空间性的镜子:对文学绘图的思考

Spatiality’s Mirrors:Reflections on Literary Cartography

故事叙述者像制图师一样,在作品中创造出对世界的表征,但这种表征并非以更具比喻性的形式纯粹反映那个“真实”的世界。文学中的空间表征必然会使我们置身于嵌套结构,在此,地图的轮廓融入风景的特征,并反过来塑造我们自己的感知和叙事,如此不断往复。文章将对文学绘图展开反思并投射出新绘图,主要将在世界文学的三个经典场景(荷马的《奥德赛》、但丁的《神曲》和麦尔维尔的《大白鲸》)中考察伴随着探索和呈现所产生的各种活动。这些场景某种程度上代表了文学绘图工程的三个不同方面:叙述者的呈现所产生的创造世界的效果,因为个体探索者的行程变成了这个世界的地图;支撑这个被创造的世界的抽象系统或建筑系统,因为这个世界的地理被表现为符合逻辑的样子,目的是为了展示其“真理性”;最后,该工程强烈的反身性,因为地图绘制者必然会被制图行为所标记。跟随奥德修斯、但丁和亚哈的脚步,我们发现自己身处一个巨大深渊的边缘,深渊里的倒影不断循环反射并产生新的景象,在绘制领土的同时会将地图领土化,并由此投射出潜在的其他安排。

Like the cartographer,the storyteller creates a representation of the world presented in the work,but this representation cannot be a simple reflection of the“real”world in a more figurative form.Spatial representations in literature inevitably place us into a kind of mise-en-abyme,where the contours of the map melt into the distinctive features of the landscape,which in turn shape our own perceptions and narratives,and so on.I will examine the concomitant activities of exploration and presentation in three exemplary scenes from world literature(Homer’s Odyssey,Dante’s Commedia,and Melville’s Moby-Dick).In my estimation,these scenes are somehow representative of three distinctive aspects of the literary cartographic project:namely,the world-making effects of a narrator’s presentation,as the itinerary of the individual explorer becomes a map of the world;the abstract or architectonic system that undergirds such a created world,as the geography is shown to conform to a logic in order to demonstrate its“truth”;and,finally the intensely reflexive character of the project,as the mapmaker cannot help but be marked by the cartographic endeavor.Along with Odysseus,Dante,and Ahab,we find ourselves on the brink of a great abyss,whose recursively reflecting reflections generate new visions,projecting potentially alternative arrangements,by simultaneously mapping the territory and territorializing the maps.