库切“自传三部曲”中的人称、时态与自我

Person,Tense and Self in Coetzee's "Autobiographical Trilogy"

库切"自传三部曲"中运用的第三人称与现在时同步叙事,有别于传统忏悔体自传所惯用的第一人称与过去时回溯叙事策略,形成"在场的缺席"的叙事矛盾与张力,同时亦表明作者拒绝通过写作为"自我"辩解。库切认为,"所有自传皆他传",自传跟其他虚构作品一样,是一种叙事书写与语言建构。在三部曲中,库切让既往自我以他者面目出现,并以即时性叙事手法使意义处于不确定、未完成的建构之中。这既说明文本中所谓"真实"的复杂性,也象征着用语言建构与找回曾经自我的不可能。写作者立足于当下,试图对历史自我进行道德复原时,其在永恒的时间面前所必然遭遇的失败,即自传与语言的困境。

The use of third-person/present-tense narrative strategy in Coetzee's autobiographical trilogy is di^fferent from the traditional first-person/past-tense retrospective narrative.It forms the 'absence within a presence' narrative paradox and tension,and shows the author's refusal in writing any form of excuses for the self.According to Coetzee,'all autobiography is autre-biography'.Coetzee represents in the trilogy the past self as a 'he' by instant narrative strategy and thus puts the textual meaning in uncertainty and incompletion.All this results in the complexity of truth in text and impossibility of constructing and finding back truth of the historical self.When the writer tries to restore the ethical and historical self,he is destined to be faced with failure in the eternal time,which is the predicament of autobiography and language itself.