Alchemy, Imagination, and Hawthorne's "The Birth-mark"

煉金術•想像力•與霍桑的〈胎記〉

10.6184/TKR.201006_40(2).0005

Joseph Yu

霍桑 ； 胎記 ； 煉金術 ； 想像力 ； Nathaniel Hawthorne ； The Birth-mark ； alchemy ； imagination

Tamkang Review

40卷2期（2010 / 06 / 01）

105 - 121

英文

批評家常把霍桑的〈胎記〉(”The Birth-mark”)解讀爲他因同時代的人對科學的過度信心而產生的憂慮，而故事的土人翁艾爾瑪(Aylmer)也一直被視爲「瘋狂的科學家」。我的論文則主張該故事不只是有關霍桑對人類有信心控制自然或有能力將物質精神化的反應。更重要的，我們應將煉金術視爲一種轉義、比喻(trope)，用以表示作家運用想像將「鉛或劣等金屬」轉化爲「黃金」的能力。 這篇論文也嘗試重新將霍桑的故事脈絡化，將該故事放置於原來的知識文化時刻，當時文學專業主義正在興起，而作爲想像的文學尚未獲致後來的神聖地位。霍桑的「心的真理」(”truth of the human heart”)的概念是在這樣的脈絡裡形成。在〈胎記〉裡霍桑極力提升作家之想像力的地位，視之爲真正的轉化能力。更進一步的，將霍桑的煉金術士／藝術家放在跨國的脈絡裡，我主張霍桑深爲跨大西洋或跨文化的接觸所吸引，經由跨越國境的途徑去豐饒他的傳奇故事。他不斷將他的故事書寫於跨國事件裡以想像美國的當代。

Critics tend to read Hawthorne's ”The Birth-mark” as his concern about his contemporaries' overbelief in science, and Aylmer, the protagonist, is repeatedly regarded as a ”mad scientist.” In my paper I argue that the story is not just about Hawthorne's reaction against beliefs in humans' power to control nature or ability in ”spiritualizing the material. ”More importantly, alchemy should be read as a trope to signify a writer's imaginative power to transmute ”lead or baser metals” into ”gold.” This paper also aims to re-contextualize Hawthorne's story and situate it in its intellectual and cultural moment when literary professionalism was only beginning to emerge and when literature as imaginative work had yet to attain its sanctified status. It was in this context that Hawthorne's idea of the ”truth of the human heart” took shape. I argue that in ”The Birth-mark” Hawthorne puts forth great effort to elevate the status of a writer's imagination and that he regards it as a genuine transformative power. Furthermore, by placing Hawthorne's alchemistic/artistic figure within a transatlantic context, I argue that Hawthorne was deeply engaged in transatlantic or transcultural encounters through which to fertilize his romance outside of his native soil. He constantly inscribes his tales in transnational events in order to imagine the U.S. present.

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