谁是“无头骑士”?——《睡谷传奇》中的文化记忆建构

Who Is the “Headless Horseman” ?——The Construct of Cultural Memory in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

华盛顿·欧文在《睡谷传奇》中塑造的"无头骑士"虽有情节意义上的角色独立性,但却延续了其文学原型在德国民间故事中早已预设的身份混杂特质,进而成为霍桑在《红字》序言中表达个人政治失落之际所引以自嘲的矛盾并置——文弱"秀才"克莱恩与复仇"硬骨"布洛姆。本文拟藉此为问题的出发点,通过聚焦于作为欧洲文化幽灵象征的"无头骑士"与克莱恩及布洛姆这两个核心人物发生的角色重叠,分析早期美利坚民族文化身份的"无头性"如何借助欧文在《睡谷传奇》中植入的"驱魔""反驱魔"乃至"自我驱魔"等话语策略,隐喻性地引发了一场围绕欧洲古风情结所进行的扬弃,暗示早期美国民族文化记忆赖以建构的独特手段。

Although the "headless horseman" in Washington Irving’s "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" plays an independent role, it assumes a hybrid identity long presupposed by its archetype in the German folklore, and hence drawn upon by Hawthorne, as suggested in "The Custom House—Introductory," to display a self-mockery at his personal political frustration by juxtaposing Ichabod Crane the emasculated and Brom Bones the vindictive. This article, by focusing on how the "headless horseman"(as a symbol of the apparition of European culture) overlaps with these two core characters, highlights the "headlessness" of early-American cultural identity, not least how it appeals to such strategies as "exorcism," "anti-exorcism," and "self-exorcism," to metaphorically initiate a sublation of Europeanantiquity complex while indicating a unique modus operandi of creating cultural memory for the then newborn America.