Edward FitzGerald, Aestheticism, and the Poetry of Nonentity

爱德华·菲茨杰拉德，唯美主义和虚无的诗歌

• 批准号: 2891245
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Goldsmiths University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2891245
• 关键词: Edward; FitzGerald; Aestheticism; Poetry; Nonentity

This study raises the poet-translator Edward FitzGerald (1809-83) to critical attention by placing him at the vanguard of the Aesthetic movement of the late 19th Century. His Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859) was a bestselling phenomenon, and frequently referenced by Aesthetic/Decadent writers; yet despite this, FitzGerald has been consistently sidelined in studies of Victorian literature, and his impact on the Aesthetic movement remains underexplored. As part of the wider critical revaluation of Aestheticism and Decadence as existential movements driven by an anxiety about the individual's place in society, my study intervenes by showing how these responses were presaged, even transcended by FitzGerald, who stands as a poet uniquely intuitive of the fundamental insubstantiality of identity and selfhood.This reading opens new avenues in translation studies by deriving from FitzGerald a radically non-hierarchical mode of relation between self and other. Discourse on the Rubáiyát's nature as a translation was originally a question of scholarly accuracy; more recently, with the emergence of postcolonial studies, criticism of his translation has taken a more ethical angle, invoking Edward Said's framework of 'Orientalism'. A representative example is Barbara J. Black's On Exhibit: Victorians and Their Museums (2000), wherein she describes FitzGerald as an agent of 'popular imperialism' who domesticated the 'exotic' poems of Khayyám. This is an oversimplistic interpretation that does not account for FitzGerald's personal, anti-colonial sentiments, nor does it reckon with the ways in which his fundamental, self-annihilating apathy challenges the very assumptions that underpin orientalist narratives of intercultural exchange. In this respect, his translations are more expressions of his own poetic instincts. Thus, it is time we move beyond treating him simply as a translator and read him as a major author in his own right. My study will provide the first comprehensive reading of FitzGerald as a whole poetic personality unique within the canon of English poets.A critical revaluation of FitzGerald's apathy, premised on a principle of 'Aestheticist Nonentity', has a radical significance in our identity- and affect-charged contemporary age. If a feature of our age, as observed by critics like Byung-Chul Han (Psychopolitics (2017)) and Hans-Georg Moeller (You and Your Profile (2021)), is the increasing demand to self-optimise and self-expose, emptying interiority to exploit care and desire, then FitzGerald offers a philosophy of living that is truly subversive in its unexploitable disregard for selfhood and the relinquishing of care itself.

这项研究将诗人兼翻译家爱德华·菲茨杰拉德(Edward Fitzgerald，1809-83年)置于19世纪末美学运动的先锋地位，从而引起了评论界的关注。他的《奥马尔·海亚姆的鲁巴亚特》(1859)是一种畅销现象，经常被美学/颓废作家引用；然而，尽管如此，菲茨杰拉德在维多利亚时期文学研究中一直被边缘化，他对美学运动的影响仍未得到充分探讨。作为对唯美主义和颓废作为存在主义运动的更广泛的批判性重估的一部分，我的研究通过展示这些反应是如何被预见的，甚至被菲茨杰拉德超越的，作为一位诗人，他独特地直观地认识到身份和自我的根本非实体。这一解读从菲茨杰拉德那里衍生出一种根本上无等级的自我与他者之间的关系模式，从而打开了翻译研究的新途径。关于Rubáiyát作为翻译的本质的论述最初是一个学术准确性的问题；最近，随着后殖民研究的出现，对他的翻译的批评已经从一个更伦理的角度，援引爱德华·赛义德的“东方主义”框架。一个典型的例子是芭芭拉·J·布莱克(Barbara J.Black)的《展览：维多利亚人及其博物馆》(On Exhibit：Victorians and They MMuseum，2000)，在书中，她将菲茨杰拉德描述为将海亚姆的诗歌归化为异国情调的流行帝国主义的代理人。这是一种过于简单化的解释，没有考虑到菲茨杰拉德个人的反殖民情绪，也没有考虑到他根本的、自我毁灭的冷漠如何挑战支撑东方主义跨文化交流叙事的假设。在这方面，他的翻译更多地表达了他自己的诗歌本能。因此，是时候不再简单地把他当做翻译家来看待了，而是应该把他当做一位重要的作家来解读。我的研究将提供第一次对菲茨杰拉德作为一个整体的全面解读，这是英国诗人经典中独一无二的一个诗性人格。批判性地重新评价菲茨杰拉德的冷漠，建立在一个唯美主义的非实体原则的前提下，在我们这个身份和情感充斥的当代具有激进的意义。如果正如韩秉哲(《心理政治学》(2017))和汉斯-格奥尔格·默勒(《你和你的个人资料》(2021))等评论家所观察到的那样，我们这个时代的一个特征是自我优化和自我暴露的需求日益增长，掏空内在以利用关怀和欲望，那么菲茨杰拉德提供了一种真正颠覆性的生活哲学，它对自我和放弃关怀本身的漠视是不可利用的。