文学与激情的疗救——“净化”对抗极端暴力

Literature and the Therapy of Passion:Catharsis against the Extreme Violence

小说《复仇女神》以纳粹军官的视角再现了大屠杀的过程和细节,并依循古希腊戏剧的手法把主人公塑造成悲剧英雄,这种运用反面人物的带入效果、利用文学的净化、同情等治疗功能的做法,引起了许多批评。许多人认为大屠杀不应该、也无法被艺术所再现和虚构,更不应该让读者获得宣泄和净化。在大屠杀这个题材上,净化遭遇到合法性和适用性的质疑。作者从这些争论出发,回顾了巴洛克到启蒙时期关于净化的重要争论,分析了在什么条件下,作家运用出色语言能力和叙述能力以追求同情与净化的效果,才能够被接受。净化这个古典诗学问题之所以被重新讨论,说明文学与伦理的关系依然是一个重要话题,从宣泄与净化中可以重新认识恐惧与人的意义。

Jonathan Littell＇s novel The Kindly Ones describes the process and details of the holocaust from the perspective of a Nazi officer and in doing so it depicts the protagonist as an ancient Greek tragic hero. This way of appropriating the antagonist to the empathy effect and literary catharsis and sympathy tries to achieve therapeutic purpose, but this way invokes much criticism. How can fiction interact with the （re） construction of emotions associated to mass extermination, especially when such emotions are reactivated from the point of view of an SS officer？ After reexamining some of the questions raised by Jonathan Littell＇s The Kindly Ones, and after reconsidering the recurrent reference to tragedy when fictions dealing with mass extermination are at stake, the paper tries to compare two types of critical approaches to the notion of catharsis. The one is the ethical reluctance to connect the experience of extermination with the effects of ＂tragedy＂ in the post-Auschwitch context. The other is that the heterodox attempts questioning the nature （ and even the possibility） of the cathartic process and demystifying the ＂paradigmatic scenarios＂ tragedies provide to stimulate and share certain kinds of emotions. Can such a detour help us to analyze from a different perspective the impact of art on the way we experience, and characterize and evaluate emotions such as ＂pity＂ and ＂terror＂ today？