有“情”之士的无“情”之作:库切的卡鲁情怀与文学生产

J.M.Coetzee’s Karoo Complex and Its Literary Production

库切对南非的复杂感情可以具体概括为“卡鲁情怀”。这种情怀具有双重维度:既包括库切依恋卡鲁农场和卡鲁地貌的个人情感,也涵盖一种社会属性维度,即作家反思其祖先在南非的殖民历史和推行的种族隔离政策。卡鲁情怀两个层面的张力是他早中期作品的重要叙事线索之一。从文学生产的角度看,库切这位有“情”之士,写就的《雅各•库切之叙述》《内陆深处》《迈克尔•K的生活和时代》等作品,在主题上都是对南非历史和现实的无“情”批判之作;在文学生产过程中,作家运用审美调解,使这些作品颇具文学性和艺术性。因此,研究作家的卡鲁情怀与他早中期作品的关系具有重要的理论和现实意义。

J.M.Coetzee’s paradoxical feelings about South Africa can be summarized as Karoo complex,which involves both the novelist’s attachment to his family farm in the Karoo as well as the landscapes of the Karoo,and his criticisms on Afrikaners’colonial history and the policy of apartheid.These tensions are integrated into one important narrative clue in Coetzee’s early and middle writing career.Based on the analysis of“The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee”,In the Heart of the Country and Life&Times of Michael K from a perspective of literary production and aesthetic mediation,this essay tries to justify the assumption that all these novels are written out of the novelist’s Karoo complex,which further demonstrates the close relationship between Coetzee’s life and his writing.