摘要
《美国》是卡夫卡于1912至1914年间创作的第一部长篇小说。在小说开头,纽约港举世闻名的雕像自由女神手持火炬,在卡夫卡的笔下悄然变成了手持利剑。这绝不是作者的失误,作者必另有深意。美国持剑而生,然后仗剑而行,最后剑指天下。卡夫卡似乎早有预言,《美国》创作百年之后,当年的美国已经不复存在,以光明与自由为象征的火炬渐渐演变成以霸权和武力为象征的利剑。利剑替代火炬,与其说是对当时美国的真实写照,毋宁说是对美国以及西方未来的焦虑和预测,而在今天我们似乎见证了卡夫卡的预言。
America is Franz Kafka's first novel written between 1912 and 1914.As Kafka's narrative unfolds at the beginning of the novel,the torch in the hand of the Statue of Liberty,a world-famous statue at the New York Harbor,quietly turns into a sword.It is by no means an inadvertent mistake by the author,but rather a move with deep implications.Figuratively speaking,it is with sword that America has come into being,expanded over the centuries,and dominated the entire world today.Kafka seems to have predicted that a century after the publication of the novel,America,the same old country would not exist anymore.The torch,once a symbol of light and liberty,would gradually turn into a sword epitomizing hegemony and force.The substitution of a sword for the torch is not so much a truthful portrayal of America at that time as an anxiety and prediction about the future of America and the West.Now,we seem to have witnessed everything that Kafka had foreseen.
作者
曾艳兵
Zeng Yanbing(the College of Literature,Renmin University of China,Beijing 100872,China)
出处
《外国文学研究》
北大核心
2023年第2期101-111,共11页
Foreign Literature Studies
基金
国家社会科学基金重点项目“卡夫卡与中国文学、文化关系之研究”(17AWW002)。
