无处为家——《内陆深处》文本内外的库切（英文）

Nowhere is Home:J. M. Coetzee’s Wrestling with Home Inside/Outside In the Heart of the Country

《内陆深处》是库切20世纪70年代返回南非之后发表的第二部小说。一直对祖国既爱又恨的库切在这个阶段一面和阿非利卡统治当局严格的书籍审查制度周旋;一面在作品中回归阿非利卡文化中的农场语境,对抗这种制度。在现实生活中,库切对审查制度采取“敌视性共处”的态度——尽管他认识到审查制度的诸多弊端,却主动跟审查机构打交道,密切关注《内陆深处》在南非的出版情况;在小说主题上,他选择反田园叙事,用反现实主义的手法刻画了女主人公玛格达的身份危机以及她和跋扈的父亲、叛逆的有色佣仆之间的关系,借此批评阿非利卡文化中白人至上的心态和父权制度。玛格达的悲剧体现了小说本身的历史维度和伦理内涵,同时也折射出作者对于家园问题的纠结。因此,无论书里书外,都反映出一种“无处为家”的困境。

By emphasizing and analyzing the frequent appearance of the term nowhere in J. M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country, I demonstrate the close correspondence between Coetzee’s unsettlement in South Africa in the 1970s and Magda, the female protagonist in In the Heart of the Country who fails to pursue an idealistic home on a remote farm. Coetzee’s authorship, or specifically speaking, his paradoxical feeling about South Africa, embodies itself in hostile coexistence with the rigorous censorship regime in South Africa and in his involvement in Afrikaner culture during this period. By choosing an anti-pastoral genre in an anti?realistic narrative, Coetzee depicts a miserable picture of Magda’s struggle with her patriarchal father, rebellious coloured servants as well as her own identity crisis. The cruel answer for Magda is that nowhere could be the very place to accommodate the ethical values in her mind, though she attempts to subvert the patriarchal authority and seek reciprocity with the coloured servants. Magda’s tragedy provides us with an opportunity to explore the historical and ethical dimensions of the narrative and, beyond that, Coetzee’s wrestling with the issue of home.