語言因為人的干預逐漸叛離其自然性并在現代行至極端。詩人羅伯特·哈斯試圖在對語言的懷疑中重建對它的信任,他將語言帶回其發生和進化的自然史境遇進行重審,將語言在自然發展中的人文戳記看作是人之為生物有機體與其生存環境進行互動的結果。揭示主體感覺世界的過程及感覺的倫理是哈斯詩歌的重要審美模式。詩歌對世界的關系既非映射亦非投射而是介乎其間,在摹仿和虛構之間揭示和創造世界;同時,詩歌將語言的圖像功能和政治表征融為一體,其間蘊含感覺經驗的倫理秩序和浪漫派的實用政治。

As a consequence of human interference in modern times, language has gone to the extreme of deviating from the world to which it gave the original name. As a poet, Robert Hass tries to restore trust in language with his linguistic skepticism, reexamining the emergence and evolution of language in its natural history, and treating human involvement in it as a result of the dynamism between man as an organic creature and his living environment. Hass’ s concerns about ways of seeing the world and ethics of perception have significantly influenced his aesthetics. The relation of his poetry to the world is neither mapping nor projecting but somewhere in between, revealing and creating the world between mimesis and fiction. Meanwhile, the mirroring capacity and political representation of language are fused in Hass’ s poetry to express his ethics of perceptive experience and his politics of romantic pragmatism.