Between Aesthetics And Morality: A Study Of Walter Pater's Poetic Thought

As one of the important theorists of British aestheticism in the 19^th century,Walter Pater was a representative contributing to the systematic theorization of British Aestheticism,who exerted great impact to Oscar Wilde and other later literary critics and writers.Pater's works is gorgeous and elegant in language,but difficult and obscure in thought.Besides,he was often regarded as prudent and consecutive pedant who devoted his whole life to the scholarship.All the reasons above caused that the study of Pater has long been neglected.With a reference of the acceptance of Pater by modern Chinese scholars in the 1920s to 1930s,this paper focuses on Pater's aesthetic poetics,mainly his artistic view and moral theory as well as their relationship,and combines his major books to analyze,trying to reevaluate this important critic and find the uniqueness in his thought in order to provide some beneficial enlightenment to contemporary Chinese literary and artistic creation and theoretical research.Apart from introduction and conclusion,this paper consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 introduces Pater's life,works and his sources of thinking.As a reserved aesthete,he constructed an imaginary utopia in art and literature,and partially implemented his rebellion against Christian religion and Victorian social and cultural concepts.Pater's poetics cannot be separated from the aestheticism in the context of Victorian period.He played a connecting role in the whole British aesthetic movement and became an important figure in Britain's transition from romanticism to modernism.His poetics has the following sources:the aesthetic ideal of ancient Greece,the German classical aesthetics and the ideological trend of aestheticism in France.Pater's aestheticism also contains decadent factors related to profound and sophisticated human feelings and life complex,which is shown as an existence intertwined with happiness and decadence.Chapter 2 elaborates Pater's unique art theory---impressionistic aesthetic worship.He celebrates the supreme value of beauty and art,emphasizes impressionist criticism,and advocates the understanding of art through contemplation and imagination.As for the fact that“all things give way,nothing remains”,he regards it a success to grasp the beauty of a moment,the highest quality in flux of time and“burn always with this hard,gemlike flame”,which means to gain as much momentary enjoyment in the limited life as possible.He also pursues a kind of integrity of harmony.Either his elaboration of“all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music”or his discovery of the mixture of“sweetness and power”in renaissance art,reflects his will and effort to reconcile such opposing factors as form and content,Hebrew and Hellene spirits,Paganism and Christianity,sensibility and rationality as well as beauty and morality,etc.Chapter 3 focuses on Pater's aesthetical moral concept.Although Pater stresses that aesthetics should not involve utilitarian purposes,he does not deny the moral value of literary and artistic works as well as the consequence of moral education they might bring.He advocates“higher morality of passion”which aims to reach the heart through feelings and enable people to enter higher spiritual realm.He actually upholds a special moral aesthetics and hopes to assimilate the ethics into aesthetic system,thus his moral theory is first and foremost an aesthetic view and he was in essence an aesthete.With“art for life's sake”as his belief,he views treating life in the spirit of art as the highest moral standard,and practices his art life by contemplation rather than action.Marius portrayed by Pater is actually a self-restraint Epicurean with a sense of responsibility for human,humanity and the world and pursues more the joy of spirit and peace of mind.Pater believes that the reconciliation of enjoyment and moderation will lead people to the happiness and fullness of life.According to the concrete texts,Chapter 4 analyses Pater's dilemma between beauty and morality that reflects the tension,or the conflict and integration of both sides.On the one hand,Pater chooses the style of prose to record the journey of thinking.In addition to the emphasis on the formal beauty of style,he holds that content is also essential as the difference between great art and good art depends directly on its content.He advocates further excavating the moral connotation and meaning of art,putting in the aesthetic form the moral spirit that contributes to the human development and creating great art with noble interest and taste.On the other hand,“imaginary portraits”is a strategy of fiction in novel created by Pater,which means discovering the personality hidden behind philosophic thought or art works.In the four short stories of Imaginary Portraits,the main characters incompatible with the surroundings all dreamed a better world than the reality.They made efforts to poeticize the real world,but finally came to death,maintaining the state of suspension between the aesthetic and ethical.With the method of comparative analysis,Chapter 5 studies the dissemination and acceptance of Pater in modern China.With the influx of Western aestheticism in the early 19^th century,Pater's poetics also attracted the attention of some intellectuals and scholars in modern Chinese literary circles.A few of Pater's works and essays were translated and introduced in the 1920s and early 30s in modern China,but obtained extensive reading among writers and critics with a tendency of aestheticism or pure art theory,who contributed valuable research in the aspects of Pater's art views and morality concepts and produced a significant influence in that era.They realized that Pater was a reserved aesthete,a pessimist who liked meditating on life.In their views,Pater pursued the supremacy of art and impressionistic criticism,proposed to grasp beauty in every moment;meantime,he worshiped noble and elegant spiritual pleasures rather than sensual enjoyment and advocated living an art life.From Pater's“reasoned excitement“,Zhou Zuoren saw his efforts to reconcile the emotional and rational.In his“all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music”,some other scholars told his true meaning of integrating form and content.These were the preliminary attempts to study the relationship between the aesthetic and moral in Pater's poetics.In general,northern decadent-aesthetic writers represented by Zhou Zuoren were more under the influence of Pater and very close to him in spiritual interests,and practiced the ideas of Pater's aestheticism in their literary creation and life.Unlike other aesthetes,Pater in his poetics tried to achieve a harmony between beauty and morality,or reach a balance between the opposites.In his opinion,the spirit of art that combines the aesthetic and ethical should be used to guide life,so as to increase the richness of life and bring people with perfect happiness and freedom of mind.In fact,his thought is conducive to the just and healthy development of literary and art,and also provides profound enlightenment for contemporary literary and artistic theory and criticism.