摆渡人与月光澡——迟子建《空色林澡屋》读札

The ferryman and moonlight bath——A review of Chi Zijian’s Empty Forest Bathhouse

迟子建2016年的中篇小说《空色林澡屋》讲述的是一则发生于神秘原始森林乌玛山区的神奇故事。“我”带领一支勘察小分队对休养生息后的森林进行实地勘察,山民关长河一路给我们当向导和护卫。在这段旅途中,还镶嵌着一个女人皂娘和神秘澡屋的传说。整篇小说充满了残忍的幸福、疼痛的温暖与破碎的美好,人性之光与人性幽暗之处共同勾勒出人性的多维景观。通过分析主人公皂娘的“大母神”形象,小说中月亮、澡盆、船等意象以及“真”与“假”的二元叙述话语来探究这部主题颇难索解的小说,以此来阐发迟子建创作的精神高度。

Chi Zijian’s 2016 novella Empty Forest Bathhouse takes the deep and unpredictable old-growth forest in Wuma Mountain as the background,telling that“I”led a small team to conduct a field survey of the forest after recuperation,and the mountain people Guan Changhe served as guide and guard for us all the way.During this journey,there is also a story of a legendary woman and a mysterious bathhouse.The entire novel is filled with cruel happiness,painful warmth and shattered beauty,and the light of human nature and the dark places of human nature together outline the multidimensional landscape of human nature.This article attempts to explore the difficulty to understand theme of the novel by analyzing the protagonist Zao Niang’s image of the“Great Mother God”,the images of the moon,bathtub and ship,and the binary narrative discourse of“true”and“false”in the novel in order to understand the spiritual height of Chi Zijian’s creation.