英語寫作略談（5）：什么是好開頭

徐海銘 上海外國語大學

陳嬋娟 上海外國語大學賢達經濟人文學院

莊甘林 上海外國語大學賢達經濟人文學院

如果文章的開頭能引人注目，或是新穎別致，那么，它不僅在觀感上立刻抓住了讀者的眼球，激發起他們的閱讀欲望，在認知上也能讓讀者獲得為之一振的感覺，置讀者于非讀不可、非要把文章開頭設置的懸念探究清楚的心智狀態。于是，在文章開頭的吸引或激發之下，讀者便開始了一次增進對世相人情的認識和理解、學習如何應對復雜世界的閱讀旅程。人們常說，一篇文章如果有了好的開頭就成功了一半。當代著名作家畢飛宇在創作長篇小說《平原》（2005）時，曾對筆者說，就是為了這篇小說的開頭，他整整忙活了三個多月，寫了，不滿，重寫，又不滿，又重寫，還是不滿，再重寫——反反復復，曲曲折折，真比繡花還難。最后，在反復摸索中，他找到了自己滿意的故事開頭，也就是找到了自己期待的敘事的自然切口。一旦有了合適自然的切口，作者便文思泉涌，敘事得以順暢完成。難怪托馬斯·福斯特（Thomas C.Forster）在《如何像教授一樣讀小說》（How to Read Novels Like a Professor）一書中說：“And it wants to tell us what it thinks is important, so much so that I cannot wait to get started.Perhaps more importantly,it wants us to get involved.When it’s over, we may feel wooed, adored, appreciated, but it will have been an affair to remember.The opening of a novel is an invitation to come inside and play.”（Forster, 2008: 21—22）〔“它（指小說開頭）想要告訴我們什么是它認為重要的東西，它如此急著要告訴我們，以至于我也等不及要開始閱讀。或許更重要的是，它要我們卷入其中。開頭結束時，我們或許有被追求過、被愛慕過、被欣賞過的感覺，不過這將會成為刻骨銘心的事。小說的開頭就是邀請我們進入故事，去體驗其中的樂趣。”〕可見，精妙的、富有魅力的開頭對于作家的順暢敘事和能否吸引讀者具有舉足輕重的意義。

經典（classical works）或值得品讀的作品都非常注重開頭的設計。其實，不論是小說、議論文、散文、隨筆，還是報紙上事實性的或非虛構的專題報道也都是如此。我們來看幾個具體例子，考察例子中開頭的特點及其背后的意圖。

Nations, like individuals, tell stories in order to understand what they are, where they come from, and what they want to be.National narratives, like personal ones,are prone to sentimentality, grievance, pride, shame, self-blindness.There is never just one—they compete and constantly change.The most durable narratives are not the ones that stand up best to fact-checking.They’re the ones that address our deepest needs and desires.Americans know by now that democracy depends on a baseline of shared reality—when facts become fungible, we’re lost.But just as no one can live a happy and productive life in nonstop selfcriticism, nations require more than facts—they need stories that convey a moral identity.The long gaze in the mirror has to end in self-respect or it will swallow us up.

…

The 1970s ended postwar, bipartisan, middle-class America, and with it the two relatively stable narratives of getting ahead and the fair shake.In their place, four rival narratives have emerged, four accounts of America’s moral identity.They have roots in history, but they are shaped by new ways of thinking and living.They reflect schisms on both sides of the divide that has made us two countries,extending and deepening the lines of fracture.Over the past four decades, the four narratives have taken turns exercising influence.They overlap, morph into one another, attract and repel one another.None can be understood apart from the others, because all four emerge from the same whole.

這是美國年逾百年的期刊《大西洋月刊》（The Atlantic）刊登的一篇政治文章的導論部分。美國資深政治社會學者喬治·帕克（George Packer）（2021）采用宏大的敘事方式，回溯性地概括并分析了自二十世紀七十年代以降直到特朗普時代美國社會所經歷的主要裂變、裂變規律以及形塑裂變的核心要素。導論的具體寫法是這樣的：個體通過講故事來表達自己對社會的理解和認知，更重要的是，通過敘事認識自己，構建自己的各種身份（認同），表達自己想要成為什么樣的人。個人如此，民族、國家亦是如此。顯然，作者通過比擬的方法界定敘事的內容。這是具體可感、可以觸摸的日常描述，一般讀者都能理解這個定義。之后，作者從個人敘事過渡到抽象的國家宏大敘事。之所以顯得抽象，是因為作者要從國家整體視角（holistic perspective）和全景化視點（panoramic view）審視整個美國的發展：“如同個人敘事一樣，國家敘事也容易受感傷、怨恨、自豪、羞愧、自我盲目的影響，而且，國家敘事從來都不止一個版本。它們互相競爭，不斷變化。”可見，要把握國家敘事并不容易。作者進而指出國家敘事的一個特征：“最持久的敘事不是因為其最能經得起事實檢驗，而是因為它回應了我們內心最深切的需要和愿望。”這是理解國家敘事的關鍵。然后，作者整體勾勒了國家敘事變化的一般情況：

二十世紀七十年代終結了戰后的、兩黨的、中產階級的美國，隨之也終結了兩個相對穩定的關于邁步向前和公平競爭的敘事。取而代之的是四個競爭性的敘事，也就是四個關于美國道德身份的講述出現了。雖然這些敘事根植于歷史，但卻被新的思維方式和生活方式所塑造，反映出雙方（民主黨和共和黨）的分歧，這些分歧已經使得美國變成了兩個國家，延長并加深了裂痕。過去四十年來，這四個敘事輪流產生影響。它們互相重疊、互相轉變、互相吸引、互相排斥。脫離了其他三個敘事，任何一個敘事都無從理解，因為它們來自相同的整體。

顯而易見，這樣的開頭充滿了高度抽象的表述，它是對美國近四十年歷史的高度濃縮和提煉。既然是濃縮提煉，當然會令一般讀者產生距離感。沒有在美國生活或工作經歷的讀者，或者不是長期關注美國社會變化的專業讀者，通常需要很大的想象力才能理解文本的思想內容。盡管如此，文章開頭從具體熟悉的東西入手，再過渡到美國社會，提綱挈領地梳理出幾大敘事以及構成敘事的核心內容，使讀者有了關于文本主要內容的清晰眉目：四個關于美國的敘事版本，它們彼此關聯、互相依賴，不懂其一，便無從理解其余；要理解美國社會，每一個敘事都不可偏廢。四個敘事共同構成關于美國近四十年變遷的有機整體。

我們現在換個文體，來看一看法國作家維克多·雨果（Victor Hugo）的小說《巴黎圣母院》（The Hunchback of Notre-Dame）的開頭。

Preface

A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an obscure nook of one of the towers, the following word,engraved by hand upon the wall: —

AΝáΓΚΗ.

These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic calligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply.

He questioned himself; he sought to divine who could have been that soul in torment which had not been willing to quit this world without leaving this stigma of crime or unhappiness upon the brow of the ancient church.

Afterward, the wall was whitewashed or scraped down,I know not which, and the inscription disappeared.For it is thus that people have been in the habit of proceeding with the marvelous churches of the Middle Ages for the last two hundred years.Mutilations come to them from every quarter,from within as well as from without.The priest whitewashes them, the archdeacon scrapes them down; then the populace arrives and demolishes them.

Thus, with the exception of the fragile memory which the author of this book here consecrates to it, there remains today nothing whatever of the mysterious word engraved with the gloomy tower of Notre-Dame—nothing of the destiny which it so sadly summed up.The man who wrote that word upon the wall disappeared from the midst of the generations of man many centuries ago; the word, in its turn,has been effaced from the wall of the church; the church will, perhaps, itself soon disappear from the face of the earth.

It is upon this word that this book is founded.

March, 1831 （Hugo, 2010: 1）

雨果創作這篇序言來充當小說的開頭。讀完這篇序言，讀者的思緒立刻被序言中的關鍵詞“命運”拽入巴黎的歷史情境中，并在心中思忖：留下了恥辱印記“命運”、飽受折磨、不甘心離開人世的靈魂（soul in torment）會是誰呢？人間代際更替，歷史朝代變換，寫下“命運”一詞的那只血肉之手早已化作塵土，消失得了無痕跡，而巴黎圣母院這個堅固的物理實體卻依然矗立。這里曾經發生過什么故事？故事的人物曾經歷過怎樣的滄桑，才非要寫下“命運”？也就是說，小說一開頭就打下的“命運”這個楔子，誘惑或迫使讀者跟著作者的思路去追尋故事發生的軌跡。換言之，作家的抱負就是要記載這里的歷史，刻錄這個冤屈靈魂不斷掙扎的命運。冤屈命運的書寫者究竟是誰？這座教堂的主教是誰？他與這個冤屈靈魂有何關系？騷亂迭起的巴黎在教堂這里上演過何種驚心動魄的故事？可以想象，這應該是一部氣勢磅礴的史詩級別小說。

與雨果這篇背景氣勢宏闊、人物命運悲慘的序言開頭不同，英國十九世紀女小說家簡·奧斯丁（Jane Austen）的小說《傲慢與偏見》（Pride and Prejudice）開頭是這樣寫的：“It is a truth universally acknowledged,that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”（Austen，2008：1）這句話采用了it作形式主語結構，把需要強調的、由that引導的從句（真正主語）置于句末，凸顯了一位有錢的單身漢需要娶個太太，點明了小說是關于男女愛情糾葛的戲劇性家常故事。作者使用了一本正經的大詞truth（真理，真相）以及universally（普遍地、放之四海而皆準地）、acknowledged（承認、認同、同意）這樣的表述，給整個小說的基調綴上了一絲詼諧和幽默的色彩，彰顯了小說的風格：輕松，幽默，自然。同時，這個開頭簡明扼要，直抵小說核心內容。究竟誰傲慢？為何傲慢？誰持有偏見？為何產生偏見？偏見和傲慢能否消除？如何消除？這一系列疑問的答案都會隨著愛情故事的展開漸次向讀者敞開。

再如美國著名黑人作家、諾貝爾文學獎獲得者托妮·莫里森（Toni Morrison）的代表作《寵兒》（Beloved），小說一開始就懸念重重、先聲奪人，激發讀者順著小說的開頭探究到底，揭開作者懸置的謎題。

I24 was spiteful.Full of a baby’s venom.The women in the house knew it and so did the children.For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims.The grandmother,Baby Suggs was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old—as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard).Neither boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the doorsill.Nor did they wait for one of the relief periods:the weeks, months even, when nothing was disturbed.No.Each one fled at once—the moment the house committed what was for him the one insult not to be borne or witnessed a second time.Within two months, in the dead of winter,leaving their grandmother, Baby Suggs; Sethe, their mother;and their little sister, Denver, all by themselves in the gray and white house on Bluestone Road.It didn’t have a number then, because Cincinnati did not stretch that far.In fact, Ohio had been calling itself a state only seventy years when first one brother and then the next stuffed quilt packing into his hat, snatched up his shoes, and crept away from the lively spite the house felt for them.（Morrison，2004：3）

首先是I24里滿是惡意，充滿了嬰兒的怨恨。這屋里的女人們知道這一點，孩子們也知道。需要讀者注意的是，作者為了營造閱讀的驚奇效果，打破一般的寫作規則，不對I24這個地點做具體描述，而是故意讓讀者從字里行間去尋找關于I24這個編號是什么的答案。細心的讀者能夠從后面的回指短語in the house推測出這是房子的門牌號碼。作者還引出了women、children、Sethe、Sethe的女兒Denver、奶奶Baby Suggs以及兩個兒子Howard和Buglar。

這兩個兒子13歲時離家出走，照鏡子把鏡子打碎了時（那是給伯格拉的信號）；蛋糕上出現兩只小小手印時（那是給霍華德的信號）。他們誰也不想等待多看點什么。滿滿一壺的鷹嘴豆在地板上的一堆東西里冒煙。蘇打薄脆餅干被捻成粉末，靠近門檻撒成一條線。他們誰也不想等待其中的某個輕松時刻：甚至在無事驚擾的幾周，幾個月。不等了。他們每個人都立刻逃離——在這屋子做了他們無法忍受或再次目睹的侮辱的那一刻。兩個月內，在隆冬時刻，他們離開了奶奶Baby Suggs、母親Sethe、小妹妹Denver，把她們丟在藍石路上的那棟灰白屋子里。那時候，這屋子還沒門牌號碼，因為辛辛那提市還沒延伸到那么遠。事實上，俄亥俄自稱是個州，不過也才70年。那時候，先是一個兄弟，接著是另一個兄弟，把被卷兒塞進帽子里，提著鞋，悄然離開了讓他們感到濃濃惡意的屋子。

可以推斷，這樣的開頭暗示著整部小說的敘事都是圍繞這房子里的人物展開。作家的語言風格和敘事格調在開頭已經露出端倪。

現在總結一下全文。本文列舉了政論和不同風格的小說的開頭樣例，旨在說明不論是寫政論還是寫創意小說，我們都要在開頭下足功夫：如何開頭？是制造懸念，還是從熟悉的話題開始，逐漸過渡到所要言說的議題？這些都得悉心推敲。有了新穎別致的開頭之后，我們再去演繹精彩的故事或展開對議題的深刻論述。