◎ Huang Jiwei
It was not too early to know Calvino. That year, because I wanted to do a radio column for the radio station "Interview on an Isolated Island", I interviewed Wang Xiaobo, and when I talked about the writers and works I liked, I knew Calvino from his mouth. Among the writers he likes, there are cards, and there is Viscount in Half. In front of the living people, Wang Xiaobo was a little restrained, but when it came to Calvino, his voice suddenly relaxed, as if covered with a layer of worshipful soft light, the corners of his mouth rose, very happy.
Since then, calvino's books on the shelves have slowly increased. Some are bought by themselves, and some are sent by friends. In domestic publishing houses, translations, flower cities, and Anhui literature and art have all produced Calvino's books, and the most and most complete one is the Yilin Publishing House. I remember that the Translation Forest Agency also published a pamphlet, which contained many card fans' reading "card" experience. I am not a "card fan", at best, A passerby fan, about the card, seems to understand, but does not seem to understand much.
Fast forward, many years have passed, time has not changed anything, and Calvino is not the only one who is enchanting. However, occasionally mentioning that the "card" fragments that are read intently and occasionally read will flicker like a beam of light spots, and faintly disappear. "If you want to know how dark it is around, you have to pay attention to the faint light in the distance"... Calvino said this, and he may not know it, but to his readers, his works are like light, occasionally remembered, and can also shine.
In The Path to the Spider's Nest, Calvino writes, "There were not many frogs on this night. Beyond the bamboo forest, there is the path to the spider's nest, which is a magical area known only to Bin. There, Bin can weave spells, can establish himself as king, can become a god"... This narrative is full of illusions, very lyrical, very fairy tales. I think "Bin" is Calvino himself. To this world, he established himself as a god.
In The Invisible City, Calvino writes, "There are two ways to avoid suffering, and for many people the first is easy: to accept hell and become a part of it until you do not feel its existence; the second is risky, requiring constant vigilance and learning: to find people and things in hell that are not hell, to learn to discern them, to keep them alive, to give them space." ”
The above passage is a paragraph near the end of "city", and after many years of reading, you can still feel its penetrating and shocking power - whether you live in the city, or live in a village, or live in a village-like city, the metaphor of "acceptance" in the card pen is like a whip, which is disturbing. The card is written about the past and the present, and it is they, and it is us, who want to "look for non-hellish people and things in hell", to be courageous, to be wise.
In the book The Hermit of Paris, Calvino writes: "I think the ideal for a writer should be, close to namelessness. In this way, the supreme prestige of the writer can be spread far and wide. This insight is surprising, and from today's point of view, isn't everyone eager to be famous? Especially writers. But calvino's insights about fame are particularly ambiguous, in addition to being particularly ambiguous—what did he see between "namelessness" and "prestige"? What comes to mind?
In the book "Literary Memorandum for the Future Millennium", discussing the rhetoric of "complexity", Calvino said, what is "complexity", complexity is "sixteen kinds of winds twisted into a hurricane"... This sentence, which compares itself to a hurricane, is a dozen words, and it is as novel and vague as the previous reflection on "becoming famous." However, perhaps it is just this superposition of novelty and ambiguity that makes people feel a majestic force from it, making ambiguity like nuclear energy and chaos like nuclear explosion.
In addition to Kashi, in response to the question of "Lonely Island", Wang Xiaobo also mentioned Ovid, "Metamorphosis", "A Bullet to Solve a Thousand Sorrows", as well as Günter Grass and his "Cat and Mouse" and so on. These writers and works, like cards, are very different in style, difficult to classify, and have multiple uncertainties—uncertainty of form, uncertainty of category, uncertainty of theme, and uninhibited spiritual orientation. This kind of glue together is probably the so-called ambiguous charm.
The writer Wilde said that life imitates art. But in the literary world of writers like Calvino, the boundaries between life and art are largely non-existent. Ovid said, "Because he belongs to me, he does not belong to me"; Calvino says, "The image in memory is erased as soon as it is fixed by words"; Günter Glass says, "Memories are like children, and they love to play hide-and-seek." It will hide. It loves flattery, it loves to dress up, and it's often not forced"... These ambiguities are precisely the definition of ambiguity in terms of ambiguity.
And using ambiguity to define ambiguity is to extend ambiguity. Writers such as Ovid, Yusenar, and Calvino, the charm of their works lies in the fact that they are often confused, often confused, and often read. The value of these immortal classics is like a prism, in different ages or time and space, the first time you read or open it again, you will see different refractive indexes, different angles of refraction, different reds, different blues.
2022-03-26