个人病痛与时代沉疴——萨拉特笔下疾病缠身的印度

Illness of the Individual and the Era:The Sick India in the Works of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee

瘟疫影响了印度人民的生活,也在作家的创作中留下了印记。20世纪初的印度小说史上,萨拉特·钱德拉·查特吉是描写疾病与底层生活关系最多的作家。萨拉特在描摹贫民生活时经常会写到疾病。在他的作品中,疾病既是主题的构成要素,也是情节结构的发展动力。他描写了疾病与底层民众如影随形,本来属于生活非常态的疾病却成为常见的现象,凸显了疾病的日常化特征及疾病蕴含的等级内涵;疾病在他的作品中不仅仅是个体的身体和心理的经验,也是社会的痼疾,萨拉特描写了疾病对个体的影响及其在社会关系构建中所起的作用,把个体的病痛与社会批判有机结合起来,更客观而真实地剖开了印度传统社会的痼疾;萨拉特小说中的疾病书写在展示社会痼疾、突出底层痛苦的同时,否定了传统宗教救世的可能性,也描写了现代科学与印度民众之间巨大的鸿沟。小说中的主人公往往表现为"反英雄"的特点,他们脆弱不堪、犹疑不决、缺乏勇气、逃避生活,无力承担改变社会的使命。作家塑造的处于病状的主人公,反映了殖民主义时期失去主体地位的印度形象,从而批判了英国殖民统治对印度的剥夺和戕害。特定的被殖民的历史语境决定了印度疾病的无法治愈,主人公只能在病痛中等待新生的曙光。

Illness affected the lives of the Indian people and left its mark on the work of many writers.In the history of Indian fiction in the early 20th century,Sarat Chandra Chatterjee was the writer who wrote the most about the relationship between illness and the life of the underclass.He often wrote about illness when describing the lives of the poor.In his works,illness is both a constituent element of the theme and a driving force in the development of the plot structure.He portrays the fact that illness,which should not have been a normal part of life,has become a common phenomenon accompanied by the underclass people day by day,highlighting the commonness of illness and the hierarchical connotations it implies.Illness in his writing is not only a physical and psychological experience of the individual,but also a long-standing problem for the whole society.Sarat emphasizes the impact of illness on the individual and its role in the construction of social relations,combining individual’s illness with social criticism and dissecting traditional Indian society in a more objective and truthful way.Those protagonists in their sickly state reflected the image of India,which had lost its subjectivity during the colonial period.Thus the writer criticized the deprivation and maiming of India by British colonialism and indicated that the illness of India could not be cured under the specific historical context.