"The Knife of flint passes over the howling Victim": Rethinking Sacrificial Violence in William Blake's Jerusalem

石刀與血肉：再探威廉．布雷克《耶路撒冷》中的獻祭與暴力

10.6184/TKR.202406_54(2).0003

Kang-Po Chen

William Blake ； Jerusalem ； human sacrifice ； ritualistic violence ； Georges Bataille ； the sacred ； 威廉．布雷克 ； 《耶路撒冷》 ； 活人獻祭 ； 儀式性暴力 ； 喬治．巴代伊 ； 神聖

Tamkang Review

54卷2期（2024 / 06 / 01）

47 - 75

英文;繁體中文

In William Blake's final epic Jerusalem, human sacrifice plays a significant role. Presented as a distortion of the Passion, its abolition functions pivotally in Blake's Christian revisionism. Generally, critics interpret human sacrifice as a gruesome reification of religious falsehood, stagnant rationalism, sexual repression, social control and surveillance, and imperialistic atrocity. This article reconsiders the established interpretations by examining two specific episodes in Jerusalem: Los's construction of Golgonooza, the City of Art, in Chapter 1 and Luvah's torture in Chapter 3. I would argue that Blake's overtly explicit, excessively detailed depiction of such violence goes beyond the representation of religious oppression and sexual repression as proposed in preceding studies. Blake's unrestrained visualization of human sacrifice, "[g]lowing with beauty & cruelty," insinuates a certain fixation on the body that outperforms his rightful assertion of Jesus's self-annihilation and the spiritual completion it brings forth. In Chapter 1, the sacrifice motif has already permeated Los's apparently righteous effort of artistic creation, attesting to Blake's awareness of the intrinsic symbiosis between art and violence. And in Chapter 3, Blake's versification of Luvah's sacrifice disturbingly yet mesmerizingly obscures the boundaries between the self and the other and breaches the spirit-body dualism. Engaging with Georges Bataille's conception of the sacred, I would propose that ritualistic violence and bodily consumption proffer an alternative route to Romantic artistic imagination, challenging the critical consensus that Blake leans towards the spiritual and renounces the corporeal in his late works.

在威廉．布雷克的晚期長篇史詩《耶路撒冷》中，活人獻祭扮演了極為重要的角色。布雷克認為獻祭的機制扭曲了耶穌受難的精神。因此，揚棄此墮落儀式成為回歸原初神聖境界的關鍵。長久以來，論者皆認為布雷克運用獻祭的意象具體化宗教謬誤、性壓抑、道德規訓與政治壓迫所帶來的可怕後果，並加以批判。有鑑於此，本文試圖透過檢視《耶路撒冷》中的兩個重要場景，來重新思考此一學術共識。本文指出，布雷克對獻祭的描述瀰漫著令讀者難以卒睹的暴力，其程度與細節已經超越了批判政治宗教和性別意識形態的範疇，反映出詩人對暴虐肉體意象的異常執著，甚至在詩歌美學的層面上壓過了《耶路撒冷》本詩宣揚耶穌自我犧牲精神與人類救贖的主旨。在第一章中，代表靈感的洛斯在打造藝術城市葛歌諾薩的過程交織著獻祭的意象，透露出布雷克思想中暴力與藝術／詩歌創作的共生關係。接著，本文納入哲學家巴代伊對神聖的論述，分析第三章中阿比恩的女兒們對路瓦施行的殘虐儀式，彰顯出布雷克詩學對自我與他者、心靈與肉體二元界線的踰越。簡言之，儀式性暴力與肉體毀傷的意象在《耶路撒冷》中，體現了另類的浪漫主義想像，挑戰了學界認定布雷克晚期作品崇尚精神、厭棄身體的傳統理解。