「豎琴當年曾讓我們都挨餓」：〈萊斯楚恭尼亞人〉中之饑荒再現

The Harp That Once Did Starve Us All: Famine Representations in 'Lestrygonians'

愛爾蘭十九世紀中葉的大饑荒造成滿目瘡痍，其衝擊延續至下一世紀。喬伊斯承繼了此一文化記憶，在文本中重現饑荒。〈萊斯楚恭尼亞人〉一章充滿了食物描述與飢餓意象。大量食物與骨瘦饑民的對比無疑喚起饑荒時期愛爾蘭生產大量食材，而人民卻因無權享有而挨餓之情境。此外，本章出現的饑荒意象──遊走孤魂、狼吞虎嚥的饑民等－－影射饑荒記憶的持續或饑荒恐怖的延續。在充斥食物的一章當中呈現饑餓意象，喬伊斯不僅喚起十九世紀中葉大饑荒的回憶，也暗示餓死鬼在1904年仍然出沒都柏林，並且伴隨市民日常生活－－包含文化局外人布盧姆。

The Great Famine in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland has resulted in complete devastation, its impact lasting until the next century. James Joyce has inherited this cultural memory and incorporated Famine representations into his text. The episode of ”Lestrygonians” abounds in descriptions of foodstuffs and images of starvation. The contrast between the plenitude of foods and numbers of famished skeletons unmistakably recalls the Famine era when Ireland produced plentiful foodstuffs while her own people were starving due to their lack of the entitlement rights to them. Moreover, the evocation of the Famine icons in this episode-walking skeletons, ravenous eaters, and so on-suggests the lingering of Famine memory, if not the continuation of Famine horrors. By representing hunger images in an episode saturated with food and eating, Joyce not only evokes the mid-nineteenth-century Famine, but suggests that famished ghosts in 1904 still haunted the city and accompanied the Dubliners in their daily life-inclusive of a cultural outsider, Leopold Bloom.