忧郁的纺织者——塞巴尔德散文体小说中的“作者”形象

The Melancholic Weaver:Images of the Author in W.G.Sebald’s Prose Fiction

近年来,关于“作者”概念的讨论在文学理论与批评领域方兴未艾。当代德国作家塞巴尔德的作品或可为此讨论带来新的启示。在他的散文体小说中,塞巴尔德通过三种方式—关于写作的隐喻或类比、对榜样作家与艺术家的评价以及叙述者对创作过程的自我反思—自觉探讨了文学创作的痛苦与价值;这些讨论又与塞巴尔德的采访发言和文学技法遥相呼应,共同塑造了复杂而丰满的作者形象。这一作者形象以其有限的能动性,颠覆了浪漫主义“天才作家”和后结构主义“作者之死”的二元对立,有助于重塑当代文学理论对作者创造力的认知。

The last three decades have seen a surge of discussions on the concept of authorship in the feld of literary theory and criticism. A close analysis of W. G.Sebald’s prose fction may yield illuminating implications for these discussions. In these works, Sebald self-consciously explores the pain and value of literary creation in at least three ways: metaphors of writing, comments on model writers and artists, and the narrators’ refections on their own creative processes. These refections, along with Sebald’s interview remarks and stylistic practices, give rise to a nuanced concept of authorship, the key characteristic of which is the possession of limited, medial agency. Subverting the binary opposition between the Romantic “genius author” and the poststructuralist “death of the author,” this notion of limited agency contributes to the reconception of authorial creativity in modern literary theory.