挽歌亦或颂歌:菲利普·罗斯小说《凡人》中的生命叙事

Elegy or Ode: The Life Narrative in Philip Roth's Everyman

  • 摘要: 罗斯小说《凡人》之主人公“凡人”无法摆脱的死亡恐惧使小说基调略显哀婉。然而,哀悼生命的易逝固然在“凡人”人生中占据重要位置,但由此引发的对生命永恒性的思索却是促使他坦然面对死亡的核心因素。晚年的他在反思中不仅发现了自己生命里久被忽视的爱的主旋律,也意识到了一味追求生物生命之人生观的谬误。在犹太墓园的沉思和与挖墓人的对话,让他顿悟到精神生命和社会生命的融入才是个体“对抗”死亡的良方。这部带有“挽歌”色彩的小说因此变奏成了一曲生命“颂歌”,小说的生命叙事由此凸显。

     

    Abstract: The fear of death that haunts Everyman in Philip Roth's Everyman endows the fiction a sense of melancholiness. Although mourning life's fugitiveness and fragility takes a significant part in Everyman's whole span of life, meditation on the immortality of life is also the key factor that helps him to view death in a peaceful way. When he becomes old and begins to reflect on the past, Everyman not only gets aware of the theme of love in his life that had been overlooked for so long, he also finds out the mistakes in his past outlook on life, which pays too much attention to biological life. His meditations in the Jewish graveyard and his dialogue with the gravedigger prompt him to get an insight that only by forging spiritual life and social life into one's life, can one have the capability to "resist" death. In this way, this "elegiac" fiction gradually becomes an ode to life, and the life narrative in this fiction is thus manifested.

     

/

返回文章
返回