Tragic Aspects of the Blues
Tragic Aspects of the Blues
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布鲁斯的悲剧性方面
DOI：
10.2307/274802
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发表时间：
1975
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Kimberly W. Benston
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Kimberly W. Benston
美国神话的二重性--一方面是对社会成功和完美的梦想，另一方面是对失败的恐惧，这种恐惧如此强烈，以至于产生内疚感--这是我们本土悲剧的根本冲突。这一冲突的现实存在于我们经历的各个层面。这种冲突的过程产生了悲剧现实的双重形象，我们可以用奥斯卡·曼德尔的语言称之为经验的“悲剧事实”。死亡，无论是个人的死亡，还是某种积极价值（公共的、伦理的或自然的）的死亡，都不可避免地战胜了努力，这是第一个悲剧性的事实。第二个悲剧性的事实是一个社会心理的事实：在他人的社会中生活的简单现实必然地、“不可避免地”带来失败、摩擦、仇恨和绝望。悲剧的目的是出于欲望和需要的冲动，生活在同类中。在一个赤裸裸的和令人敬畏的方式，一个美国人的数字体现了悲剧遭遇的梦想成功和知识的“内疚”是蓝调歌手。2从蓝调歌手的集体抒情诗3出现了一个单一的，清晰的，自我意识，奋斗，但最终恢复的性格，其无尽的悲伤之歌呼应了悲剧的忧郁和辉煌的经典悲剧的最好的创作。作为一个悲剧人物，蓝调音乐人特别有趣，因为与所有其他悲剧人物不同，他是自我创造的。他并不存在于一个自成一体、组织良好的戏剧结构中，而是存在于几位作家不可预测、互不关联的作品中，他们中的大多数人自己也过着极端悲剧意味的生活。因此，要说布鲁斯乐手是一个悲剧人物，就必须理解布鲁斯的“生命悲剧感”，因为正是这种感觉，在布鲁斯歌手的组合歌词中传递，使布鲁斯乐手成为一个可识别的单一角色。悲剧意识引发了一个基本问题，其他一切都是从这个问题开始的，除此之外，其他一切都不重要：生命，存在本身，真正意味着什么？在理查德B。Sewall的话，“它回忆起最初的恐怖，回到一个先于哲学概念的世界，宗教的安慰，以及人类头脑设计的任何结构，以说服自己宇宙是安全的。“4它使人想起对未知事物的前理性恐惧。的
T HE DUALITY OF American mythology a dream of social success and perfection on one hand and the fear of failure so strong as to produce guilt on the otheris the conflict essential to our indigenous tragedy. The reality of this conflict is seen at every level of our experience. The process of such conflict produces a double image of tragic reality which we might call, in the language of Oscar Mandel, the "tragic facts"' of experience. Death, of the individual or of some positive value (communal, ethical, or natural), with its inevitable victory over effort, is the first tragic fact. The second tragic fact is a socio-psychological one: the simple reality of life in the society of others brings with it unavoidably, "inevitably" failure, friction, hate, despair. The tragic purpose is the impulse, born of desire and need, to live among one's kind. In a naked and awesome way, the one American figure who embodies the tragic encounter of the dream of success and knowledge of "guilt" is the bluesman.2 From the collective lyric of blues singers3 there emerges a single, articulate, self-conscious, struggling, yet ultimately resilient character whose endless song of woe echoes the tragic gloom and splendor of classic tragedy's finest creations. The bluesman as a tragic character is especially interesting because, unlike all other tragic figures, he is self-created. He exists not in a self-contained, well-organized dramatic structure, but in the unpredictable and unjoined works of several authors, most of whom themselves lived lives of extreme tragic implications. To speak of the bluesman as a tragic figure, then, it will be necessary to understand the blues' "tragic sense of life," for it is precisely this sense, transmitted in the combined lyrics of the blues singers, that makes of the bluesman a recognizable, single character. The tragic sense provokes the elemental question from which all else begins and besides which nothing else truly matters: What does life, being itself, truly mean? In Richard B. Sewall's words, "it recalls the original terror, harking back to a world that antedates the conceptions of philosophy, the consolations of religions, and whatever constructions the human mind has devised to persuade itself that its universe is secure."4 It recalls, then, the pre-rational terror of the unknown. The