「傷心咖啡店之歌」裡過渡儀典式的自由之旅

Crossing Liminal Spaces: The Journey to Freedom in a Song of the Sad Coffee Shop

在台灣小說家朱少麟的「傷心咖啡店之歌」裡，馬達加斯加島被故事女主角馬蒂當作自由的象徵。由於對台北都市高度現代化與資本主義競爭感到厭倦，馬蒂在夢想中刻畫著馬達加斯加島宛如台灣的擴大版與良知，並終於出發前往該島尋求象徵中代表自由與認同的符號與認知體系的連結：自我身份認同與自由的串聯。本文將以小說中馬蒂的認知為起點，由台灣，台灣的鏡像馬達加斯加島與自由的符號象徵作為探討這些社會、文化、空間符號背後的符號學連結關係，檢視小說中馬蒂在台北工作與生活時的種種迴繞、徘徊，與在馬達加斯加島追求自由的旅行過程，是如何成為一種空間過渡（季內普，特納），成為「過渡」儀典般的一種跨越社會與文化的中介；而這樣的跨越與「過渡」，最終將因為馬蒂在馬達加斯加島的各種經歷與領悟，而得以用更開闊多元的認知符號體系的建立來釋懷創傷並面對新局。

Madagascar, in Shao-ling Chu’s A Song of the Sad Coffee Shop （1996）, is the symbol of freedom for the young, divorced protagonist Mathi. Working in the highly modernized Taipei city, Mathi believes the city’s visible and invisible confinements result in her lethargy and aimlessness in life. In Mathi’s daydreaming, Madagascar becomes Taiwan’s counterpart, its enlarged self and its lost conscience. She finally sets out in quest of freedom in the desert of Madagascar where she believes the ultimate symbolic sign of self-identity and the idealistic concept of freedom in life converge. In this paper, I would like to examine firstly the close semiotic connection and signification between the sign of freedom and the signification of the geographical and economic situations of Madagascar as Taiwan’s “reflection of the mirror,” and secondly I would address Mathi’s detour in Taiwan and her quest for freedom in Madagascar as experiences of crossing liminal spaces （Gennep, Turner） that prepare and initiate her to a broader sense of inter-subjective relationship. After passing this liminal phase, Mathi at last approaches the resolution to her traumatic puzzlement in life through her final realization of nature’s extreme “non-interference” delineated in the intermittent episodes of liminal spaces as significant semiotic sign process of social, cultural and special crossings in A Song of the Sad Coffee Shop’s textual narrative.