作为存在诗学的时间政治:鲁迅文体析论

Politics ofTime as Poetics ofBeing:ACriticalAnalysis of Lu Xun’s Style

本文考察了鲁迅散文创作所体现出来的时间政治。作者认为,记忆与遗忘的二元对立为解读和重构鲁迅存在观的时间形态提供了切入点。本文旨在揭示,时间政治是推动和启发鲁迅写作的叙事和批判能量,使其能够进入一种激进的虚无主义,通过使历史时间更为充实、更加紧凑和更有成效,来驳斥和救赎历史时间。本文将鲁迅的时间政治划分为三个领域:首先以鲁迅借助严复对赫胥黎《天演论》的翻译挪用进化论为研究对象,对鲁迅的宇宙时间政治进行了考察;此处的关键因素并非鲁迅对达尔文进化论理念间接和粗略的了解,而是他早期接触的西方实验科学与数学科学,以及他在地质学、采矿、工程学以及最终在日本接受的生物学和西医培训。这种科学的世界观与作为宇宙秩序的自然进化法则交织在鲁迅的文学表现、叙事和政治理念当中;它保留了一种形而上学的,因此是非政治性的、历史的,甚至是时间的立场。相对于世俗而具体的社会政治,它常在仅由“过渡形式”或“中间事物”所构成的“进化链”中被否定和取代。鲁迅的时间政治的第二个层面,即是在这种时间政治的时间性基础上,建构一种生命自成一条路、消灭或打击一切阻碍它的事物的存在的必要性、紧迫性和首要性。鲁迅时间政治的第三个方面,也是最深层的方面,在于他作为一种写作的散文风格,一种作家意识的自觉。这种自我意识经由一种策略性和稍显刻意的“混合风格”(笔者认为,这是他散文创作的一个中心特征)以及一种二次建构的形式象征性地得以实现;后者多以他笔下的众多序言和与之对应的散文集为例。笔者认为,正是在这些时刻,我们才得以识别五四以降在启蒙运动影响下产生的小说和报告宣传文学之后,鲁迅文学的“二次诞生”抑或“二度降临”。正是通过鲁迅文学更为“自然”的、以小说形式完成的初绽与第二种更政治化、更为自觉的混建风格之间由过渡而生的罅隙,我们才能批判性地定位和分析鲁迅的文学作品,并将其视为中国现代文学的真正起源,以及其历史性、审美抱负和存在政治的具象体现。而这一作为存在诗学的时间政治归根结底亦是厘清过去、现在和未来之间辩证关系的重要途径。

This article examines the politics of time in Lu Xun’s鲁迅(1881–1936)essays.The author argues that the binary of memory and forgetting provides an entry point into interpreting and reconstructing the temporal configuration pertain‐ing to Lu Xun’s concept of being.From this point onwards,as the article seeks to show,the politics of time serves as the narrative and critical energy that propels and inspires Lu Xun’s writing,enabling it to engage in a radical nihilism that both refutes and redeems historical time by making it full,more stressful and more produc‐tive.The politics of time in Lu Xun is divided into three domains in this analy‐sis.First,the author examines the cosmic politics of time in Lu Xun’s appropriation of evolutionary theory via Yan Fu’s严复(1854–1921)translation of Huxley’s Evolu‐tion and Ethics.In this domain,the key factor is not Lu Xun’s second-hand and ap‐proximate understanding of Darwin’s notion of evolution,but rather his early expo‐sure to Western experimental and mathematical science,his training in geology,mining,engineering,and,eventually,in biology and Western medicine in Japan.This scientific worldview is intertwined with the natural law of evolution as a cosmic order in Lu Xun’s literary representation,narrative,and politics,which retain a meta‐physical,thus apolitical,ahistorical,and indeed atemporal stance vis-a-vis concrete social politics as something to be negated and superseded in“the chain of evolution”constituted solely by the“intermediate form”or“what is in-between.”Based on this atemporal politics of time,Lu Xun develops the second aspect of his politics of time as a necessity,urgency,and primacy of existence,of life blazing its own path no mat‐ter what,pu mie扑灭(wiping out or breaking down)everything and anything in the way.The third and the innermost aspect of Lu Xun’s politics of time lies within his es‐sayistic style as a writing of writing,a self-consciousness of the writerly conscious‐ness,which is symbolically made possible by a strategic and deliberate“mixed styles”approach(a central feature of his essay production,as the author argues);and by a secondarily constructed form exemplified by his numerous prefaces and afterwords to his collections of es‐says.The author points out that it is in these moments that we can identify the“second birth”or“second coming”of Lu Xun’s work,that is,after the May-Fourth-era fiction and propaganda pieces under the rubric of Enlightenment.It is through this narrow strait between the first,more“natural”birth of Lu Xun’s fiction work and the second,more politicized,self-conscious,mixed,and secondarily constructed style that we can critically locate and analyze Lu Xun’s literary production as the true origin of modern Chinese literature,its historicity,aesthetic ambition,and its existential politics,which is ultimately a politics by which to work out the dialectical relationship between the past,present,and future.