康拉德《特务》中被语言阻隔的荒诞人生

The Absurd Life Abstructed by Language in The Secret Agent by Conrad

英国著名作家康拉德的小说《特务》因其洗练的语言和严谨的结构而著名,描写了伦敦的一群无政府主义者。他们借革命为幌子,整天无所事事,高谈阔论。虽然他们都过着穷困潦倒的落魄生活,并有几人相继丧命,但依然执迷不悟,自欺欺人地认为自己在从事一件高尚的事业。究其原因,他们每个人都生活在两个世界当中:一个不容乐观的现实世界和一个用谎言建造的虚构世界,这两个世界之间的张力构成了小说所营造的荒诞气氛。而语言恰恰起到了把人们隔离在现实之外的作用。

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad,famous for its concise language and neat structure,is about several anarchists,who do nothing but spout pointlessly all day long.All of them are living in extreme poverty and distress,and some even get killed successively,but they still cannot face the reality,deceiving themselves and others by pretending to be revolutionaries.The cause of their tragedy is their living in two incompatible worlds： an unbearable world of reality and a fictional world made of lies,the tension between which produces the atmosphere of absurdity.It is the language that isolates the people from their reality.