HAWTHORNEの作品にみられる象徴機能 : THE SCARLET LETTERの場合

抄録

As Henry James says, Hawthorne is perpetually looking for images which shall place themselves in picturesque correspondence with the spiritual facts with which he is concerned. The world that Hawthorne seeks is geeneratd by contemplation of the symbol, not by the eternal yoking-together of two realms which by definition are different in kind. In The Scarlet Letter the scarlet "A" is not only the meaning of adultery but also meaning in general. This aspect of the work is emphasized by the writer's method of circling interpretation through the minds of various characters. Hester is not the only person who wears the symbol. Pearl is also the scarlet letter both physically and mentally. She is really a kind of commentary on the symbol itself. In Dimmesdale the symbol is changed from its normal course an appears as the psychosomatic mark on his breast. In Chillingworth the effect of the symbol on body and mind is complete, because he has entirely plunged himself in a symbolic role. Needless to say, the letter A is the symbol of sin. But it is a concept that the symbol really conveys. Just as quickly as the concept is symbolized to us, our own imagination dresses it up in a private, personal conception, which we can distinguish from the communicable public concept only by a process of abstraction. We never deal with a concept without having some particular presentation of it, through which we grasp it. What we really have in mind, is always universalium in re. When we express this universalium we use another symbol to exhibit it, and still another res will embody it for the mind that sees through our symbol and apprehends the concept in its own way. In fact, it is not the essential act of thought that is symbolization, but an act essential to thought, and prior to it. Symbolization is the essential act of mind; and mind takes in more than what is commonly called thought. There are transformations of experience in the human mind that have quite different overt endings. They end in acts that are neither practical nor communal; I mean the actions we call ritual. Ritual is essentially the active termination of a symbolic transformation of experience. It is not prescribed for a practical purpose, not even that of social solidarity, though such solidarity may be one of its effects. It was Freud who recognized that ritual acts are not genuine instrumental acts, but are motivated primarily a tergo, and carry with them, a feeling not of purpose but of compulsion. They must be performed, not to any visible end, but from a sheer inward need. Empirically senseless, they are none the less important and justified when we regard them as symbolic presentations rather than practical means. They are spontaneous trans-formations of experience. All the characters are the persons who feel down to some realm of reality that contains their ultimate life-symbols and dictates activities which may acquire ritual value. Many symbols in the work may be said to be charged with meanings. They have many symbolic and signific functions, and these functions have been integrated into a complex so that they are all apt to be sympathetically invoked with any chosen one. The letter A is such a charged symbol: the actual instrument of Dimmesdale's death, hence a symbol of suffering; first laid on his shoulders, an actual burden, as well as on both grounds a symbol of his accepted moral burden. The life of a symbol is a smooth and skillful shuttling to and fro between sign-functions and symbolic functions, a steady interweaving of sensory interpretations, influences, imaginative prevision, factual knowledge, and tacit appreciations. Dreams can possess it at night and work off the heaviest load of self-expression needs, and evaporate before the light of day.