从“共济会”到“最后一块石头”——论《一桶艾蒙提拉多酒》中的“秘密写作”

From “Masons” to “the Last Stone”: On the “Secret Writing” in “The Cask of Amontillado”

《一桶艾蒙提拉多酒》通常被视为坡的经典复仇叙事。国内外学界的讨论亦较多地聚焦于主人公是否忏悔这一伦理维度。而坡力图在作品中植入的深层语义结构(作为坡所倡导的"秘密写作"机制)往往得不到关注。鉴于此,本文拟从文本边缘地带隐匿的"共济会"元素入手,分析其如何借助理想读者的"侧目而视"转化为新的逻辑语义中心,进而成为作品中历史文化内涵得以衍生的关键。在此基础上,本文还试图将故事进一步纳入"元语"图式,通过对情节中的一个核心短语"最后一块石头"进行美学功能分析,说明《一桶艾蒙提拉多酒》在其复仇叙事的表象之下如何精妙地植入了一则以坡的"情节整体观"为阐发对象的小说创作寓言。

'The Cask of Amontillado' is usually regarded as one of Poe's canonical revenge narratives,and as a result,its scholarship either at home or abroad tends to focus on the moral dimension of the protagonist's problematic confession. The inadequacy of this interpretive tradition lies in the fact that the in-depth semantic construct( i. e. the 'secret-writing'mechanism as advocated by Poe) of the tale has often been ignored. To redress the flaw,this article intends to take advantage of the 'masonic'factor hidden on the periphery of the text,analyzing how this factor transforms into a new logic semantic center via the ideal reader's 'sidelong glance,'and in so doing serves as a key to the genesis of the tale's historiocultural connotation.