“替补”性诗学:毕肖普的巴西诗歌

Poetics of“Supplement”:Bishop’s Brazilian Poems

毕肖普超越美国主流文学创作理念,形成一种独特的生命写作。学界关注到她的旅行写作和生命书写,但尚未认识到她以其旅行书写创造了一种“替补”诗学。其诗集《旅行的问题》构建了一系列二元对立结构,每个二元对立中前者对后者进行“替补”。以德里达的解构主义视角来看,毕肖普构建的这些二元对立结构和实施的“替补”策略蕴含着诗人对于想象、现实、历史、旅行和留守家中赋予的深厚意义,以及诗人如何对这些二元对立结构进行决断的思考。《到达圣托斯》实现了想象与现实的“替补”;《巴西,1502年,1月1日》实现了当下与历史的“替补”;《旅行的问题》实现了旅行与留守的“替补”。我们认为:毕肖普一生在做决断但未必能决断,不断思考生命意义但未必得出结论,其“替补”诗学实现了“巴西”对“美国”的“替补”、“新大陆”对“殖民者”的“替补”、“旅行”对“留守”的替补,但她依然无法在这一系列二元对称结构中进行最终决断。

Elizabeth Bishop transcended American mainstream literary creative ideas and formed unique life writing.Scholars have noticed her travel poems and life writing but have not realized that she created a“supplement”poetics with her travel poems.Her poetry collection Questions of Travel constructs a series of binary oppositions,in which the former supplements the latter.In light of Derrida’s deconstruction,Bishop’s construction of these binary oppositions and her implementation of“supplement”strategy contain the deep meaning she endowed with imagination,reality,history,travel and staying at home,and her consideration of how to make a decision among those binary oppositions.In“Arriving at Santos”,imagination supplements reality;in“Brazil,January 1st,1502”,the present supplements history;in“Questions of Travel”,travel supplements staying at home.We conclude that in her whole life Bishop had been making judgment but might not have made them;she continuously meditated over the meaning of life but might not have reached a conclusion.Her poetics of“supplement”realized the substitute and addition of Brazil for United States,the New World for the European colonizers,travel for staying at home,yet she still could not make the final judgment in this series of binary oppositions.