TRACT: A NOVEL WRITTEN WITHIN THE CRACKS OF KING LEAR

“呼吸道”——身体的主要通道，如呼吸道。-一块无限延伸的土地，或一种地块。——一篇稿子，准备送人。研究背景莎士比亚的《李尔王》最近有几次被重新改编。最著名的包括：简·斯迈利的《一千英亩》（1991），其中土地占据了中心位置；爱德华·圣·奥宾（Edward St. Aubyn）的《邓巴》（2017），李尔王的愚蠢被设定在一个媒体帝国的背景下；Preti Taneja的We That Are Young（2017）将剧本搬到了现代印度；JR·索普的《李尔王的妻子》（2021）以莎士比亚“未写”的一个人——李尔王的妻子——的独白形式出现。同样未写的是愚人在驱逐科迪莉亚后神秘地暂时离开李尔王的宫廷。当李尔王评论愚人说“我这两天没见过他”（1.iv.41）时，我们只知道愚人“被钉在钉子上了”（1.iv.72）。我们不知道他去了哪里，为什么去。这是剧中的一个暗门，一个滴答作响的时钟，48小时的未经授权的缺席。然而，除了提到消瘦之外，作家和学者们都忽略了愚人的缺席。就好像李尔王的感叹词“不再那样了，我已经注意到了”（1.iv.73），到目前为止，已经结束了任何进一步的猜测。对该领域的贡献我自己的猜测将以《Tract》的形式出现，这是一部实验性的混合小说，它将《愚人》的不上庭比作科迪莉亚的不上庭。他们被否定联系在一起，事实上，“无”的概念——科迪莉亚的“无，我的主”（1.i.87）被愚人的“你不能利用无吗，叔叔？”“(1. iv.129)。许多学者都关注过《李尔王》中“虚无”的概念（例如布莱恩·希林，《利用虚无》，《语言学研究》（2013）），但崔特将添加的是一种小说式的探索，即在傻瓜和科迪莉亚的联合消失中，我们不是一个虚无，而是两个虚无，甚至可能是虚无的结合。t·s·艾略特（T. S. Eliot）在《荒原》（The Waste Land, 1922）中写下了一句名言：“我可以将无与无连接起来”，而《Tract》将追求当两个无连接或相遇时会发生什么。这仅仅是“一个没有数字的O”（1.iv.158）加上一个没有数字的O——一个简单的算术上的空虚的、感性的自我的加倍吗？还是有某种偶遇？有“我”和“你”吗？如果有，他们是谁？发生了什么？对我来说，在这里引起共鸣的是保罗·策兰（Paul Celan）的诗《巨大而发光的穹顶》（Vast, luminous vault）中的最后一句话：“世界已逝，我必须带着你”（《诗歌选集》，Michael Hamburger tr.（企鹅出版社1990），275页）。换句话说，Tract将超越一个一致的虚无世界的愿景，走向两个虚无相遇或碰撞的愿景。

'Tract' - - a major passage in the body - e.g. respiratory tract.- an indefinite stretch of land, or kind of plot.- a piece of writing, to be given away.Research ContextThere have been several recent re-framings of Shakespeare's King Lear. The most notable include: Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres (1991) where the land takes centre stage; Edward St. Aubyn's Dunbar (2017) where Lear's folly is set against the backdrop of a media empire; Preti Taneja's We That Are Young (2017) which relocates the play to modern India; and JR Thorp's Learwife (2021) which takes the form of a monologue by one 'unwritten' by Shakespeare - namely Lear's wife. Equally unwritten is the Fool's mysterious temporary absence from Lear's court following the banishment of Cordelia. When Lear remarks of the Fool that 'I have not seen him these two days' (1.iv.41) we learn only that the Fool has 'much pin'd away' (1.iv.72). We have no idea where he has gone or why. This is a trapdoor in the play, a ticking clock, forty-eight hours of unauthorised absence. However, save for the mention of pining, the Fool's absence has been passed over by both writers and scholars. It is as if Lear's interjection 'No more of that, I have noted it well' (1.iv.73) has, until now, put paid to any further speculation. Contribution to the fieldMy own speculation will take the form of Tract, an experimental hybrid novel driven by its reading of the Fool's not-being-at-court as analogous to Cordelia's not-speaking-at-court. They are bound together by negation, and indeed the idea of 'nothing' - Cordelia's 'Nothing, my Lord' (1.i.87) is mirrored by the Fool's 'Can you make no use of nothing, Nuncle?' (1.iv.129). Many scholars have attended to the idea of 'nothing' in King Lear (e.g. Brian Sheerin, 'Making Use of Nothing,' Studies in Philology (2013)) but what Tract will add is a novelistic exploration of how, in the conjoined disappearances of both the Fool and Cordelia, we have not one nothing but two nothings, even perhaps a marriage of nothings. T. S. Eliot famously writes that 'I can connect/Nothing with nothing' (The Waste Land (1922), and Tract shall pursue what happens when two nothings do connect or meet. Is it simply a case of 'an O without a figure' (1.iv.158) plus an O without a figure - a simple arithmetical doubling of emptied, kenotic selves? Or is there some kind of encounter? Is there an 'I' and a 'You'? If so, who are they? And what happens? Resonant here, for me, is the final sentence from Paul Celan's poem 'Vast, glowing vault': 'The world is gone, I must carry you' (Selected Poems, tr. Michael Hamburger (Penguin 1990), 275).To put this another way, Tract will read and write beyond a vision of one consistent world of nothing and towards a vision of the meeting or colliding of two nothings.