主义的理论框架,也即将这一以“新”为旗帜的文学革命置入由生到死、由新折旧的有机生命循环。本文应对的问题因此并非雷蒙·威廉斯意义上的“何时是现代主义”,也并不完全是“现代主义芳龄几何”,而是将艾略特乃至现代主义作为个案,以观察更普遍意义上“新生”风格与建制权威间权力协商现场的一种进路。

T.S.Eliot is known for his impersonation of the old as a young man.The impersonation attests to the sleight of hand of young modernists:exponents of the“new”who make inroads into the monolithic literary history under the disarming guise of tradition.Eliot’s early impersonal theory subsuming the new under tradition,along with his late style buttressing the existing order,are thus both in line with the modernist agenda for the new to sabotage—and supersede—the old through its impersonation.Perspectives of late modernism helps situate the novelty/tradition struggle within the inevitable ageing process of the new.On that account,the modernist anxiety to“grow old”as well as the contracting late style of T.S.Eliot are understood less as part of conservative politics than as a necessary evil:one empowering a new set of canons which makes sense only in the new coordinates it invents.