Nicholas Hawksmoor

摘要

In 1985 a deeply haunting novel appeared with which the early-l8th-century British architect, Nicholas Hawksmoor, is now inextricably linked. On one level the connection was assured as soon as the book's author Peter Ackroyd used Hawksmoor's name for the title. But it was also due to the power of the book itself, which weaves together time and place across two separate narratives: one set in the early 18th century that follows the mysterious occultist-architect Nicholas Dyer - a recasting of the real Hawksmoor - as he erects churches across London; the other takes place in present-day London as a Metropolitan Police detective - the eponymous Hawksmoor - investigates a series of murders around Dyer's churches. Ackroyd's carefully constructed early modern English prose belies the extent to which Dyer was a fictional reworking of the real Hawksmoor, whose six London churches, along with the fictional addition of Little St Hugh, are co-opted into a dark web of murder and Satanism. The churches emerge almost as active agents in the story, shaping the events that swirl around them until the two narratives eventually fuse and time and space collapse into their stark, geometrical abysses.