《纯粹美化物》是一篇比较晦涩的作品。作品一开始似乎发生在威登堡一个大学的美学课上。一位讲师正在向学生阐述美的原理。他从美的定义说起,说到美与愉悦的关系,最后用图像向学生展示女性的人体美。然而,他那津津乐道的论述被打断了好几次。其中一次是一位学生的父亲死了,要他回去奔丧。还有一次是校长的干预(这位校长对讲师在大学讲台上肆无忌惮地宣扬人体美大为恼火,表示要把他从课堂里驱逐出去),最后,讲师不得不将学生带到自己房里继续他的美学课。淌若仔细注意一下,读者可以发现,小说的背景似乎发生在中世纪。那位因父亲去世而回家奔丧的学生,很像是莎士比亚笔下那位在威登堡读书并接受了人文主义思想熏陶的丹麦王子哈姆雷特。然而作者并未点明这一点,留给读者的是一种扑朔迷离的感觉。小说以两条平行的线索发展,一条是“哈姆雷特”回家奔丧,一路上读着无神论著作,对宗教、信仰、当时流行的怀疑论等问题提出自己的看法,发出种种感叹,而回到家里却被告知要去参加母亲改嫁的婚筵。另一条线索,也是小说中着墨更多的线索,则是写他走后课堂里发生的风波,以及师生对于美的本质的探讨。这两条线索之间似乎并无直接的联系,因而留给读者许多空白,需要读者以自己的体会和人生经验来作出判断、理解和补充。伯吉斯的文学修养很高,善于思辨,他的不少作品都涉及到文学名著及历史人物,这里所选的《纯粹美化物》就是一例。除了文学创作外,伯吉斯还写了不少文学批评著作,其中比较著名的有《当代小说》(1967)、《莎士比亚》(1970)、《海明威和他的世界》(1978)等。《无休止的旅行者》(The Endless Voyager)和《纯粹美化物》(The Most Beautified)均选自纽约兰登书屋出版的短篇小说集《魔鬼的旋律》(1989)。正待发稿时,获悉伯吉斯先生于1993年11月22日去世的消息。特此提记,以为纪念。 “Pure beauty” is a relatively obscure work. The work seems to have taken place at the beginning of an aesthetic class at a university in Wittenberg. A lecturer is explaining the principle of beauty to students. Starting from the definition of beauty, he talked about the relationship between beauty and pleasure, and finally used images to show the beauty of women’s body. However, his talk of relish was interrupted several times. One of them was the death of a student’s father, asking him to go back to funerals. Another was the intervention of the headmaster (the headmaster insulted the lecturer on the university podium with a blatant advocacy of the beauty of the human body that he was going to be expelled from the classroom.) Finally, the lecturer had to take the student to his room and continue His aesthetics class. If you look carefully, readers can see that the background of the novel seems to have occurred in the Middle Ages. The student who returned home for his father’s death was much like the Danish prince Hamlet who Shakespeare had studied in Wittenberg and embraced by humanism. However, the author did not point out this, leaving readers with a bewildering feeling. The novel is based on two parallel clues: one is Hamlet’s home funeral, reading atheism writings along the way, offering his own views on issues such as religion, belief and prevailing skepticism, To the house was told to go to the wedding remarried mother’s wedding feast. Another clue, but also more clues to ink in the novel, is to write about the storm that took place in the classroom after his departure, and the teachers and students’ exploration of the essence of beauty. There seems to be no direct connection between these two clues, thus leaving the reader with many gaps that require the reader to make judgments, understandings and additions based on his own experience and life experience. Burgess’s literary accomplishments are high and he is good at speculation. Many of his works involve literary masters and historical figures. The “pure beauty” chosen here is an example. In addition to his literary creation, Burgess also wrote a number of literary criticism, notably “Contemporary Novels” (1967), “Shakespeare” (1970), “Hemingway and his World” (1978). The Endless Voyager and The Most Beautified were all taken from the collection of short stories “The Devil’s Melody” (1989) published by Random House in New York. At the time of writing, I was informed of Mr. Burgess’s death on November 22, 1993. Hereby mention, that commemoration.