恐惧之源——《心是孤独的猎手》的“阈限空间”阐释

The Source of Terror: Interpretation of “the Liminal Space”in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

美国南方女作家卡森·麦卡勒斯向来关注时间与空间问题。在她的长篇小说处女作《心是孤独的猎手》中,"恐惧感"贯穿作品始终,但恐惧之源却无处可寻,令人困惑不已。在这部小说中,通过真实与想象的互动与转换,麦卡勒斯建构了"既不在此亦不在彼"的"阈限空间"。作者借助镜子、里屋与外屋等一系列的阈限空间意象,将时间空间化,以空间叙事的形式打破了"时间性的万能叙事"的窠臼,展示了美国南方社会边缘人群的普遍生存状态。阈限空间的体验是生存体验的内在形式,麦卡勒斯对阈限空间的关注也是她对美国南方社会中"他者"的生存困境与身份认同问题的探询。为此,本文找到了恐惧之源:恐惧直接关乎空间,它与空间的关联更甚于时间。

Carson Mc Cullers,an American Southern woman writer,has always been concerned with time and space. The 'sense of terror'runs through her first novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. However,the source of terror seems to be nowhere to be found,which is very perplexing to readers. In this novel,by means of the interactions and the transformations between the real and the imaginary,Mc Cullers constructs 'the liminal space'which is 'neither here nor there '. In the light of images of the liminal space such as the mirror,the inside room,the outside room and so on,the author makes a breakthrough in 'a temporal master- narrative'by the spatialization of time and the spatial narratives to expose the dreadful life of the marginalized people in the Southern American society. The experiences of the liminal space incarnate the living experiences. Mc Cullers' s concern with the liminal space shows that she offers an insight into the plight and identity of the 'Other'in the Southern American society.Therefore,we have tracked down the source of terror: terror comes fundamentally more from space than from time.