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1、The Dichotomy of Imagination想象力二分法In the West, the imagination as an image forming faculty has been variously dichotomized. Plotinus, for instance, distinguishes between a higher and a lower phantasy (i.e., imagination).1 For him the lower is dependent on sense while the higher is reflective of idea
2、s. By this distinction he is making his Neoplatonic assertion that the World of Ideas is truer and thus higher than the World of Senses. This distinction, however, also suggests that imagination is, for Plotinus, a mediatory power between the material and the form of art, because in his ideology to
3、create art through imagination is to invest matter with form, and that, in turn, is to unify sense with ideas.After Plotinus, the next significant dichotomy of imagination was made by Hobbes. In his Leviathan Hobbes divides imagination into the simple and the compounded types. The former refers to “
4、the imagining the whole object, as it was presented to the sense,” as when one imagines a man or a horse he has seen before. The latter refers to the imagining of a compounded object whose parts have been perceived before at several times, as when “from the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse
5、 at another, we conceive in our mind a Centaure.” This latter type also includes the compounding of the image of ones own person with the image of the actions of another man, as when “a man imagines himself a Hercules, or an Alexander.”2Hoboes division of imagination into simple and compounded types
6、 does not transgress the bounds of experience, which is for him simply “much memory” or “memory of many things.” However, contrary to many peoples concept of Hobbes empirical tradition, this division of his does not describe imagination as a faculty entirely passive and devoid of invention. To be su
7、re, his “simple imagination” is not creative at all. Yet, his “compounded imagination” is, as he says, capable of “a fiction of the mind.”3 It explains, in fact, that imaginative creation is the work of dissection and recombination, or of relocational displacement of one sense impression with anothe
8、r, not that of producing something absolutely new-an idea to be directly uttered later by Edmund Burke in his The Sublime and Beautiful.In the 18th century, Joseph Addison talked of primary and secondary pleasures of the imagination in his Spectator articles. The basis for such a classification is t
9、he source of pleasures to be derived from imagination. The source of the primary is really-seen objects while that of the secondary is remembered absent or fictitious objects. This assortment serves to explain peoples difference of taste, besides calling our attention to the fact that imagination wo
10、rks not only in the writer but also in the reader-a fact the reader-oriented critics of our time have given special heed to.The Scottish philosopher Dougald Stewart is one of the first to use fancy and imagination to designate two related sorts of the same image-forming faculty. He ascribes imagery
11、wholly to “fancy,” saying that it is the power which “supplies the poet with metaphorical language,” while, freeing “imagination” from its close association with the image, he calls the imagination the power that “creates the complex scenes he the poet describes and the fictitious characters he deli
12、neates,” as illustrated in Miltons Eden, Harringtons Oceana, and Shakespeares Falstaff or Hamlet.4 This differentiation between fancy and imagination is in essence little different from Hobbes division of simple and compounded imagination. Yet, Stewart is here confined to the realm of literature, as
13、 he talks solely of metaphorical language and scenes and characters, instead of just the image of a man or a horse and the image of a Centaur or a Hercules in a scene. More importantly, he makes us realize that the image-forming faculty can deal with either linguistic or extralinguistic matters (arr
14、anging scenes and delineating characters are extralinguistic imagination).The most impressive Romantic who dichotomizes the image-forming faculty by using the names of fancy and imagination is of course S. T. Coleridge. But before Coleridges dichotomy appeared in Biographia Literaria (1817), his fri
15、end Wordsworth had made his own dichotomy in his Preface to Poems (1815). The two Romantics ideas of fancy and imagination are quite different and their respective points have been subject to various interpretations and ample arguments. To speak summarily, for Wordsworth “Fancy is given to quicken a
16、nd to beguile the temporal part of our nature, Imagination to incite and to support the eternal.-Yet is it not the less true that fancy, as she is an active, is also, under her own laws and in her own spirit, a creative faculty.”5 In contrast, regarding imagination as the only creative power, Coleri
17、dge thinks of fancy as merely a passive, associative, rather than creative, faculty, for, as he says, it is “indeed not other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space” and it must needs “receive all its materials ready made from the law of association.”6Actually, neither Co
18、leridges nor Wordsworths distinction between fancy and imagination makes any great sense in terms of literary creation. What really counts is Coleridges further dichotomy of imagination into the primary and the secondary types:The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of
19、all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only
20、in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead
21、. (Biographia Literaria, chpt. 13)This famous passage is indeed charged with philosophical depth, hence giving rise to difficulties of interpretation. In my book Imagination and the Process of Literary Creation (1991), I have given some critics explications which may or may not be right. And I have
22、given my own explication, which I dare to deem very sensible. Basically I agree with most critics that Coleridges primary and secondary imagination ought to refer to the powers of human perception vs. artistic creation. Nevertheless, I think the primary imagination can be exercised in two modes: eit
23、her with or without the users conscious will. And it can result in either ordinary or extraordinary human perception, related respectively to what some psychologists call “R-thinking” (reality-adjusted thinking) and “A-thinking” (autism).7In reality, the above-quoted passage of Coleridges is a descr
24、iption of two crucial stages in the process of artistic creation. The first stage is a pre-composition stage. It is the stage when the poet is experiencing the world with his senses. In doing so the poet is actually perceiving something all the time with his primary imagination. If he is perceptive
25、enough, he may have the so-called insight or vision. But to beget an insight or vision, the primary imagination may need to become extraordinary. A gifted poet may easily get his primary imagination into an extraordinary state, because he is “sensitive” or has great sensibility. At times, the poet m
26、ay even seek the aid of alcohol, opium, or any other stimulant to have his insightful or visionary imagination. Anyway, the primary imagination is, doubtless, a pre-composition power employed to “see into the life of things,” or, to use a common phrase, to “get ideas for writing.”The second crucial
27、stage of artistic creation is the stage when the poet sits down at his desk, using his secondary imagination together with his conscious will to “recreate” the insight or vision or “idea” his primary imagination has obtained for him. The work of this stage, as described in Coleridges famous passage,
28、 is clearly both analytic and synthetic. So, the secondary imagination is a composition power, with which the poet actualizes his idea or composes his poem. Without this imagination the poet is only a half poet, or only a poet to himself since he has not yet expressed his poetry in words.If we read
29、Coleridges famous definitions of the two sorts of imagination along with Wordsworths famous definition of poetry, my argument above will sound even more convincing. As we know, in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth defines poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” and says “
30、it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” Now, when does the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings occur? And when is emotion recollected in tranquility? The poets powerful feelings overflow spontaneously when he is excited by the workings of his primary imagination, of cours
31、e. And when the emotion is recollected in tranquility, the poet has somehow settled down working with his secondary imagination, to be sure. So, Wordsworths definition of poetry also comprises two crucial stages of poetic creation, echoing Coleridges definition of primary and secondary imagination.A
32、fter Wordsworth and Coleridge, no epoch-making dichotomy of imagination has been found again. But John Ruskins three modes (“Imagination Associative,” “Imagination Penetrative,” and “Imagination Contemplative”), Irving Babbitts two classes (the ethical vs. the Arcadian or dalliant imagination), Samu
33、el Alexanders two types (the passive and the creative imagination), and Ernst Cassirers three kinds (“the power of invention, the power of personification, and the power to produce pure sensuous forms”) are among those recent classifications of imagination which may have uses of their own.In my opin
34、ion, if we want to construct a system of dichotomies to fully explain the role of imagination in the entire process of literary creation, we must take into account at least the following points. First, we must distinguish the imagination used to beget ideas for writing from that used to express the
35、ideas. Second, we must differentiate the imagination used to beget ordinary ideas from that used to beget insightful or visionary ideas. Third, we must tell apart the imagination used to deal with linguistic elements and that used to deal with extralinguistic elements. And finally, we must discrimin
36、ate between the imagination used in direct contact with life and the imagination used in vicarious contact with life such as in reading a novel or in watching a movie. According to this scheme, then, we have ideational vs. technical imagination (corresponding to Coleridges primary vs. secondary imag
37、ination); ordinary or plain imagination vs. extraordinary or visionary imagination; linguistic vs. extralinguistic imagination (dealing, respectively, with the sound, sense, and shape in language, and with such things as plot, characterization, setting, theme, motif, and imagery which are expressed
38、through language); and direct vs. indirect imagination.Obviously, the four dichotomies of imagination I make above are not purely my own thinking. They have in fact been considered directly or indirectly by previous thinkers, poets, or critics. I have said that Coleridges primary and secondary imagi
39、nation is equivalent to my ideational and technical (or pre-compositional and compositional) imagination. The same dichotomy is in effect implied in James Russell Lowells assertion that “The poet is he who can best see and best say what is ideal-what belongs to the world of soul and of beauty”8 (ita
40、lics mine). Likewise, my assumed contrast between ordinary and extraordinary imagination is implied in Leslie Stephens (not to say Wordsworths) distinction between fancy and imagination: “fancy deals with the superficial resemblances, and imagination with the deeper truths that underlie them.”9 As t
41、o my idea of linguistic vs. extralinguistic imagination, it is already foreshadowed in Dougald Stewarts ideas of fancy vs. imagination, as mentioned above. And finally in Addisons differentiating primary from secondary pleasures of imagination is already seen my concept of direct vs. indirect imagin
42、ation.My ways of dichotomizing imagination are in truth influenced by some classical Chinese critical ideas, too. In classical Chinese criticism, the term 神思 shen-ssu (literally, “divine thinking”) and the term 比興 pi-hsing (literally, “comparing and exalting”) are roughly equal to what I call vision
43、ary imagination and technical imagination here.10But no matter from what sources I have drawn my dichotomies of imagination, I hope it is clear now that in the process of literary creation we do need various sorts of imagination to “read” life and “write” out our readings.待添加的隐藏文字内容3Notes1. This dis
44、tinction is mentioned in Alex Preminger, ed., The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms. But I can find only some hints of this distinction in Plotinuss work. See Plotinus: The Six Enneads, tr. Stephen Mackenna & B. S. Page, (Chicago & London: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 1952).2. Leviathan, part , c
45、hapter 2. In the edition by C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 89.3. Ibid.4. Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, , pp. 3, 5, & 8. Quoted in Preminger, p. 100.5. See John Spencer Hill, ed., The Romantic Imagination (London: The MacMillan Press, 197
46、7), p. 66.6. See J. Shawcross, ed., Biographia Literaria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), p.202.7. See Peter McKellar, Imagination and Thinking: A Psychological Analysis (New York: Basic Books Inc., 1957), p. 4 ff.8. “The Function of the Poet,” in Literary Criticism: Pope to Croce, eds., G. W. Allen
47、 & H. H. Clark, (Detroit: Wayne State U. P., 1962), p. 421.9. Hours in Library, quoted in Frederick Clarke Prescott, The Poetic Mind (Ithaca, N. Y.: Great Seal Books, 1922), p. 142.10. See Liu Hsieh, The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, tr. Vincent Yuchung Shih, (Taipei: Chung Hua Book Co., 1975), pp. 216, 217, 276 & 278. There have been various interpretations of the meanings of pi and hsing, but they do not affect the basic fact that they are technical matters used in imaginative writing.
