《夕霧花園》中的戰爭創傷與世界化文學

War Trauma and Worlding Literature: The Garden of Evening Mists

本文援用謝永平(Pheng Cheah)提出「世界化文學」(worlding literature)的概念來閱讀華裔馬英小說家陳團英(Tan Twan Eng)於2012年出版的作品《夕霧花團》(The Garden of Evening Mists)。以二戰日據馬來亞的戰後世界為背景，書中從戰俘營倖存的女主角雲林(Yun Ling)暮年罹患失語症，回憶與日本園藝師曾有一段糾結的感情，這不只超越殖民者／被殖民者，加害者／受害者的二元對立概念，更讓我們看見被國族史觀所壓抑的、將臨之寰宇主義的倫理想像。論文首先探討謝永平世界（化）文學的理論框架，後殖民文學如何檢視對已然殖民世界再世界化的流變。其次，小說中庭園的「借景」(shakkei; borrowed scenery)技巧可被視為轉換觀點來處理殖民暴力與種族衝突的創傷，除了從美學繞道而行的跨國連結，「借時間」更讓回憶錄成為倖存者放下仇恨、回應敵人作為不可能的他者，並與之共存。論文最後回到小說之中花園代表了美學召喚的世界化的力量，修補當今社會所錯過的、寰宇主義的倫理潛能。

This paper draws on Pheng Cheah’s concept of“worlding literature”and explores the notion in relation to Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists (2012). Tan’s novel takes us through the older Yun Ling’s memories during the Japanese occupation in Malaya, when she, as the sole survivor in a prisoner-of-war camp, found herself falling in love with a Japanese ex-imperial landscaper. The love affair not only defies a dichotomy between victims and perpetrators but breaks open the possibility of reimagining cosmopolitan alternatives to postcolonial nationalist representation. The first part reviews Cheah’s theoretical framework of“world-making”in postcolonial literature, which he believes is an instrument to examine the normativity of“the reworlding of the (colonized) world.”Then, the paper sees the art of“borrowed scenery”in the novel as a perspective shift to deal with the trauma of colonial violence and racial conflict. Characters not only appeal to aesthetic imagination as a way to transcend individual traumas into transnational relationships; the heroine Yun Ling also borrows time to write her memoir, eventually unpacking a world of being with others. The final part takes the image of the“garden”as an aesthetics of worlding, mapping out a missed but still available cosmopolitan ethics.