马丁·艾米斯《时间箭》中的时间倒置与“显现真实”

Time Inversion and“Real Point”in Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow

英国作家马丁·艾米斯在《时间箭》中以时间倒置叙述大屠杀的做法尽管受到学界诟病,但可视为一种书写真实的有益尝试。时间倒置创造了两种观看关系:叙述者“我”对主人公安沃多本倒置生活的观看,以及读者对“我”的观看的观看。前者不仅揭示导致大屠杀发生的真实原因之一——纳粹种族主义幻象,还以此制造视差,再现大屠杀在历史中真实的本体存在状态;后者意在邀请读者在表层阅读中回应大屠杀的两种历史真实,启发他们想象与反思自身在相同生命政治语境下的真实处境。在对这三种真实的呈现中,时间倒置不再是一场追求戏谑的后现代游戏,而是艾米斯对文学如何有效表征历史真实所做的严肃思考,也是他从历史角度审视现实人类生存困境的责任体现。

Even though Martin Amis’s use of time inversion to recount the Holocaust in Time’s Arrow has been denigrated by scholars,it could still be considered as a meaningful attempt at writing about truth.Time inversion creates two kinds of observations:the“I”(aka the narrator)observes the inverted life of the protagonist,Unverdorben,and readers observe the observation presented by the“I”.The former not only reveals the Nazi racial fantasy,one of the real causes of the Holocaust,but also generates a parallax to reconstruct the Holocaust’s real ontological state in history.The latter aims to invite readers to respond to the two kinds of historical truth about the Holocaust and inspire their imagination and reflection about their own real situation in the similar bio-politics context.In the representation of these three kinds of truth,time inversion is no longer a postmodern game of pleasant banter.Instead,it is both Amis’s serious reflection on how literature should effectively represent the truth of history and his responsible inquisition of the plight of mankind in reality from a historical perspective.