“有时”、创伤疗愈与尾关露丝的《时间物语》

在2013年布克奖提名小说《时间物语》中,日裔美国作家尾关露丝不仅鞭辟入里地揭露了军国主义、东亚金融危机、极端右翼势力等日本现当代社会政治事件对日本人造成的心理创伤,更通过老比丘尼吉柯剖释日本佛教曹洞宗创始人道元禅师的"有时"及其创伤疗愈功能。在当代亚裔美国作家致力于呈现"亚裔少数群体创伤经历的未充分表征的问题"语境下,尾关在小说创作中砥志研思佛教这一东方哲学,为普通日本人与日裔美国人提供了一种修复心理伤痛的可能性。

Ruth Ozeki’s Man Booker-nominated A Tale for the Time Being(2010)explores in all its complexities social and political upheavals in Japan—Japanese militarism,Asian financial crisis,political extremism,etc.It can be argued that the author not only lays bare the psychological trauma of the Japanese characters,but provides,via the Zen Buddhist nun Jiko,a speculum into how Dogen Zenji’s“Uji”can help them cope with their trauma.While most Asian American writings devote almost all their narrative energies to the literary representation of trauma,Ozeki borrows from Soto Zen this Buddhist wisdom and investigates its possibility of trauma recovery in her fiction.