鲁迅的《铸剑》:一篇后现代主义的小说

Lu Xun's Forging the Sword: A Postmodernist Novel

鲁迅与西方现代主义鼎盛时期(1910-1939年)的主要作家在同一个时期创作,甚至早于这些作家,因此不存在受到西方现代主义的直接影响,更不用说受到后现代主义的影响了,因为后现代主义在鲁迅去世前尚未出现。但是,以后现代主义的审美视角来研究鲁迅作品发现,鲁迅在追寻人类存在的意义以及文学的新概念和实践的过程中,也许是不经意之间走进了后现代文学创作的园地,这在他晚期的《故事新编》中尤其突出。通过细读《故事新编》中的《铸剑》,可以看出鲁迅对人类生存状况的存在主义思考,对宏大叙事的辛辣讽刺,他大量地使用油滑、戏仿、解构式反讽,在小说叙事中混合现实主义、象征主义、魔幻现实主义、奇幻主义、超现实主义等写作手法,清楚地表现出现代主义和后现代主义的特征。我们甚至有理由声称,《铸剑》是一篇土生土长的后现代主义小说。

Lu Xun composed his literary works in the same period as the major Western modernist writers in High Modernism(1910-1939)and even earlier than them.Thus,he did not receive direct influence from Western modernism,still less from Western postmodernism,because the latter did not appear at the time of Lu Xun's death.To study Lu Xun's literary works from the aesthetic perspective of postmodernism,however,we will find that in his search for the meanings of human existence and new conceptions and practice of literature,he may have inadvertently ventured into the field of postmodernism.This is especially prominent in his last story collection Old Stories Retold.By close reading Forging the Sword in the collection,we may see that his existential reflections on the human condition,his pungent satire of grand narrative,his abundant use of sardonic mockery,playful pastiche,and deconstructive irony,and a miscellaneous writing techniques which blend realism,symbolism,magical realism,the fantastic,superrealism,and other modes of writing,clearly exhibit the characteristic features of modernism and postmodernism.It is even reasonable to claim that Forging the Sword is a home-made postmodern fictional work.