沉默与逃避——论《迈克尔·K的生活和时代》中的风景

在布克奖获奖小说《迈克尔·K的生活和时代》中,库切借助风景这种动态的存在深刻探讨了有关沉默与逃避的问题。沉默的风景呼应着主人公迈克尔内心的创伤,它是历史和现实的表征,同时也受制于权力的规训和破坏。风景最终以想象的方式成为了迈克尔的精神庇护所和梦想中的家园,让他得以一次次逃避压迫和强权,小说至此也陷入了逃跑与被捕的无望循环。库切通过风景集中反映了殖民的历史与内战给普通南非人民造成的不可愈合的伤痛,而人文地理学也为解读库切笔下的自然世界提供了新的视角。

Silence and Escape: Landscape in Life & Times of Michael K

In the Booker Prize winning novel Life & Times of Michael K,J.M.Coetzee thoroughly discusses the issues of silence and escape through the dynamic existence of landscape,which corresponds with the inner trauma of the protagonist Michael.It is a representation of history and reality;meanwhile it is also subjected to the discipline and destruction of power.Moreover,by means of imagination,it has finally become the last shelter in Michael’s spiritual world as well as the ideal homeland in his dreams.It is landscape that helps Michael succeed in escaping from oppression and power again and again,thus the novel falls into a hopeless cycle of running-away and being arrested.By using landscape,Coetzee reveals intensely the unhealed sufferings of the ordinary people in South Africa,caused by the colonial history and the civil wars.In addition,anthropogeography provides a new perspective to interpret the natural world in Coetzee’s eyes.