閱讀〈塞王〉中的音樂與意識流

Reading Music and Translating Interior Monologue: Finding Sense in the Sounds of “Sirens”

〈塞王〉為《尤利西斯》一書中訊息密度最高、文體風格最複雜的篇章之一。本論文探討聲音和韻律如何干擾意識流文本的閱讀。喬伊斯為了突顯詞句韻律引用了音樂、歌詞、和音效，並採取調皮多元的語言表現風格，因而時常犧牲詞句中的語意，也嚴重違背標準英文句型和句法。此複雜的韻律與文字遊戲，再加上原本可讀性極低的意識流和零碎獨白片段，再再形成讀者的一大挑戰。此篇以刁鑽的意識流文體參雜格格不入的聲韻和歌詞片段，帶給讀者不少詮釋學上的困擾，對譯者亦然。為了更突顯韻律和音樂在文學文本中帶給讀者閱讀上的困擾，本文將〈塞王〉兩中譯本與喬伊斯的原文做交叉比較。中英文本比較充份顯示喬伊斯在〈塞王〉這一章為了凸顯音效而廣泛破壞標準句型，因而使原本就難理解的意識流文章更不容易閱讀，亦犧牲了文本的邏輯性。

This paper discusses the motifs of sound and music in the “Sirens” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses， and how they actually interfere with reading when put side-by-side with stream of consciousness passages. In “Sirens，” Joyce puts emphasis on playful phrasings and the disruption of conventional syntactical patterns done so as to enhance prose rhythm needed for musical effect. In this episode， Bloom’s interior monologues are no longer presented in extended passages. Instead， they are integrated into the narrative and often juxtaposed with dialogue and psycho-narration. Over and above these narratological changes， the density with which rhythm， sound， music and song lyrics are included makes reading of this episode quite formidable for a reader with an ear untrained in the innuendos of sound and musical patterns embedded in literary texts， more so for a translator who has to render the story into another language. To better show how the text is read and understood， excerpts from the two translated Chinese versions by Xiao Qian and Wen Jieruo， and by Jin Di are compared with Joyce’s original. Through these comparisons， we realize that Joyce adopts playful phrasings that often disrupt conventional syntax while having a specific musical or rhythmic effect in mind， giving more emphasis on the achievement of the latter at the expense of syntactic and semantic intelligibility. The necessary consequence of such a reversal is that Joyce substantially reduced the rationality， or readability， of his extravagant prose.