“浪漫”之外——德·昆西鸦片写作中的幻听

Beyond Romanticism:Auditory Hallucinations in De Quincey’s Opium Writings

将德·昆西的鸦片写作置于他整个文学生涯中加以考察,会发现其中出现的歌剧幻听并非只是托名于鸦片致幻作用的浪漫主义想象。德·昆西声称吸食鸦片能“把器官声音的原材料变成精美的精神娱乐”,似在强调鸦片的致幻作用是产生愉悦幻听的关键。这一说法来源于他长期以来所秉持的以舞台表现技巧和剧场整体效果为导向的戏剧批评,以及他所坚信的记忆的“耳语回廊”模型。德·昆西对幻听的非浪漫主义思考,部分解释了为何《一个英国瘾君子的自白》首次发表时的副标题是“一个学者的生活节录”。

The operatic auditory hallucinations in De Quincey’s opium writings, when situated in his whole literary career, are more than the products of Romantic imagination based on the hallucinogenic effect of opium. By claiming that “we are able to construct out of raw material of organic sound an elaborate intellectual pleasure”, De Quincey seems to emphasize that the hallucinogenic effect of opium is the key to pleasant auditory hallucinations. But his words have a more realistic foundation, namely his habitual dramatic criticism that concentrates on stagecraft and dramaturgic effects, as well as what he believes to be the “Whispering Gallery” model of memory. De Quincey’s Non-Romantic meditations on auditory hallucinations partly explain why Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, when first published, bears as subtitle “Being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar”.