论《萨巴斯剧院》中的老龄化问题

The Elderly and Erotism:On Aging in Sabbath’s Theater

《萨巴斯剧院》是美国作家菲利普·罗斯后期关于老年叙事的重要作品。以西塞罗为代表的主流老年观认为进入黄昏期的老年人应是摈弃欲望而顺从超然的沉寂智慧型人格。但是在《萨巴斯剧院》中,罗斯笔下的老年人突破了既定刻板印象,其身上充满了反主流意识形态的否定性元素,他们以性充盈抵抗晚年生活中的孤独与衰老,藉疯狂性爱带来的尖锐的体验感暂时性遗忘世界,从而对抗死亡带来的焦虑。本文借鉴巴塔耶的欲望理论,旨在揭示小说中老年色情和越界欲望实然是一种去蔽的本真性暴力,并深入审视孤独焦虑的老年主体如何冒犯并对抗意识形态世界中的非本真性。

Sabbath’s Theatre is an important work on the narrative of old age in the late period of American writer Philip Roth.The mainstream view of old age,represented by Cicero,is that old people entering their twilight years should be silent and intelligent people who renounce desires and submit to transcendence.However,in Sabbath’s Theatre,elderly characters break through established stereotypes,and the novel is full of anti-mainstream negative elements.Sabbath and Drenka resist loneliness and ageing in their old age by turning to sexual abundance,and they temporarily forget the world through the sharp physical experience brought by crazy sex,so as to combat the anxiety brought on by the thought of death.Inspired by Georges Bataille’s view of desire,this paper aims to reveal that the eroticism and transgressive desires of the elderly in Sabbath’s Theatre are de-concealed sexual violence,and that the author uses erotism as a lens to see how lonely and anxious elderly subjects offend and confront the unauthentic nature of the ideological world.