土星般的目光:本雅明论巴洛克悲苦剧中的君主、寄喻与自然史

The Saturnine Vision:Walter Benjamin on Sovereign,Allegory and Natural History in German Baroque Tragedy

在《德意志悲苦剧的起源》中,本雅明对悲苦剧这一特殊的文学形式进行了寄喻式和历史哲学式的解读。通过将目光投向巴洛克戏剧中的主权者形象,本雅明看到了17世纪以及现代历史和政治生活中的危机和困境。不同于卡尔·施米特在《政治神学》中所定义的能够“对例外状态作出决断”的主权者,巴洛克君主在面临灾难和动荡时往往呈现出“受难者”和“忧郁者”的面相。他所表征的历史是一种充满忧郁与悲苦气息的自然史。自然史概念在本雅明笔下具有一种强烈的辩证意味,它既指向自然与历史之间的张力关系,也关涉到世俗现代性的内在结构。对于自然史的寄喻性表达,贯穿着巴洛克的思想世界。巴洛克及其悲苦剧构成了一种本雅明意义上的“辩证图像”,它为我们审视现代性的历史起源和谱系开启了新的可能性。

In his seminal habilitation thesis,Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels,Walter Benjamin provided an allegorical and historical-philosophical interpretation of German baroque tragedy.Drawing upon Carl Schmitt's theory of sovereignty,Benjamin demonstrated the paradoxical role of the baroque sovereign within the secularized world of history.As a representative of both history and the state,however,the sovereign is characterized by his inability to make decisions and his melancholy in the face of the state of emergency.This leads to an immanence between monarch and martyr.Against this backdrop,the history represented by the sovereign is understood as a natural history that touches on the historical constitution of secularization as a dialectical entanglement of nature and history.The baroque world is thus to be seen as a dialectical image that can reveal a new conceptual space for understanding the origins of modernity.