先锋戏剧、戏剧人物和剧作家的困境:管窥《悲悼》中的语言暴力现象

Avant-Garde Drama, Dramatis Persona and Playwright’s Dilemmas: Encountering Violence of Language in Mourning Becomes Electra

911事件以来,齐泽克等人提出的语言暴力成了西方暴力研究领域的新热点,而戏剧界对语言暴力的感知比理论家们早了大半个世纪,二十世纪初先锋派戏剧家和戏剧理论家就指出语言成了束缚戏剧艺术发展的阻力。尤金·奥尼尔作为西方表现主义戏剧流派的代表人物在作品中反映了语言暴力对个体人物的影响,主要包括语言给生活强加意义体系,给个体命名并通过其说服力量控制个体的思维和行动。而奥尼尔的创作风格和困境体现了语言对戏剧艺术的局限,写剧本从本质上来讲是一种将多维的艺术场景付诸抽象文字的造型描述过程,语言是工具同时也是束缚。而将剧本转变成舞台演出是一个造型描述的逆过程,这也是戏剧艺术摆脱语言重获多维化生命的过程。

Since the event of 9/11, Zizek, alongside with a group of theorists, has extended the study of violence to the field of language. However, this recent hotspot is rarely new for the field of theatrical studies. The Avant-Garde dramatists and theorists had figured out the obstruction from the violence of language upon the development of theatrical arts since the beginning of the20 thcentury. Eugene O’ Neill’s plays, as the representative masterpieces of the Expressionism genre, also display the influence of language’s violence upon the protagonists, who undergo an enforcement of meanings upon their life, enforced naming and mind control by the persuasive power of language. Besides, O’ Neill’s writing dilemma reflects the limitation from the language upon the dramatic creation. Writing dramatic text is, in essence, a process of Ekphrasis,crowding the multidimensional scene into the abstract language, language as both a vehicle and an obstacle. Anyway, the transformation of text into performance is a counter-Ekphrasis process,enriching the life power of theatre as a multidimensional art form.