The Specter of Wall Street: "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and the Language of Commodities
The Specter of Wall Street: "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and the Language of Commodities
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华尔街的幽灵：“书记员巴图比”与商品语言
DOI：
10.1215/00029831-76-2-247
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发表时间：
2004
影响因子：
0.5
通讯作者：
Naomi C. Reed
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Naomi C. Reed
律师在赫尔曼梅尔维尔的《代书人巴特比》（1853）中写道：“在介绍代书人之前，就像他第一次出现在我面前一样，我对自己、我的雇员、我的生意、我的办公室和周围的环境做一些介绍是合适的。”有趣的是，律师并没有说他见过巴特比;相反，巴特比“出现”给他。我们可能会把“出现”这个词读作一个从事法律工作多年的人的措辞，在这个职业中，个人的出现通常被称为“出现”。然而，在法律的用语中，动词“to appear”后面通常跟介词“before”：某人总是出现在法官席、法官或陪审团面前。然而，巴特比并没有出现在律师面前，而是在介词的关键变化中出现在他面前。巴特比的出现，当然，创造了一个微妙的，戏剧性的紧张局势，建立了最终的高潮，他被证明是完全不同的人，他第一次出现。然而，“出现”这个词暗示了一种更奇怪的可能性：也许巴特比真的出现了，就像幽灵一样。但是，如果相信梅尔维尔的话，把巴特比当作一个幽灵来读，那又意味着什么呢？我们会被提醒当前的故事评论家似乎已经忘记了：巴特比是奇怪的。当时的评论家当然看到了这个故事的神秘可能性。一个人写道巴特比的“幽灵般的沉默”;另一个人称这个故事是一个“奇怪的故事”，让人想起爱伦·坡的怪诞。然而，在大多数情况下，这个故事的怪异感已经消失了。几乎所有关于“巴特比”的当前工作都来自另一个关键的谱系-不是神秘学，而是神秘主义，一位早期的评论家甚至称这个故事为“生活的肖像”。马克思主义对“巴特比”的批评，
Ere introducing the scrivener, as he first appeared to me,’’ writes the lawyer in Herman Melville’s ‘‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’’ (1853), ‘‘it is fit I make somemention of myself, my employés, my business, my chambers, and general surroundings.’’ Intriguingly, the lawyer does not say he met Bartleby; instead, Bartleby ‘‘appeared’’ to him. Wemight read the word appeared as the diction of a man who has practiced law for many years, a profession in which the presence of individuals is often referred to as an ‘‘appearance.’’ Yet in legal phraseology the verb to appear is typically followed by the preposition before: one always appears before the bench, the judge, or the jury. Bartleby, however, does not appear before the lawyer but, in a crucial change of prepositions, to him. Bartleby’s appearance, of course, creates a subtle, dramatic tension, setting up the eventual climax in which he is shown to be quite different from the person he first appears to be. Yet the word appeared suggests a stranger possibility: perhaps Bartleby quite literally appeared, as would an apparition. But what would it mean to take Melville at his word and read Bartleby as an apparition? We would be reminded of what current critics of the story seem to have forgotten: Bartleby is strange. Contemporaneous reviewers certainly saw the story’s occult possibilities. One wrote of Bartleby’s ‘‘ghost-like taciturnity’’; another called the story a ‘‘weird tale,’’ reminiscent of the eeriness of Poe. Yet for the most part, this sense of the story’s weirdness has been lost. Nearly all current work on ‘‘Bartleby’’ follows from another critical genealogy—not the occult but the quotidian, with one early reviewer going so far as to call the story ‘‘a portrait from life.’’ Marxist criticism of ‘‘Bartleby,’’ in par-