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Wen | Jiang Xu
A few days ago, I saw a temple monk in the circle of friends sighing: "Everything will eventually be nothing." ”
Maybe you think that he is a monk, see through the red dust, and naturally feel that everything in the world is empty. In fact, how can the earthly people who actively struggle not have a sense of nothingness?
Life is impermanent, like a dream bubble, and short and fleeting, like dew and electricity. Living in this world, everyone is seeking a sense of belonging and existence. From this, I think of the writer Yasunari Kawabata and his nihilistic works, as well as the aesthetic ideas expressed in the works.
He wrote in an essay: "I woke up at four o'clock in the morning and found that the begonia flowers were not sleeping. Gazing at the begonia flower at four o'clock in the morning, I think it is even more beautiful. It blooms and contains a sad beauty. This attitude of integrating the aesthetics of material mourning into daily life is vividly displayed in his masterpiece "Snow Country".
In 1968, the three novels "Snow Country", "A Thousand Cranes" and "Ancient Capital" made Yasunari Kawabata win the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Japanese to receive this honor.
In this work, the author expresses the spirit of the Japanese literati with his keen perceptual ability and superior writing techniques:
Life is a journey of impermanence, and we can appreciate the beauty of mourning along the way.
Yasunari Kawabata in the award
<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" >1. Life is impermanent and makes people feel infinite sadness</h1>
The moon has clouds and sunshine, and people have sorrows and joys.
Yasunari Kawabata's life is very tragic, which to a large extent shapes his sentimental and gloomy character, and also determines the direction of his creative style and thought.
Celebrities who attended the funeral, this is the title given to Yasunari Kawabata. Because, when he was 3 years old, his father died of illness, when he was 4, his mother died, when he was 10, his sister died, and when he was 15, his grandfather died. Since then, he has been sending people under the fence.
The bumpy experience and the impermanence of life cultivated a sensitive and sad heart. Taking the death of his grandfather as an opportunity, he began to embark on the road of writing and explored his life for it.
Judging from the story structure, the novel "Snow Country" also exudes a strong impermanence. The hero, Shimamura, is a dance art researcher who inherits a rich ancestral inheritance and does not have to work hard to survive.
Stills from the TV work "Snow Country"
Shimamura travels to Snow Country, where he meets geisha komako at a hot spring inn. He is fascinated by her cleanliness, beauty, and grace, and every year he goes to the snow country to meet with her. On his second trip to snow country, on the train, Shimamura meets the maiden Leaf, who is deeply attracted by her ethereal, melancholy, and indescribable beauty.
Such karmic encounters cause subtle emotional involvement between the three of them. She loved him dearly, and he was unfazed by it, but he was obsessed with another her, and the other she was interested in him.
It seems that after a subtle and tortuous emotional experience, the person who has a relationship will finally get what he wants. But I don't know, accidents sometimes rush to visit tomorrow -
In the end, Leaf, who decides to follow Shimamura out of snow country, is buried in the sea of fire, and Komako is devastated by this accident and goes mad. The sudden change gave Shimamura a shock to his soul, and the end of the novel read: "Shimamura stood firm, looked up, and the Milky Way seemed to make a roar, pouring down on his heart." ”
A person is always in impermanence.
Impermanence, i.e. constant.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-center-line" > 2. Impermanent life, people fall into nihilism</h1>
Once people realize that life is impermanent, they fall into nihilism.
Shimamura in Snow Country is an out-and-out nihilist, often in a trance. Many things in life are in vain to him.
Komako is an up-and-coming girl who, over the years, has developed the habit of reading and taking notes. She bound her notebook herself, writing down the title of the article and the names of the characters in it. Shimamura felt that it was futile. He was blunt to her: "It's a complete futility." ”
Komako learns to play the piano from his teacher. In order to repay the master's kindness, the geisha sold herself to the master's son who was about to die of illness. In Shimamura's eyes, this is also in vain. "Isn't all this in vain and what is it?"
Komako took the canyon as the listener and practiced every day. The efforts and will behind this act are still futile in Shimamura's view. The book reads: "He felt strongly that this emotion of hers was not so much the arrogant dissatisfaction of the losers of the great cities as a simple futility... If you blindly indulge in this kind of thinking, even Shimamura himself may fall into a delicate sentimentality, thinking that survival itself is a futility. ”
Shimamura fell into nihilism and felt that everything between life and death was in vain.
However, this nihilism is different from Western nihilism. Camus's outsider, because of his nihilism, adopts a negative attitude towards life, whether he comes or goes, whether he lives or dies, it does not matter, he lives insensitively.
Regarding his own nihilism, Yasunari Kawabata once said in his speech "The Beauty and Me of Japan" at the Nobel Prize in Literature:
"Destroy me for nothing." This 'nothingness' is not the nothingness of the West, but on the contrary, it is the emptiness of all things, the boundless and endless spiritual universe. Some critics say that my work is nihilistic, but this is not the same as what the West calls nihilism. I think this is fundamentally different in the 'mind'. ”
This kind of nothingness, which ultimately belongs to the emptiness of all things, allows Yasushi Kawabata to get a way out for himself and his characters: material sorrow.
Yasunari Kawabata
<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > 3</h1>
Yasunari Kawabata has his unique aesthetic ideas, which are embodied in mourning, elegance, mysteriousness, cold silence, and silence.
Among them, the most distinctive thing is the mourning.
In the Japanese retro Sinology book "Ziwen Essentials", the following explanation is made of "material sorrow": "The variety of things in the world, we see in the eyes, listen in the ears, the experience of physical practice, put all these things in the heart to taste, and discern the feelings of these things one by one in the heart, this is to understand the feelings of things, is to understand the sorrow of things." ”
It should be noted that we should not be misled by the word "lament", thinking that this aesthetic idea only teaches people to experience mourning from things, but in fact there is joy and joy.
From the perspective of objects, the aesthetics of material mourning has three levels: people and their emotions between people, everything in the world, and nature in heaven and earth.
The aesthetics of material mourning permeate the entire "Snow Country". In the story, the three levels of material mourning are Shimamura's keen perception and care for female beauty, world beauty, and natural beauty.
Encountering Leaves on the journey, her enchanting beauty makes Shimamura's heart flutter. Through the reflection of the glass window, he savored this beauty:
The figure reflected on the part of the window glass obscured the twilight outside the window, but the scenery was constantly moving around the girl's silhouette, making Ren feel that the girl's face was also transparent. Is it really transparent? This is an illusion. Because the twilight that kept passing behind the girl's face seemed to flow from the front of her face. Fixed on the eyes to look closely, but confused. ”
For the scenery of the snow country, Shimamura also has a meticulous feeling:
The summit resembles a finely crafted carving, from where a soft diagonal line emerges and extends to the foot of the mountain. The top of the mountain is covered with moonlight. It was the only view at the end of the wilderness. The faint sunset reflects the entire mountain into a deep royal blue, and the outline emerges clearly. ”
In short, the various images in "Snow Country" bring readers a cold and mysterious aesthetic experience. Yasunari Kawabata discovers beauty, feels beauty, and creates beauty with his lonely heart and elegant fun.
Yasunari Kawabata said that when he wrote "Snow Country", he was grateful for his love.
At present, the rhythm of our real life is becoming more and more hurried, the mind becomes rough in various trivial matters, and the space of the spiritual universe is increasingly compressed. No matter how rich the material is, it is difficult to experience true happiness.
You may wish to choose a quiet corner, open "Snow Country", follow the author's rhythm and aesthetic experience, let the soul be nourished, and draw the power of love in beauty.
As Yasunari Kawabata said: "If a flower is beautiful, then I sometimes can't help but say to myself: To live!" ”
[Author's profile: Jiang Xu, a post-80s woman, is a signed author of Ten Point Reading. Cook words to cure hunger, borrow a pen to draw the heart. Has published "Li Qingzhao: Wine poetry who shares". Click "Follow" in the top right corner to watch more related content. 】