略萨给青年小说家的信谈说服力

三、说服力The power of persuasion

亲爱的朋友：Dear Friend,

 

您说得有道理。我前两封信，由于在文学才能和小说家的主题来源方面的模糊假设，以及那些动物寓言——绦虫和卡托布勒帕斯的原因，内容过于抽象和犯有令人讨厌的不可证实的毛病。因此现在应该谈一谈主观性较少、尤其与文学方面联系较多的事情了。

 You’re right. My first few letters, with their vague hypothesizing on the literary vocation and the origin of novelists’ themes, not to mention their zoological allegories—the tapeworm, the catoblepas –were overly abstract, their suppositions sadly unverifiable. Which means that the moment has come for us to move on to less subjective matters, ones more specifically rooted in literary practice.

那 咱们就谈谈长篇小说的形式吧，小说中最具体的东西就是形式，不管它显得多么怪诞,

Let us speak, then, of form, which, paradoxical as it may seem, is the novel’s most concrete attribute, since it is form that gives novels their shape and substance. But before we set sail on waters so alluring for those who,

因为通过小说采取的形式，那具体的东西就具有了可感知的真实特点。但是， 在起航驶入您和我喜爱并且操练的小说艺术技巧的水域之前，有必要界定一下您自己很明白但许多读者并不清楚的东西：内容和形式(或者主题、风格和叙述顺序) 的分离是人为造成的，只有出于讲解和分析的原因才能成立，实际上是绝对不会发生的，因为小说讲述的内容与讲述的方式不可能分开。正是这个方式决定故事是否 可信，是否动人或者可笑，是否滑稽或者悲伤。Like you and me, love and practice the narrative craft, it’s worth establishing what you already know very well, though it is not so clear to most readers of novels: the separation of form and content(or theme and style and narrative structure) is artificial, admissible only when we are explaining or analyzing them; it never occurs in reality, since the story a novel tells is inseparable from the way it is told. This way is what determines whether the tale is believable or not, moving or ridiculous, comic or dramatic.

当然，可以说《白鲸》讲述的是一个老海员被一条白鲸迷住的故事：在所有海域里追捕这条鲸鱼，《堂吉诃德》讲述 了一个半疯癫的骑士的冒险和不幸，这位骑士企图在拉曼却平原上再现骑士小说中的英雄业绩。可是有哪位读过这两部小说的人能在"主题"的描写中辨认出麦尔维 尔①和塞万提斯创造的无限丰富和精致的世界呢？当然，为了说明结构是如何使得故事活起来的，是可以把小说的主题与形式分割开来，条件是确保这一分割绝对不 能发生，至少在优秀的小说中如此，——在坏小说中可以，所以才是坏小说——优秀的小说讲述的内容和方式构成一个不可摧毁的统一体。这些小说之所以优秀，正 是因为借助形式所产生的效果，作品被赋予了一种不可抵抗的说服力。

It is of course possible to say that Moby-Dick is the story of sea captain obsessed with a white whale that he pursues across all the world’s oceans and that Don Quixote tells of the adventures and misadventures of a half-mad knight who tries to reproduce on the plains of La Mancha the deeds of the heroes of chivalric literature. But would anyone who has read those novels recognize in such plot descriptions the infinitely rich and subtle universes of Melville and Cervantes? To explain the mechanisms that brings a tale to life, it is permissible to separate content from form only on the condition that it is made clear that such a division never occurs naturally, at least not in good novels. It does occur, on the other hand, in bad ones, and that is why they’re bad, but in good novels what is told and the way it is told are inextricably bound up together. They are good because thanks to the effectiveness their form they are endowed with an irresistible power of persuasion. 

 

假如在您还没有读过《变形记》之前，有 人告诉您那篇小说的主题就是一个可怜的职员变成令人厌恶的甲虫，那您有可能一面打着哈欠一面心想：立刻放弃阅读这类愚蠢的玩艺儿，可是，由于您读过了这个 卡夫卡用魔术般的技巧讲述的故事，您就毫不怀疑地“相信”了格里高尔·萨姆沙的意外事件：您认可这个事情，您同他一道痛苦，您感到毁灭那个可怜人物的绝望 情绪同样在使您窒息，直到随着萨姆沙的去世、那不幸的冒险搅乱了的生活又恢复正常为止。您之所以相信了萨姆沙的故事，是因为卡夫卡能为讲述这个故事找到一 种方式——安排话语和缄默，揭示秘密，讲述细节，组织素材和叙事的时间——一种让读者接受的方式，以便打消读者面对类似叙事过程可能怀有的保留态度。

If before reading The Metamorphosis you had been told that it was about the transformation of a meek little office worker into a repulsive cockroach, you probably would have yawned and said to yourself there was no reason to read such a ridiculous tale. However, since you’ve read the story as Kafka magically tells it, you “believe” wholeheartedly in the terrible plight of Gregor Samsa: you identify with him, you suffer with him, and you feel choked by the same despair that destroys the poor character, until with his death the ordinariness of life as it was (before his unhappy adventure disturbed it) is restored. And you believe the story of Gregor Samsa because Kafka was capable of finding a way to tell it—in words, silences, revelations, details, organizations he or she might harbor when faced with such a tale.

 

为 了让小说具有说服力，就必须讲出故事来，以便最大限度地利用包含在事件和人物中的生活经验，并且努力给读者传达一个幻想：针对现实世界应该自己当家作主。 当小说中发生的一切让我们感觉这是根据小说内部结构的运行而不是外部某个意志的强加命令发生的，我们越是觉得小说更加独立自主了，它的说服力就越大。当一 部小说给我们的印象是它已经自给自足、已经从真正的现实里解放出来、自身已经包含存在所需要的一切的时候，那它就已经拥有了最大的说服力。于是，它就能够 吸引读者，能够让读者相信讲述的故事了；优秀的小说、伟大的小说似乎不是给我们讲述故事，更确切地说，是用它们具有的说服力让我们体验和分享故事。

To equip a novel with power of persuasion, it is necessary to tell your story in such a way that it makes the most of every personal experience implicit in its plot and characters; at the same time, it must transmit to the reader an illusion of autonomy from the real world he inhabits. The more independent and self-contained a novel seems to us, and the more everything happening in it gives us impression of occurring as a result of the story’s internal mechanisms and not as a result of the arbitrary imposition of an outside will, the greater the novel’s power of persuasion.  

When a novel gives us the impression of self-sufficiency, of being freed from real life, of containing in itself  everything it requires to exist, it has reached its maximum capacity for persuasion, successful seducing its readers and making them believe what it tells them. Good novels –great ones—never actually seem to tell us anything; rather, they make us live it and share in it by virtue of their persuasive powers.

您 一定知道布莱希特著名的间离效果理论。他认为，为了使自己准备写出史诗性和教化性戏剧能够达到目的，必须在表演中运用一种技术——演员的动作、台词、甚至 舞台设计本身等方面的演出方式——一种渐渐摧毁“幻想”的技术，它提醒观众舞台上表演的那一切，不是生活，而是戏剧，是谎言，是表演，但应该从中吸取可以 指导行动的经验和教训，以便改变生活。我不清楚您对布莱希特是怎么想的。我认为他是一个伟大的作家，虽然他的剧作常常被意识形态的宣传企图弄得令人不快， 但还是优秀的，幸亏比他的间离效果理论有说服力。

 You’re undoubtedly familiar with Bertolt Brech’s famous theory of the alienation effect. He believed that to succeed in writing the kind of epic and didactic theater he proposed, it was essential to develop a way of staging plays—reflected in the movement or speech of the actors and even the construction of the sets—that would gradually destroy the “illusion” remind the audience that what they were seeing was not real life but theater a fabrication, a performance, from which, nevertheless, conclusions should be drawn and lessons learned promoting action and reform. I don’t know what you think of Brecht. I believe he was a great writer, and that, although he was often hampered by his propagandistic and ideological aims, his plays are excellent and thankfully, much more persuasive than his theorizing.  

 

小说的说服力恰恰追求相反的东西：缩短小说和现实之间的 距离，在抹去二者界线的同时，努力让读者体验那些谎言，仿佛那些谎言就是永恒的真理，那些幻想就是对现实最坚实、可靠的描写。这就是伟大小说所犯下的最大 的欺骗行为：让我们相信世界就如同作品中讲述的那样，仿佛虚构并非虚构，仿佛虚构不是一个被沉重地破坏后又重建的世界，以便平息小说家那种本能——无论他 本人知道与否——的就神欲望(对现实进行再创造)。只有坏小说才具备布莱希特为了观众上好他企图通过剧作开设的政治哲学课所需要的保持距离的能力。缺乏说 服力或者说服力很小的小说，无法让我们相信讲述出来的谎言中的真实；出现在我们面前的谎言还是“谎言”，是造作，是随心所欲但没有生命的编造，它活动起来 沉重而又笨拙，仿佛蹩脚艺人手中的木偶，作者牵引的细线暴露在众目睽睽之下，让人们看到了人物的滑稽处境，无论这些人物有什么功绩或者痛苦都很难打动我 们，因为是毫无自由的欺骗谎言，是被万能主人(作者)赐予生命而操纵的傀儡，难道它们会有那些功绩和痛苦吗?

In its persuasive efforts, the novel aims for exactly the opposite effect: to reduce the distance that separates fiction from reality and, once that boundary is elided, to make the reader live the lie of fiction as if it were the most eternal truth, its illusions the most consistent and convincing depictions of reality. That is the trick great novels play: they convince us that the world is the way they describe it, as if fiction were not what it is, the picture of a world dismantled  and rebuilt to satisfy the deicidal urge to remake reality, the urge that fuels the novelist’s vocation whether he knows it or not. Only bad novels foster the alienation Brecht wanted his spectators to experience in order to learn the political lessons he meant to impart along with his plays. Bad novels lacking in the power of persuasion, or possessing only a weak strain of it, don’t convince us that the lie they’re telling is true; the “lie” appears to us as what it is: a construction, an arbitrary, lifeless invention that moves ploddingly and clumsily, like the puppets of a mediocre puppet master whose threads, manipulated by their creator, are in full sight, exposing them as caricatures of living beings. The deeds or sufferings of these caricatures will scarcely be able to move us: do they, after all, experience anything themselves? They are no more than captive shades, borrowed lives dependent on an omnipotent master.

 

当 然，一部虚构小说的主权不是一种现实，它还是一种虚构。确切地说，一种虚构掌握着一种形象的方式，因此一说到虚构，我总是非常小心翼翼地谈到一种“主权幻 想”、“一个独立存在的印象、从现实世界里解放出来的印象”。某人写长篇小说这个事实，即小说不是自发产生的，都必须是从属的，都有一条与现实世界联系的 脐带。但是，不仅仅因为小说有作者才与实在的生活联系在一起，而且还因为在编造和讲述的故事中，如果小说不对读者生活的这个世界发表看法的话，那么读者就 会觉得小说是个太遥远的东西，是个很难交流的东西，是个与自身经验格格不入的装置：那小说就会永远没有说服力，永远不会迷惑读者，不会吸引读者，不会说服 读者接受书中的道理，使读者体验到讲述的内容，仿佛亲身经历一般。

Naturally, the autonomy of fiction is not a truth—it is a fiction, too. That is to say, fiction is autonomous only in a figurative sense, and that’s why I’ve been very careful when referring to it to speak of an “illusion of autonomy” “the impression of self-sufficiency, of being freed from real life.” Someone is writing these novels. That fact, that they are not the product of spontaneous generation, makes them dependent, connects each of them by an umbilical cord to the rest of the world. But it’s not just having an author that links novels to real life; if the storytelling inventions of noves did not reflect on the world as it is lived by their readers, the novel would be something remote and mute, an artifice that shuts us out: it would never possess any power of persuasion, it could never cast a spell, seduce readers, convince them of its truth, and make them live what it relates as if they were experiencing it themselves.

 

 

这就是虚构小说奇特的模糊性：由于小说知道自己受现实性的奴役是不可避免的，因此希望自主，通过大胆的技巧设想出一种充满幻想的独立自主品格，其空想程度如同歌剧的曲调离开了乐器，或者离开了歌喉一样。

当 形式有效时，就能创造这些奇迹。尽管像主题和形式的问题从实际操作的角度说是一个不可分开的单位，但形式是由两个同等重要的因素组成的，虽然这两个因素总 是缠绕在一起的，出于分析和说明的理由也是可以分离的，它们是：风格和秩序。风格当然是指

This is the curious ambiguity of fiction: it must aspire to independence knowing that its slavery to reality is inevitable, and it must suggest through sophisticated techniques an autonomy and self-sufficiency as deceptive as the melodies of an opera divorced from the instruments or the throats that voice them.

 

叙述故事的话语和方式；秩序指的是对小说素材的组织安排，简而言 之，就是与整个小说结构的巨大支柱有关系的内容：叙述者，叙述空间和时间。

 

为了这封信不拉得太长，有些看法我留待下一封信说，例如：风格，讲述虚构故事的话语，决定小说生(或者死)的说服力。

 

拥抱您。

From works these miracles—when it works. It is in practical terms an indivisible entity, made up of two equally important components that, though they are always intertwined, may be isolated for purposes of analysis and explication: style and order. Style refers, of course, to words, to the way a story is written; order to the organization of the story’s elements. To simplify greatly, order concerns the great axes of all novelistic construction: narrative space and time.

  So as not to make this letter too long, I’ll leave for next time some thoughts on style, the language of fiction, and the workings of that power of persuasion on which the life (or death) of all novels depends.

Fondly,