Uttering The Unutterable-the Writing Of Secular Mysticism In Iris Murdoch's Novel

Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) is a famous contemporary British writer and moral philosopher. Murdoch's thoughts were influenced by Plato, Kant, Wittgenstein,Simone Weil, and Sartre's Existentialism, and Tibetan Buddhism, and gradually had her own system of moral philosophy with "good" for the ethical goal. Murdoch took philosophical thinking into her novels, and using the methods of literature imagination and artistic interpretation to explore the ethical guideline which directs humans to the"good". Mysticism was treated as a kind of aesthetic strategy in her novels to show the true picture of the reality, which makes the novel of philosophical implication has ideological content, at the same time, there is no lack of iconicity. Murdoch's novel creation skillfully integrated the mystique and the speculative features together to form her novels the most significant artistic features. Therefore, by virtue of Murdoch's moral philosophy and the novel texts, to interpret the deep meaning in her novels and help better understand the moral concern and artistic pursuit from her novels, on the basis of the mysterious writing in Murdoch's novels.The European social situation after World War II and Murdoch's criticism to Sartre's existential solipsism, and the suspicion of Freud psychoanalysis, which make her pay more attention to the real world and the mystery of human individual. Simone Weil, Wittgenstein and Plato's mysticism ideology directly led to the generation of Murdoch's mysticism thoughts. Murdoch regarded the mysterious as the essence of humanity and regarded morality as a sort of unesoteric mysticism, the core of moral"good" is mysterious, Murdoch's moral values eventually evolved into a kind of mysticism. At the same time, the mysticism as a way of writing masterly combined Murdoch's philosophical concept with the art image, which makes her novel create amysterious atmosphere and romantic tune, and avoid the shortcomings of boring inthe general philosophical novel.The artistic feature that the mystique interfuses with the speculative in Murdoch's novels is firstly depicted by rendering the mysterious atmosphere, by constructing a kind of deep, closed, dark, and stagnant environment of time and space,describing extreme natural phenomena and the supernatural, using all kinds of imageries, symbols, metaphors and hints, Murdoch created a mysterious and strange atmosphere in her novels to show the mysterious nature of the reality; Secondly Murdoch set up the plot with the mysterious tendency to show the irrational powe has influence on contemporary life, these plots include magic plots which are set up by the mysterious materials such as myths, legends, witchcraft, prediction, folk tales,religious secret organization of twist, and absurdist plots which are set up by accident,chance, coincidence and irrational narrative; Thirdly, a series of mysterious characters that mainly divided into two major categories of artists and saints often appeared in Murdoch's novel, the image of the artists and saints who are the literary interpretation and artistic imagination of Murdoch's philosophical thoughts havc symbolism in the novels, only by the mysterious writing could Murdoch prevent these characters from being the pale symbols and purveyors of her philosophical thoughts; Finally, by the use of the remembrance of characters and the moment of meditation of characters .of a man's experience that near death and the description of the dreams, Murdoch's mysterious writing presented mystical experiences in two ways, these experiences reflect the Murdoch's moral reflection on contemporary individual's spirit life.The mysterious writing in Murdoch's novel is for the purpose of presenting her rational thinking to her readers vividly and invisibly, these philosophical thoughts include how to guide the individual to the pilgrimage road for "good", paying attention on the real individual with "love" eyes and maintaining the mystery of the world. Mysticism as a kind of aesthetic writing strategies, it attempts to reconcile the contradiction between Murdoch's speculative moral philosophy and the perceptual imaginative art, it becomes a communication bridge between rational thinking and sensibility of the poem, it makes the novel perfectly combine the beauty of art and morality of "good" together, it embodies the virtuosity of Murdoch's novels, and shows the novel has profound connotation of philosophical thoughts.