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，他的《奥马尔·海亚姆的鲁拜集》（Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám，1859 年）成为畅销书，并经常被引用。美学/颓废作家；尽管如此，菲茨杰拉德在维多利亚文学及其对美学运动的影响的研究中一直被边缘化。作为对唯美主义和颓废作为由对个人在社会中的地位的焦虑所驱动的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菲茨杰拉德（FitzGerald）所预示的，甚至是超越的，而菲茨杰拉德是一位独特的诗人。直观地认识到身份和自我的根本非实质性。这篇阅读从菲茨杰拉德的根本非等级制度中衍生出来，为翻译研究开辟了新的途径。关于《鲁拜集》作为翻译的性质的讨论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，对他的翻译的批评采取了更加伦理的角度，援引了爱德华·萨义德的框架。 “东方主义”的一个典型例子是芭芭拉·J·布莱克（Barbara J. Black）的《展览：维多利亚时代及其博物馆》（On Exhibit: Victorians and Their Museums，2000），她在书中将菲茨杰拉德描述为“大众帝国主义”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上的自我毁灭性冷漠对支撑的假设的挑战。在这方面，他的翻译更多地表达了他自己的诗意本能，因此，我们现在应该超越仅仅把他视为一个翻译家。我的研究将首次全面地解读菲茨杰拉德作为英国诗人经典中独特的整体诗性人格。以“唯美主义者的无足轻重”为前提，对菲茨杰拉德的冷漠进行批判性的重新评价。正如韩秉哲（《心理政治学》）等评论家所观察到的那样，如果这是我们这个时代的一个特征，那么它在我们这个充满身份和情感的时代具有根本性的意义。 （2017））和汉斯·格奥尔格·莫勒（Hans-Georg Moeller）（你和你的个人资料（2021）），是对自我优化和自我暴露的日益增长的需求，清空内心以利用关心和欲望，然后菲茨杰拉德提供了一种真正的生活哲学颠覆性在于其对自我的不可利用的漠视和放弃照顾本身。