听觉叙事与民族记忆——以托尼·莫里森的《所罗门之歌》为例

Auditory Narrative and Racial Memory in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon

听觉叙事研究近年来逐渐成为文学研究新的增长点。莫里森小说中有许多关于声音和听觉的书写,这些听觉叙事不仅为读者带来别样的听觉感官体验,而且与黑人民族记忆紧密相连,是黑人摆脱白人主流文化冲击,回归黑人民族历史与文化的关键途径。本文以《所罗门之歌》中的听觉叙事为切入点,探讨声音、倾听在人物回归和重建民族记忆中扮演的角色。听觉意象沉寂与歌声分别代表祖先的缺席与在场;破除种族主义听觉模式,学会因声而听是回归民族记忆的先决条件;因听而思到因听而行的听觉模式蜕变标志人物对民族记忆的反思与重建。听觉叙事是莫里森借助感官想象再现黑人内心世界,重构民族记忆这一创作思想的内在要求与重要体现。

Over the past few years,the study of auditory narrative has increasingly attracted more and more attention in the field of literary criticism.It has been focusing on the depiction of sounds and listening in literary works as well as the way they may actively shape memory,culture,and identity.The sounds and listening in Toni Morrison’s novels not only bring readers a different auditory experience but also closely relate to black racial memory in America. Close readings of texts show that they offer black people an important channel to get rid of the possible negative influences of American mainstream white culture and gain good knowledge of black culture.This paper tries to analyze the auditory narrative in the Song of Solomon and the role sounds and listening play in constructing the protagonist’s identity and the black memory of the American south. Morrison uses quiet and the sounds of a song as the two auditory images that signify respectively the ancestor ’s absence and presence in black families. Milkman,the protagonist,should abandon his deeply-ingrained racist mode of listening before he can have a clear understanding of slavery and black history as a whole. Circe,a former black woman slave,acts as an ancestor figure in the southern black community and mentors Milkman during his search for the memory of the Dead family. Hunting with the local black men in the southern woods is crucial to Milkman’s growth as a black man. The listening practice in the dark wilderness teaches him to listen for survival,frees him from the life-threatening stranglehold of Guitar,and establishes a symbolic and intimate connection between him and his forbears,the runaway slaves during the period of slavery. Listening to the children’s folk rhymes in his southern hometown leads him to reflect upon his own childhood and insinuates more details of the memory of the Dead family. The knowledge that his great-grandfather flies back to Africa to escape slavery arouses in him a huge sense of racial pride and confidence.However,Morrison shows that race-related heroism alone could not make a respectable man. That is,Milkman could not become a mature man if he is ignorant of the sufferings of black women and fails to shoulder his responsibility for what happened to them. The open ending of the novel brings with it a multitude of significance. Based on the above analysis,it can be said that Milkman has internalized the essence of black racial memory,puts what he has learned into practice,and confronts life and death squarely by surrendering himself to the air.In conclusion,Morrison’s depiction of the American south and the black memory is both enlightening and encouraging. Auditory narrative not only manifests her artistic creativity in representing the interior life of black people and their memories of the race-related past,but also her concern for modern blacks growing up in a society dominated by white culture and racism. Auditory narrative can be adopted as a new angle to interpret black literature and works by other literary writers.