普里莫·莱维大屠杀回忆录中的“地狱”隐喻

The metaphor of hell in Primo Levi’s Auschwitz memoirs

犹太作家普里莫·莱维是二十世纪意大利文坛巨擘,他在多部大屠杀回忆录中借用了但丁《神曲·地狱篇》的篇章布局、意象、概念隐喻等,就连集中营的地貌特征也与地狱类似。他还将集中营喻为"深渊""地狱边缘""层沟"等,将莱维的《这是不是个人》与《地狱篇》进行对比细读,可探讨地狱隐喻背后蕴藏的深层含义及其引发的争议。但丁式地狱是西方文化中已知的共识意象,莱维以其作为理解奥斯维辛世界的重要途径,显然是合理的。然而,集中营并不符合但丁构想的"罪罚适当"原则,理性语言也并不适合表现极端劫难。因此莱维提出"灰色空间"这一概念,对但丁地狱隐喻进行了创造性的改写。

The Jewish writer Primo Levi is a world acclaimed Italian literary giant.In his masterpiece Se Questoèun Uomo,hell is the metaphor for Auschwitz concentration camp.Levi borrowed the chapter layout and glossary from Dante’s Divina Commedia.The topographic features of Auschwitz are also like those in Dante’s hell,for instance,Abisso,Limbo are often used to describe the camp.As Dante’s hell is an archetypical image in Western culture,it seems reasonable to apply it as an allegorical tool to illuminate the atrocious and abstruse world of Auschwitz.But some scholars find the metaphor extremely absurd,in that it contradicts with Dante’s Contrapasso principle and that extremely irrational catastrophes can not to be adequately represented by rational words.Based on a comparative reading of Levi’s metaphor of hell in Se Questoèun Uomo with Dante’s hell and on an exploration into the hidden meaning and the controversy which arose with this metaphor,this paper argues that the conceptualization of a"grey zone"is Levi’s creative revision of Dante’s metaphor.