The novel says so
Wang Anyi
In my opinion, for a novel to be "great," the task is too heavy. Especially like me, who writes novels professionally, because I am in it, I always look at the problems specifically, even specific to the trivial, and "great" is even more afraid to think about it. It's still empty to think of, and it's almost impossible to start. Writing a novel is a craft job, and all you want to do is to do it well, so sometimes, if you can think freely, all you think about is how good the novel is.
Writer Gao Xiaosheng wrote a story called "Ferry", at the end of the story is the writer changed his profession, became a ferryman, after a long time, the writer found that in fact, he did not change his career, "The original creation is the same as the ferry, the purpose is to ferry people to the other side of the front." In this way, writing a novel is a "crossing", so there is this shore and the other shore. In "Dream of the Red Chamber", this shore is Baoyu and Daiyu, and the other shore is the daizhu grass and the attendant of the god Ying, with the leading edge on the three living stones, the children's love of the Grand View Garden has a fairy name: also tears. The "frontier" in chinese stories is a very emotional concept, which takes the other shore as a foothold, sets out to this place, and then returns to the other side, with two crossings, during which the road is twice as long, the experience is more heavy, and the vision is also higher. "The Legend of the White Snake" should be a novel, it is a good novel. The White Snake cultivated for a thousand years to go to the world, and was punished by the Fahai monk into the Leifeng Pagoda, and it was a long time that passed before he returned to the Immortal Realm. "Heavenly Immortals Matching" is also, the seven fairies finally return to heaven. I think it's not just the Jade Emperor recall, or the Fahai Monk Zhenfa, these are actually "crossings", in fact, those are all immortals, and they must be classified into eternity. "Journey to the West" is confused on the other side of this shore, four Tang monks and apprentices, but also eternal characters, immortal, but on the way to the West Heaven, all that is encountered are accidents on this shore: the flame mountain, the man-eating beast, the demon who confuses the mind, and Sun Wukong is like a martial arts master, who can turn the danger into a disaster, cut through thorns and thorns, just like a dry road in the Ganges River, not from this shore to the other shore, but up the river. "Water Margin" is a very realistic novel, close to the western people's empirical concept, on the other side of this shore is the mountain and down the mountain of Liangshan Po, one hundred and eight stars have gone through all the disasters, have defected to Liangshan Po, vigorously, gathered a group of heroes. Later zhao'an was really a failure, not from the revolution's complete incompleteness, but because it was deplored that it had pulled out of the world, but it had fallen into the trap. Putting down the end, the whole book is written about "crossing", how to ferry the good men from the world of the people to the hero Taoli, each has its own original reasons, each has its own number of ways. The other shore in Western novels is not like the Chinese illusion, but has an actual form, which requires the rationality of "crossing".
There is a novel in Calvino, Italy, called "The Wrong Station", which says that a man came out of the evening cinema, encountered a foggy day, and his mind was full of dream scenes in the movie, so he missed the station, came to the unfamiliar street, and then entered the tavern to drink a few drinks, came out even more confused, walked around, walked up a wall, walked down a platform, fell to the grass, the ground was embedded with lights, walked along the light on the cement road, walked up a ladder, entered a "bus", asked the ticket inspector whether he would go to his station, and replied: The first stop is Mumbai, then Kolkata and Singapore. Then the "bus" flew through the stars toward the clear sky, and it turned out that he had stepped on a plane. It's kind of interesting, so there's a qualitative difference between here and there, here and there. The novelist is also a bit like a magician, changing into a human trick.
Notre Dame de Paris
Published by the People's Literature Publishing House
In "Notre Dame de Paris", Hugo finally put Quasimode and Esmeralda into Notre Dame, giving the two tormented gods from Egypt a magnificent shell, and Notre Dame de Paris had a human heart. In "The Smiley Man", he put Gwen Puran, a juggling clown, into the British noble House of Lords and asked him to criticize the world in the form of street jokes. Valjean, the obscure slave, eventually became a saint, and the road was even longer, paving the way with the boulders of history: the French Revolution, the Battle of Waterloo, the July Revolution of 1830, and the future February Revolution, in this figurative social scene, step by step, step by step, and also bear the burden of salvation, with the weak and the small, there is the meaning of "universal sentient beings", the task is long, and finally "crossing" to the ethereal other shore, the strength of thought is extremely strong. In short, the other shore is a miraculous face, which cannot appear in reality, and this is what the novel does - to create a void space, but to start from reality. Because it is a novel, not a myth, a novel is a story of man, not a story of God, and the other shore is the shore of man's god. That is to say, from this shore to the other shore, it is to "cross" people to God. The other side of "John Christophe" is the unity with the Sage Christophe, which is somewhat like the "leading edge" of the Chinese, which also has a way to go and then go to the other side. But there is also a sense of mission here, not as passive as "frontier". It is "crossing" the past, and it merges with the sage Christophe, and if it does not "cross" the past, there will be no day, so it needs to be struggled. I like the phrase "one with Christophe the Sage", as if the soul enters the real shell and is greeted by the other side of nothingness.
But the other shore is ultimately slim, especially under a strict writer like Tolstoy. In War and Peace, Pierre seeks the goal of life, first joining Freemasonry, then going to war, then staying alone in evacuated Moscow, and then being captured by the French army, walking in the ranks of prisoners of war. He was like the Prince Shakya in Eastern religions, removing his costume, draping himself barefoot, and sharpening his body and mind in order to attain enlightenment. But where do you go next? He marries Natasha, gives birth to a bunch of children, and is immersed in a peaceful daily life, and Tolstoy seems unwilling to let things end there, so at the end of the page, Pierre reveals that he is involved with the Decembrists. The other shore extends out again, hidden in the future. On the other side of Andrea's death, on his deathbed, he realized a broad love that was not directed at anything else, and that all things were fused into one under the care of this love, and he ceased to pay attention to the specific things around him, near and far, and instead took up spiritual peace. This is also a bit like the realm of Chinese, chaotic and empty, but also hidden in the unknown. Nikolai finally found the meaning of life on the farm, and many of Tolstoy's characters quieted down in the life of the farm, such as Levin in Anna, Karenina. This is a more realistic destination, it is moral, and at the same time it does not make people suffer, it seems to be the liberation after asceticism. Just like the scene that Nekhlyudov saw in "Resurrection" at the commander's house in the Siberian fortress, the commander's daughter shyly begged Nekhlyudov to see her pair of sleeping children, like buds, making people feel happy. Before the beginning of Nikolai's pastoral life, Tolstoy, consciously or unconsciously, held a splendid tour for the future destination, that is, winter hunting. The hunt is so excitingly described—windless weather, fertile land, one hundred and thirty dogs, twenty hunters on horseback, chasing a flock of rolling men, hares fleeing in all directions, red foxes crossing winter wheat fields... The passion of this world seems to be handy for the novel, and it is more in line with the realistic character of the novel. But Tolstoy was obviously not satisfied, and he placed his character in the grange, but he set out from the grange and died alone on the caravanserai, as if ending in practice to fiction, ending in a lonely journey. As a result, Tolstoy is great, but the novel is not. I mean, something like a novel, in its own form, has a limit, which limits it from becoming great, and this limit is its secularity.
This worldliness can be said to be the core of traditional Chinese novels, which are more or less derived from the legends of the script, the tiles are arbitrarily hooked, and the short soldiers of the common people are trained, and they understand the meaning of life. In "The Old Remnant's Travels", it is only said that the section on listening to the white lady's book is lined up and down. First listen to the burden of the person said to rest the business to listen to the white lady to talk about the book, then the guys at the counter scrambled to say goodbye, tomorrow to listen to the white lady talking about the book, so easy to the next day, it is a momentary, less than ten o'clock, the scattered seats are full, eleven o'clock, the palanquin is blocked in front of the door, the reserved seats are occupied, twelve o'clock, the gap is inserted in the short stool, twelve o'clock, out of an ugly man, playing strings, competing like a big bead, playing a song, only to come out a Peugeot girl, but not a white girl, is the sister of the white girl. "Du Shi Niang", the tenth lady she has been conscientious for many years, she has already accumulated thousands of years, and she can clearly redeem herself, but she does not, she wants to test Li Jia's sincerity, but unfortunately Li Jia did not fail to live up to it, so she did not return to her righteousness, angrily sank the treasure chest, and threw herself into the river. Among them, there is sophistication, wind and moon, and ambition. Hong Yi's drama "The Hall of Eternal Life" writes the emotions of the emperor and the queen concubine in the style of Xianli Lane. The emperor was originally three palaces and six courtyards, but Yang Guifei wanted to be jealous, and she wanted to be angry with Emperor Tang Ming and drive her out of the palace, and there was another Gao Lishi who reconciled with it and passed on the letter, and Long Live Grandpa was welcomed back by a fragrant car. Originally, it should have been more restrained, but Yang Guifei still did not, Tang Ming Emperor did not return for one night, so he found Concubine Mei and blocked the two in the door, or Gao Lishi mediated and played the round field. It's a bit like the current TV series "Addiction". The storms were several times fixed, and the two of them unexpectedly took a "secret oath" in the Hall of Immortality - "The double stars are on the top, I Li Longji and Yang Yuhuan, the love is deep, I wish the world to live, be a husband and wife, and never be separated." "When I read this, I am going to cry. The career of the emperor was originally a heavenly wonderland, with a little meaning of the other shore, but it fell back to the human world and became a you and me. Originally it was "history", which became a "novel". The benefits of fiction seem to be here again, pulling back the unreachable.
Madame Bovary
In Western novels, the performance of this paragraph can be called critical realism. Western novels have always had a more serious temperament than Chinese novels, unlike Chinese novels, which are more interesting and have a lighter task of thought, and it was not until the "May Fourth" situation that they improved. Critical realism is the most realistic novel, in France it is a naturalistic novel, and the life idea of Madame Bovary is nothing more than bourgeois materialism, but this Flaubert also has to break her, her lover is more and more trivial, her romantic history is more and more slang, and finally falls into a warm hotel, and meets with a small civil servant. The English Hardy's novel "The Romance of the Milking Woman", the atmosphere is much brighter, but also the dream of writing "Cinderella", the result is shattered, but also a flexible realization, the baron kindly gave her fiancé, a countryman, she longed for the silver candlestick, the flower-encrusted needle and thread table, the gold tea set, the French clock, the large painting, and laid out their new home. It's all a story with an ending, and in fact the other shore has retreated. Simon Beauva's "Female Guest", Françoise's efforts to form a "love threesome", is eventually destroyed by jealousy, she actually wants to "cross" to the other shore, but in the end she is bound to reality. The novel is like this, it fully expounds the reasons of reality, using realistic materials to pile up space, the larger and stronger the pile, and finally the more it cannot be overthrown and cannot go out. The more rigorous the writer, the more he cannot walk out of the wall of reality. Especially after the modern era of the twentieth century, the concept of reality is more solid, and the other shore is even more ignorant. Germany's Xu Sijin's "The Story of Mr. Xia", Mr. Xia has been moving forward, walking, as if there is an attempt to go to the other shore, and finally went to the lake, what kind of world is there? Mr. Lu Xun's "Passerby", a good passerby also went all the way forward, asked him where he went, and replied, "Since the time I can still remember, I have been walking like this, I want to go to a place, this place is in front." The old man told him that in front of him was a grave, but the child said that it was a wild lily and a wild rose... Seeing this, I also want to cry, and "Passerby" is a poem, the novel goes through a realistic section, and then goes forward, and then goes into the poem. Therefore, if we want to do a good novel, we must make the novel into poetry.
Excerpt from "Wang Anyi's Essays"
Editor of this weChat issue: Liu Yujie
The image comes from the Internet