十個文學時期７:現代主義(英國篇)

1. 理性唔掂、情感唔掂、自然主義把人推向無神論之後，變成「為藝術而藝術」：But towards the end of the century a different alternative appears, among the first precursors of the modernist movement. Even if there is nothing to live by in this world, they seem to be saying, at least we can construct something meaningful and significant in the separate universe of art. Art can give meaning to a meaningless life; and to some extent we are heirs to this tradition: art, particularly music, functions in this way for many people in our modern culture. You have a meaningless existence at work, but at the end of the day you can go home and you have access there to something really worthwhile, to Stravinsky or John Lennon or whatever your taste may be. It is in the modern period that art begins to assume this almost religious role (along with friendship, love and sexuality), as the thing that is supremely meaningful. We see this kind of approach emerging late in the nineteenth century in France with the Symbolist poets, and in Britain with the aesthetic movement, whose slogan was 'Art for Art's sake'. Out of this development emerged the modernist movement, which includes some of the great masterpieces of English literature. In different ways Joyce, Yeats, Woolf, even the early T.S. Eliot are seeking to construct an autonomous artistic universe that will somehow make sense of this one, or contain its own order and beauty and meaningfulness that this one lacks and that is truly valuable.

2. 但無神論之下，藝術還有標準嗎？：But of course modernism contained within it a problem. What is beauty? You are building a separate universe, but how do you know what is beautiful and significant and worthy of record? When we believed in God we could go back to the beginning of the Bible and see that there is a God who makes things and then declares that they are very good; we see God making the first man and woman and taking them to a place where there were trees that were good to look at and food that was good to eat. For this reason we learn that there is a God who creates beauty, and beauty has meaning because it comes from God