《间谍》的时间意义探讨

Exploration of Time in The Secret Agent

《间谍》是英国著名小说家约瑟夫·康拉德小说创作后期的一部政治小说。小说围绕格林威治爆炸案进行。格林威治天文台既是现代文明的象征,也是抽象人为时间的具体表现。将故事的主要事件设计成炸毁格林威治天文台,这无疑是对时间发出的挑战,康拉德的时间哲学也在小说中得到了充分体现。本文从叙事时间和心理时间两方面对小说中的时间意义进行了探讨。从叙述角度看,康拉德巧妙地运用一种立体的、多层次的、并与意识融为一体的叙述模式,有意淡化消融近代小说对历时性发生的线性叙述。从意识形态看,作者敏感地把握住了二十世纪转向非理性、往内心世界探索的动向,以心理时间为主轴,努力探索人物的内在世界,强调人物的心理时间和机械时间的不可协调和不同步性,把基于真实事件的格林威治爆炸案件象征地上升为对时间的丰富解读,使作品不仅从主题,更从形式上表达了作家对时间的理解和对欧洲现代文明的怀疑。

The Secret Agent is Joseph Conrad＇ s political novel written in his late period. It has been considered by critics to be the most grim of his novels. The story is based on an attempt to blow up Greenwich Observatory, which suggests Conrad＇ s desire to manipulate time. Conrad＇ s intention to subvert time is implicitly conveyed in his way of constructing the novel. In The Secret Agent, Conrad takes time both as one of the themes and as a narrative index. He investigates the human experience of time and its relationship to knowledge of the external world as well as to the totality of the novel. He incorporates consciousness in a uniquely cubistic, all-leveled narrative pattern with unconventionally temporal intensification. This paper explores the significance of time in the novel from the aspects of narrative time as well as psychological time. It concludes that time is one of the most fundamental parameters through which The Secret Agent is organized and understood. What is revealed in Conrad＇ s chronological aberration functionally contributes to the impact of his novel＇ s totality and results in some kind of vision and illumination. His keen reflection on the issue of time shows the uncertainty of his attitude towards modern European civilization.