《间谍》中的“伦敦想象”与现代性困境

The London Imagination and the Dilemma of Modernity in The Secret Agent

《间谍》对“伦敦”的刻画独具特色。作为英国文坛的外来者,约瑟夫·康拉德的独特身世经历与创作意图,以及特定的时代背景和思想语境,使他拥有了不同于其他作家的“伦敦想象”。在陌生的伦敦中,作家把作为虚构文本形象的伦敦塑造成一座具有幽灵特质的都市“魅像”,使真实与虚构的伦敦超越了直截了当的实证关系,成为用虚构为现实“赋形”的想象性关系,其反映了都市生活中的康拉德在面对现代性困境时所产生的焦虑和思索:第一,小说借助流动的空间表征“闲逛者”和“煤气灯”,表达了流亡者在伦敦所遭遇的身份“去本质化”的困境;第二,小说通过对现代都市人的孤寂生存境遇的描绘,展现了作家对“理想价值”的思考,并进一步深入对“英格兰性”的探究。最终,康拉德既否认无政府主义式的破坏与重建,又质疑英国式的温和与折中,揭示了共同信仰和价值观焚毁之后的虚无思想。

The portrayal of“London”in The Secret Agent is unique.As an outsider in the British literary world,Joseph Conrad’s unique life experience and creative intention,as well as the specific background and ideological context of his time,give him a“London imagination”different from other writers.In the unfamiliar London,the writer turns London as a fictional text into a“phantasmagoria”of the city with ghostly qualities,making the real and fictional London transcend the straightforward empirical relationship and become an imaginative relationship of“giving shape”to reality with fiction.It reflects the anxiety and contemplation of Conrad in urban life in the face of the dilemma of modernity:First,the novel expresses the dilemma of“de-essentialization”of the exiles’identity in London through the mobile spatial representations of“loiterers”and“gaslights”;Second,the novel shows the writer’s reflection on“ideal values”through the depiction of the lonely existence of modern urbanites,and further delves into the inquiry of“Englishness”.Ultimately,Conrad denies the anarchist destruction and reconstruction,but also questions the English moderation and compromise,revealing the idea of nothingness after the burning of common beliefs and values.