大时代里的小食客——从王安忆《长恨歌》里的食物谈起

Small Diners in a Grand Era——A Research about Food in WANG Anyi's Song of Everlasting Sorrow

阅读王安忆的《长恨歌》,除却以王琦瑶的一生为主线而展开的发生于二十世纪三十到八十年代的上海故事之外,文中还充斥大量关于各式食物的描绘,食物由此成为书中情节以外不可忽视的点缀。透过这些看似简单的食物描写,可以窥见食物与生活的对应关系、食物中体现出的食欲对于人性欲望的一种隐喻、食物对矛盾起到的缓解作用、时代对食物的影响以及从王琦瑶时代的“食物”到薇薇时代的“服装”所隐含的时代变迁。食物的“小”与时代的“大”在小说中得以串联,这既是王安忆“新历史主义”创作的独到之处,也是理解王安忆《长恨歌》的一种新解读方式。

Reading WANG Anyi's Song of Everlasting Sorrow,in addition to the Shanghai story that took place from the 1930s to the 1980s based on WANG Qiyao's life,this novel is also full of descriptions of various foods,and the food becomes the plot of the book in addition to the embellishment that cannot be ignored.Through these seemingly simple depictions of food,we can glimpse the corresponding relationship between food and life.Food embodies a metaphorical representation of human desires through appetite,the role of food in alleviating contradictions and the impact of the era on food,as well as the hidden changes in the times implied by the shift from“food”in WANG Qiyao's era to“clothing”in the Weiwei era.The“smallness”of food and the“grandness”of the era are interconnected in the novel,which not only showcases the uniqueness of WANG Anyi's“new historicism”,but also provides readers with a new way of interpreting WANG Anyi's Song of Everlasting Sorrow.