Read Kilimanjaro's Snow

「One」

The name "Kilimanjaro's Snow" was first heard when I was a teenager on CCTV.

As the "movie channel" in CCTV programs, CCTV Six always broadcasts some film works at home and abroad around the clock, and "Kilimanjaro's Snow" is one of them.

In the early 1990s, film and television works were not as mass-produced as they are today, so many of CCTV's six sets of films were repeated many times, and I was most impressed by the "Titanic", followed by "Kilimanjaro's Snow". But strangely, as a classic and famous romance film, the former I have watched many times, while the latter has never been fully watched, but I have deeply remembered its name.

Then, I heard the name again, in my high school Language class.

Because of the demand for knowledge points in the language test, he has memorized and memorized many famous writers and their representative works at home and abroad, and Ernest Miller Hemingway, as the representative of the "lost generation" in the United States, the founder of the "iceberg theory", and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, has naturally been repeated many times. To this day, I still remember his representative works such as The Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Rises, Farewell, Weapons, For Whom the Death Knell Tolls, and Kilimanjaro's Snow.

As for the legendary figure who eventually swallowed himself up, many of his other works are not known because they have never been remembered. Moreover, we were not required to recite his full name at that time, as long as we remembered to call him "Hemingway".

After that, in my daily reading, I learned about Africa, about the Sahara, about the Great Rift Valley, about Mount Kilimanjaro. But I never remembered that there was a book that was very interesting but had not read, called "The Snow of Kilimanjaro".

「贰」

A while ago, because of the busy work and distraught, lazy to read, simply began to make up, do some entertainment that does not require much brainpower, and turned out the Japanese animation that I had not seen in the previous two or three years.

Accidentally swept up an animation work called "Shudder Killing Machine" (formerly: BANANA FISH), this ancient girl anime set in the United States, has repeatedly mentioned "Kilimanjaro's snow", mentioning that "there is a dried and frozen leopard corpse near the peak of Snow Mountain, no one knows what leopards do when they run to such a high place." ”

Akio Yoshida, the original author of the manga, has repeatedly metaphorically portrayed the male protagonist ASH (Asho) as a leopard frozen to death on a snowy mountain, and the word ASH originally meant: ashes.

So I remembered the unread Hemingway's work, out of curiosity about the leopard on the snowy mountain, and the sense of indebtedness that I had never read this work in all these years, and finally read "The Snow of Kilimanjaro" with a little patience.

This collection of short stories begins with The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

On the first paragraph of the opening paragraph, there is a small line that reads: "Kilimanjaro is an ice-covered mountain at 19,710 feet above sea level, and is said to be the highest peak in Africa." Its western peak is called 'Engaye-Engay' in Maasai, the dwelling place of the gods. Near the summit of the West Peak there is a dried and frozen leopard corpse. No one knows what leopards do when they run to such a high place. ”

「三」」

When I was young, I read several fragments from Hemingway's work "The Old Man and the Sea", and this kind of "fragment reading" was called "reading comprehension" in chinese class. In fact, at that time, I really didn't read it very well, I could only listen to the language teacher combined with Hemingway's life deeds to do some analysis, for teenagers, this kind of concise and meaningful translation literature is really not easy to understand, after all, there are still differences between Chinese and American cultures, even if it goes back to a deeper level of meaning, the expression of literature is common.

Therefore, this short story anthology can be regarded as the first time in his strict sense to read Hemingway's literary works in its entirety. The Chinese achievements of the translator Yang Wei and the understanding of Hemingway make the translation of the Chinese very fluent.

Among them, I like "Kilimanjaro's Snow", "Indian Camp", "Big Twin Hearts River", "Two Generations of Father and Son", and the words and techniques described are very exquisite, and there is a very strong sense of picture presentation when reading.

The reading of the whole work actually needs to be combined with the background of the era in which Hemingway was at that time, as well as some of his personal likes and dislikes, in order to read more smoothly, otherwise there are always some metaphors that will make people feel inexplicable. For example, Hemingway mentions his friend Fitzgerald many times in his work, hoping to urge him to write better works, but readers who don't understand the relationship between the two will mostly think that they are tearing each other apart (I myself thought so at the beginning). ）

In addition, some of the words in the work are more intense, especially the description of female characters, which will make it difficult for people who respect equal rights to accept, but these need to be combined with the background of the times at that time, leaving aside the times to look at many of the expressions in the book, it seems a little weak, embarrassing, and inexplicable.

Each work is showing Hemingway's minimalist style, and the deep meaning hidden behind the text needs to be deeply excavated, which undoubtedly makes reading Hemingway's works seem a little difficult. Reading world literary works with relatively high requirements like this, I really don't understand why they were included in the extracurricular reading list of primary and secondary schools in those years. Personally, I doubt that primary and secondary school students can read what the work is trying to say.

As a generation of legendary literary giants, Hemingway's works have a very profound mark of the times, the first reading of the translation, can only say that there is some superficial understanding of it, and his most intuitive feeling is that the text is concise and deep, about others, it is difficult to say that there are too many feelings. After all, as an ordinary reader, there is a distance between the Nobel Prize in Literature and a legendary distance from the author. After that, perhaps you should read the original work first, and then read the translations of other translators to have more understanding.

But in any case, I finally read "The Snow of Kilimanjaro" and learned about the leopard that froze to death, and the ice and snow that never melted on the top of the mountain.

BY HARSHIL GUDKA