苏珊·桑塔格论阐释

Susan Sontag’s Reflections on Interpretation

在桑塔格的理论体系中,阐释是人类理解事物做出的积极努力,事物是可以被阐释的。但对艺术作品内容与形式的失衡性阐释会成为过度阐释滋长的温床,人们同时也应该对转换型和隐喻化的阐释方式保持警惕。桑塔格为语言创作者因受困于语言的不可靠性而颇感担忧,因而鼓励人们重视静默的力量以恢复语言的张力。艺术家选择中止创作而踏入完全崭新的领域和直白创作手法的呈现都是静默在文学中的重要体现。在静默的众多功用之中,桑塔格着重强调了阻隔性功用,即创作者借由静默可以从尘世的眼光和历史的重压中抽离出来,更加自由而专心地投入创作。

In Susan Sontag’s theoretical system,interpretation is an active effort made by humans to understand things.However,interpretations that place more emphasis on artistic content over form can easily become overinterpretations.Sontag reminds people to pay attention to the side effects of interpretation,its transformational capacity and its improper metaphors.Realizing that writers are trapped by the unreliability of language,she encourages people to value the power of silence,which manifests itself in the artist’s break in creation and in the rhetorical device of literalness.The power of silence enables artistic creators to focus on their works,free from the anxiety of influence and secular expectations.