As the most profound female writer in the Chinese language world, Zhang Ailing has always had an unshakable literary status since the Republic of China, although Zhang's novels are not more profound than some literary people, but her description of the life of men and women in the "human world" can be described as poking people's hearts and meticulous.
Zhang Ailing described people's heart-wrenching crying as "destroying the liver and lungs", writing that the shadow of the match extinguishing was "the ghost shadow hanging down and curled up in gray", and writing about love kisses as "cool and cold, hot, wild sparks burning straight up"; she used "Are you young?" It doesn't matter, after two years it will be old" writes that time is merciless, and uses "the fish swinging its tail to sway in her" to describe the spring supper moment of men and women...
The above sentences have a clear Zhang style, different from other writers' metaphors, her language has sound and color and more picture sense, although the words are gorgeous, they do not seem superfluous, but bring the reader deeply into one after another strange text world.
But somehow, even though Zhang Ailing is so familiar with the use of language, most of her novels are novellas, with only "Yang Ge" and "Small Reunion" with an autobiographical nature, and the more outstanding in the medium and long stories are her "Golden Lock" and "Half Life".
At the beginning of the birth of "Half Life", it was not called this name, but "Eighteen Springs", and the creation time of this novel, from the most open 1950 to the later 1968, just spanned eighteen spring and autumn.
Zhang Ailing once revealed the creative process of "Half Life" in a letter to a friend, and the novel was rewritten based on the American writer Ma Kuande's long story "Mr. Puhan". She modeled most of the plot and structure, and even the most classic sentence of the novel, "Shijun, we can never go back", is directly translated from "Mr. Puhan"'s "daring, we cant go back".
Zhang Ailing never denied her imitation of the plot of "Mr. Puhan", and "Half Life" just proved her confidence. After the deadline, "Half Life" does not have any shadow of foreign novels, whether it is the character shaping of the characters or the description and use of the novel language, "Half Life" is permeated with Zhang Ailing's unique creative characteristics inside and out. This kind of rewriting is to write the characters and environment more vividly, more colorful pictures and meanings.
From the overall point of view of the novel, the rewritten "Half Life" is like a trio of life, playing three pieces around the lives of the protagonists of the novel, Gu Manzhen and Shen Shijun, a repertoire to talk about love, a duet to talk about sex, and a trio to talk about encounters.
Zhang Ailing writes about the emotions between men and women, which is too handy to poke people's hearts. Take the feelings of several protagonists in the book, Man Zhen, Man Lu, Shen Shijun, Mu Jin, Shu Hui, Cui Zhi, most of their feelings are either yin and yang, or regret half a life, in short, it is a tragedy.
Zhang Ailing obviously got the secret of the eternal transmission of the work from her beloved "Dream of the Red Chamber", which is these five words - not to write a reunion.
As a writer with old and spicy writing, Zhang Ailing deeply understands that tragedies are more likely to resonate with most readers than the ending of the reunion. And look at "Les Misérables" is a life of naked struggle against the tragedy of fate, the love tragedy of Bao Dai in "Dream of the Red Chamber" resounded throughout the century, and the huge work "One Hundred Years of Solitude" in which the big town of Reno disappeared and overturned, leaving nothing behind...
Most of these novels are sentimental after reading, but the tragedy is more impressive than the comedic reunion ending, so there is a miss and a half-life of faults between Gu Manzhen and Shen Shijun.
The tragedy of Gu Manzhen and Shen Shijun is that the emotions are not firm enough, or that the emotions are too fragile in the face of external resistance. In fact, if Gu Manlu did not make a sinister move in their feelings and let his sister's half life be ruined by her husband, would Man Zhen and Shi Jun be able to smoothly enter a happy marriage?
I am afraid that it is not necessary, the feelings between Gu Manzhen and Shen Shijun are contradictory, and the biggest resistance comes from birth and family. Among them, the wrong door of the two people is a material factor, and the material factor will lead to a difference in values, thus aggravating the emotional contradiction.
This kind of contradiction is unavoidable, especially when the feelings heat up to a certain extent, when discussing the issue of marriage, Man Zhen will take into account her sister Man Lu and her family, and Shen Shijun will also be biased towards her own family - no one is willing to give in, from love to contradictions, from contradictions to cracks.
And the emotional rift will be expanded, and when Gu Manzhen is forcibly possessed by his brother-in-law and locked in Gu Manlu's home, Shen Shijun goes to Gu Manlu's home to find Manzhen, but is sent away by Manlu's light and fluttering sentence "She marries someone else". Shen Shijun went home in despair, and without looking at it, he threw away the ring stained with Man Zhen's blood, once again missing the last moment to save Man Zhen's fate and save their feelings.
Therefore, in the face of the complexity of life, if there is no firm love and trust for each other, then the feelings are just a mess, Zhang Ailing just used such a delicate chessboard, broke the emotional balance point of Gu Manzhen and Shen Shijun, and completed this emotional ensemble.
Emotions aside, let's look at the duo – personality. The formation of many tragic endings in the book lies in the weakness of the characters' personalities, such as the weakness of The personalities of Shi Jun and Man Zhen, the too strong of Man Lu, the inferiority and passivity of Shu Hui, and the stubbornness of Cui Zhi's personality.
In the novel, when Se-jun sees Man Zhen "wrapping his head in a green sheep scarf" and looks at him, he will feel that "I hardly know her anymore, I still like her usual appearance, and I don't like to change a little." When he saw that Mu Jin liked Man Zhen, and Man Zhen was also very kind to Mu Jin, he couldn't help but feel inferior and retreat.
And Man zhen also has her limitations as a woman, although she is more independent than other women, believes that men and women are equal in this society, and believes that women should also work to realize their social values. Unfortunately, the entire background of the era at that time was extremely terrifying to constrain women's thinking.
In the novel, when Mrs. Gu learned that Manlu had been abused by Zhu Hongcai, she had been making trouble, and her first thought was not to seek justice for her daughter, but "this child is so ignorant, how can this kind of thing be blindly shouted", and then it is even more "two eyes closed" to leave it alone, allowing Manlu to lock Manzhen in the room. When Shen Shijun came to Mrs. Gu and asked where Man Zhen was in a hurry, she did not tell the truth, further ruining her daughter's life.
Is Mrs. Gu having such a heart, it is inevitable that she is also cold. In fact, Mrs. Gu did not mean this, she just followed the extremely high moral shackles of society for women at that time, which promoted the tragedy of Man Zhen - Man Zhen was destroyed, and there was no other way to do the next step, except to die, she could only marry Zhu Hongcai.
Although Man Zhen is the new woman of the times, under the closed environment after being locked, she gradually doubts her own value. After Man Zhen gave birth to a child in the hospital and escaped with difficulty, she was confused about the step of finding Se-kyun, and she immediately "remembered the conservative side of Se-jun's personality, even if he fully understood her, could he still love her as before?" ”
Man Zhen was changed step by step, from her sister Man Zhen's design of "borrowing her belly to give birth", to Mrs. Gu's disregard and indifference, to her own resistance to the facts and final acceptance. She was radiant from the beginning, and then she lost her smile, "eager to hide in the black hole", and there was a deep pain hidden in the numbness of her thoughts.
The previous writing of "Half Life" is a complete tragedy, that is, it shows that no one has a good ending, as the murderer Gu Manlu who destroyed the happiness of her sister, her life is both hateful and sad. And the reason for the tragedy lies in two words: to be strong.
Gu Manlusheng is the eldest sister in the family, forced to give up her happiness for her livelihood, enter the sound and color industry to become a dancer, prematurely enter a complex society, and cannot have a normal life like a normal person. Man Lu's pity is also here, the degeneration into a male power plaything is not her own choice, but she is forced to passively choose by the dilemma at home, and this passivity forms her unwillingness.
The identity of the dancer is destined to bear more criticism, her family relies on the money she earns from selling herself, but on the other hand, she looks down on her, and her boyfriend Zhu Hongcai relies on possessing her on the one hand, but on the other hand, he is always reluctant to marry her. Even Man Zhen's boyfriend Shi Jun, didn't he hide the identity of Man Zhen's sister from his parents?
Only Man Zhen can understand her, and Man Zhen once said to Shi Jun: "I don't think there is anything unseemly about my sister, she is not wrong, it is this unreasonable society that forces her to do this." To say immoral, I don't know who the clients and prostitutes are more immoral. ”
In fact, although Man Lu was not willing to accept her fate arrangement at this time, she was not depressed, even as a dancer, she did her best, she let her family live in a considerable house by selling smiles, let her sister and her brothers receive education, and her words of suffering were all hidden behind her smile, the shadow of the invisible place.
Mu Jin came and was packing his luggage in his room, when he looked up, he saw a thin woman in a purple velvet cheongsam, leaning on the railing and looking at him with a smile. Mu Jin was taken aback, and then he suddenly found that this woman was Man Lu - he couldn't speak, his heart only sank... He had denied everything, the memories she had cherished, and he had been ashamed to admit it.
Anyone can feel that she has become unrecognizable, even if the family does not understand her, it does not matter, but Mu Jin can't - doesn't he know the pain behind himself?
The silence and surprise of the young Qingmei's gaze also stabbed Man Lu's heart, making her unwillingness for many years turn into a dark torrent of noda. Well, don't you Mu Jin like her sister? Therefore, Man Lu used Man Zhen's "borrowing belly to give birth" to tear apart the past memories and past self, in an attempt to "replace" his own tragedy with his sister's tragedy. Pathetic, deplorable, hateful!
The book "Half Life" is magical, and the reader only needs less than half a day to read the eighteen years of the character, and time is a mysterious container in this book. The reason why the character image constructed by Zhang Ailing is so vivid and vivid is precisely what time has given. For example, the six years between Mu Jin and Man Lu, shi jun and Man Zhen, Shu Hui and Cui Zhi for more than ten years, all have left the mark of time.
The sentence that touched me the most in the novel was not the well-known "Shi jun, we can't go back", but the sentence when Mu Jin and Man Lu met again after six years, "The two silently opposed each other, only to feel like the water flowing there". Compared with the bluntness of "we can't go back", "like the flow of water over the years" is more in line with the situation of the parties facing each other.
It is time that makes the protagonists haunt their dreams every night, and it is also time, little by little, cutting the acacia line of the year, until everyone becomes unrecognizable. Just like Shen Shijun finally heard Man Zhen's voice after more than ten years of separation, he just thought, "Has she been waiting for me there?" When the two finally met, the strongest feelings fourteen years ago only became "a kind of desolate satisfaction."
In the end, time is merciless, and the years urge people to grow old, which is Zhang Ailing's cruelty, and it also brings helpless loneliness to the reader.