6月28日晚上10點(diǎn)，“欲望的語法”英文寫作工作坊正式收官。這也意味著在我們的好朋友Nazl?的引導(dǎo)下，我們已經(jīng)完整地走過了探索“都市、記憶、欲望”三重主題的閱讀寫作之旅。

在這期課程的6周中，我們與30位生活在世界各地的寫作者共同閱讀了杜拉斯的經(jīng)典之作《情人》。每晚的課程往往伴隨著柯恩（Leonard Cohen）的歌聲開啟，在Nazl?與參與者們互道晚安中結(jié)束。

這是一部對一些共讀者有特殊意義的而反復(fù)重溫的作品，也可能是另一些共讀者因?yàn)椴粩喔惺艿介喿x的困難而反復(fù)放下的作品。除了賞析那些令我們贊嘆乃至屏息的時刻，我們也毫不避諱地在課堂中討論這本半自傳體小說給我們帶來的挑戰(zhàn)，甚至是不適與困惑。從坦誠面對自己的閱讀體驗(yàn)開始，我們再共同思考并討論杜拉斯為何做出這樣或者那樣具體的寫作選擇：譬如那反復(fù)切換的視角與時態(tài)——我們時而被帶到那穿著白裙的15歲少年的面前傾聽她的囈語，下一秒又被帶到已老去的她回看過往的視角——杜拉斯為何這樣寫作？大家在此過程中提到或許人的經(jīng)驗(yàn)與感知原本就并非線性，而這樣跳躍、非線性的敘事，或許在為我們的寫作提供另一種可能性。

除此之外，或許值得一提的是，課程中發(fā)生了許多美妙的共時性時刻：譬如在開課2周之后，美國線上雜志平臺APS（A Public Space）也在作家霍諾·摩爾（Honor Moore）的帶領(lǐng)下開啟了《情人》的共讀活動。摩爾提到，在當(dāng)下這個充滿變動、混亂與暴力的時代，我們應(yīng)當(dāng)重新閱讀這本寫在二十世紀(jì)末的經(jīng)典之作。

杜拉斯流暢地融合著復(fù)雜的話題：殖民主義、種族主義、暴力、性。與此同時，她冷靜地，時而嘲諷地，揭示著其中的殘酷性與脆弱性。她的書寫會持續(xù)為我們帶來關(guān)于欲望文法的新啟示。

在以下的內(nèi)容中，我們希望與你分享來自工作坊參與者的真實(shí)想法與收獲。

SU蘇說：

我記住了“如何像作家一樣閱讀”這一觀點(diǎn)概念，更會從一個創(chuàng)作者的角度去閱讀文本，并從中得到創(chuàng)作的啟發(fā)。我希望將來還有機(jī)會繼續(xù)上Nazl?的課，因?yàn)閮?nèi)容是我感興趣的，在專業(yè)老師的帶領(lǐng)下，我的閱讀和寫作技能很快提升了很多。同學(xué)們相互啟發(fā)討論，也帶給我很多靈感。

Viya說：

不要管那么多，閱讀更多作品，并且立即開始寫。

這門課程讓我每周固定有一個時間必須要思考閱讀和寫作，并且布置了一些聯(lián)系，我必須立即開始實(shí)操。同時，Nazli非常積極地回應(yīng)每一位同學(xué)，我的想法能得到很積極的回應(yīng)。最后謝謝Nazli跟我們一起度過了非常有意義的六個星期。??

Melanie Tsang說：

我想記住我們一起對The Lover的分析和感受，Nazli傳授的寫作觀念以及我們總結(jié)的寫作知識和經(jīng)驗(yàn)。

Nazli是一個好老師。她每堂課都會提前準(zhǔn)備好閱讀和啟發(fā)式的提問，課堂上兼容講授和解答學(xué)生提問，課后發(fā)放錄音，非常有條理。 她的教學(xué)內(nèi)容非常豐富，除了課堂內(nèi)容還提供一對一的解答，其它文學(xué)資源和活動的分享，以及她對我們作品的細(xì)致的反饋。上Nazli的課期間會有種回到大學(xué)的沉浸式的感覺。

Ying說：

我非常喜歡書影音結(jié)合的方式。一般鏡頭語言和文本不經(jīng)常同時出現(xiàn)，老師的課程從最開始就引入了這一個視角。我覺得十分獨(dú)特。 同學(xué)們的討論質(zhì)量也很高，有時候自己閱讀是孤獨(dú)的，但有同伴的感覺非常不同。

Nazli可以用讀者的視角平視我，同時給我非常細(xì)致的評論，這是寫作者看來很珍貴的。

Jie S 說：

我的收獲：讀你喜歡的書，寫作時慢慢來，耐心；我喜歡Nazli設(shè)計(jì)的寫作prompt，那個幫助我更好理解閱讀材料和進(jìn)行寫作訓(xùn)練；Nazli每次上課前都會發(fā)一個文檔，讓我更有效地進(jìn)行課前閱讀，比單純閱讀有趣多了；寫作時，沉浸在當(dāng)下，不要去想失敗或成功，也不要在意別人的評價(jià)。這個幫助我喜歡上寫作。

Nazli有蠻多經(jīng)驗(yàn)的，知道哪些地方需要改進(jìn)，以及哪些地方是寫作者需要關(guān)注的。她可以幫助我入門寫作小說，也讓我感覺到，寫小說不僅僅只是靠靈感的意識流，更是一步步來的，但是長期堅(jiān)持的一種修身養(yǎng)性的實(shí)踐。喜歡她慢慢分析閱讀和寫作的過程。

Chelsea說：

首先，我非常喜歡課程聚焦的兩個文本——瑪格麗特·杜拉斯的《情人》和《幾句關(guān)于寫作的短句》（這是我第一次閱讀和觀看《情人》）。課程的標(biāo)題“欲望的語法”本身就已經(jīng)給我?guī)砹撕芏鄦l(fā)。

這里所說的“語法”，提供了一種清晰的閱讀和寫作的思路，即如何從語言（句子）結(jié)構(gòu)的角度出發(fā)，去構(gòu)建一個關(guān)于情感、欲望（存在和毀滅）以及離別的故事。這包括仔細(xì)思考：是誰在表達(dá)自己的情感？從什么時候開始轉(zhuǎn)換視角才最合適？同時也涉及到敘事時態(tài)的選擇——過去的記憶如何與未來的想象交織？此外，還要考慮在不同場景之間使用何種標(biāo)點(diǎn)符號：這些場景之間是沖突的，還是能連貫地推動敘述？它們是完整的句子（也即完整的場景），還是作者借此提出的問題？

語法的觀念也意味著：一個句子可以被重新書寫，可以展現(xiàn)不同的風(fēng)格、聲音甚至?xí)r態(tài)。這種潛力促使我從多重時間和空間的視角來看待文本。更重要的是，通過比較同一個故事的文學(xué)版與視覺版，此番對照的閱讀方式可以幫助寫作者思考文本的潛力，包括但不限于更細(xì)致地關(guān)注寫作中場景的建構(gòu)與想象。第二本書則聚焦于如何寫出有效的句子，并提醒寫作者打磨句子的重要性，這對我來說也非常有幫助。

我希望將來還有機(jī)會繼續(xù)上Nazl?的課，因?yàn)镹azli總能提供最精細(xì)、精準(zhǔn)的寫作建議，非常有耐心幫助寫作者打磨作品。她選用的文本有助于作者以寫作者的視角學(xué)習(xí)和練習(xí)。

塔麻可吉Tata說：

這門課中關(guān)于意向/形象的討論讓我記憶猶新，非常感動：同一個意向/形象如何重復(fù)，又如何變化，它如何反應(yīng)作者精心虛構(gòu)的時空，又如何投射作者對“自我”、對角色的情感與凝視。我很喜歡課上大家討論小說中愛、欲望、權(quán)力關(guān)系的那部分，也很喜歡一起探索敘述者在文中插入對于寫作看法的那部分。

正如課程名稱所說的，這是“欲望的語法”。我們在這些流動的文字里也學(xué)會了審視自己的記憶——然后將它們提煉塑造成敘事，進(jìn)而更好地理解“愛和欲望”如何反過來構(gòu)建了我們的內(nèi)心。這些體驗(yàn)給我很大的鼓舞，我也開始鼓足勇氣，進(jìn)行了第一次英文創(chuàng)意寫作的嘗試。

Nazl?的教學(xué)引人入勝，我特別享受全身心參與到每一次課堂的討論當(dāng)中，這感覺真的很棒。每周的討論大家都各抒己見，非常有見地，讓我學(xué)到了很多。

Nazl?的課堂總是充滿熱情，極富感染力，而且是指引式的，引導(dǎo)我們自己思考。從精心設(shè)計(jì)的課前問題、每周的寫作提示建議，到課堂上的文本分析、現(xiàn)場討論，每個環(huán)節(jié)層層深入，非常絲滑，在她的帶領(lǐng)下，我能更深入地探索文學(xué)世界。

我非常感謝她為我們設(shè)置的那些明確的截止日期，這讓人在標(biāo)準(zhǔn)下行事，仔細(xì)規(guī)劃時間。我也感謝她面對作業(yè)給出的反饋信，它真的太詳細(xì)了。課后一對一咨詢的那場會議也令人難忘。我現(xiàn)在還會時不時想起，那些建議對我而言有著很重要的意義，幾乎重塑了我的寫作習(xí)慣和態(tài)度。

我覺得這一切都超級完美，現(xiàn)在只有一個問題：下次工作坊什么時候開啟呢？我已經(jīng)迫不及待想要參加了！

最后，請讓我們共同回顧工作坊中的作品選段。

“Unutterable Love”

by SU蘇

The light slants through the office window now, a thin gold blade slicing across the desk where she sits, sorting through a stack of manuscripts. Ten years, she thinks, and the memory arrives not as a wave but as a drift of ash—fine, persistent, settling on the surface of the present. She pauses, her finger hovering over a dog-eared copy of Notes from Underground, its pages faintly scented with bergamot and the ghost of a library’s dust. That first day, too, there had been bergamot: he’d been holding a mug, steam curling like a question mark, when their paths crossed in the glass-walled atrium of the new building.

“Dostoevsky,” he’d said, as if they’d been mid-conversation all along. Not hello or welcome, but the name of a man who’d written about souls cracking open like eggs. She’d laughed, startled, because it was true—she’d been re-reading Crime and Punishment on the subway that morning, Raskolnikov’s feverish logic still clinging to her like a second skin. “You too?” she’d asked, and in that moment, the atrium’s fluorescent lights had softened, as if the sun itself had leaned in to listen.

They’d talked then, standing by the potted ferns that never quite thrived, about The Brothers Karamazov and whether redemption was a lie men told themselves to sleep easier. He’d mentioned Brecht, how the alienation effect was just a way to make the audience feel the weight of their own complicity, and she’d thought, He understands. Later, in the elevator, their shoulders brushing as the doors slid shut, she’d caught the faint scent of his cologne—something woody, like a forest after rain—and wondered if he felt it too, that electric hum of recognition, the way two strangers can sometimes sound like a single voice, echoing back a thought you hadn’t known you’d had.

Nazl?評語

Dear SU蘇,

“Unutterable Love” is a story about two characters who seem to have met at the wrong time at the wrong place, and instead of becoming lovers have drifted apart for ten years. I appreciate how you recreate the complexity of real life, especially when the mainstream media has warped our expectations to be positive and uncomplicated. I also appreciate your similes and word choice, specifically the strong verbs. I find that the flashbacks add to the story, the repeated scenes and images accumulate meaning and metaphorical meaning, and all of them come together as a moving and real story.

Let’s begin with the language, which is already one of the strengths of this piece, so I’d like to make suggestions to polish and refine it even further. There are some words that are repeated, two or four or five times, and while these aren’t great numbers, because the words are strong ones, the repetition is felt. In situations like this, I want to make sure the repetition is intentional and that it doesn’t feel repetitive. Examples of repeated words are: fragile, lock, fold, bergamot, and mote. […] I wanted to share all this with you because at the end of the day, I know you, too, want logically sound metaphors and details. Back to repetitions, metronome, too, is used in two instances, and I recommend changing one of the metaphors to give each its due impact.

“Hands and Whispers”

by Chelsea

Iris did not meet Flora at the college where they both studied. It was at a massage parlour, tucked into a shabby corner of Brick Lane in East London, that Iris first came to know Flora—more precisely, her hands.

Daily, she passed the parlour—

shoulders aching, back bent with months of want—

yet she never entered.

The coloured lights strung above the door—the dim red and blue glow—resembled the hair salons in the narrow alleys of late twentieth-century China.

Recognition was unsettling, Iris thought: the act of comparing two images in one’s mind, unfair to both.

Iris finally went to the parlour, after cutting a twenty-minute short film by a young Japanese director whom she met in the summer,

at a workshop discussing intellectual intimacy.

It was a part-time job.

No talking. Only attention-seeking.

Keep this. Cut that.

Decisions made in seconds—

and measured by them.

The film was about a grandmother with dementia. First, she forgot nouns.

Then adjectives. Finally, verbs. Her visionary world turned orange on the day she celebrated her ninetieth birthday with her neighbour.

The VOICE-OVER said:

“The old lady ate too many unripe persimmons

during Japan’s economic depression.”

Hunger does not produce illusions. Thirst does, Iris thought.

Until one day, the film editor couldn’t bleach the colour from her eyes.

The old lady and she seemed to arrive

at the same vision.

She craved pain—the physical kind—

to overwrite it.

It was a Chinese girl’s hand.

Iris knew it the moment it touched her.

Not muscle, but finger bone—force from the knuckles. Soft hands, underpinned by firm strength, she thought.

“Is the pressure okay?” the girl asked.

“Good,” Iris said.

“I’ve seen you a few times, but you never came in.”

“Do you work here full-time?” Iris asked, then leaned forward into the cradle of the massage table, taking shallow breaths, avoiding the question.

The pressure on her shoulder blades deepened—

her bones let out a brittle creak.

Collapse under each stroke,

like sourdough folding into itself.

Nazl?評語

Dear Chelsea,

This piece is about the relationship of Iris and Flora. I appreciate the distilled narrative that allows for the images to become symbols and the silences to convey meaning. That you chose to write a story in verse made me think of Anne Carson’s essays in verse, especially because your writing was poetically arresting like hers. I think the jobs of the characters, film and massage, also work well, they bring great potential to the piece, which you’ve begun to use. Your stanza about hunger and thirst is already erotic, and should you wish, you can make more of either of the themes—depending on the final length of the piece, another stanza might be enough. I also loved the word games, and while I think having another stanza made up of word pairs may be too much, I am sure you’ll find other occasions to attract attention to words. […]

I’ll be attaching Anne Carson’s “Irony Is Not Enough,” an essay I love and reread often. It’s a retelling of the 1996 movie Thieves, and should you wish to do a little fun study, you can watch the movie and read the first and second drafts of the essay to get even more ideas from it. What I have in mind is, 1) how Carson translates the movie into verse, which may inspire you to do more with Iris’s job, 2) how Carson includes lessons and translations due to the main character’s job, which you may also take and adapt, should you wish to add literary/cinematic references to your piece, and 3) how Carson does dialogue, which is different than yours, and through the differences may show you options to refine and sharpen

“The Ice Boy”

by Dai Yuan

From the age of 15 to 18, my shoulders were my tools for making money.

I carried blocks of ice, about the size of a shoebox, on my shoulder, weaving through every corner of the market in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In this overheated city, everyone needed ice. Seafood vendors used it to chill the catch hauled in from the sea. Traffic police relied on iced coffee to stay calm under the sun. Housewives needed it to prepare chilled water for their families. Though refrigerators were widespread, the electricity was too expensive, and blackouts were frequent. So people preferred buying ice to keeping their fridges on all day.

I don’t know how many blocks I carried. When people needed ice, they called my boss. The ice shop was run by a woman, about forty, who kept a thick notebook on her desk. It had been worn out from years of flipping—inside were the names and addresses of all the regular customers. Wherever the boss asked me to go, I went. Most of the orders came from seafood stalls in the market—they used the most ice. Some came from households. And some customers, old ones, still came to pick up the ice themselves, strapping it to the backs of their motorbikes.

In this city, ice was the only thing that could quiet me. I liked ice. It made me quiet. People here all seemed to know what they were doing. They were busy. Tired. But not poor enough to starve. Nor rich enough to rest. The elders said, as long as there’s no war, life is good.

Nazl?評語

Dear Dai Yuan,

“Ice Boy” is a story about desire told by juxtaposing heat and ice, in their literal and metaphorical manifestations. I appreciated how the heat and ice come together effortlessly through the setting and the body. Lyer’s name would be pronounced “l(fā)iar” in English, which added an extra dimension of belief/disbelief for me, and even though it may be accidental, I enjoyed the possibility of another secret. I also appreciated the dialogue throughout, always sparse and distilled.

In fact, I can use those adjectives to describe the writing. It too was sparse and distilled, just at the right amounts. With the exception of only the rare moment when I wanted the analogies or feelings described only a little bit more, I find that I have no questions for the existing text, nothing to cut, add, or expand. I am curious about the ending, though, and I don’t think the piece has yet reached completion.

On a grander level, I think the story can become one about the three years the narrator refers to in the beginning. […] On a smaller level, I think the story could benefit from bringing Lyer or some thoughts about Lyer at the end, so that it doesn’t end like an unsolved murder mystery that beckons the reader to solve it. And should you wish to make/keep it a murder mystery, the thinking and emotions behind the crime, and the thinking and clues around its later explanation by the police/detectives are full of opportunities to reveal character, explore the qualities of defects of personality, and write about the hope and despair that makes people do what they do.

我們有幸得以分享以上三位寫作者的結(jié)課文章片段，并在三明治的文章平臺上發(fā)表，同時附上Nazl?的點(diǎn)評，希望將寫作及成為寫作者的快樂與更多人分享和見證。希望在未來的相聚中，能夠遇到同樣渴望探索自我的你。

（由haiyan整理&總結(jié)）

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