reading 西方学界关于列斐伏尔思想研究现状综述

刘怀玉(南京大学哲学系江苏南京210093)

〔中图分类号〕B15〔文献标识码 〕A〔文章编号〕1002-8862(2003)05-0021-04

昂利．列斐伏尔(Henri Lefebvre，1901～1991)，一位和20世纪一同降生的现代法国思想大 师 ，在其六十多年的创作生涯中，为后人留下了六十多部著作、三百余篇论文这样一笔丰厚的 精神遗产，是西方学界公认的“日常生活批判理论之父”，“现代法国辩证法之父” ，区域社会学、特别是城市社会学理论的重要奠基人。

值得一提的是，在列斐伏尔的重要著作《日常生活批判》第1卷于1991 年被首次英译刊出之后，其后两卷的英译本可望于2003年前后问世。这是继《 日常生活批判》三大卷的德语与日语译本之后的第三种外文译本。

一关于列斐伏尔的日常生活批判理论的评价

1.关于列斐伏尔的日常生活批判理论的来源与早期形态研究的评述

马克．波斯特发现，列斐伏尔的日常生活批判概念最早见于《被神秘化的意识》一书 。此书是作者写作计划中的《五论唯物主义哲学》之第一种，计划中的第三卷即定名 为《日常生活批判》。十年后的“第三卷”以更大的篇幅变为现实，从此日常生活批判也便 成了列斐伏尔的毕生事业。

特里比希认为，列斐伏尔的日常生活概念可能受到了海德格尔的《存在与时间》一书中的“ 日常状态”与“常人”观点的影响，而不是卢卡奇的物化观点的影响。 通过青年黑格尔的《精神现象学》、海德格尔的《存在与时间》及马 克思的《巴黎手稿》，列斐伏尔于1933年左右在没有读到卢卡奇的《历史与阶级意识》一书 ，特别是其“物化”理论的情况下，与古特曼一起写出了《被神秘化的意识》一书。正是在 此 书中，列斐伏尔提出了后面系统阐述的日常生活异化问题。从书的标题可以看出，列斐伏尔 认识到资本主义社会最深层最广泛的异化，不是马克思当年所深恶痛绝的劳动异化，而是遍 布于现代社会日常生活的每个角落的意识形态的“自我欺骗”。此书与《历史和 阶 级意 识》不同，认为所有的意识包括卢卡奇的无产阶级的阶级意识，都有神秘的骗人的 方面。

布克哈德认为，列斐伏尔日常生活批判理论的形成，就其现实原因来 说，始于对法西斯主义的批判。列斐伏尔认为欧洲革命的失败与法西斯主义的兴起，一个重 要原因就是日常生活意识的神秘化，特别是个人主义意识与民族主义意识这两种意识形态神 秘化。这一点与法兰克福学派的观点与经历有相似之处。但后来列斐伏尔将重点转向对大众 消费社会的研究，而不同于阿多诺等人陷于对法西斯主义的哲学美学批判中不能自拔。早期 列斐伏尔的日常生活批判是和同时代的葛兰西的意识形态霸权理论、卢卡奇的物化与阶级意 识批判理论、阿多诺的启蒙辩证法与文化工业理论等联系在一起的。而到了后期，他的“消 费 引导性官僚社会”理论则与马尔库塞的单向度社会理论、福柯的惩罚社会理论等联系在一起 的。早期列斐伏尔日常生活批判理论的思想根源则是他与古特曼在整理出版《马克思著作选 集》与《列宁论黑格尔辩证法的笔记》过程中对马克思的异化概念、黑格尔的 体系与方法问题的独特理解。

2.关于列斐伏尔的日常生活概念的内涵与特征的研究

列斐伏尔日常生活批判理论的独特性是与其核心概念“日常生活”的丰富内涵联系在一起的 。谢尔兹发现，列斐伏尔是根据20世纪之初的超现实主义来把握“日常生活”、“日 常”(le quotidien)的概念。日常是一个反映资本主义条件下的陈腐的、琐碎的与枯燥重复 的生活品质的概念。“日常”(the everyday)与“日常性”(the everydayness)不能简单地 等同于“日常生活”(everyday life)或“每日生活”(daily life)。 后者通常是指那些不好分类的、习惯性的、常规性的一天又一天的生活的本性，而不是用于 批判性地特指的每天生活中的异化、干巴的“日复一日性”特征。借安东尼．吉登斯(Antho ny Giddens)的话来说，一个是现代社会的单调乏味的机器般的有节奏的日常生活(ev eryday life)，另一个是古代社会的充满着具体而丰富的意味的每日生活(daily life)。

谢尔兹指出，在列斐伏尔的著作中，日常生活是指一种单调乏味毫无意义的生活，而不是指 每天的平常生活。这一点与赫勒倾向于将日常生活理解为一种本体论意义上的“本真 ”状态的立场明显不同。列斐伏尔突出的是日常生活的本真性的缺失与异化四处弥漫占支配 地位的特征。日常生活因此并不是一个创造性的自我实现的活动过程；它同时又是 一个充满奇异冒险色彩的世界，一个克服或扬弃矛盾的过程。

3.关于列斐伏尔早、中期日常生活批判理论的联系与区别问题的研究

在波斯特看来，《日常生活批判》第一卷实际上还尚未真正将马克思的哲学引向一种 日常生活批判的现代性社会学，而主要是运用马克思的政治经济学批判中的劳动异化理论， 对资本主义社会的全面异化现象作了逻辑的分析与揭露，特别是对意识形态异化现象进行了 深入的批判。在第二卷中，列斐伏尔走出了异化理论的一般框架，放弃了经典马克思主义的 经 济基础与上层建筑二元结构，将日常生活视为独立于经济与政治两个“平台”之外的一个新 的“平台”，并且日常生活这个“平台”已经处于比生产更重要的主导性的位置上：日常 生活取代了马克思的工厂车间而成为社会的核心位置；现代日常生活扮演了过去“经济”的 角色。它具有统治地位，这是新革命的源泉。因为日常生活成为资本主义社会组织化的一个 重要部分，一个压迫的核心地区。

谢尔兹详细地讨论了列斐伏尔日常生活理论的前后变化与差异。在列斐伏尔的早期著 作《被神秘化的意识》一书中，日常生活仅仅是沉闷单调的每天生活现实，它终究要被一种 革命的、非异化的社会生活所取代。经过近40年后，在他的系列著作《日常生活批判》中 ，日常生活又呈现为一种抵抗与更新社会生活的基础，可以作为神秘的灵机(瞬间)与非异化 的在场来揭示――就像阳光穿透层层云雾：日常生活的单调乏味如同层层乌云，而瞬间的在 场则似耀眼夺目的灿烂阳光。瞬间是日常生活的一种拯救：“日常生活=单调性÷在场的瞬 间”。在谢尔兹看来，把日常生活作为每天生活来理解，并同卢卡奇、海德格尔、列斐伏尔 这些理论大师们所说的那些琐碎的“日常性”区别开是十分重要的。从《被神秘化的意识》 开始到《日常生活批判》，列斐伏尔始终研究着这样一种琐碎乏味、单调无奇的日常生活。 在列斐伏尔看来，发现本真的马克思主义就是发现日常生活批判的认识论。

伽丁纳比较深入地研究了列斐伏尔的《日常生活批判》第一卷与《 现代世界中的日常生活》这两本书之间的区别，即相对集中地研究与评述了 列斐伏尔的前期日常生活批判与后期日常生活批判之间的明显区别。总体来说，列斐伏尔在 《日常生活批判》第一卷中对日常生活主要采取了一种相对比较哲学化的与乐观化的立场， 而《现代世界中的日常生活》则对日常生活理解得更加微观，也相对悲观了一些。在第一卷 视 野中，被异化的日常生活世界既包括着被压迫的因素也包括着解放的因素。日常生活是各种 社会活动与社会制度结构的最深层次连接处，是一切文化现象的共同基础，也是导致总体性 革命的策源地。而《现代世界中的日常生活》则认为，在现代社会初期，日常生活还是一个 被忽略的、因而放任自流的边缘化领域，而在发达资本主义社会，现代日常生活则被全面地 组织到、纳入到生产与消费的总体环节中去。日常生活成了资本主义统治与竞争的主战场， 而不再是被遗忘的角落。现代社会成了一个“受控消费的官僚社会” ，而不是一个可供人们自由选择的休闲社会、丰裕社会 。在现代世界中，日常生活被技术理性、市场交换所入侵，被传播媒体的符码化统治体制多 重性地殖民主义化了。正像马克思所指出的，资本主义社会是一个交换价值超越、脱离使用 价值的社会，一个为生产而生产而不是为日常生活而生产的社会，这就导致了资本主义社会 中生活意义消失、现实参考系统消失的异化现象。从语言学角度来看，人们所生活的日常生 活世界便是一个漂浮着各种符号的神话般的世界，一个语言变成了纯粹视觉刺激、而没有任 何确定性意义与对应的人文意义的世界。这就是说，语言不再是表意现实的一种象征符号， 而是独立的自我生产与复制的能指系统与符码系统。多种面孔的符号与象征已经被抽象普遍 的符码所取代。前工业社会中所常出现的人们对自然统治、对暴力统治的直接恐惧不见了， 但人们今天则生活在一个你根本无法逃脱的符号化、体制化、抽象化、匿名化、功能化统治 时代，一个不再有具体恐惧、因而是恐怖普遍化的时代。正因为如此，列斐伏尔才始终坚持 ，今天的社会解放一定是总体性的而不是某个领域的(如经济的或政治的、文化的)，一定是 日常生活的节日化、艺术化与瞬间化。

二关于晚期列斐伏尔的“空间的生产”理论与 城市社 会学理论问题的研究 [HS)]

目前西方所接受的列斐伏尔已经不再是那位研究日常生活异化问题的马克思主义哲学家 ，而是一位研究空间与城市问题的地理学家、社会学家乃至后现代批判理论家。

考夫曼和列巴斯认为，目前法国学界侧重于从城市社会学角度来接受列斐伏 尔，而英语国家则倾向从空间理论、地理学理论与后现代主义方面来接受列斐伏尔。也就 是说，法语学界认为列斐伏尔的主要著作是《城市的权力》一书。而英语学界认为列 斐伏尔的主要著作是《空间的生产》一书。两位编者倾向将列斐伏尔视为城市社会学 家 。在他们看来，列斐伏尔在《城市的权力》等著作中的一个重要贡献是明确区分了工业化与 城市化，突出了城市化与重建现代日常生活的重要意义。在列斐伏尔看来，城市化与工业化 并不是同质的、而是矛盾的双重的过程。工业化最初是以破坏城市化为前提的。工业化是增 长的、经济的过程，而城市化则是发展的与生活化的过程，因此不能用工业化代替城市化。 列斐伏尔研究城市的日常生活，目的是要瓦解传统的理性主义或者柏拉图式的哲学理想国对 城市生活的同质化设计与控制，重建一种差异性的空间乌托邦。

与考夫曼和列巴斯的倾向有所不同，谢尔兹认为，列斐伏尔对马克思主义最大的贡献 也许是不断地运用辩证唯物主义方法研究现代日常生活问题，但他目前对西方思想界影响最 大的方面却是对“社会空间”的发现。“列斐伏尔不断地将自己的最初的日常生活概念译解 为一个空间与城市领域内的范畴。”列斐伏尔最重要的贡献是将辩证唯物主义基础从时间移 向 空间。美国著名的左派地理学家戴维．哈维在《空间的生产》一书英译本后记(列斐伏尔，1 991b)中指出：通过1968年的历史事件，列斐伏尔认识到了城市日常生活状况的重要意义― ―它是革命激情与政治的核心。这种看法与传统马克思主义只关心工作场所的政治问题的狭 隘视野是对立的。对于列斐伏尔来说，空间不是通常的几何学与传统地理学的概念，而是一 个社会关系的重组与社会秩序实践性的建构过程；不是一个同质性的抽象逻辑结构，也不是 既 定的先验的资本的统治秩序，而是一个动态的矛盾的异质性实践过程。空间性不仅是被生产 出来的结果而且是再生产者。马克思仅仅看到一定空间与时间制约下的物质生产，而没有看 到，资本主义的“生产”更是一个不断地超越地理空间限制而实现空间的“自我生产”过 程。列斐伏尔非常重要的一个贡献是提出“空间生产的历史方式”。借鉴马克思的生产方式 理论与社会形态理论，他将迄今为止的空间化历史过程理解为如下几个阶段：一、绝对的空 间――自然状态；二、神圣的空间――埃及式的神庙与暴君统治的国家；三、历史性空间： 政治国家、希腊式的城邦，罗马帝国；四、抽象空间：资本主义，财产的政治经济空间；五 、矛盾性空间：当代全球化资本主义与地方化意义的对立；六、差异性空间：重估差异性的 与生活经验的未来空间。

参考文献

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〔2〕佩里．安德森：《当代西方马克思主义》，东方出版社，1989。

〔3〕Anthony Giddens， A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materilism, Vol.1 Power,Property and the State, The Macmilian Press Ltd.,1981.

〔4〕科西克：《具体的辩证法》，社会科学文献出版社，1989。

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〔6〕弗．詹姆逊：《晚期资本主义的文化逻辑》，三联书店，1997。

〔7〕Henri Lefebvre， Everyday Life in the Modern World, Transaction P ublishers,New Brunswic,New Jersey,1984.

〔8〕Henri Lefebvre， Critique of Everyday Life,volume I,Introduction; Verso,London,New York,1991.

〔9〕Henri Lefebvre， The Production of Space, Blackwell Ltd.1991.

〔10〕Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities, Blackwell Publishers Ltd.，1996 .

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                                                               (责任编辑孔明安)

reading Henri Lfebvre 情景主义

H.L.: Are you going to ask me questions about the Situationists? Because I have something I'd like to talk about.

K.R.: Fine, go ahead.

H.L.: The Situationists . . . it's a delicate subject, one I care deeply about. It touches me in some ways very intimately because I knew them very well. I was close friends with them. The friendship lasted from 1957 to 1961 or '62, which is to say about five years. And then we had a quarrel that got worse and worse in conditions I don't undertsnad too well myself, but which I could describe to you. In the end, it was a love story that ended badly, very badly. There are love stories that begin well and end badly. And this was one of them.

I remember a whole night spent talking at Guy Debord's place where he was living with Michele Bernstein in a kind of studio near the place I was living on the rue Saint Martin, in a dark room, no lights at all, a veritable. . . a miserable place, but at the same time a place where there was a great deal of strength and radiance in the thinking and the research.

K.R.: They had no money?

H.L.: No.

K.R.: How did they live?

H.L.: No one could figure out how they got by. One day one of my friends (someone to whom I had introduced Debord) asked him, "What do you live on?" And Guy Debord answered very proudly, "I live off my wits." [Laughter.] Actually, he must have had some money; I think that his family wasn't poor. His parents lived on the Cote d'Azur. I don't really think I really know the answer. And also Michele Bernstein had come up with a clever way to make money, or at least a bit of money. Or at least this is what she told me. She said she did horoscopes for horses, which were published in racing magazines. It was extremely funny. She determined the date of birth of the horses and did their horoscopes in order to predict the outcome of the race. And I think there were racing magazines that published them and paid her.

K.R.: So the Situationist slogan "Never work" didn't apply to women?

H.L.: Yes, it did, because this wasn't work. They didn't work; they managed to live without working to quite a large extent -- of course, they had to do something. To do horoscopes for race horses, I suppose, wasn't really work; in any case, I think it was fun to do it, and they didn't really work.

But I'd like to go farther back in time, because everything started much earlier. It started with the COBRA group. They were the intermediaries: the group made up of architects, with the Dutch architect Constant in particular and the painter Asger Jorn and people from Brussels -- it was a Nordic group, a group with considerable ambitions. They wanted to renew art, renew the action of art on life. It was an extremely interesting and active group, which came together in the 1950s, and one of the books that inspired the founding of the group was my book Critique of Everyday Life. That's why I got involved with them from such an early date. And the pivotal figure was Constant Nieuwenhuys, the utopian architect who designed a Utopian city, a New Babylon -- a provocative name, since in the Protestant tradition Babylon is a figure of evil. New Babylon was to be the figure of good that took the name of the cursed city and transformed itself into the city of the future. The design for New Babylon dates from 1950. And in 1953 Constant published a text called For an Architecture of Situation. This was a fundamental text based on the idea that architecture would allow a transformation of daily reality. This was the conception with Critique of Everyday Life: to create an architecture that would itself instigate the creation of new situations. So this text was the beginning of a whole new research that developed in the following years, especially since Constant was very close to popular movements; he was one of the instigators of the Provos, the Provo mopvement.

K.R.: So there was a direct relationship between Constant and the Provos?

H.L.: Oh yes, he was recognized by them as their thinker, their leader, the one who wanted to transform life and the city. The relation was direct; he spurred them on.

[...] During the postwar years, the figure of Stalin was dominant. And the Communist movement was the revolutionary movement. Then, after '56 or '57, revolutionary movements moved outside the organized parties, especially with Fidel Castro. In this sense, Situationism wasn't at all isolated. Its point of origin was Holland -- Paris, too -- but Holland especially, and it was linked to many events on the world stage, especially the fact that Fidel Castro succeded in a revolutionary victory completely outside of the Communist movement and the workers' movement. This was an event. And I remember that in 1957 I published a kind of manifesto, Le romantisme revolutionnaire, which was linked to the Castro story and to all the movements happening a little bit everywhere that were outside of the parties. This was when I left the Communist Party myself. I felt that there were going to be a lot of things happening outside the established parties and organized movements like syndicates. There was going to be a spontaneity outside of organizations and institutions -- that's what this text from 1957 was about. It was this text that put me into contact with the Situationists, because they attached a certain importance to it -- before attacking it later on. They had their critiques to make, of course; we were never completely in agreement, but the article was the basis for a certain understanding that lasted for four or five years -- we kept coming back to it.

[...] And then there were the rather extremist movements like that of Isidore Isou and the Lettrists. They also had ambitions on an international scale. But that was all a joke. It was evident in the way that Isidore Isou would recite his Dadaist poetry made up of meaningless syllables and fragments of words. He would recite it in cafes. I remember very well having met him several times in Paris [...]

K.R.: Did the Situationist theory of constructing situations have a direct relationship with your theory of "moments"?

H.L.: Yes, that was the basis of our understanding. They more or less said to me during discussions -- discussions that lasted whole nights -- "What you call 'moments,' we call 'situations,' but we're taking it farther than you. You accept as 'moments' everything that has occurred in the course of history (love, poetry, thought). We want to create new moments."

K.R.: How did they propose to make the transition from a "moment" to a conscious construction?

H.L.: The idea of a new moment, of a new situation, was already there in Constant's text from 1953. Because the architecture of situation is a Utopian architecture that supposes a new society, Constant's idea was that society must be transformed not in order to continue a boring, uneventful life, but in order to create something absolutely new: situations.

K.R.: And how did the city figure into this?

H.L.: Well, "new situations" was never very clear. When we talked about it, I always gave as an example -- and they would have nothing to do with my example -- love. I said to them: in antiquity, passionate love was known, but not individual ove, love for an individual. The poets of antiquity write of a kind of cosmic, physical, physiological passion. But love for an individual only appears in the Middle Ages within a mixture of Christian and Islamic traditions, especially in the south of France [...]

K.R.: But didn't constructing "new situations" for the Situationists involve urbanism?

H.L.: Yes. We agreed. I said to them, individual love created new situations, there was a creation of situations. But it didn't happen in a day, it developed. Their idea (and this was also related to Constant's experiments) was that in the city one could create new situations by, for example, linking up parts of the city, neighborhoods that were separated spatially. And that was the first meaning of the derive. It was done first in Amsterdam, using walkie-talkies. There was one group that went to one part of the city and could communicate with people in another area.

K.R.: Did the Situationists use this technique, too?,?P>

H.L.: Oh, I think so. In any case, Constant did. But there were Situationist experiments in Unitary Urbanism. Unitary urbanism consisted of making different parts of the city communicate with one another. They did have their experiments; I didn't participate. They used all kinds of means of communication -- I don't know when exactly they were using walkie-talkies. But I know they were used in Amsterdam and in Strasbourg.

K.R.: Did you know people in Strasbourg then?

H.L.: They were my students. But relations with them were also very strained. When I arrived in Strasbourg in 1958 or '59, it was right in the middle of the Algerian War, and I had only been in Strasbourg for about three weeks, maybe, when a group of guys came up to me. They were the future Situationists of Strasbourg -- or maybe they were already a little bit Situationist. They said to me: "We need your support: we're going to set up a maquis in the Vosges. We're going to make a military base in the Vosges, and from there spread out over the whole country. We're going to derail trains." I replied: "But the army and the police . . . you aren't sure of having the support of the population. You're precipitating a catastrophe." So they began to insult me and call me a traitor. And, after a little while, a few weeks, they came back to see me and told me: "You were right, it's impossible. It's impossible to set up a military base in the Vosges. We're going to work on something else."

So I found myself getting along with them, and afterward they became Situationists, the same group that wanted to support the Algerians by starting up military activity in France -- it was crazy. But, you know, my relations with them were always very difficult. They got angry over nothing. I was living at the time with a young woman from Strabourg; I was the scandal of the university. She was pregnant, she had a daughter (my daughter Armelle), and it was the town scandal -- a horror, an abomination. Strasbourg was a very bourgeois city. And the university wasn't outside the city, it was right in the middle. But at the same time I was giving lectures that were very successful, on music, for example -- music and society. I taught a whole course one year on "music and society"; many people attended, so I could only be attacked with difficulty. Armelle's mother, Nicole, was friends with the Situationists. She was always with them; she invited them over. They came to eat at our place, and we played music -- this was scandal in Strasbourg. So that's how I came to have close relations, organic relations, with them -- not only because I taught Marxism at the University, but through Nicole, who was an intermediary. Guy came over to my place to see Nicole, to eat dinner. But relations were difficult, they got angry over tiny things. Mustapoha Khayati, author of the brochure, was in the group.

K.R.: What was the effect of the brochure [On the Poverty of Student Life]? How many copies were given out?

H.L.: Oh, it was very successful. But in the beginning, it was only distributed in Strasbourg; then, Debord and others distributed it in Paris. Thousands and thousands were given out, certainly tens of thousands of copies, to students. It's a very good brochure, without a doubt. Its author, Mustapha Khayati, was Tunisian. There were several Tunisians in the group, many foreigners who were less talked about afterward, and even Mustapha Khayati didn't show himself very often at the time because he might have had problems because of his nationality. He didn't have dual citizenship; he stayed a Tunisian and he could have had real troubles. But anyway, in Paris, after 1957, I saw a lot of them, and I was also spending time with Constant in Amsterdam. This was the moment when the Provo movement became very powerful in Amsterdam, with their idea of keeping urban life intact, preventing the city from being eviscerated by auto-routes and being opened up to automobile traffic. They wanted the city to be conserved and transformed, instead of being given over to traffic. They also wanted drugs; they seemed to count on drugs to create new situations -- imagination sparked by LSD, It was LSD in those days.

K.R.: Among the Parisian Situationists, too?

H.L.: No. Very little. They drank. At Guy Debord's place, we drank tequila with a little mezcal added. But never . . . mescaline, a little, but many of them took nothing at all. That wasn't the way they wanted to create new situations [...]

K.R.: Was Constant's project predicated on the end of work?

H.L.: Yes, to a certain extent. Yes, that's the beginning: complete mechanization, the complete automatization of productive work, which left people free to do other things. He was one of the ones who considered the problem.

K.R.: And the Situationists, too?

H.L.: Yes [...] And so, a complete change in revolutionary movements beginning in 1956-57, movements that leave behind classic organizations. What's beautiful is the voice of small groups having influence.

K.R.: So the very existence of microsocieties or groupuscules like the Situationists was itself a new situation?,?P>

H. L. Yes, to a certain extent. But, then again, we mustn't exaggerate either. For how many of them were there? You know that the Situationist International never had more than ten members [at a time]. There were two or three Belgians, two or three Dutch, like Constant. But they were all expelled immediately. Guy Debord followed Andre Breton's example. People were expelled. I was never part of the group. I could have been, but I was careful, since I knew Guy Debord's character and his manner, and the way he had of imitating Andre Breton, by expelling everyone in order to get at a pure and hard little core. In the end, the members of the Situationist International were Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem, and Michele Bernstein. There were some outer groupuscules, satellite groups -- which is where I was, and where Asger Jorn was, too. Asger Jorn had been expelled; poor Constant was expelled as well. For what reason? Well, Constant didn't build anything -- he was an architect who didn't build, a Utopian architect. But he was expelled because a guy who worked with him built a church in Germany; expulsion for reason of disastrous influence. It's rubbish. It was really about keeping oneself in a pure state, like a crystal. Debord's dogmatism was exactly like Breton's. And, what's more, it was a dogmatism without a dogma, since the theory of situations, of the creation of situations, disappeared very quickly, leaving behind only the critique of the existing world, which is where it all started, with the Critique of Everyday Life.

K.R.: How did your association with the Situationists change or inspire your thinking about the city? Did it change your thinking or not?

H.L.: It was all corollary, parallel. My thinking about the city had completely different sources [....] But, at the same time that I met Guy Debord [1957] , I met Constant. I knew that the Provos in Amsterdam were interested in the city, and I went there to see what was going on, maybe ten times. Just to see the form that the movement was taking, if it took a political form. There were Provos elected to the city council in Amsterdam. I forget which year, but they pulled off a big victory in the municipal elections. Then, after that, it all fell apart. All this was part and parcel of the same thing. And after 1960 there was the great movement in urbanization. [The Situationists] abandoned the theory of Unitary Urbanism, since Unitary Urbanism only had a precise meaning for historic cities, like Amsterdam, that had to be renewed, transformed. But from the moment that the historic city exploded into peripherics, suburbs -- like what happened in Paris, and in all sorts of places, Los Angeles, San Francisco, wild extensions of the city -- the theory of Unitary Urbanism lost any meaning. I remember very sharp, pointed discussions with Guy Debord, where he said that urbanism was becoming an ideology. He was absolutely right, from the moment that there was an official doctrine on urbanism. I think the urbanism code dates from 1961 in France -- that's the moment when urbanism becomes an ideology. That doesn't mean that the problem of the city was resolved -- far from it. But at that point [the Situationists] abandoned the theory of Unitary Urbanism. And then I think that even the derive, the derive experiments were little by little abandoned around then, too. I'm not sure how that happened, because that was the moment I broke with them.

After all, there's the political context in France, and there are also personal relations, very complicated stories. The most complicated story arose when [the Situationists] came to my place in the Pyrenees. And we took a wonderful trip: we left Paris in a car and stopped at the Lascaux caves, which were closed not long after that. We were very taken up with the problem of the Lascaux caves. They are buried very deep, with even a well that was inaccessible -- and all this was filled with paintings. How were these paintings made, who were they made for, since they weren't painted in order to see seen? The idea was that painting started as a critique. All the more so in that all the churches in the region have crypts. We stopped at Saint-Savin, where there are frescoes on the church's vaulted dome and a crypt full of paintings, a crypt whose depths are difficult to reach because it is so dark. What are paintings that were not destined to be seen? And how were they made? So, we made our way south; we had a fabulous feast at Sarlat, and I could hardly drive -- I was the one driving. I got a ticket; we were almost arrested because I crossed a village going 120 kilometers per hour. They stayed several days at my place, and, working together, we wrote a programmatic text. At the end of the week they spent at Navarrenx, they kept the text. I said to them, "You type it" (it was handwritten), and afterward they accused me of plagiarism. In reality, it was complete bad faith. The text that was used in writing the book about the [Paris] Commune was a joint text, by them and by me, and only one small part of the Commune book was taken from the joint text.

I had this idea about the Commune as a festival, and I threw it into debate, after consulting an unpublished document about the Commune that is at the Feltrinelli Foundation in Milan. It's a diary about the Commune. The person who kept the diary -- who was deported, by the way, and who brought back his diary from deportation several years later, around 1880 -- recounts how, on March 28, 1871, Thier's soldiers came to look for the cannons that were in Montmartre and on the hills of Belleville; how the women who got up very early in the morning heard the noise and all ran out in the streets and surrounded the soldiers, laughing, having fun, greeting them in a friendly way. Then they went off to get coffee and offered it to the soldiers, and these soldiers, who had come to get the cannons, were more or less carried away by the people. First the women, then the men, everyone came out, in an atmosphere of popular festival. The Commune cannon incident was not at all a situation of armed heroes arriving and combating the soldiers taking the cannons. It didn't happen at all like that. It was the poeople who came out of their houses, who were enjoying themselves. The weather was beautiful, March 28 was the first day of spring, it was sunny: the women kiss the soldiers, they're relaxed, and the soldiers are absorbed into all of that, a Parisian popular festival. But this diary is an exception. And afterward the theorists of the heroes of the Commune said to me, "This is a testimonial, you can't write history from a testimonial." The Situationists said more or less the same thing. I didn't read what they said; I did my work. There were ideas that were batted around in conversation, and then worked up in common texts. And then afterward, I wrote a study on the Commune. I worked for weeks in Milan, at the Feltrinelli Institute; I found unpublished documentation. I used it, and that's completely my right. Listen, I don't care at all about these accusations [by the Situationists] of plagiarism. And I never took the time to read what they wrote about it in their journal. I know that I was dragged through the mud.

And then, as for how I broke with them, it happened after an extremely complicated story concerning the journal Arguments. The idea had come up to stop editing Arguments because several of the collaborators in the journal, such as my friend Kostas Axelos, thought that its role was over; they thought they had nothing more to say. In fact, I have the text by Axelos where he talks about the dissolution of the group and of the journal. They thought it was finished and that it would be better to end it [quickly] rather than let it drag along. I was kept informed of these discussions. During discussions with Guy Debord, we talked about it and Debord said to me, "Our journal, the Internationale Situationniste has to replace Arguments." And so Argument's editor, and all the people there, had to agree. Everything depended on a certain man [Herval] who was very powerful at the time in publishing: he did a literary chronicle for L'Express, he was also in with the Nouvelle revue francais and the Editions de Minuit. He was extremely powerful, and everything depended on him.

Well, at that moment I had broken up with a woman, very bitterly. She left me, and she took my address book with her. This meant I no longer had Herval's address. I telephoned Debord and told him I was perfectly willing to continue negotiations with Herval, but that I no longer had his address, his phone number, nothing. Debord began insulting me over the phone. He was furious and said, "I'm used to people like you who become traitors at the decisive moment." That's how the rupture between us began, and it continued in a curious way.

This woman, Eveline -- who, I forgot to mention, was a longtime friend of Michele Bernstein -- had left me, and Nicole took her place, and Nicole was pregnant. She wanted the child, and so did I: it's Armelle. But Guy Debord and our little Situationist friends sent a young woman to Navarrenx over Easter vacation to try to persuade Nicole to get an abortion

K.R.: Why?

H.L.: Because they didn't know, or they didn't want to know, that Nicole wanted this child just as I did. Can you believe that this woman, whose name was Denise and who was particularly unbearable, had been sent to persuade Nicole to have an abortion and leave me, in order to be with them? Then I understood -- Nicole told me about it right away. She told me, "You know, this woman is on a mission from Guy Debord; they want me to leave you and get rid of the kid." So, since I already didn't much like Denise, I threw her out. Denise was the girlfriend of that Situationist who had learned Chinese -- I forget his name [Rene Vienet]. I'm telling you this because it's all very complex, everything gets mixed up; political history, ideology, women . . . but there was time when it was a real, very warm friendship.

K.R.: You even wrote an article entitled "You Will All Be Situationists."

H.L.: Oh yes, I did that to help bring about the replacement of Arguments by the Internationale Situationniste. Guy Debord accused me of having done nothing to get it published. Yes, it was Herval who was supposed to publish it. Lucky for me that it didn't appear because afterwards they would have reproached me for it. But there's a point I want to go back to -- the question of plagiarism. That bothered me quite a bit. Not a lot, just a little bit. We worked together day and night at Navarrenx, we went to sleep at nine in the morning (that was how they lived, going to sleep in the morning and sleeping all day). We ate nothing. It was appalling. I suffered throughout the week, not eating, just drinking. We must have drunk a hundred bottles. In a few days. Five . . . and we were working while drinking. The text was almost a doctrinal resume of everything we were thinking, about situations, about transformations of life; it wasn't very long, just a few pages, handwritten. They took it away and typed it up, and afterwards thought they had a right to the ideas. These were ideas we tossed around on a little country walk I took them on. With a nice touch of perversity, I took them down a path that led nowhere, that got lost in the woods, fields, and so on. Michele Bernstein had a complete nervous breakdown, she didn't enjoy it at all. It's true, it wasn't urban, it was very deep in the country.

K.R.: A rural derive. Let's talk a about the derive in general. Do you think it brought anything new to spatial theory or to urban theory? In the way that it emphasized experimental games and practices, do you think it was more productive than a purely theoretical approach to the city?

H.L.: Yes. As I perceived it, the derive was more of a practice than a theory. It revealed the growing fragmentation of the city. In the course of its history, the city was once a powerful organic unity; for some time, however, that unity was becoming undone, was fragmenting, and [the situationists] were recording examples of what we had all been talking about, like the place where the new Bastille Opera is going to be built. The Place de la Bastille is the end of historic Paris -- beyond that it's the Paris of the first industrialization of the nineteenth century. The Place des Vosges is still aristocratic Paris of the seventeenth century. When you get to the Bastille, another Paris begins, which is of the nineteenth century, but it's Paris of the bourgeoisie, of commercial, industrial expansion, at the same time that the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie takes hold of the Marais, the center of Paris -- it spreads out beyond the Bastille, the rue de la Roquette, the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, etc. So already the city is becoming fragmented. We had a vision of a city that was more and more fragmented without its organic unity being completely shattered. Afterward, of course, the peripheries and the suburbs highlighted the problem. But back then it wasn't yet obvious, and we thought that the practice of the derive revealed the idea of the fragmented city. But it was mostly done in Amsterdam. The experiment consisted of rendering different aspects or fragments of the city simultaneous, fragments that can only be seen successively, in the same way that there exist people who have never seen certain parts of the city.

K.R.: While the derive took the form of a narrative.

H.L.: That's it; one goes along in any direction and recounts what one sees.

K.R.: But the recounting can't be done simultaneously.

H.L.: Yes, it can, if you have a walkie-talkie. The goal was to attain a certain simultaneity. That was the goal; it didn't always work.

K.R.: So, a kind of synchronic history.

H.L.: Yes, that's it, a synchronic history. That was the meaning of Unitary Urbanism: unify what has a certain unity, but a lost unity, a disappearing unity.

K.R.: And it was during the time when you knew the situationists that the idea of Unitary Urbanism began to lose its force?

H.L.: At the moment when urbanization became truly massive, that is, after 1960, and when the city, Paris, completely exploded. You know that there were very few suburbs in Paris; there were some, but very few. And then suddenly the whole area was filled, covered with little houses, with new cities, Sarcelles and the rest. Sarcelles became a kind of myth. There was even a disease that people called the "sarcellite." Around then Guy Debord's attitude changed -- he went from Unitary Urbanism to the thesis of urbanistic ideology.

K.R.: And what was that transition, exactly?

H.L.: It was more than a transition, it was the abandonment of one position in order to adopt the exact opposite one. Between the idea of elaborating an urbanism and the thesis that all urbanism is an ideology is a profound modification. In fact, by saying that all urbanism was a bourgeois ideology, [the situationists] abandoned the problem of the city. They left it behind. They thought that the problem no longer interested them. While I, on the other hand, continued to be interested; I thought that the explosion of the historic city was precisely the occasion for finding a larger theory of the city, and not a pretext for abandoning the problem. But it wasn't because of this that we fell out; we fell out for much more sordid reasons. That business about sabotaging Arguments, Herval's lost address -- all that was completely ridiculous. But there were certainly deeper reasons.

The theory of situations was itself abandoned, little by little. And the journal itself became a political organ. They began to insult everyone. That was part of Debord's attitude, or it might have been part of his difficulties -- he split up with Michele Bernstein [in 1967]. I don't know, there were all kinds of circumstances that might have made him more polemical, more bitter, more violent. In the end, everything became oriented toward a kind of polemical violence. I think they ended up insulting just about everyone. And they also greatly exaggerated their role in May '68, after the fact.

reading 约翰．巴思：论卡尔维诺与博尔赫斯

我发现卡尔维诺的小说是在1968年, 即《宇宙奇趣》由威廉．韦弗[William Weaver]译介到美国的那一年。当时我在纽约州立大学水牛城分校[State U. of NY at Buffalo]教书, 正因博尔赫斯的魔咒而深感痴迷: 后者我也刚发现没几年。68年, 我刚刚在那种迷醉状态中发表了《枯竭的文学》[The Literature of Exhaustion], 基本上是篇原型后现代主义[protopostmodernist]的宣言; 还有我的第一部短篇小说集, 正题叫《迷失在开心馆中》[Lost in the Funhouse], 副题为《供印刷, 录音及现场朗诵的虚构作品》[Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice](不消说, 特别使用“虚构”这个词是为了向博尔赫斯的《虚构集》[ficciones, 英译Fictions]致敬)。简单地说, 使我能够欣赏卡尔维诺的《宇宙奇趣》以及后来的《时间零》[t zero]的前提已经具备--第二部作品于次年由韦弗译成英语。我想, 这是个不含泪水的博尔赫斯--或者不如说, 是个富有活力[con molto brio]的博尔赫斯: 较之那位伟大的阿根廷人, 卡尔维诺要来得轻松, 许多时候更是非常滑稽有趣(博尔赫斯先生可绝少这样的时候); 而在形式和语言的艺术性上, 在才智与想象的丰富性上, 他们又不相上下。

　　1985年9月, 卡尔维诺的死讯传来后不过一周左右, 安伯托．艾可[Umberto Eco]刚好去了我所在的约翰霍普金斯大学[John Hopkins U.]作客, 自然就说起了逝去的这位我们共同的朋友(当然了, 这位朋友跟艾可的关系要密切得多; 按艾可自己的说法, 卡尔维诺是他领斯托里加奖[Strega Prize]时的“伴护人”[chaperon])。艾可给我讲他亲历的见闻: 当时卡尔维诺虽然因两周前的严重脑溢血而身心受损, 但还是尽力说出了“I paralleli! I paralleli!”(“平行性! 平行性!”)[按: 英语的“parallel”, 即可指“平行线”, 也可指“平行性”; 巴思本文中主要应指后者, 但文末处玩弄花招, 变成“平行线”了。至于卡氏的意大利文原意, 真是天晓得]的话语, 这可能就是他的遗言了。

　　博尔赫斯与卡尔维诺在成就上的“平行性”[paralleli]至为明显; 然而无疑地, 与之对应的“反平行性”[anti-paralleli]亦然。首先, 尽管两位作家都具有极为精细的心智, 他们在写作风格上却都清楚直接, 全无矫揉造作或花巧虚饰, 然而一丝不苟, 细致入微. “……如水晶般明澈, 冷静, 轻盈, 绝无滞涩之处……”[本文中有些《备忘录》段落未依定译], 卡尔维诺本人这样形容博尔赫斯的风格(在他的《未来千年文学备忘录》之第二篇中; 这些备忘录是卡尔维诺为诺顿讲座[Norton lectures]准备的讲稿, 然而他生前没来得及宣讲); 但这些形容当然也适用于他自己--他的六篇诺顿讲稿的题目全都适用于他自己: “轻逸”(Leggerezza)及笔触的灵巧; “迅捷”(Rapidita), 既是指手法的简约有效, 也是指叙事的流畅迅速; “精准”(Esatezza), 既指形式设计也指词句表达; “可视”(Visibilita), 既指动人心魄的细节描写, 也指鲜明的视觉形象--即使是(或许尤其是)在对幻想的描写之中; “繁复”(Molteplicita), 既是从组合艺术[ars combinatoria]角度而言, 也指对事物间无穷联系的关注, 而后者体现于不断扩张无法完成的作品如加达[Gadda]的“美鲁拉纳大”[Via Merulana]与罗伯特．穆希尔[Robert Musil]的“无个性的人”[Man Without Qualities], 也体现于博尔赫斯那令人晕眩的短篇故事如“小径分叉的花园”――以上这些作品, 卡尔维诺都在论繁复的演讲中举为例子; “一贯”, 表现在通过他们二人的风格、各自在文体上以及其他方面的关注目标, 我们可以轻易地辨认出“博尔赫斯式”[Borgesian]和“卡尔维诺体”[Calvinoesque]。卡尔维诺把这六种特定的文学价值讲得妙趣横生, 但我们切不可忘记, 它们并非仅有的文学价值; 不可忘记, 它们的对立面也都确实自有其可称道之处。卡尔维诺在“迅捷”一讲中对此毫不否认: “我选作演讲主题的任何一种价值或优点,”他写道, “都不完全排斥其对立面。我对轻逸的赞歌之中隐含着对重实的称许; 同样地, 我在此为迅捷辩护, 但也不敢妄自否定舒缓的乐趣,”等等。我们这些文风舒缓者--有人可能说是逃避主题者[原文用“malinger”, 与上文中“linger”(舒缓)相映成趣]--在此长出一口气, 放下心来。

　　回顾这六份“备忘录”之际, 我们不觉已经越出了风格形式的范畴, 开始探讨博尔赫斯与卡尔维诺小说在其它方面的平行性. 卡尔维诺以现实主义小说的形式开始了写作生涯, 且从未放弃较长篇幅的叙事体裁; 但是他也如博尔赫斯一般, 对于简练短篇的兴趣要大得多。就连他后期的长篇作品, 例如《宇宙奇趣》、《看不见的城市》、《命运交织的城堡》、和《如果在冬夜, 一个旅人》, 也都是(用卡尔维诺自己的形容)模块式、组装式的, 由较小、较“迅捷”的单元构成。而博尔赫斯, 主要是因为他的审美观而不是他暮年失明这一情况, 从没写过一部中篇, 更不用说长篇小说了(在《自叙随笔》[Autobiographical Essay, 浙江文艺的博氏“全集”似未收入]中他宣称,“我的一生岁月主要都献给了阅读, 但是读过的长篇小说寥寥无几, 而且通常情况下, 我都是全凭某种责任感才能坚持到最后一页。”)。在他的晚年, 他不得不象《秘密的奇迹》[the Secret Miracle]中那位被判死刑, 但暂时缓期的亚罗米尔．赫拉迪克[Jaromir Hladik]一样, 在记忆中进行创作和修改。无怪乎他的风格会如此的简洁精准有如碑铭, 如此的……令人难以忘怀。

　　继续来说其它的平行性: 虽然, 在博尔赫斯和卡尔维诺的小说文集中, 分别可以找到布宜诺斯艾利斯及其市郊, 或是意大利, 的情调乃至特定的细节; 虽然他们在各自国家的文学中, 也如在整体的现代文学中一样, 是重量级人物; 他们却都大体上无意于社会/心理学上的现实主义倾向, 这种不论幸或不幸, 长期以来占据北美小说界主流地位的模式。在卡尔维诺而言, 是神话、寓言和自然科学; 在博尔赫斯而言, 则是文学史/哲学史和“梦境对现实的点染”, 取代了社会/心理学的分析以及历史年代/地理环境的细节。两位作家都热衷于反讽式地俯纳通俗叙事风格, 在卡尔维诺, 民间故事和连环画; 在博尔赫斯, 超自然主义和侦探小说。卡尔维诺甚至在他的演讲“可视”中, 将后现代主义定义为“反讽式地利用大众传媒的平庸意象, 或者在那些明显异化的叙事结构里注入由文学传统中继承到的优良品味, 这样的一种倾向”[*对卡氏此句的理解可能有误, 望有方家指正]--这种倾向正是博尔赫斯作品的特色之一，对于卡尔维诺的作品也是一样。幸或不幸地, 两位作家都不曾创造过令人难忘的人物, 也不曾描述过浩大的激情; 虽然博尔赫斯1975年在密歇根州大激流市[Grand Rapids]接受公开采访之际, 被问到“你认为什么是作家的主要职责?”时, 他毫不犹豫地答道, “创造人物.”真是尖刻的回答: 这位伟大的作家本人从没有真正创造过任何人物; 就连他那难忘的[unforgettable, 原文似为双关, 既指人物令读者难忘, 也指人物本身具有过目不忘的能力]“博闻强记的富内斯”[Funes the Memorious], 也如我在别处评述的那样, 更接近于一种病理学上的范例, 而不是一个文学人物。而卡尔维诺有趣的Qwfwq⒙砜桑?波罗、马可瓦尔多[Marcovaldo]、和帕洛马尔先生, 都是一些典型的叙述担当者, 跟叙事/戏剧性文学中特色至为鲜明的人物毫无可比性。一流的饭店未必会供应所有的美食; 要在豪尔赫．路易斯．博尔赫斯或伊塔洛．卡尔维诺的高超作品中寻觅集中的人物刻画所提供的乐趣, 根本就是找错了地方, 正如这里同样也没有华丽的激情。

　　与前文引述的卡尔维诺所谓“后现代主义倾向”――对平庸意象和陈旧叙事结构的反讽式回收利用--相伴而来的, 是一种对于形式体裁的“政府规定”, 这一点上卡尔维诺体现得尤过于博尔赫斯。在博尔赫斯的巅峰杰作中, 他无比巧妙地运用了被我称为“象征原则”的技巧, 即(请原谅我引用自己的话)“不唯是主题构想、中心意象、背景设置、叙述的编排、观察的角度等等方面; 甚至文本自身的存在, 作品乃是虚构这一事实[the fact of the artifact, 语言的游戏难以完全译出], 也都成了作品意义的象征。他的《特隆、乌克巴尔、奥比斯．特蒂乌斯》[Tln, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius]这篇非凡之作, 就是这种“高技术”小说写法的绝佳范例; 另外还有其它的例子。此外, 博尔赫斯更以可佩的克制态度, 轻描淡写地运用这种出神入化的技巧, 他把形式的艺术性暗藏袖底, 而不是明佩臂间。而卡尔维诺则正相反, 虽然他一贯不事张扬, 却全无掩饰地以他“浪漫形式主义”(又是我自己的术语, 再次致歉)自得其乐: 这乐趣首先并不是因为证明了他个人的杰出才智, 而是因为组合艺术那振奋人心的多种可能性, 这一点尤为《命运交织的城堡》和《如果在冬夜, 一个旅人》的那种结构上的魔术所证明。他与雷蒙．凯诺[Raymond Queneau]的OULIPO小组的大量交流, 对于这种以形式为游戏的做法来说, 无疑既是原因之一, 也是结果之一。

　　1976年在约翰霍普金斯进行作品朗读/阐释活动[reading这个词很难简单地翻出来啊?]时, 卡尔维诺简单概述了他的小说《看不见的城市》的主题构想, 而后说道, “现在我将朗读这篇小说中的一小段……”他犹豫了一下, 寻找能令他满意的用词。“……一小段咏叹调。”我心中想, 没错, 依塔洛; 太好了[bravissimo, 意大利语]。卡尔维诺与OULIPO小组其他的巫术师之间的决定性差异, 就在于(祝福他的意大利性格, 但请原谅我这种按照死板成见给人物分类的做法)他知道什么时候应该停止形式上的雕琢, 开始歌唱--或者不如说, 他知道如何让严苛的形式本身放声歌唱。卡尔维诺关于乔治．佩莱克[Georges Perec]的评论对他自己的作品也非常合适: 那些异想天开的运算方法和其它的组合规则, 不唯没有窒息他的想象力, 反而确定无疑的激发了它。有一次他告诉我, 因为上述原因, 他乐于接受困难的任务, 例如配合里奇[Ricci]版的塔罗牌[I Tarocchi]写作小说《命运交织的城堡》, 又或另一次更加激进的尝试, 为一部计划中的芭蕾舞剧写篇没有文字的故事, 作为剧情框架(卡尔维诺编了一篇无字的故事, 讲述舞蹈的创生)。

　　现在就要说到最后一种平行性了: 豪尔赫．路易斯．博尔赫斯与依塔洛．卡尔维诺都在小说中精妙地结合了两种文学价值, 我称之为“代数学”和“火”的(这些术语我在别处也用过, 是从博尔赫斯的《特隆第一百科全书》中借来的; 他描述道, 一个完整的国度, “包括它的帝王和海域, 它的矿藏、飞鸟和游鱼, 它的代数学, 它的火。”)。“代数学”, 我用它代表结构的精巧; 而“火”代表触动我们感情的因素(我很想改而借用卡尔维诺在演讲“精准”中提出的“晶体”和“火焰”这两种可任择其一的价值, 但是不巧, 他用这些词表达的意思与我在此提到的并不相同)。形式上的艺术性本身当然也足以惊心动魄, 但如果代数学有余而火不足甚至没有火, 那么结果就只是奇技淫巧, 例如凯诺的《文体练习》[Exercises in Style]和《百万亿首十四行诗》[A Hundred Thousand Billion Sonnets]。反之, 如果火有余而代数学太少或阙如, 结果就是真诚的梦呓--没必要举例了。多数人在多数时间里, 向文学作品寻求的是所谓富有热情的艺术性, 而博尔赫斯与卡尔维诺都能满足这样的需要。虽然我认为两位作家缺一不可, 也决不敢妄图给他们的文学地位分出个高下, 但在我看来, 卡尔维诺或许更为接近当今的主流后现代主义者的典范--这其实没什么重要性, 也姑且不论“后现代主义者”这个巨大的口袋究为何物, 竟能容下如此之多在其它方面大不相同的人物, 包括唐纳德．巴塞尔姆[Donald Barthelme]、萨缪尔．贝克特、豪．路．博尔赫斯、伊塔洛．卡尔维诺、安吉拉．卡特[Angela Carter]、罗伯特．库佛[Robert Coover]、加布列尔．加西亚．马尔克斯、埃尔萨．莫兰黛[Elsa Morante]、弗拉基米尔．纳博科夫、格雷丝．佩莱[Grace Paley]、托马斯．品钦[Thomas Pychon], 等等... 我的意思是, 不光要有代数学与火的交融, 非凡的(在卡尔维诺身上且是热情洋溢的)艺术性, 对于安伯托．艾可所谓"老话"[the already said]的广泛了解以及谦恭而反讽式的循环利用, 引人入胜而又全然不见雕琢的叙事手法; 还需要把创作的双脚之一留在传统叙事法中, 而另一只脚切实地踏在“高技术”(在卡尔维诺而言, 是巴黎“结构主义”式)当代叙事法的土壤上。此外再加上我已经指出的, 我们这位朋友身上的人类性和入世性可能要多一些, 就是我论断的理由了。

　　在反平行性之中, 我觉得真正重要的只有一点: 以我之见, 博尔赫斯的叙事几何学, 可以说本质上是欧几里得式的。他追求扁长菱形、五点梅花形和象棋的逻辑; 连他那无处不在的无限也是线性的, “欧几里得式”的。在卡尔维诺的螺旋和让人眼花缭乱的拆散重组之中, 我则看到了某种作弄人的非欧几何成分; 例如, 他和我同样钦佩卜迦丘在《十日谈》中创造出了第奥纽[Dioneo]这个人物: 这位酒神风格的、百搭牌式的讲故事人不守同伴制定的任何规则, 从而在叙事进程之中加入了一种活泼(但适可而止的)不确定因素。我没能找到机会跟卡尔维诺谈论量子力学和混沌理论, 但我毫不怀疑, 他会认为这些领域富含隐喻价值, 引人探求。

　　据我所知, 这两位超卓的作家只有过一次邂逅(在罗马, 当时博尔赫斯已届暮年)[根据中文站收的卡氏年表, 似乎1985年在西班牙还有一次?]。卡尔维诺对博尔赫斯的尊崇是有明文记录的; 然而遗憾的是, 我在同博尔赫斯的五六次简短交谈之中, 忘了问他对卡尔维诺有何看法。我自己对他们二位的尊崇自是不消说了。在欧几里得几何学中, 两条平行线[paralleli]是不会相遇的; 但是非欧几何的最基本原理之一, 就是它们有可能相遇--地点不是灵薄狱(在那里但丁由维吉尔引导, 遇到了荷马等人的影子), 也不是布宜诺斯艾利斯或者罗马, 而是在无限之中; 我猜想他们在那里一起展露笑容, 因为看到我努力归纳他们之间的平行性。

　　这想法不错, 对吧? 值得由伊塔洛．卡尔维诺来给它歌喉, 让它欢唱。
 

　　改编自97年4月4日在加州大学戴维斯分校[U.C.Davis]伊塔洛．卡尔维诺讨论会上的发言