在癲狂邊緣創作：〈亞舍家的傾頹〉中的分裂極限

Struggling with Madness: The Schizophrenic Limit in “The Fall of the House of Usher”

愛倫坡其人其作品常引發藝術創作是否可能或如何可能萌生於瘋狂中的問題。本論文企圖藉助德勒茲與瓜達希所謂文學的精神分裂天職，亦即對文學如何將語言逼至極限並將自我拉出自我之外的相關討論，來閱讀〈亞舍家的傾頹〉，探討愛倫坡作品中分裂的自我在文學創作過程中扮演的角色。故事主角羅德瑞克被塑造為飽受折磨的浪漫派藝術家，似乎因為對藝術與智識的狂熱愛好而到癲狂自毀的境地。故事中大量的雙重鏡像與疊影則充分演繹了藝術家形象與狂人樣貌相互映照而致的張力，可據以探討自我分裂與藝術創作之間的關係。由精神分裂天職的論述出發，我們或可主張，〈亞舍家的傾頹〉中的鏡像與疊影所反映的並非自我毀滅的意志，而是創作與癲狂之間的複雜關係；在羅德瑞克神智崩解的過程，其自我經歷一連串置換變化，啟動了精神分裂反實化的力量。由此觀之，羅德瑞克的崩潰與亞舍家的傾頹所揭示的是藝術／文學創作者如何不身陷瘋狂而又讓作品產生精神分裂的效果；故事結尾處第一人稱敘事者的成功脫逃，更指出分裂自我在所謂理智消蝕時選擇寫作事件讓創作持續的可能性。敘事者做為自羅德瑞克文字中現身的疊影，進出亞舍家的旅程展演了創作者自瘋狂深處中萌生、讓創作得以繼續的過程。

Edgar Allan Poe’s works pose the question how an inventive artist can arise fromthe whirlpool of fear and madness. This paper seeks to respond to this questionthrough a reading of “The Fall of the House of Usher” informed by Gilles Deleuze’sand Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s conception of literature as an enterprise which carrieslanguage to its outside, and in the process produces the effect of pulling the “self”as defined by its identity outside itself. Roderick Usher is characterized as a Romanticartist as well as a tormented soul. His avid engagement in artistic and intellectual activitiesseems to lead to nowhere other than irrevocable madness and destruction.Such a split and tension posited between the image of an artist and that of a madmanare explored via the multitude of doubles in the story. The way these doubling patternsaccumulate makes the predicament of Roderick an especially fitting instance to bescrutinized in the logic of the relation or non-relation between art-making andself-division. Deleuze’s and Deleuze and Guattari’s reflections on the “schizophrenicvocation” of literature will be drawn on to provide a new approach to examining thevariegated meanings of the doubles in “Usher.” It will then be found that instead ofsimply embodying a certain will to destruction, the doubling patterns reveal a certaincomplicated relationship between literature and madness. What has been read as theutter disintegration of Roderick’s mental condition actually reveals certain powers ofschizophrenia which open the “self” to a series of permutations, a process designatedby Deleuze as “counter-actualization.” Read in this light, both Roderick and the mansionthat bears his family name move towards destruction, unveiling the dynamicprocess of how to bring about a schizophrenic effect with art and literature withoutproducing a schizophrenic. The first-person narrator’s narrow escape at the end of thestory furthermore points to the possibility of reading the doubles as forces which playdivergent roles in selecting the event of writing in the erosion of reason. As a double of Roderick that emerges as the effect of writing and is therefore read as the duplicatedimage of Roderick, the narrator’s eventful journey into the house of Usher bringsattention to the writer’s problems of surviving the whirlpool of madness and revivingthe process of writing.