蜕变与抉择:成长小说视野里的《狂人日记》

Metamorphosis and Choice: On The Madman’s Diary from the Perspective of Initiation Novels

跳出启蒙视野,运用西方人本主义心理学知识重新解读《狂人日记》,可以清晰梳理“狂人”心理成长和人格发展的轨迹:其一,“狂人”自我意识刚刚苏醒时,成长的个体对异质性环境产生直觉的紧张惶恐,他开始运用理性观察分析现实历史,发现环境“吃人”,便产生了“被吃”的恐惧;其二,为克服成长压力,重获安全感而挣扎,他拒绝“服从”环境,也体会了“说服”的无效,自我与环境始终无法同一,恐惧无法消除;其三,重获安全感的渴望促使“狂人”回到生命源头——母亲,希望在母爱中得到温暖安全,但最终失望而且更进一步看清了自我与环境的纠缠:成长于历史环境中的个体无法如哪吒那样剔骨还肉,也无法如天狗那样自噬心肝,成长陷入绝望的悖论;最后,狂人在绝境中仍然坚持探索着成长方向,最终选择“生根式”成长,通过孩子与世界建立起爱的关系,与环境“和解”,重获自身心理安全感,寻找自我与民族成长的新道路。“狂人”的心理成长预示着现代中国人精神蜕变成长的艰难及其最后的道路抉择,并在后来的成长小说中得到反复的呈现与书写。作为中国现代文学史上的第一篇白话小说,《狂人日记》也可以说是中国现代第一篇成长小说。

To reinterpret The Madman’s Diary with Western humanism psychology instead of the vision of Enlightenment can clearly sort out the trace of Madman’s psychological growth and personality development:firstly,when self-consciousness has just awakened,the growing individual has an intuitive tension with the heterogeneous environment.Afraid,he began to use rational observation to analyze the real history and find out the environment“can eat people”.The fear of“being eaten”then appears;secondly,the fear cannot be eliminated when he refuses to“obey”the environment in order to overcome the growing stress and experiences the separation of self and environment;the desire to regain the sense of safety makes Madman to return to the origin of life—Mother.However,he becomes more depressed when he understands growing-up in certain environment can’t be achieved by self-sacrifice.Finally,Madman sticks to his ambition and selects the way of“rooting growing”through love establishment between children and the world so as to“compromise”with the environment and look for a new route for self and national growing.Madman’s psychological growth indicates the difficulties of the spiritual transformation of modern Chinese which has been repeatedly written in later novels.The Madman’s Diary is the first novel written in modern Chinese and the first initiation story in Chinese literature.