- 學位論文
知識份子的調適:論索爾貝婁四部後期小說
Intellectuals Accommodating: A Study of Saul Bellow's Herzog, Humboldt's Gift, The Dean's December, and Ravelstein
摘要
本論文主要在討論索爾貝婁於:《何索》、《韓伯的禮物》、《院長的十二月》以及《拉斐斯坦》這四部後期小說中，書中知識份子對自身角色的期許與調適的過程。如同作者本身，小說中的主角多具有猶太背景，常因懷有高度浪漫理想與正義感，在自覺與主流(美國)社會產生疏離時，試圖以不同方式融入當代社會與文化。而文中所探討的調適是指：小說主角調整自我終至接納適應的過程，可視為一種有條件讓步。既能保有自身主體完整性成為獨特思考者，同時也能與普羅大眾產生溝通互動，進而主動融入大眾文化。而小說主角在融入社會也保有個人內在主體性的同時，更期盼喚醒大眾重視在20世紀中後期美國社會中正逐漸喪失的人性關懷。(這點正與當代社會過度商業化、經濟化、機械化與科技化做對比。)貝婁的人性關懷也表現在對於小說中受苦人物所產生不平之鳴與憐憫之情。除了個人與社會的調適外，小說主角另一種形式的調適過程則是指身體與心靈的契合；物質世界與精神世界的適度協調。在面對許多相對思考與價值 - 如自我與他者，個人與社會，內在與外在，思想與情感，過去與現在，地方色彩與普遍性 – 身為主角的知識份子雖因內心有所衝突而常感困擾，卻也努力不懈尋找平衡點！這四部小說在結構上均呈現出辨證張力，遊移在相對應的兩方思考與價值之中，尋求調適之道。小說中所呈現的複雜性正是人性真實的一面，而貝婁運用活力與熱情將之深刻描繪出來。
並列摘要
This dissertation explores the problem and process of the isolated intellectual’s accommodation in four of American author Saul Bellow’s novels: Herzog, Humboldt’s Gift,The Dean’s December,and Ravelstein. The protagonists of these novels, most of whom are, like Bellow, of European-Jewish background,feel alienated from the mainstream, mid-to-late-20th-century U.S. society, and try in various ways to more fully enter into it. Yet “accommodation,” as it is interpreted here, really means a going-halfway, a process of mediation through which the character maintains his own individual, subjective integrity as a “thinker” while also communicating and interacting more with others (including the “masses,” the non-intellectuals), that is, engaging more actively in the “mass culture.”The novels’protagonists, although they manage to “fit into” the larger society to varying degrees,share a keen awareness of the need for the internal and subjective—as opposed to the merely external, the commercial, financial, mechanical, technological—and for a sense of humanity, a “law of the heart,” a compassionate attitude toward a suffering (and indeed increasingly alienated) mankind. However, this mode of the individual’s accommodation with his society is also closed to another key duality, that of mind (or soul) and body (or material world). They thus seek an accommodation or mediation between such opposite ideas or values as self and other, individual and social, internal and external, thinking and feeling, past and present, local and universal. These novels seem to be structured, then, around a dialectical dynamic, a pulling- both-ways, just as the characters are inevitably driven by inner conflicts, often perplexed and confused, moving in both directions at once. But this is a very human complexity, and Bellow describes it with great energy and passion.