Intuitional Love In Material World

Sherwood Anderson’s writing style was quite different with realistic techniques. Critics had acknowledged that the term "realism" did not accurately describe Anderson’s writing after he had succeeded in expressing life rather than merely describing it. Walter B Rideout pointed out that in Anderson’s stories,"what is important is ’to see beneath the surface of lives,’to perceive the intricate mesh of impulse, desires, drives growing dawn deep in the dark, unrevealed parts of the personality". Similarly, Irving Howe observed that "Anderson is not trying to represent...the immediate surface of human experience; he is rather drawing the abstract and deliberately distorted paradigm of an extreme situation", Anderson’s artistic goal was to express something inexpressible for his characters and to make visible the invisible innermost hidden truth. In his short story anthology Winsberg, Ohio, almost every story was endless quest of human being’s inner world; while in "Death in the Woods", which exposed the creation of a story, he presented the whole process of how to reveal the secret inner life.In the present thesis, the author tries to view Anderson himself and his stories in the context of France philosopher Henri Bergson’s life philosophy. In the introduction, an analogy is drawn between them two in terms of their artistic propositions and philosophic assertions. In chapter one, Bergson himself and his main concepts are briefly introduced in order to smoothly move to the following chapters. In chapter two, it is discussed that how Anderson, through his life impetus and imagination, successfully transcend the barriers of the traditional values. And the root causes of how the characters in Winsberg, Ohio axe distorted to grotesques are discussed in details by using Bergson’s terminologies. In chapter three, it is pointed out by both Anderson and Bergson that the attitude toward the human life is not to cure or to analyze, but to understand and love through empathy and intuition, and only by which can an artist find his true self and reach his maturity. In chapter four, Anderson’s innovative writing style is discussed under the background of Bergson’s philosophy. In conclusion, the author holds that both Anderson’s life and his works can best illustrate Bergson’s life philosophy, which, in turn, helps us to better understand Anderson himself and his works.