巴西的现代性 (Brazilian Modernity)

Flora Süssekind, Cinematograph of Words: Literature, Technique, and Modernization in Brazil (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).

这是一本巴西学者写的书，被翻译成英文在美国出版，得以让英语读者也了解作者对巴西文学与现代性的思考。书里从新技术和新发明的角度来谈论近现代巴西的文化活动，分析了留声机、照相机、电影、打字机等等对文化生产和消费的冲击。这个比较有意思。本书关注的巴西文化进程，差不多是从十九世纪末到二十世纪初这段时间，正好是我们大清国“锐意进取”的末期。巴西在1889年就已经从帝制迈向共和了。我们的大清国一直挺到1911年。做为两个大国，又在大致的历史时期走向近现代社会，晚清民初的日常生活和同时期的巴西有些共性。其中一个相似之处就是对新技术和新发明的好奇。拿我们的晚清民初来说，不管是颐和园的电灯，溥仪的自行车还是上海的照相馆，新玩意儿的引进和应用都五花八门，对文化的影响更复杂得很。留声机刚传入巴西的时候，也是个新奇的玩意儿。值得玩味的是，最先有机会摆弄这个新玩意儿的还是旧制度的头头——巴西的皇上。留声机在巴西最初录下来的，是末代皇帝的声音。此时离皇上的退位仅剩一个星期。

通过讲述新技术和发明进入巴西后所产生的文化意义，此书告诉读者：怀旧和布新，并不是泾渭分明的。

Some quotations:

(The exhibition and the royal auditions of Edison’s phonographs in 1889)
What is ironic about this incident is that it took place on the eve of the proclamation of the republic, and that in its earliest use in Brazil the phonograph should have preserved the last voices of the empire—including that of the emperor himself. (32)

There was yet another phonograph exhibition before the imperial family—the most melancholy of all. This was on November 14, 1889—the night before the proclamation of the republic. (33)

Thus, from a political point of view the phonograph played the part of recording the voices of the rulers of the empire just before their fall from power. These recordings had a somewhat ambiguous effect: at the same time that they preserved and reproduced the voices they also seemed to divest them of their earlier aura, in a rather cruel way. The voice of the emperor, recorded on November 9, was the voice of a deposed monarch only one week later. It was as though the daguerreotypes and phonograms that held such a fascination for Pedro II were announcing, without his being aware of the fact, the fading of the empire’s insignia and the extinction of the monarchy. And the new devices, having been blessed by the emperor, were soon in the service of those who succeeded him in power. (33)

© by Dun Wang (王敦). All rights reserved. 著作权拥有者：Dun Wang (王敦)。

Miscellaneous “primitive” and “savagery”/ “原始”与“野蛮“种种

[T]his great reservoir of moral, social, and physical pollution which is constantly extending its area and threatens to engulf with its filthiness and immorality the fairest portion of our city.

Depiction of San Francisco Chinatown (San Francisco Chronicle February 24, 1880).
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It was so easy to imitate these people. I learned to spit in the very first days. We used to spit in each other’s faces; the only difference was that I licked my face clean afterwards and they did not.

Franz Kafka, “A Report to an Academy” in The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces (New York: Schocken books, 1948), 180.

Ah, one learns when one has to; one learns when one needs a way out; one learns at all costs.

Ibid, 183.
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All complacency over his handiwork had vanished; never could he bring himself to exhibit to mortal eye these repulsive creatures. His only thought was the unanswerable question: what should he do with them? On this he brooded continually, reaching no conclusion because he could no more contemplate destroying creatures possessing human intelligence, however distorted and degraded, than he could have taken the life of a born idiot or one insane.

Louise J. Strong, “An Unscientific Story” The Cosmopolitan 34, no 4 (February, 1903), 414.

They were small, oblique, set closely together, of a heady black, their only lids being a whitish membrane that swept them at intervals—but they sparkled and glowed with passion, dimmed with tears, and widened with thought. Those eyes, more than a score of them, were fixed upon him now with entreaty, menace, fear, revolt, and, most of all, judgment burning in their depths. Even the smaller ones, of which there were many in various sizes, eyed him with resentment and hate, while scurrying, like frightened rats, from corner to corner as he moved about.

Ibid, 416.
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The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea--something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (New York: Norton, 1988), 10. Quoted from Theodore Huters, Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press), 266.

William Schaefer, "Shanghai Savage" Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 11.1 (2003) 91-133.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/positions/v011/11.1schaefer.html

不加按语了。相互关联当然是有。现在只是先列一个感兴趣的单子。当然，我的同情不是站在十九世纪和二十世纪初西方所自诩的“文明人”一边。我所同情的是被“文明人”所诋毁的“原始”、“野蛮”群体，以及他们是怎样被诋毁的。

© by Dun Wang (王敦). All rights reserved. 著作权拥有者：Dun Wang (王敦)。

摘自晚清的一篇幻想小说 (Highjacked Modernity)

當此之時。余心中所有一切歡娛快樂之感情。早已付諸九霄雲外。無何有之鄉矣。故雖欲強顏為笑。總不可得。惟時覺懮心忡忡。驚悸恐怖而已。非但不能稍自寬解。且憂悶之餘。反而自憐自憫。懊悔欲死。不覺深自痛責曰。噫﹑余何人斯。彼何人斯。而竟不加深察。而同至於此耶。彼工師者。外國人也。非我族類。其心必異。彼老悖者。癲癇之人也。彼自身且不惜。更何有於余。嗟乎。余何辜。乃遭斯厄。蓋余此去。必死無疑。雖然。人孰無死。死亦常事耳。不過遲早之間耳。第此非余所自創之事業。與余有何關涉。而乃無端犧牲其生命耶。

读罢有一种中国被“现代”所劫持的感觉，就好像此篇小说里叙事者所乘“宇宙飞船”,其航向不是他的主观意识所能主宰的。驾驶是外国人，发明家也是外国人。这哪如列子般的御风而行那样坦然？在“现代化的飞船上”，加速腾飞的过程必须分秒不差，而且充满了风险。