文化的传承与历史的想象——论陈河的长篇小说《甲骨时光》

An Inheritance of Culture and an Imagination of History:On Time of Oracle Bones, a Novel by Chen He

《甲骨时光》是陈河回望中华传统文化的作品。小说叙述了中国人发掘殷墟甲骨的过程,反映的却是以海外华人的文化比较视角为潜在背景的中国故事,这在小说的思想表达上是陈河对自己以往创作的超越,也是他对中国文化的回归,小说文化的主题得以彰显;其文本以充分的历史想象而展开,在艺术形式上既有四千年前后两对人物的互文式精神勾连的虚实交错,以及高度写实与浪漫写意的融合,又有西方"寻宝故事"以及时下玄幻穿越类文本的叙述形式的借鉴。《甲骨时光》在内容与形式上的突破,使陈河的这篇小说在世界华人文化圈内有重要的意义和价值。

Time of Oracle Bones is a work in which Chen He looks back on the traditional Chinese culture. Although the novel tells the story of how the Chinese people excavated the oracle bones in the Yin Dynasty ruins, it actually is a Chinese story that uses the cultural-comparative perspective of the Chinese overseas as a potential background, which, in terms of the novel's ideological expression, goes beyond Chen He's creations in the past and is his return to Chinese culture. The theme of culture is made manifest in this novel in which the text is developed with a full historical imagination. In terms of its artistic form, there is the convergence of the actual and the virtual, with the inter-textual spiritual connection of two pairs of characters with a space of four thousand years in between in a combination of highly realistic and romantic ways of writing, and also a story of seeking gold in the West along with a borrowing from the forms of narrative found in the current texts of time-travel fantasies. The breakthrough achieved in form and content in Time of Oracle Bones makes it possible for the novel to have important significance and value in the world of culture among the overseas Chinese.