“翻译”与帝国的“逆写”--从题词进入《北上》的可能

“Translation”and the“Reverse Narrative”of the Empire:A Possible Approach to The Northward through Inscriptions

在《北上》这部小说中,徐则臣试图有意识地建构一个“比较”的视域,通过讲述运河,讲述运河与人的故事,回溯性地探寻祖先的面目并揭示一个民族的秘史,以此实现“还乡”亦是一种“到世界中去”的理想。然而,这项回溯性的工作首先面临着“翻译”的难题,尤其表现在小说中两则引用的题词。无论是龚自珍的诗,还是被严重“误读”的爱德华多·加莱亚诺的句子,都显示出题词与正文之间存在着反讽与自我解构的危险,即一种“不可回溯性”。由此进入小说便会发现,逆流而上的“北上”作为一种方法蜕变为一次有关帝国的“逆写”,而“民族秘史”也成了“民族寓言”无处找寻的替代。

In The Northward,in order to realize an ideal that“returning home”also means a kind of“going out into the world”,Xu Zechen retroactively explores the faces of our ancestors and presents a secret history of our nation through the narrative of the Grand Canal and stories about the Canal and her people in a deliberately comparative perspective.However,a tough problem,namely“translation”which challenges this retroactive project comes out,especially in the two quoted inscriptions of the novel.It is the“non-reversibility”rooted in cracks between inscriptions and the body content that leads to risks of irony and self-deconstruction either in the quoted poem of Gong Zizhen or in the badly misread fragment of Eduardo Galeano.From the gate of the“non-reversibility”into the novel,it can be seen that“going northward”against the current as a method has been degenerating into a kind of simply“reverse”narrative of the Empire,meanwhile the“national allegory”has been replaced by the“the secret history of nations”.