The Death of the Author: Timothy Findley's Pilgrim

作者已死：Timothy Findley的《Pilgrim》The Death of the Author: Timothy Findley's Pilgrim

Timothy Findley's 1999 novel, Pilgrim, tells the story of a famous art-critic and biographer who is convinced that he has lived uninterruptedly for thousands of years. His own unpublished journals give frrst-hand accounts of mythical events, like the war of Troy, or of historical figures, like Leonardo Da Vinci. Tired of such a prolonged existence, the nove氐enigmatic protagonist, Mr Pilgrim, fervently desires an end to his life but he believes himself incapable of dying. With the help of a concerned friend, Lady Sybil Quartermaine, Pilgrim is assigned to the care of psychiatric Doctor, Carl Gustav Jung. Superficially, this novel seems to simply deal with madness. But it does not. Findley's storytelling hints that this strange man may indeed be telling the truth. In doing so, the novel seems to mock our desire to distinguish fact from fiction, love from oppression, life from death. But to what end? In this paper I argue that ''deconstruction'' makes it possible to address the above question and to grasp better some of its philosophical implications. More specifically, I will be focusing on the complex nature of the relationship between Mr Pilgrim and his Doctor, which, I argue, is a relationship of inescapable conflict but, also, of an unbreakable connection. Moreover, using the post-structuralist theme of ''the death of the author,'' my intention is to explain why, at the end of the novel, Findley allows the writer-madman (Pilgrim) to find the freedom of death at the exact moment when Jung is confronted with horrible dreams of a coming world war one.

Timothy Findley在《Pilgrim》這部1999年的小說，講述了一位知名藝評家兼傳記作家的故事。那人深信自己已經持續地存活了幾千年。在他那本尚未公諸於世的日記裡，他用第一手的方式記載了一些諸如特洛伊戰爭的神話事件，又或像是達文西這樣的歷史人物。小說中這位奇幻的主人翁Pilgrim先生，熱切的渴望能夠結束自己的生命，但他卻相信自己怎麼都死不了。後來，在一位關心他的朋友Sybil Quartermaine女士的引介之下，Pilgrim先生接受了精神科醫師Carl Gustav Jung的治療。乍看之下，這似乎不過是一本探討癲狂的小說，但實際上卻非如此。Findley的敘述方式暗示著：這位奇特的男人所說的或許是實話。透過這樣的方式，這本小說似乎在嘲諷我們想分辨真實與虛構、愛與壓抑，以及生與死的追切。但到底其背後的目的為何？本文透過「解構」分析闡述上述問題，並攫取當中的哲學意涵。更確切的來說，本文將著眼在Pilgrim先生與他醫生之間關係的複雜本質。而就這點，本文指出那是一種不可避免的衝突關係，同時也是牢不可破的連結。藉由套用後結構主義的「作者已死」觀點，本文企圖解釋，為何在小說的最後，Findley允許作家，也就是Pilgrim先生這位瘋子，找到死去的自由。而在此同時，Jung的夢中，也開始浮現第一次世界大戰即將到來的可怕景象。