「誇喻之狂喜」：波特萊爾、朗基尼司與過度之美

Abstract

本計畫旨在探討誇喻在波特萊爾的美學與詩歌中所扮演的核心角色。不論在其評論或創作上，波式追求一種過度（excess）的美學，主張將理想美（ideal or absolute beauty）所排除在外的元素變成美的來源。波式所處年代，學院派藝術當道，它一味追求真實以致於造成美的標準化與理性化，波式對此不以為然，強調無奇不美，追求美的多樣化與感性化。此主張可追溯至朗基尼司（Longinus）的雄渾論（the sublime），此乃一種強調情感強度的美學修辭，重視誇張與不可置信的特質以造就震攝與駭人的異常效果。對於波式而言，隆式亦然，達到此情感效果的利器為誇喻（hyperbole），它是一個不顧真實與可信度的修辭手法，因此能將心靈拋入新奇與無限的狂喜（“l’vertige”）之中，這狂喜乃是波式想像力所具備的功能。本計畫將分成兩部分。首先，筆者將審視波式如何厭倦單一特質的美而大膽地切斷真實與美之間的臍帶，並進一步以浪漫派的（亦即強調情感與主觀的）方式重新定義美；此部分將可使讀者瞭解何以誇喻得以在波式的驚奇美學中佔據中心地位。之後，筆者將討論在其詩中，尤其是呈現女人的部分，波式如何使用誇喻來實踐其無奇不美的理論。

This project seeks to explore the central role of hyperbole in Baudelaire’s aesthetics and poetry. In theory and practice, Baudelaire pursues an aesthetics of excess by allowing what is rejected by ideal or absolute beauty to become a source of the beautiful. At the heart of his aesthetics of excess lies l’irrégularité, which arises from his discontent with the taste for the true in art in his age and can be traced to the Longinian sublime, an emotionalist aesthetics that seeks the quality of exaggeration and incredibility to result in a shocking and outrageous abnormality. For Baudelaire, as for Longinus, a great vehicle of achieving such aesthetic enthusiasm is hyperbole, a figure of speech that disregards credibility, accurate similitude, and truth and thus helps plunge the mind into the intoxication (“l’vertige”) of novelty and infinitude, a sensation that the Baudelairean imagination seeks to achieve. This project will be divided into two parts. In the first part, I will examine the ways in which Baudelaire dares to untie the tenacious classical knot between the true and the beautiful—which results in the monotony and banality of (absolute) beauty—and then redefine beauty in a Romantic, or affective and subjective, manner. The reader will understand solidly how and why hyperbole is central to Baudelaire’s aesthetics of excess. The second part will be devoted to a discussion of how Baudelaire—through the use of hyperbole—materialises his expression of beauty in his poetry, notably, his poetic description of woman.