食物隐喻与存在之思:李翊云《我该走了吗》中的情感、记忆与生命哲学  

Food Metaphors and Existential Reflections:Emotion,Memory,and the Philosophy of Life in Yiyun Li's Must I Go

作　　者：肖明文 石雅迪 Xiao Mingwen;Shi Yadi

机构地区：[1]中山大学外国语学院

出　　处：《华文文学》2025年第2期29-36,共8页Literatures in Chinese

基　　金：国家社科基金重大招标项目“西方物叙事研究”(23&ZD302);教育部人文社科项目“19世纪美国小说中的饮食书写与国家想象研究”(21YJC752019)。

摘　　要：李翊云的小说《我该走了吗》通过丰富的食物隐喻,构建了情感、记忆及生命哲学的深层叙事。酒与牛奶的二元对立象征了主人公罗兰的情感张力:酒代表激情与未完成的欲望,恰如他对伊夫琳的禁忌之恋与对“适度陌生感”的执念;牛奶则指向自我欺骗的平静,映射其与赫蒂婚姻的平庸妥协。莉利亚则以“香草布丁”“咸鱼”等食喻类比了婚姻的乏味,揭示情感价值的虚空。瑞士奶酪的孔洞隐喻人生缺憾与记忆的不可逆性,而面包从“酵母面团”到“坚硬陈腐”的转变,象征了丧女之痛引发的心灵僵化与防御性重构。此外,文本通过食物与战争的并置,批判了历史暴力对个体期待的粉碎,同时以腌黄瓜的机械化保存讽刺社会对“永恒”的虚妄追求。小说借助食物的物质性与象征性,探讨了记忆的主观性、情感的矛盾性以及存在本质的短暂性,最终指向人类如何在缺憾中重构意义的核心命题。Yiyun Li’s novel Must I Go employs rich metaphors of food and drink to construct a layered narrative exploring characters’emotions,memories,and existential philosophies.The binary opposition between wine and milk symbolizes the protagonist Roland’s emotional tensions:wine embodies passion and unfulfilled desires,as his forbidden infatuation with Evelyn and his obsession with“measured estrangement,”while milk signifies self-deceptive tranquility,mirroring his compromise in a mundane marriage with Hetty.Lilia,another central figure,deconstructs the tedium of marital coexistence through metaphors like“vanilla pudding”and“salted fish,”revealing the hollowing of emotional value.The porous structure of Swiss cheese serves as a metaphor for life’s imperfections and the irreversibility of memory,while bread’s transformation from“leavened dough”to“stale hardness”symbolizes the psychological rigidity and defensive reconstruction wrought by maternal grief.Juxtaposing food with war imagery,the text critiques historical violence’s annihilation of individual aspirations,while the mechanized preservation of pickles cucumbers satirizes society’s futile pursuit of permanence.Through the materiality and symbolism of food,the novel investigates the subjectivity of memory,the contradictions of emotion,and the transient nature of existence,ultimately probing how humanity reconstructs meaning amidst imperfection.

关 键 词：李翊云 《我该走了吗》 食物隐喻 记忆书写 生命哲学 

分 类 号：I106[文学—世界文学]