Text/Ren Zimo
Whether you have read "Jin Ping Mei" or not, you must be familiar with the character of Ximen Qing. He deservedly sat on the throne of scumbags with lust and domineering. Yesterday, he turned clouds and rain with Pan Jinlian; today he hooked up with Meng Yulou; tomorrow he looked for Li Ping'er to be happy and happy.
He couldn't live without women and even suffered from "sexual" dependence. Along with him "share the disease" is Florentino Alyssa. Alyssa has been looking for flowers and asking for willows for more than fifty years. In his diary, he recorded a total of 622 sexual encounters.
Although the identities of these women are diverse, for Alyssa, their souls are the same. He didn't love them, he just wanted to replace the "pain of the soul" with "the joy of the flesh." Because he suffered from "lovesickness", and he was terminally ill, he was ill for 51 years.
In this impetuous society, the feelings between men and women are full of "commodity"-style hypocrisy, and no one will believe that a "scum" man will also be deeply rooted. But some people don't understand that losing to worldly love may be the real reason why scumbags become "scum".
Open García Márquez's Love in The Time of Cholera and you'll see the following sentence: "Love is a cholera, and the common feature is that it is uninvited and difficult to cure." ”
Alyssa is the experience of this "cholera", 18-year-old Alyssa can sing and dance, not only good looks, but also play the violin. The girls were fascinated by him, and in order to be able to dance with Alyssa, they prepared for the "lottery" every day.
However, at that time, Alyssa did not care about these flower-like women, and he thought that love was just a bridge in the script. It wasn't until Fermina's appearance that he realized what was "crazy" for love and why he was "sleepless".
It was a very ordinary afternoon, and Alyssa was delivering telegrams as usual. When they arrived at Fermina's house, their occasional four eyes met, awakening the boy's love and revealing the bud of love in the girl's heart. So the boy learned to express love in poetry; learned to express love with the violin; learned to long for love with endless waiting.
Alyssa's love was so warm that Fermina was deeply moved. However, the view of the door between them is doomed to the end of love. Fermina was an educated, well-off rich woman, and Alyssa was just a poor boy with no decent job.
Under secular influence and opposition from her father, Fermina married Dr. Urbino. She rejected Alyssa desperately, calling the love between them "nothing more than an illusion." When Alyssa was rejected, the whole person seemed to be hollowed out.
"It's always best not to get it", Alyssa can't forget Fermina's "beauty", but Alyssa also understands:
"To earn fame and fortune to be worthy of her." He didn't even consider that she was already a married woman... He was determined to wait neither hurriedly nor restlessly, even until the end of the world. ”
So, in inferiority, Alyssa learns to be self-reliant; in self-pity, he begins to fight with different women as a way to find solace. Fast forward 51 years, and Alyssa has never been married. Now he has become the helmsman of the shipping company, and he also has the capital to talk about love than in the past.
Even though Alyssa had tried 172 kinds of hair water to defeat the "baldness"; even if he carefully protected his body in order to maintain a young face, he could not stop the passage of time, and Alyssa waited anxiously, hoping that Dr. Urbino would die soon, so that Fermina would be free.
Finally, Dr. Urbino was taken away by death, and Fermina no longer had to wrestle with her domineering mother-in-law, her stupid sister-in-law, and no longer had to endure her husband's cowardice and unreasonable demands; Alyssa no longer had to continue to fall into the breasts of different women.
At the funeral, Alyssa handled the funeral in an orderly manner. He carefully took care of Fermina's emotions while writing letters, waiting for the opportunity to re-enter Fermina's heart.
"Fermina, I have been waiting for this opportunity for more than half a century, so that I can once again reaffirm to you my eternal loyalty and unwavering love for you."
Who in this world can love someone for half a century?
Alyssa will be able to do it.
For decades, his love for Fermina has tended to be a "platonic" spiritual love. Although he indulges in female sex, he has never forgotten his love for Fermina, and he has never given up his efforts. For more than 50 years, Alyssa has gone from being a poor creature abandoned by her lover to becoming a respected silver-haired rich man.
The flying yellow Tengda of "before the people" does not know how much "after the people" of Alyssa is hidden. But no matter how hard it was, Alyssa never lost herself. Compared to Fermina, Alyssa was always sober. So, for more than 50 years, he was much happier than Fermina.
In fact, Fermina was unlucky after marriage. There is no love between him and his husband, only the satisfaction of each other's vanity. This combination is like Walter and Kate in "The Veil"; it is also like Daisy and Tom in "The Great Gatsby".
From a secular point of view, they all have a decent, yet happy marriage. In fact, it is like a person drinking water, cold and warm self-knowledge. After marriage, the mother-in-law and sister-in-law always made it difficult for her, but the husband was too lazy to even be a "master of water". Fermina could not feel the intimateness of her husband, and some trivial things often made them blush.
Perhaps, this is what it should be like to marry a secular marriage, but before marriage, no one told Fermina that compared to the misfortune of poor marriage, secular marriage also has its sorrows. She was in pain and longed for her husband to give her some care, but Dr. Urbino told her: "The most important thing for a loving couple is not happiness, but stable relationship." ”
This sentence itself is very contradictory, how can an unhappy marriage be called "love"? They may really be "loving", but that is just for outsiders to see. In my opinion, the most absurd thing about couples is that in those unfortunate years, they also had to behave in public and be extremely happy.
In this way, Fermina is indeed very unfortunate, because she does not have the courage to choose love in front of the world, but she cannot pretend to be happy. But at the same time, she was also lucky, because in this world, at least there was Alyssa waiting for her.
And what about us in reality? When we choose a secular marriage and encounter misfortune, who will stand where we are like Alyssa, waiting for us to turn back?
Perhaps, we should not have such expectations.
Some people say that Alyssa is both obsessive and abusive; very divided and contradictory, and there will be no such person in reality. But friends who know Freud's "personality theory" should not think so. Because the balance and resistance of "the id, the ego, the superego" in Alyssa is pervasive in human nature.
The "original self" is an instinctive desire of man, which does not understand good and evil, is not constrained, and always pursues happiness and satisfaction under the domination of the "principle of idealism".
The first time I met Fermina, the "I" manipulated Alyssa's actions. A glance of longing for thousands of years prompted Alyssa to write more than 70 pages of love letters to Fermina; he squatted every day in Fermina's place, only to look at her from a distance; he ignored the disparity of identities and tried to get close to Fermina.
These were all out of instinct to pursue pleasure, and when his love, when he was betrayed by Fermina, and when he was stopped by Fermina's father, the unfettered "instinct" once again encouraged him to continue to love Fermina.
But at this time, Alyssa was already heartbroken. He pleaded with God:
Let the lightning of justice in heaven strike her to death when Fermina is ready to swear to love and obey a man who merely wants to use her as a social vase and marry her, while he rejoices in the presence of his lover, his lover, or anyone's lover. She lay on her back on the tiled floor of the cathedral, the dew of death, transformed into snow-white lemon blossoms, flowing on the tiled floor, the waterfall-like wedding dress, scattered on the marble coffins of the 14 bishops buried in front of the main altar."
At this time, Alyssa had transformed love into hate. And this hatred is opening its mouth wide with a basin of blood, ready to devour him and Fermina, or everyone else. Fortunately, Alyssa was never irrational, and the "superego" with a conscience awakened him and negated the idea of cursing his lover. As a result, Alyssa instantly felt regretful.
Freud believed that the "superego" was the representative of all moral limitations, which cultivated man as a law-abiding member of society.
Under the warning of the "superego", Alyssa woke up in time. It was just that his desire had not yet found an outlet, and Alyssa was still uncomfortable. At this time, the "self" tells him that love can be transferred. Because the "self" is much more realistic than the "original self", after considering the real environment, it seeks advantage and avoids harm, and achieves a balance between happiness and morality.
Therefore, Alyssa will hide her love for Fermina deep in her heart and transfer her desires to other women in order to seek spiritual comfort. After Fermina regains her freedom, Alyssa chooses to drift with Fermina on a river without moral restraint. Because the old man who is nearly 80 years old will be ridiculed when he marries; the widows in the upper class will remarry against morality.
In "Love in the Time of Cholera", Alyssa has a successful career and a positive image; although love has waited for half a century, it is also bitter. And all this is not a coincidence, nor is it the author's favoritism, but stems from the fact that he has achieved the harmonious unity of "the original self, the self, and the superego".
In fact, the human ideal can indeed be realized through the balance of "self, self, and superego." Because they can help us not to become "saints who do not eat fireworks in the world", they can also restrain us from not indulging ourselves too much, becoming indulgents in the eyes of others, and not pushing us to extremes.
Love is difficult in eternity, how much love is not lost to time, but to the world. Luckily, in Love in a Time of Cholera, Alyssa and Fermina face their hearts and choose to be brave. He invited Fermina to sea; she attended in full dress, despite her children's objections; together they decided to drift at sea for the rest of their lives.
And in the real world of love, I also hope that everyone can not lose the world, and win time.