卡夫卡《论寓言》及其先驱

Kafka’s On Fables and Its Forerunners

卡夫卡短篇名作《论寓言》既是其文本“寓言性”的展示,也是其写作过程的“寓言性展示”,以及内在于文学世界的“文学—现实”之不确定二元关系这一“寓言式结构”的说明,可视作“元寓言”“最后的寓言”或“关于寓言的寓言”。在这一寓言提供的视野中,寓言世界与现实世界相互转化、彼此依存;文学对现实进行解释与转化以及文学批评对文学文本进行解释与转化之生生不息驱动力,皆来自于这一寓言结构。从比较文学渊源学及语文学角度来看,卡夫卡这一作品及其所包含洞见的“先驱”,可被追溯至古代中国的庄子与古代希腊的欧里庇得斯,由此,内在于古今文学关系之“古—今结构”的寓言性可得到阐明。

Kafka’s short masterpiece On Fables is not only a display of the“allegorical”nature of his text,but also an“allegorical display”of his writing process,as well as an illustration of the“allegorical structure”of the uncertain binary relationship between“literature and reality”inherent in the literary world,which can be regarded as“meta-fable”,“final fable”or“allegory about allegory”.In the vision provided by this fable,the allegorical world and the real world are transformed and interdependent and the eternal driving force for literature to interpret and transform reality and literary criticism to interpret and transform literary texts all come from this allegorical structure.From the point of view of comparative literary origins and philology,Kafka’s work and the“forerunners”of the insights it contains can be traced back to Zhuangzi in ancient China and Euripides in ancient Greece,thus illuminating the allegorical nature of the“ancient-modern structure”inherent in the relationship between ancient and modern literature.