Henry James's Portrait-Envy
Henry James's Portrait-Envy
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亨利·詹姆斯的肖像-嫉妒
DOI：
10.1353/nlh.2017.0015
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发表时间：
2017
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
R. Yeazell
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
R. Yeazell
“没有比一幅伟大的肖像画更伟大的艺术作品了，”亨利詹姆斯在他1887年关于约翰辛格萨金特的文章中断然宣称。这是一个非同寻常的声明，尤其是从一个艺术家谁是自己最重要的是众所周知的表现人类意识，而不是外观。这位世纪最伟大的作家之一不仅如此彻底地打破了传统的文字和图像的等级制度，即诗人的作品长期以来胜过画家的作品，而且他这样做是代表一种类型，这种类型的局限性甚至经常困扰着最著名的实践者。他也不只是代表一个朋友在公开场合夸张一下，因为他私下里更夸张地记录了他对另一个人工作的羡慕。是什么导致了这种令人震惊的肖像嫉妒？本文认为，詹姆斯对绘画肖像的迷恋反映了他对小说艺术的深刻矛盾，特别是叙事全知的小说威胁要摧毁他最想创造的自主人类生活的幻想。
"There is no greater work of art than a great portrait," Henry James flatly declared in his essay on John Singer Sargent of 1887. This is an extraordinary statement, especially from an artist who is himself known above all for the representation of human consciousness rather than appearances. Not only did one of the century's greatest writers thus sweepingly undo the traditional hierarchy of word and image, whereby the work of the poet had long trumped that of the painter, but he did so on behalf of a genre whose limitations had often troubled even its most celebrated practitioners. Nor was he just indulging a bit of public hyperbole on behalf of a friend, since he recorded his envy of the other's work still more extravagantly in private. What accounts for this striking case of portrait-envy? This essay argues that James's fascination with the painted portrait reflected his deep ambivalence toward the art of the novel, especially the ways in which the fiction of narrative omniscience threatened to destroy the very illusion of autonomous human life he most sought to create.