麦卡勒斯的《金色眼睛的映像》何以“无法言传”

麦卡勒斯的创作无疑是成功的,但她的小说历来存在争议。她从第二部小说《金色眼睛的映像》开始就涉及扭曲的人生这一敏感话题,以致她的挚友、戏剧家威廉姆斯认为她的作品中有“某种无法言传的东西”。本文基于文本探讨《金色眼睛的映像》中到底有什么神秘而不可言传的东西,小说题目“金色眼睛的映像”与作者所描写的那个畸形的社会有何关系,被作者视为“人物”的那匹马——“火鸟”在作品中扮演着怎样的角色。文章最后结合当时的历史和文化语境、作者本人的性取向及其创作理念进一步分析造成她的小说给人以“无法言传”这种神秘感的原因。

Carson McCullers’writing career is surely successful,but her novels are always controversial.Her concern with twisted lives begins with her second novel Reflections in a Golden Eye,in which Tennessee Williams,her loyal friend,finds"the incommunicable something."Based on close reading of the text,this paper explores what is mysterious and incommunicable in the novel,the relationship between the title"Reflections in a Golden Eye"and the grotesque world depicted by the author,and the role the"firebird,"the horse treated as a character by the author,plays in the novel.The paper finally analyses the reasons why the novel seems mysterious and incommunicable in light of the historical and cultural contexts of McCullers’time,her sexual orientation and her writing ideas.