論Henry Fuseli的Milton Gallery：從撒旦形象的再現論人類學與美學上的矛盾

Representing Satan/Lucifer as Anthropological and Aesthetic Paradox: Henry Fuseli's Milton Gallery (1791-1799)

約翰‧亨利希‧菲斯利可被視為是第一位具備現代意識的獨立畫家，其從客觀性主題朝向創造性主題的轉變，和反對在專制主義與理性主義中所言之生命形式，同時在傳統學院派的封閉世界中引發討論，並使學院派面對新挑戰與新目的。此一過程的特點在於，藝術家對自己的重新體認，及其尋找最適合自身表現的新題材。除荷馬、北歐神話、但丁和莎士比亞之外，米爾頓的《失樂園》成為菲斯利繪畫創作的靈感來源。在18世紀之時，米爾頓被視為天才詩人，其詩作《失樂園》則幾與《聖經》齊名。而在《失樂園》甫出版的幾年間，便成為初萌芽之英國文學經典的核心作品。米爾頓被視為是最偉大的史詩詩人，擁有所有的天賦才華，不僅是企及，他的成就甚至超越了荷馬和維吉爾。但《失樂園》從開始便不只被看作是經典的，它還是神聖的文本；而詩人本身也不只是國家的財產（「我們的米爾頓」），他還是一位受神靈眷顧的作家。以詩歌的誇飾法來形容，米爾頓成為了神聖的、基督教化之受神性啟發的詩人。約翰‧米爾頓《失樂園》中的悲劇英雄不是亞當、基督或神，而是從恩典之中墮落成邪惡象徵的天使－－撒旦。墮落的魔王（撒旦）成為想像的象徵，並使這位反抗權威的藝術家的理念，在「浪漫主義」初期被明確化。此圖像同時匯集並重複出現了許多在今日稱之為歌德式和崇高主義的概念。

John Henry Fuseli can be regarded as the first free-lance painter in the modern sense. The shift of objective thematics toward the creating subject, as well as opposition to the forms of life represented in absolutism and rationalism, at the same time gave rise to a situation to participate in the closed world of classic academic schools, and it confronted them with new challenges and objectives. This process was characterized by reorientation of the artist's attention toward himself or herself, and by the search for new topical areas and formulations most appropriate to their treatment. In addition to Homer, Nordic mythology, Dante, and Shakespeare, Milton's 'Paradise Lost' became an inspirational sources of Fuseli's pictorial inventions. For the 18th century no poet seemed to be closer to the divine than Milton, no poem closer to the sacred Scripture than 'Paradise Lost'. Within few years after its primary publication, 'Paradise Lost' established as the great central work of the nascent English Literary Canon. Milton is claimed to be the ultimate epic poet, possessed of all the gift of natural genius, who can not only match but exceed both Homer und Virgil. But 'Paradise Lost' was frequently figured almost from the beginning not merely as a canonical but also as a sacred text, and its poet not merely as a national property ('our Milton'), but as a writer touched by the divine. At least in poetic hyperbole Milton was becoming godlike, a Christianized furor poeticus. The tragic hero of John Milton's Paradise Lost is not Adam, Christ, or God Himself, but Satan, the former angel who falls from grace and becomes the epitome of evil. The fallen Lucifer (Satan) served as a symbol of the imagination, crystallising the idea of the rebel artist at the opening of what we know as 'Romanticism'. The image brings together many of the recurrent preoccupations of what became known as the Gothic and the Sublime.