米尔豪瑟的《看望》与动物的来临

The Advent of Animal in Steven Millhauser’s “A Visit”

斯蒂文·米尔豪瑟的短篇小说《看望》讲述了叙述者拜访朋友时发现他和一只青蛙过着和谐夫妻生活的故事。该作触及了当代动物理论中的三大主题:跨物种的遭遇和对视、语言和意识、敞开和爱恋。其超现实主义手法不是如传统的动物故事那样讨论当代的物种压迫,而是描述物种沟通的新的可能途径。第一人称叙述者在故事中的暧昧立场和态度转变,成为表征人类向物种逐渐敞开的认知戏剧。

Steven Millhauser’s short fiction “A Visit” tells a story of the narrator’s discovering his friend living a happy married life with a frog. It touches upon the three major motifs of contemporary animal theory: the interspecies encounter and gaze, language and consciousness, opening and love. By a surrealist style, the narrative delves not into the interspecies oppression as many other animal stories do, but instead into the new possibility of an interspecies communication and coexistence. The ambiguous position and changing attitude of the first-person narrator enacts a cognitive drama representing human being’s gradual opening to other species.