康拉德《黑暗之心》與葛林《麻風病人》中的語言

Language in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Greene’s A Burnt-Out-Case

約瑟夫‧康拉德是格雷安‧葛林敬重的三位現代作家之一。在1920 年代末葛林開始小說創作之前，他就已經十分熟稔康拉德的重要作品。然而，如果說康拉德身為作家的正直贏得了讀者群和評論家的注意，那麼葛林處女作《心內人》（1929）的正面迴響卻隨《行動之名》（1930）和《暮色的流言》（1931）相繼問世而幾乎消失殆盡。葛林本人將這些小說的失敗歸咎於康拉德「太深遠而又深具災難性的影響」。因此他發誓再也不讀康拉德的小說。不過葛林的書寫並未成功擺脫康拉德的鬼魂。分析葛林成熟時期作品可見，他仍然身陷康拉德的網中。康拉德「沉重且令人著魔的寫作風格」仍然影響《麻風病人》（1960）甚深。在這篇論文中，我試圖比較康拉德的《黑暗之心》（1899）和葛林的《麻風病人》，檢視葛林繼康拉德之後所使用的風格技巧，並驗證葛林借用這位來自波蘭的作家的各種技巧是否真的損害其創作。

Joseph Conrad was one of the three modern writers whom Graham Greene revered. By the time Greene started writing fiction in the late 1920s, he had been acquainted with Conrad’s main works. However, if Conrad’s integrity as a writer won the attention of both the reading public and many reviewers, the positive response that welcomed Greene’s first published novel, The Man Within (1929), almost died out with the novels that came next, The Name of Action (1930) and Rumour at Nightfall (1931). Greene himself attributed the failure of these novels to Conrad’s “too great and too disastrous influence.” He thus vowed never again to read a novel by Conrad. However, Greene did not succeed in writing off the ghost of Conrad. A study of his mature work reveals Greene still caught in the Conradian web. Conrad’s “heavy and hypnotic style” is still an important influence in A Burnt-Out Case (1960). In this essay, I shall attempt a comparison between Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) and Greene’s aforementioned novel to see what array of stylistic devices Greene uses in the wake of Conrad and verify if the borrowings from the Polish writer undermine Greene’s writings in any way.