「與群星共舞」：《耶穌上學記》的兒童詩學與救贖想像

《耶穌上學記》因其極簡主義風格與神秘隱晦的主旨，自問世以來便爭議不斷，甚至有評論斥之為無聊之作。本文從尼采生命哲學與《耶穌上學記》書寫實踐的內在綰合點出發，立足文本細讀，深入闡析柯慈以詩性想像與審美救贖為創作內核的藝術特質。《耶穌上學記》摹繪了一幅「上帝死後」主體碎裂、理想消隱、記憶失落的末人世相，聚焦世俗理性與奴隸道德宰制下個體迷惘無告的情感訴求與精神苦厄，然而在晦暗與絕望中又乞靈於藝術的審美救贖，從而燭照出世俗情境中內蘊於人類生命的「嬰孩般的自我」。柯慈筆下的兒童舞者大衛揭櫫了一種尼采式的孩子精神，是集奇蹟、自由與創造於一體的超人化身，他以「宇宙之舞」召喚出現代性廢墟下掩埋的生命原初激情與靈魂律動。在後基督時代的語境中，柯慈充分挖掘小說藝術「想像不可想像之物」的無限潛能，為人類逐漸疏離的童年體驗與精神導向賦形。《耶穌上學記》藉助詩性想像超拔於世俗苦難的自我救贖浸潤了一種以「超驗性指令」為精神旨歸的崇高風格。 J. M. Coetzee’s 2016 novel The Schooldays of Jesus has since its publication stirred up quite a controversy for its minimalist style and the far too arcane theme, with some going so far as to disparage it as an unimportant bore. Building upon the signs of interconnectedness between Nietzsche's Lebensphilosophie and Coetzee's novelistic practice, this paper provides a detailed elucidation of the poetic imagination and the aesthetics of redemption that undergird the Coetzeean mode of literary vision. Set in a disenchanted universe after the death of God populated by the Nietzschean “last man” who symbolize splintered subjectivities in the absence of higher aspirations and past memories, the novel tracks the unrepresentable psychological and emotional plights of two adult characters bowed by a prevailing sense of slave morality and mediocre rationalism, while also scanning the darkened horizon for previously unnoticed glimmers of grace through sympathetically inhabiting “our neonate selves” in the aesthetic utopia of art. Coetzee's boy dancer Davíd, disclosing through “the dance of the universe” an ethos predicated upon the primordial vitality and inner rhythm of creation before the secular onslaught of modernity, invokes the child spirit of the Nietzschean Übermensch as a paradigm of miracle, freedom and creativity. Coetzee re-envisages the diminishing contact with our embodied childhood and its relevance to our spiritual transformation through his trenchant com- mitment to the novel's possibility of “imagining the unimaginable,” capturing in this latest oeuvre “a transcendental imperative” imbued with poetic imagination and sublime exuberance that sustains mankind's quest for selfsalvation in a Post-Christian world.