Haddis Alemayehu’s classic novel ፍቅር እስከ መቃብር (Fikir iske Mekabir, Love until Death, 1958 Ethiopian Calendar, 1965/6 Gregorian Calendar), is lauded by critics as a pioneering realist and modern novel in the Amharic literary tradition. My aim in this article is to scrutinize this take by examining the novel’s narrative temporalities and modes through a dialectical lens. This leads me to argue that the novel’s realism is marked by contradiction and fluidity. Specifically, the emergence of realism in Fikir iske Mekabir is accompanied by its breakdown while the realist narrative mode is accompanied by the traditional narrative modes of epic and hagiography (or, gedl). This hitherto unexamined textual and intertextual quality of Haddis’s novel reveals new insights into its thematic content regarding modernity, tradition, and social reproduction under the old Ethiopian order.

哈迪斯·阿莱玛耶胡的经典小说《ፍቅር እስከ መቃብር》（《Fikir iske Mekabir》《爱至死》，1958 年埃塞俄比亚历，1965/6 公历）被评论家誉为阿姆哈拉文学传统中开创性的现实主义和现代小说。我写这篇文章的目的是通过辩证的视角审视小说的叙事时间性和模式来审视这一观点。这使我认为小说的现实主义特点是矛盾和流动性。具体来说， 《Fikir iske Mekabir》中现实主义的出现伴随着现实主义的崩溃，而现实主义叙事模式则伴随着史诗和圣徒传记等传统叙事模式。哈迪斯小说迄今为止未经检验的文本和互文质量揭示了对其有关现代性、传统和埃塞俄比亚旧秩序下的社会再生产的主题内容的新见解。