毁灭、建构与超越：苏珊·桑塔格虚构作品中死亡疾病主题研究
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摘要
二十世纪六十年代是纽约知识分子圈中新老文化交替的时代,新老文风相互争夺地盘的年代。二战后美国社会呈现出的激进和先锋前卫的政治和艺术思潮冲击着新一代的作家和艺术家。桑塔格作为初出茅庐的新手作家,抱着与注重道德和历史价值的传统现实文学、美国浅薄肤浅的缺乏新鲜元素的文风彻底决裂的姿态。她强调以一种全新的,注重形式上、感官上的美感的,全方位的心感受力,用以挑战过时陈腐的文风。她深受欧洲深厚的、批判性强的文化和文学传统的影响,以其独特的文化气质和品位,在美国文坛崭露头角。就文艺批评的功能而言,桑塔格强调全方位地展示艺术品的透明性和丰富敏锐的可感知性,而不拘泥于对其内容的探索。对于将高雅文化和通俗文化,文化和反文化的截然对立的老派做法,桑塔格明确表示反对,并试图打通它们之间的阻隔和对立,使之彼此关联、互为映衬。她追求的境界是:在保留艺术品古老的人文价值的基础上,以全新的方式和风格对它进行阐释,全面恢复我们所丧失的对于美学价值的感受能力。在这种激进自由的社会风气中,桑塔格高举着弘扬恢复直观感受、形式大于内容的旗帜,反对因循守旧,拒绝传统的作品分析方式,以艺术形式的创新和纯粹的美感拓展全方位的审美意识展示和呈现,从而解放人的感官和思想。这种的彻底的反对传统现实主义的新潮意在打破僵化的阐释方式、树立新的给人带来美感和新鲜体验的视觉、听觉和触觉的感知。桑塔格正是在这种强调表面经验展示的思潮影响下,完全抛弃了对于心理活动的传统叙述和注重故事情节的现实主义的注重现实生活反映的“深度”叙事模式,模仿以萨路特和罗伯·格里耶为代表的法国新小说,瓦解故事、消解人物,摈弃对现实的摹仿,另辟蹊径,转向无深度的表面叙述,开始了她的前两部小说《恩主》和《死亡之匣》的创作。
桑塔格一生中有着广泛的兴趣和不同的身份和标签。她是小说家、散文作家、电影和戏剧导演兼戏剧家,同时又积极关注政治运动,在战火纷飞的南斯拉夫上演《等待戈多》。她有着哲学家的睿智和深邃,对于时尚问题有敏锐和及时的感受,深受欧洲文化和思想的浸淫,热衷于吸取美国、欧洲的作家和思想家的精华。桑塔格的虚构的作品虽然数量不算很多,评价也褒贬不一,但作者却钟情于小说等虚构作品:六十年代的两部小说《恩主》和《死亡之匣》,七八十年代的短篇小说集《我及其他》、关于艾滋病的短篇《我们现在的生活》,九十年代的戏剧《床上的爱丽丝》,后期的两部历史小说《火山情人》和《在美国》。桑塔格的小说创作经历并不顺利,第二部和第三部小说之间有着二十五年的间隔,这反映了作者在先锋激进的反现实主义创作之后的一种逐渐对自身的清醒的认知,和对曾一度被抛弃的传统的小说情节和故事建构的认同和回归。鉴于桑塔格作品的丰富性和多样性,以往的研究多重视桑塔格散文作品的分析和其早期“反对阐释”的思想和对新的感受力的提倡,对于小说等虚构作品的介绍也多是对单部作品的分析和介绍,对于其虚构作品中同一主题的纵向分析较少。
本博士论文研究的重点是探索桑塔格虚构作品在三个不同时期对于死亡疾病主题所呈现的不同特点以及前后风格转变的关联。死亡作为文学母题古往今来许许多多的作家都有涉猎,而疾病作为生死之间的一种常态也常常与死亡并存于文学作品中。桑塔格的思想的既严肃又具深度,她对人生的终极归属和人生中的病痛折磨有着深刻的体悟和认识,这些都确凿地反映在其所钟爱的小说之中。
本论文的第一章介绍了桑塔格的生平和早期所受到的欧洲作家和文化的影响。她所钟爱的作家无一例外地都有着一种阴郁深沉的文风,都对人类生命中经历的种种痛苦、彷徨与挣扎、死亡和疾病有着精彩的刻画,这对年幼的桑塔格有着深刻的影响,并成为作家毕生追求和为之着迷的主题。作者亲身经历的三次与癌症病魔抗争的生死体验都在其作品中留下了不可磨灭的印迹,在三个阶段中虚构作品对于死亡和疾病有着不同的呈现:早期作品充满对梦境中挥之不去的死亡的描摹,表现出对生的彻底的否定和颠覆,对死亡的破坏和魅力的接受;中期作品逐渐回归到对于自身身份的探索和对疾病的不同领悟和积极抗争;后期作品穿越时空,摆脱历史和现实、虚幻与真实的束缚,充满了对女性意识和身份的深邃思考。
第二章主要分析六十年代的两部小说《恩主》和《死亡之匣》。该时期的小说的创作大背景是彻底颠覆性的激进的反文化的六十年代文艺风潮,深受欧洲新小说和哲学思潮影响,强调形式优先于内容的“新感受力”,体现了在倡导“大拒绝”和“主体消亡”的沉默美学指导之下与死亡强大的破坏力的高度契合。小说以超现实的反现实主义的风格,表现了对梦幻、梦魇、濒死以及其中的一系列对生的渴望的消失和对具有强大的破坏力的死亡的欣然接受。作为纽约文化圈新人,桑塔格以其激进的意志大胆突破旧的自然主义的传统文风,摈弃了历史感和深度,只注重当下直接的感受和体验,作品中充斥着对情节、人物和时间的颠覆和创新,突出了意义的偶然性、不确定性和任何阐释的无效性,在打破原有的秩序后无法找到任何固定的新秩序的无奈,体现着“反对阐释”的精神特征。这种巨大的消解性和破坏性正好契合了死亡本能的摧毁一切的本源性,一切的纷乱与喧嚣最后归于静寂。桑塔格在六十年代的小说创作中以先锋派的姿态体现了大刀阔斧地寻求艺术的最大解放力、祛除旧的传统窠臼的文学理想。
第三章讨论七八十年代的社会重归保守以后作者在创作思想上的转变和对死亡主题完全迥异的呈现。桑塔格告别了六十年代的狂飙突进的艺术理想,放弃了前期的激进主张,反而更加重视疾病和死亡对于个体、家庭和社会群体造成的影响。作者本人的死亡体验更加坚定了她对于死亡和疾病的现实的思考。这个时期的短篇小说有着浓重的自传的色彩,《我及其他》中的三个故事分别涉及了第一人称的“我”(很多是作者本人的亲身感悟)对于人生和死亡的认知,对于身体和心理都有疾病的孩子和父母的心理的考验和折磨,以及同样有着心理疾病最后自杀的朋友的生活的认知和感悟。在《我们所生活的年代》中,一个艾滋病人与周遭亲朋好友的连锁反应透露出人们在心理和生活中的各种微妙变化。虽然桑塔格的短篇小说仍保持着警句的句式特征,叙事结构上的视角的突破和创新,这些故事还是有着清晰的线性的结构,而不同于前期的完全没有固定情节,或是多种可能性相互碰撞交织的复杂图景。这个时期桑塔格与乳腺癌作斗争的经历成为作者一生小说创作的一个分水岭,不幸的经历反而激发了生存本能的潜力,是作者对生活充满憧憬和渴望,更关注社会的道德和伦理问题。七八十年代的短篇小说注重描写各种不同的人生困惑和人对疾病的抗争,表达了作者拒绝接受“隐喻”和“耻辱化”的标签,抗争死亡和疾病、留恋美好生活的积极态度。第四章是对于桑塔格唯一戏剧作品八幕剧《床上的爱丽丝》中死亡疾病主题的探讨。这是桑塔格一生都在思索的问题,这个剧本也是她所声称的一生都在准备的剧本。年届花甲之年的作者对人世沧桑和生死问题有着更为成熟的体验和认知,表现出“向死而在”的豁达与从容的人生态度。剧本穿越了时空的界限,将历史和现实,虚幻与真实并置于一个舞台,描写了一个病弱但对生活及其敏感而有才华的女性对生存的探求。因为她熟悉死亡、了解死亡,更加体会到了生活是向死而在的一种表现,超越了生死的局限,这是对人类生存的一种深刻的辩证的反思。
最后一章是结论,指出桑塔格在其三个时期的虚构作品对于疾病、死亡的描述反映了她在各个时期思想的不同方向和侧重点,显示了桑塔格一向严肃的道德追求和独特的审美取向。同时,要区分作者对待死亡的态度和作品中有关死亡和疾病的主张。
The turbulent nineteen sixties in the American scene witnessed conflicting ideas and claims in social, cultural and literary arenas. It is an age after the war calling for a new sensibility in art and literature which are radical and avant-garde, extreme and revolutionary. Susan Sontag, as a new-comer in the New York intellectual circle, adopted a radical renunciation of the outdated shallow traditional realism prevalent in the previous decades. She advocated a brand-new sensibility which prioritizes form over content, and stresses sensual pleasures as a substitute for the old tradition. Much influenced by the high-minded seriousness in European literature, she exhibited a distinct Euro-centric predilection in her own writings and criticism. To expand the scope of literary criticism, she endorsed an all-rounded transparency and sensuality in literature, so that breakthroughs in the form became a must. She tried to break down the barriers between high and low cultures, culture and counterculture, and enrich the humanistic values to restore the long-lost perceptibility in aestheticism. With the backdrop of the social and cultural turmoil, she appealed for new artistic creativity and opposed the traditional way of interpreting a literary work, with the aim to break the rigid interpretation mode prevalent in the old practices of literary criticism and establish distinctly different mode of perception. Her early works displayed a marked shift from the realistic narratives related to realistic details and the psychology to sensations and feelings represented by such nouveau roman writers as Robbe-Grillet and Nathalie Sarraute. Quite contrary to the realistic representation of the realism, the two early novels of Sontag dissolved the plot and characters, and focused on depthless surface narratives.
All through her life, many different labels were attached to the controversial writer: novelist, essayist, movie and drama director, as well as social activist. As a nonconformist generalist much influenced by European culture, she maintained an interest not only in the abstruse philosophy, but also for current social issues. Sontag held a preference to being called a novelist and she valued her fictional works despite their limited number: from The Benefactor and Death Kit in the sixties, I, Etcetera in the seventies and“The Way We Live”in the eighties, and a play Alice in Bed in the nineties, and two more novels in the last decade of her life: The Volcano Lover and In America. There was an unusual interval of twenty years between her second and third novel, which reflected her painful readjustments in novel writing. Her later short stories and novels showed a tendency to return to the plot and character and tangible stories that were once abandoned. Owing to the diversity of Sontag’s works, the research on them by scholars in China has been mostly related to her essays including such resounding thoughts as“against interpretation”and“a new sensibility”. For her fictional works, most of the research has been made for individual works. Very little has been contributed to the theme analysis of her fictional works.
The focus of this Ph.D. dissertation is the theme of death and disease in Sontag’s fictional works in three different periods and the reasons behind the evolutions. Life and death has always been a concern in literature, and disease, as a common state between the two, is also found in numerous literary works. With a persistent high-minded seriousness in her thoughts, Sontag has kept a unique understanding in her life and writings. In a sense, her obsession with death and disease becomes a perpetual fascinating theme in her novels, short stories and play.
Chapter One gives an overview of the writer and the reason for her obsession with death and disease. Her favorite writers have, without exception, profound concern about the fate of human beings and the melancholy contemplations on death and disease. Her love for the theme has been consistent throughout her life since she was a teenager. Her educational background, Euro-centric aestheticism and her rich experience in the literary circles both in France and America, as well as her tormenting experiences with cancer for three times, all left indelible traces in her works. The same theme has been rendered different representations in the fictional works in the three different periods. The two experimental novels in the sixties nurtured in the spirit of counterculture and avant-gardism break away from the classical realistic tradition. Both novels are dream novels which are inquiries of shattered human consciousness by inverting the roles of waking lives and dreams, so much so that they mark a radical and thorough subversion of the values of living and a ready acceptance of the destructive charms of death. The middle-period works return to realism, with autobiographical traces, showing a calm reflection on the nature of death and disease and a courageous denial of death and love of life. The play in the final period penetrates into the female consciousness of an invalid but intelligent woman, and transcends the boundary of time and space, reality and fantasy, truth and imagination, to reveal a more philosophical meditation on death and disease.
Chapter Two focuses on two novels in the sixties: The Benefactor and Death Kit. Much influenced by the nouveau roman and European philosophy, the two novels represent the radical stylistic revolution and subversion in the spiritual turmoil of the age. The claim of form over content gives space to the new sensibility, and the prevailing renunciation and the dissolution of subjectivity in the silence of aestheticism correspond well to the overwhelming destruction of death. In the novels, dreams, nightmares, and near-death hallucinations become the object to be examined and the protagonists find themselves more drawn to the charms of Thanatos. The emphasis on the superficial senses and feelings results in the contingency, indefiniteness of meaning and the spirit of refusal to any fixed interpretation, thus giving the works more openness. The powerful dissolution and destruction account for the primordial nature of the death instinct, and all noises and sounds inevitably lead to silence, which is the most avant-gardist stance toward liberating the function of literature.
Chapter Three reflects the transitions from the radicalism in the sixties to the more conservative return in the seventies and eighties. The changes in the society force the writer to give up her previous literary claims and return to realism in the form of short stories. What death and disease could do to the individuals, the family and the communities are much explored in the short story collection I etcetera. The author’s own experience with cancer is another important reason for her to reconsider the meanings of death and disease. Therefore, there is the first-person narration of one’s personal stories reflecting on the implications of death on life, and a troubled couple with a kid suffering psychological problems eager to seek a way out, and the story of a female friend of the narrator killed by illness.“The Way We Live Now”portrays the chain effect of an AIDS victim and the ripples created onto his closest friends. The unfortunate experience of the author with cancer marks a water-shed in Sontag’s writing, and her life instinct becomes unprecedentedly strong in the stories, even though life is never easy when accompanied by disease and threatened by death. The concern for ethics and moral duties becomes more evident in the stories. In the realistic depiction of people’s fighting against death and disease, the implicit message is the indignation at the social stigmas and the metaphorization of such diseases as cancer and AIDS.
Chapter Four concerns the eight-act play Alice in Bed. The play penetrates into the consciousness of the invalid and extremely sensitive Alice James, sister of Henry James, and it goes deeper than that. The play transcends the boundary of time and space, fantasy and reality, imagination and truth to render the meaning of death in multifarious aspects. The play has been what the author claims to have been preparing to write all her life, and incorporates in it more mature reflections on life and death and rich experiences in life. It reflects the philosophical meditation on the concept of“being towards death”, which helps to deepen one’s understanding of life when the meaning of death is realized. One can live a more complete and meaningful life only when one has grasped the essence of death.
The concluding chapter makes a summary of the different representations of death and disease in sharply distinct styles over three different periods. Despite the marked differences, the evolution testifies to the author’s boldness in embracing changes at time changes, and Sontag has been proved to be a besotted aesthete, a serious moralist and passionate modernist. Besides, the author’s attitude towards death is not to be confused with the themes of death and disease in her fictional works.
桑塔格一生中有着广泛的兴趣和不同的身份和标签。她是小说家、散文作家、电影和戏剧导演兼戏剧家,同时又积极关注政治运动,在战火纷飞的南斯拉夫上演《等待戈多》。她有着哲学家的睿智和深邃,对于时尚问题有敏锐和及时的感受,深受欧洲文化和思想的浸淫,热衷于吸取美国、欧洲的作家和思想家的精华。桑塔格的虚构的作品虽然数量不算很多,评价也褒贬不一,但作者却钟情于小说等虚构作品:六十年代的两部小说《恩主》和《死亡之匣》,七八十年代的短篇小说集《我及其他》、关于艾滋病的短篇《我们现在的生活》,九十年代的戏剧《床上的爱丽丝》,后期的两部历史小说《火山情人》和《在美国》。桑塔格的小说创作经历并不顺利,第二部和第三部小说之间有着二十五年的间隔,这反映了作者在先锋激进的反现实主义创作之后的一种逐渐对自身的清醒的认知,和对曾一度被抛弃的传统的小说情节和故事建构的认同和回归。鉴于桑塔格作品的丰富性和多样性,以往的研究多重视桑塔格散文作品的分析和其早期“反对阐释”的思想和对新的感受力的提倡,对于小说等虚构作品的介绍也多是对单部作品的分析和介绍,对于其虚构作品中同一主题的纵向分析较少。
本博士论文研究的重点是探索桑塔格虚构作品在三个不同时期对于死亡疾病主题所呈现的不同特点以及前后风格转变的关联。死亡作为文学母题古往今来许许多多的作家都有涉猎,而疾病作为生死之间的一种常态也常常与死亡并存于文学作品中。桑塔格的思想的既严肃又具深度,她对人生的终极归属和人生中的病痛折磨有着深刻的体悟和认识,这些都确凿地反映在其所钟爱的小说之中。
本论文的第一章介绍了桑塔格的生平和早期所受到的欧洲作家和文化的影响。她所钟爱的作家无一例外地都有着一种阴郁深沉的文风,都对人类生命中经历的种种痛苦、彷徨与挣扎、死亡和疾病有着精彩的刻画,这对年幼的桑塔格有着深刻的影响,并成为作家毕生追求和为之着迷的主题。作者亲身经历的三次与癌症病魔抗争的生死体验都在其作品中留下了不可磨灭的印迹,在三个阶段中虚构作品对于死亡和疾病有着不同的呈现:早期作品充满对梦境中挥之不去的死亡的描摹,表现出对生的彻底的否定和颠覆,对死亡的破坏和魅力的接受;中期作品逐渐回归到对于自身身份的探索和对疾病的不同领悟和积极抗争;后期作品穿越时空,摆脱历史和现实、虚幻与真实的束缚,充满了对女性意识和身份的深邃思考。
第二章主要分析六十年代的两部小说《恩主》和《死亡之匣》。该时期的小说的创作大背景是彻底颠覆性的激进的反文化的六十年代文艺风潮,深受欧洲新小说和哲学思潮影响,强调形式优先于内容的“新感受力”,体现了在倡导“大拒绝”和“主体消亡”的沉默美学指导之下与死亡强大的破坏力的高度契合。小说以超现实的反现实主义的风格,表现了对梦幻、梦魇、濒死以及其中的一系列对生的渴望的消失和对具有强大的破坏力的死亡的欣然接受。作为纽约文化圈新人,桑塔格以其激进的意志大胆突破旧的自然主义的传统文风,摈弃了历史感和深度,只注重当下直接的感受和体验,作品中充斥着对情节、人物和时间的颠覆和创新,突出了意义的偶然性、不确定性和任何阐释的无效性,在打破原有的秩序后无法找到任何固定的新秩序的无奈,体现着“反对阐释”的精神特征。这种巨大的消解性和破坏性正好契合了死亡本能的摧毁一切的本源性,一切的纷乱与喧嚣最后归于静寂。桑塔格在六十年代的小说创作中以先锋派的姿态体现了大刀阔斧地寻求艺术的最大解放力、祛除旧的传统窠臼的文学理想。
第三章讨论七八十年代的社会重归保守以后作者在创作思想上的转变和对死亡主题完全迥异的呈现。桑塔格告别了六十年代的狂飙突进的艺术理想,放弃了前期的激进主张,反而更加重视疾病和死亡对于个体、家庭和社会群体造成的影响。作者本人的死亡体验更加坚定了她对于死亡和疾病的现实的思考。这个时期的短篇小说有着浓重的自传的色彩,《我及其他》中的三个故事分别涉及了第一人称的“我”(很多是作者本人的亲身感悟)对于人生和死亡的认知,对于身体和心理都有疾病的孩子和父母的心理的考验和折磨,以及同样有着心理疾病最后自杀的朋友的生活的认知和感悟。在《我们所生活的年代》中,一个艾滋病人与周遭亲朋好友的连锁反应透露出人们在心理和生活中的各种微妙变化。虽然桑塔格的短篇小说仍保持着警句的句式特征,叙事结构上的视角的突破和创新,这些故事还是有着清晰的线性的结构,而不同于前期的完全没有固定情节,或是多种可能性相互碰撞交织的复杂图景。这个时期桑塔格与乳腺癌作斗争的经历成为作者一生小说创作的一个分水岭,不幸的经历反而激发了生存本能的潜力,是作者对生活充满憧憬和渴望,更关注社会的道德和伦理问题。七八十年代的短篇小说注重描写各种不同的人生困惑和人对疾病的抗争,表达了作者拒绝接受“隐喻”和“耻辱化”的标签,抗争死亡和疾病、留恋美好生活的积极态度。第四章是对于桑塔格唯一戏剧作品八幕剧《床上的爱丽丝》中死亡疾病主题的探讨。这是桑塔格一生都在思索的问题,这个剧本也是她所声称的一生都在准备的剧本。年届花甲之年的作者对人世沧桑和生死问题有着更为成熟的体验和认知,表现出“向死而在”的豁达与从容的人生态度。剧本穿越了时空的界限,将历史和现实,虚幻与真实并置于一个舞台,描写了一个病弱但对生活及其敏感而有才华的女性对生存的探求。因为她熟悉死亡、了解死亡,更加体会到了生活是向死而在的一种表现,超越了生死的局限,这是对人类生存的一种深刻的辩证的反思。
最后一章是结论,指出桑塔格在其三个时期的虚构作品对于疾病、死亡的描述反映了她在各个时期思想的不同方向和侧重点,显示了桑塔格一向严肃的道德追求和独特的审美取向。同时,要区分作者对待死亡的态度和作品中有关死亡和疾病的主张。
The turbulent nineteen sixties in the American scene witnessed conflicting ideas and claims in social, cultural and literary arenas. It is an age after the war calling for a new sensibility in art and literature which are radical and avant-garde, extreme and revolutionary. Susan Sontag, as a new-comer in the New York intellectual circle, adopted a radical renunciation of the outdated shallow traditional realism prevalent in the previous decades. She advocated a brand-new sensibility which prioritizes form over content, and stresses sensual pleasures as a substitute for the old tradition. Much influenced by the high-minded seriousness in European literature, she exhibited a distinct Euro-centric predilection in her own writings and criticism. To expand the scope of literary criticism, she endorsed an all-rounded transparency and sensuality in literature, so that breakthroughs in the form became a must. She tried to break down the barriers between high and low cultures, culture and counterculture, and enrich the humanistic values to restore the long-lost perceptibility in aestheticism. With the backdrop of the social and cultural turmoil, she appealed for new artistic creativity and opposed the traditional way of interpreting a literary work, with the aim to break the rigid interpretation mode prevalent in the old practices of literary criticism and establish distinctly different mode of perception. Her early works displayed a marked shift from the realistic narratives related to realistic details and the psychology to sensations and feelings represented by such nouveau roman writers as Robbe-Grillet and Nathalie Sarraute. Quite contrary to the realistic representation of the realism, the two early novels of Sontag dissolved the plot and characters, and focused on depthless surface narratives.
All through her life, many different labels were attached to the controversial writer: novelist, essayist, movie and drama director, as well as social activist. As a nonconformist generalist much influenced by European culture, she maintained an interest not only in the abstruse philosophy, but also for current social issues. Sontag held a preference to being called a novelist and she valued her fictional works despite their limited number: from The Benefactor and Death Kit in the sixties, I, Etcetera in the seventies and“The Way We Live”in the eighties, and a play Alice in Bed in the nineties, and two more novels in the last decade of her life: The Volcano Lover and In America. There was an unusual interval of twenty years between her second and third novel, which reflected her painful readjustments in novel writing. Her later short stories and novels showed a tendency to return to the plot and character and tangible stories that were once abandoned. Owing to the diversity of Sontag’s works, the research on them by scholars in China has been mostly related to her essays including such resounding thoughts as“against interpretation”and“a new sensibility”. For her fictional works, most of the research has been made for individual works. Very little has been contributed to the theme analysis of her fictional works.
The focus of this Ph.D. dissertation is the theme of death and disease in Sontag’s fictional works in three different periods and the reasons behind the evolutions. Life and death has always been a concern in literature, and disease, as a common state between the two, is also found in numerous literary works. With a persistent high-minded seriousness in her thoughts, Sontag has kept a unique understanding in her life and writings. In a sense, her obsession with death and disease becomes a perpetual fascinating theme in her novels, short stories and play.
Chapter One gives an overview of the writer and the reason for her obsession with death and disease. Her favorite writers have, without exception, profound concern about the fate of human beings and the melancholy contemplations on death and disease. Her love for the theme has been consistent throughout her life since she was a teenager. Her educational background, Euro-centric aestheticism and her rich experience in the literary circles both in France and America, as well as her tormenting experiences with cancer for three times, all left indelible traces in her works. The same theme has been rendered different representations in the fictional works in the three different periods. The two experimental novels in the sixties nurtured in the spirit of counterculture and avant-gardism break away from the classical realistic tradition. Both novels are dream novels which are inquiries of shattered human consciousness by inverting the roles of waking lives and dreams, so much so that they mark a radical and thorough subversion of the values of living and a ready acceptance of the destructive charms of death. The middle-period works return to realism, with autobiographical traces, showing a calm reflection on the nature of death and disease and a courageous denial of death and love of life. The play in the final period penetrates into the female consciousness of an invalid but intelligent woman, and transcends the boundary of time and space, reality and fantasy, truth and imagination, to reveal a more philosophical meditation on death and disease.
Chapter Two focuses on two novels in the sixties: The Benefactor and Death Kit. Much influenced by the nouveau roman and European philosophy, the two novels represent the radical stylistic revolution and subversion in the spiritual turmoil of the age. The claim of form over content gives space to the new sensibility, and the prevailing renunciation and the dissolution of subjectivity in the silence of aestheticism correspond well to the overwhelming destruction of death. In the novels, dreams, nightmares, and near-death hallucinations become the object to be examined and the protagonists find themselves more drawn to the charms of Thanatos. The emphasis on the superficial senses and feelings results in the contingency, indefiniteness of meaning and the spirit of refusal to any fixed interpretation, thus giving the works more openness. The powerful dissolution and destruction account for the primordial nature of the death instinct, and all noises and sounds inevitably lead to silence, which is the most avant-gardist stance toward liberating the function of literature.
Chapter Three reflects the transitions from the radicalism in the sixties to the more conservative return in the seventies and eighties. The changes in the society force the writer to give up her previous literary claims and return to realism in the form of short stories. What death and disease could do to the individuals, the family and the communities are much explored in the short story collection I etcetera. The author’s own experience with cancer is another important reason for her to reconsider the meanings of death and disease. Therefore, there is the first-person narration of one’s personal stories reflecting on the implications of death on life, and a troubled couple with a kid suffering psychological problems eager to seek a way out, and the story of a female friend of the narrator killed by illness.“The Way We Live Now”portrays the chain effect of an AIDS victim and the ripples created onto his closest friends. The unfortunate experience of the author with cancer marks a water-shed in Sontag’s writing, and her life instinct becomes unprecedentedly strong in the stories, even though life is never easy when accompanied by disease and threatened by death. The concern for ethics and moral duties becomes more evident in the stories. In the realistic depiction of people’s fighting against death and disease, the implicit message is the indignation at the social stigmas and the metaphorization of such diseases as cancer and AIDS.
Chapter Four concerns the eight-act play Alice in Bed. The play penetrates into the consciousness of the invalid and extremely sensitive Alice James, sister of Henry James, and it goes deeper than that. The play transcends the boundary of time and space, fantasy and reality, imagination and truth to render the meaning of death in multifarious aspects. The play has been what the author claims to have been preparing to write all her life, and incorporates in it more mature reflections on life and death and rich experiences in life. It reflects the philosophical meditation on the concept of“being towards death”, which helps to deepen one’s understanding of life when the meaning of death is realized. One can live a more complete and meaningful life only when one has grasped the essence of death.
The concluding chapter makes a summary of the different representations of death and disease in sharply distinct styles over three different periods. Despite the marked differences, the evolution testifies to the author’s boldness in embracing changes at time changes, and Sontag has been proved to be a besotted aesthete, a serious moralist and passionate modernist. Besides, the author’s attitude towards death is not to be confused with the themes of death and disease in her fictional works.
引文
1. Steve Wasserman.“Obituary of Susan Sontag,”Los Angeles Times. December 28, 2004.
2. Edward Hirsch.“Susan Sontag, The Art of Fiction No. 143,”Interview. The Paris Review. No. 137, Winter 1995.
3. Ibid.
4. Susan Sontag,“Pilgrimage,”The New Yorker, December 21, 1987, 38.
5. Steve Wasserman.“Obituary of Susan Sontag,”Los Angeles Times. December 28, 2004.
6. In 2002 the UCLA Library acquired the papers of Susan Sontag, a unique record of her distinguished career in American letters. This extensive archive includes manuscripts of her writings; correspondence with contemporary writers, artists, musicians, and other intellectual and historical figures; her personal notebooks; and her private library, consisting of more than 20,000 books in all areas of literature, the arts, history and the social sciences.
1. Edward Hirsch.“Susan Sontag, The Art of Fiction No. 143,”Interview. The Paris Review. No. 137, Winter 1995. Here Sontag also listed a third work she wasn’t at all conscious of at the time, which was Kenneth Burke’s Towards a Better Life.
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5. Charles Baudelaire. Les Fleurs du Mal. Trans. Richard Howard. David R. GodinePublisher, 1983. Les Fleurs du Mal (often translated The Flowers of Evil) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857, it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements. The subject matter of these poems deals with themes relating to decadence and eroticism.
6. Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Collector’s Library, 2003. The concept of“art for art’s sake”played a major role in this book, Oscar Wilde’s only novel. The slogan was coined early in the nineteenth century by the French philosopher Victor Cousin and became a bohemian slogan during the nineteenth century.
7. Ingmar Bergman. Persona. Film, 1966. Sontag wrote on this film in her article“Bergman’s Persona”in 1967, and was later collected in her Styles of Radical Will in 1969.
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刘丹凌,苏珊·桑塔格新感受力美学研究[博士论文]四川大学2007年。
陆杨,《死亡美学》北京:北京大学出版社,2006。
梅丽,作为解放手段的文学[博士论文]上海外国语大学2007年。
桑塔格,《沉默的美学:苏珊·桑塔格论文选》黄梅等译,海口:南海出版公司,2006。
---,《床上的爱丽斯》冯涛译,上海:上海:上海译文出版社,2007。
---,《反对阐释》程巍译,上海:上海译文出版社,2003。
---,《关于他人的痛苦》黄灿然译,上海:上海译文出版社,2006。
---,《疾病的隐喻》程巍译,上海:上海译文出版社,2003。
---,《论摄影》黄灿然译,上海:上海译文出版社,2007。
---,《死亡之匣》李建波译,南京:译林出版社,2005。
---,《在土星的标志下》姚君伟译,上海:上海译文出版社,2006.
---,《中国旅行计划:苏珊·桑塔格短片小说集》申慧辉等译,海口:南海出版公司,2005。
---,《重点所在》陶洁黄灿然等译,上海:上海译文出版社,2004。
---,《铸就偶像:苏珊·桑塔格传》姚君伟译上海:上海译文出版社,2009。
孙燕,《反对阐释—一种后现代的文化表征》上海三联书店2007年。
---,苏珊·桑塔格:一位好战的唯美主义者贵州大学学报(社会科学版) 2007年。
王秋海,反对阐释[博士论文]首都师范大学2004年。
---,桑塔格:“激进”语境下的美国实验派作家外国文学2005年。
---,超现实的精神探索—论桑塔格的小说《恩人》国外文学2008年4期。
---,桑塔格“沉默美学”的意义解读首都师范大学学报(社会科学版) 2010年4期。
王予霞,《苏珊·桑塔格纵论》北京:民族出版社,2003。
---,苏珊·桑塔格研究综述外国文学动态2007年。
---,《苏珊·桑塔格与当代美国左翼文学研究》,中国社会科学出版社,2009。
姚君伟,苏珊·桑塔格及其小说《恩人》外国文学动态2004年。
袁晓玲,桑塔格小说的艺术审美价值及美学特征探索与争鸣(理论月刊) 2009年1月。
---,《桑塔格——思想研究基于小说、文论与影像创作的美学批判》,武汉大学出版社,2010年10月。
张念,苏珊·桑塔格:唯美主义的斗士文景2006年1月。
张亚婷,“疯狂的茶会”:《床上的爱丽斯》中的女性绝望与女性社区中外戏剧视线2009年5期。
周树山,苏珊·桑塔格的启示文艺评论2007年2月。
2. Edward Hirsch.“Susan Sontag, The Art of Fiction No. 143,”Interview. The Paris Review. No. 137, Winter 1995.
3. Ibid.
4. Susan Sontag,“Pilgrimage,”The New Yorker, December 21, 1987, 38.
5. Steve Wasserman.“Obituary of Susan Sontag,”Los Angeles Times. December 28, 2004.
6. In 2002 the UCLA Library acquired the papers of Susan Sontag, a unique record of her distinguished career in American letters. This extensive archive includes manuscripts of her writings; correspondence with contemporary writers, artists, musicians, and other intellectual and historical figures; her personal notebooks; and her private library, consisting of more than 20,000 books in all areas of literature, the arts, history and the social sciences.
1. Edward Hirsch.“Susan Sontag, The Art of Fiction No. 143,”Interview. The Paris Review. No. 137, Winter 1995. Here Sontag also listed a third work she wasn’t at all conscious of at the time, which was Kenneth Burke’s Towards a Better Life.
2. Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Life Is a Dream. Dover, 2002.
3. William Shakespeare. The Tempest. Bantam, 2006.
4. Susan Sontag.“The Idea of Europe,”Where the Stress Falls. New York : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2001.
5. Charles Baudelaire. Les Fleurs du Mal. Trans. Richard Howard. David R. GodinePublisher, 1983. Les Fleurs du Mal (often translated The Flowers of Evil) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857, it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements. The subject matter of these poems deals with themes relating to decadence and eroticism.
6. Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Collector’s Library, 2003. The concept of“art for art’s sake”played a major role in this book, Oscar Wilde’s only novel. The slogan was coined early in the nineteenth century by the French philosopher Victor Cousin and became a bohemian slogan during the nineteenth century.
7. Ingmar Bergman. Persona. Film, 1966. Sontag wrote on this film in her article“Bergman’s Persona”in 1967, and was later collected in her Styles of Radical Will in 1969.
1.Jillian Becker.“Simon Weil,”Street Level Consulting. Online. < http://www.streetlevelconsulting.ca/biographies/weil.htm>.
2. Anthony Trollope. The Way We Live Now. Wordsworth Editions, 2001.
3. ACT UP is the abbreviation for AIDS Coalition to Unlesh Power. ACT UP Americas Committee Promotes the creation of AIDS activist groups throughout the Americas.
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陈文钢,苏珊·桑塔格批评思想研究[博士学位论文]浙江大学2006年。
---,《恩主》与法国“新小说”湖南工业大学学报2008年2期。
---,小说的冒险与小说术的迷幻:论苏珊·桑塔格的《恩主》外国文学研究2008年3期。
段智德,《西方死亡哲学》北京大学出版社,2006。
郝桂莲,作者死后的文本狂欢——从《恩主》和《死亡之匣》看桑塔格早期的小说观解放军外国语学院学报2009年1期。
---,苏珊·桑塔格在中国的接受与研究展望当代外国文学2010年3期。
傅伟勋,《死亡尊严与生命的尊严》北京大学出版社,2006。
李建波,直面人色和那个的阴影——苏珊·桑塔格和她的小说《死亡之匣》名家名作评论2000年5期。
刘丹凌,苏珊·桑塔格新感受力美学研究[博士论文]四川大学2007年。
陆杨,《死亡美学》北京:北京大学出版社,2006。
梅丽,作为解放手段的文学[博士论文]上海外国语大学2007年。
桑塔格,《沉默的美学:苏珊·桑塔格论文选》黄梅等译,海口:南海出版公司,2006。
---,《床上的爱丽斯》冯涛译,上海:上海:上海译文出版社,2007。
---,《反对阐释》程巍译,上海:上海译文出版社,2003。
---,《关于他人的痛苦》黄灿然译,上海:上海译文出版社,2006。
---,《疾病的隐喻》程巍译,上海:上海译文出版社,2003。
---,《论摄影》黄灿然译,上海:上海译文出版社,2007。
---,《死亡之匣》李建波译,南京:译林出版社,2005。
---,《在土星的标志下》姚君伟译,上海:上海译文出版社,2006.
---,《中国旅行计划:苏珊·桑塔格短片小说集》申慧辉等译,海口:南海出版公司,2005。
---,《重点所在》陶洁黄灿然等译,上海:上海译文出版社,2004。
---,《铸就偶像:苏珊·桑塔格传》姚君伟译上海:上海译文出版社,2009。
孙燕,《反对阐释—一种后现代的文化表征》上海三联书店2007年。
---,苏珊·桑塔格:一位好战的唯美主义者贵州大学学报(社会科学版) 2007年。
王秋海,反对阐释[博士论文]首都师范大学2004年。
---,桑塔格:“激进”语境下的美国实验派作家外国文学2005年。
---,超现实的精神探索—论桑塔格的小说《恩人》国外文学2008年4期。
---,桑塔格“沉默美学”的意义解读首都师范大学学报(社会科学版) 2010年4期。
王予霞,《苏珊·桑塔格纵论》北京:民族出版社,2003。
---,苏珊·桑塔格研究综述外国文学动态2007年。
---,《苏珊·桑塔格与当代美国左翼文学研究》,中国社会科学出版社,2009。
姚君伟,苏珊·桑塔格及其小说《恩人》外国文学动态2004年。
袁晓玲,桑塔格小说的艺术审美价值及美学特征探索与争鸣(理论月刊) 2009年1月。
---,《桑塔格——思想研究基于小说、文论与影像创作的美学批判》,武汉大学出版社,2010年10月。
张念,苏珊·桑塔格:唯美主义的斗士文景2006年1月。
张亚婷,“疯狂的茶会”:《床上的爱丽斯》中的女性绝望与女性社区中外戏剧视线2009年5期。
周树山,苏珊·桑塔格的启示文艺评论2007年2月。