前一陣，有位華人教授撰文回憶初初留洋讀書時候，被迫讀克里斯蒂娃的書卻讀不懂，更被迫“套理論”，因而文中，克里斯蒂娃頂戴“時尚學者”之帽，潑潑然挨鬥。
平心而言，批判大學及學術機構的人事博弈不能不算幾分道理，祗是不要模糊了靶心。一個中國人看到一桌子法國菜，試了其中一口，太難吃啦，不是我的菜！於是把一桌子都掀翻。
克里斯蒂娃，作為巴赫金與法國/巴特的交節點，創立“互為文本”一詞，得到巴特極大提攜，這一段歷史無可取代。之後她搞的理論是難懂，後又改向精神分析學，方為轉機。不似中國把精神分析學搞成一個哲學流派，原本的精神分析，係有臨床基礎的。弗洛伊德，開的是診所，他的理論由實例總結而出。而不是學者們多讀幾本書，在紙面上理論推理論。這也是克里斯蒂娃再接觸盛世中國後，驚訝於中國大學的精神分析學者，既無“自我分析”，也沒開診所。
講回華人教授求學時的受難經歷，其時我即想起，保羅·奧斯特在此書前言中提及英美某些人“a certain wariness, even hostility, to literary and intellectual practices in France”，所憾那時手頭沒有原文。
好在，眼下書在手上，很慢的把精彩片段敲入電腦，不得不佩服奧斯特的段位——“the French live inside their language in ways that are somewhat at odds with the way we live inside English. ”—— 如果連這一段都參不透，難怪會上街亂勘人吧。
《The Random House Book of 20th Century French Poetry》前言by保羅·奧斯特
（摘選）
“On the other hand, this much is also certain: If there has been a steady interest in French poetry for the past hundred years on the part of British and American poets, enthusiasm for the French has often been tempered by a certain wariness, even hostility, to literary and intellectual practices in France.
……One has only to compare the dominant trends in philosophy, literary criticism or novel-writing, to realize the enormous gulf between the two cultures.
Many of these differences reside in the disparities between the two languages. Although English is in large part derived from French, it still holds fast to its Anglo-Saxon origins. Against the gravity and substantiality to be found in the work of our greatest poets (Milton, say, or Emily Dickinson), which embodies an awareness of the contrast between the thick emphasis of Anglo-Saxon and the nimble conceptuality of French/Latin — and to play one repeatedly against the other — French poetry often seems almost weightless to us, to be composed of ethereal puffs of lyricism and little else. French is necessarily a thinner medium than English. But that does not mean it is weaker. If English writing has staked out as its territory the world of tangibility, of concrete presence, of surface accident, French literary language has largely been a language of essences.
……The contrast, as Lytton Strachey noted, is between “comprehension” and “concentration”. “Racine’s great aim,” wrote, “was to produce, not an extraordinary nor a complex work of art, but a flawless one; he wished to be all matter and no impertinency. His conception of a drama was of something swift, inevitable; an action taken at the crisis, with no redundancies however interesting, no complications however suggestive, no irrelevances however beautiful — but plain, intense, vigorous, and splendid with nothing but its own essential force.” More recently, the poet Yves Bonnefoy has described English as a “mirror” and French as a “sphere”, the one Aristotelian in its acceptance of the given, the other Platonic in its readiness to hypothesize “a different reality, a different realm”.
……(after an example of “Il n’y a plus de roues de bicyclette” and “There are no more bicycle wheels.”) A world of difference is embedded here beneath apparent similarity. Just as the Eskimos have more than 20 words for snow (a frequently cited example), which means they are able to experience snow in ways far more nuanced and elaborate than we are — literally to see things we cannot see — the French live inside their language in ways that are somewhat at odds with the way we live inside English. There is no judgment of any kind attached to this remark. If bad French poetry tends to drift off into almost mechanical abstractions, bad English and American poetry has tended to be too earthbound and leaden, sinking into triviality and inconsequence. Between the two bads there is probably little to choose from. But it is helpful to remember that a good French poem is not necessarily the same thing as a good English poem.”
