文明社会批判和重返自然——评克莱斯特中篇小说《智利地震》

The Critique of the Civilized Society and the Reflection on Returning to Nature:A Review of Kleist’s The Earthquake in Chile

克莱斯特深受同时期法国启蒙思想家卢梭的文明批判论、自然主义学说以及伏尔泰和爱尔维修的宗教批判思想的影响。1807年,其创作的中篇小说《智利地震》出版。该小说以两位主人公的爱情悲剧为线索,演绎了作为革命隐喻的地震前后“城市—山谷—城市”这一空间转换过程中人们道德意识和社会秩序的变迁,嘲讽了各式人物针对该偶然性自然事件基于神正论所做出的宗教性阐释和行为,批判了以私有制和等级制为基础的人类文明社会使本性纯良的民众道德堕落的虚伪本质,抨击了反人性的社会规范和天主教教会及世俗政权等社会权力机构对个体自然爱欲和自由平等诉求的压迫和异化。然而,作者否认了人类摆脱社会制约重返自然状态的可能性。

Inspired by the civilization critique and the naturalism theory of Rousseau,and the religion critique of Voltaire and Helvetius,the French Enlightenment thinkers of the same period,in his anti-social novella The Earthquake in Chile published in 1807,Kleist takes the love tragedy of the two protagonists as clues to reveal the changes in people’s ethical consciousness and social order during the spatial transformation process of“city—valley—city”before and after the earthquake that serves as a revolutionary metaphor in the novel.Through this book,he mocks the various characters’theodicy-based religious interpretations and behaviors to this accidental natural event.He criticizes the human civilization based on private ownership and hierarchical system,which corrupts the morals of the natural and pure people.He also declaims against the oppression and alienation of individual’s natural desires for affection,freedom and equality by certain anti-natural social norms and such social power institutions as the Catholic Church and other secular regimes.He,however,negates the possibility of human beings getting rid of social constraints and returning to their natural states.