充满情感厚度的自我剖析——V.S.奈保尔《抵达之谜》中的空间叙事

Soul-searching Thickened with Emotion:Spatial Narrative in V.S.Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival

在《抵达之谜》中,V.S.奈保尔将全书的主题隐藏于叙事中,创作出引发多种阐释的“抵达之谜”。通过对社会和世界变迁的质询和思考,借助非线性的空间书写,奈保尔揭示了作为“精神之地”“花园”的多重意义。通过对“栖居之地”“庄园”和“小屋”这些具有代表性的隐喻空间的描写,作者用细腻的笔触绘制了居住者的心理地图和意识空间。植根于各种细腻的外部景观描写中的,以及叙述者与新世界的情感和精神的碰撞、对旧世界的留念与反思中的,是作家对身份充满情感厚度的自我剖析和对生命和人的存在的“顿悟”。所谓“抵达”更是一种心理上的“抵达”和实现。

In The Enigma of Arrival,V.S.Naipaul weaves a mysterious theme through his ex⁃quisite narration,producing an enigma that is subject to a variety of interpretations.Through non-linear spatial narrative,Naipaul uncovers different images of“garden”as“spirit of place”through his inquiry of and meditation on the changing society and the world.By categorizing“manor”and“cottage”as typical dwelling places,Naipaul portraits through minute observation the dwellers’mental topography and spatial consciousness.The theme that harmonized in the verbal landscape picturesque writing,coupled with the narrator’s emotional conflict with the new world and his self-reflection and memories of the old one,is the soul-searching identification as a writer,an epiphany of human life and existence.The so-called“the enigma of the arrival”is essentially the author’s psychological arrival and realization.