Recently, we have heard the news of the death of our literary predecessors one after another, this time by The famous Hong Kong writer and media personality Liu Yihuan. At 2:25 p.m. on June 8, Liu Yihuan died at the east of Hong Kong's East China Academy at the age of 99.
The day after the death of Mr. Liu Yiman, we published a commemorative article entitled "The Death of the Famous Hong Kong Writer Liu Yihuan, Who Alone Pioneered Hong Kong Modernism." Today, we publish commemorative articles again, follow the author's brushstrokes, return to the world of Liu Yiman's words, and follow him on a literary getaway.
Born in Shanghai on December 7, 1918, Liu Yihuan, Liu Yihuan moved to Hong Kong at the age of 30. In 1936, he published his first short story, Anna Floschi in Exile, but the masterpiece of his career was completed after the 1950s and 1960s. His works include "The Alcoholic", "The Upside Down", "Terauchi", "Typing Mistake", "Island and Peninsula", "He Has a Sharp Knife", "Model Stamps, Ceramics" and other works. Among them, "The Drunkard" is considered to be the first stream-of-consciousness novel in China, and together with "Opposite", it inspired Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai to make the movie "Fancy Years" and "2046". In the end credits of "Fancy Years", Wong Kar-wai paid tribute to the pioneer of the "Shanghai Complex".
Written by | a handful of green
The literary world withered, and the predecessors traveled one by one, this time, it was the hundred-year-old Liu Yiman.
Remember two years ago, "They Write on the Island" held a press conference at the University of Hong Kong, the protagonist of the documentary "1918", 98-year-old Liu Yihuan sat in the audience, he was inconvenient to listen to the speech, asked Professor Huang Shuxian of Lingnan University to speak on behalf of him, Bai Xianyong, Love (who died in March this year), Lin Wenyue, and the protagonists of several other films, counted as his descendants, their talk, Mr. Liu may not be able to hear, but still in the way of personal presence, as a support and greeting to literature.
The "They Write on the Island" literary master series filmed "Liu Yihuan: 1918", which records Liu Yihuan's experience and creation with images and interviews. The picture shows the first shot in the "1918" film, Liu Yihuan personally copied the text of "The Drunkard" on the original manuscript paper used that year, and was burned by anger.
Liu Yiman's writings are best known to the world as "The Drunkard" and "Opposite Down", which inspired the creation of "2046" and "Fancy Years" respectively. Wong Kar-wai also mourns the grandmaster with a sentence in "The Alcoholic", "All memories are wet", and at the end of the preface to this novel, which is hailed as China's first stream-of-consciousness novel, he confesses, "All these years, I have been entertaining others for life, and now I want to entertain myself."
Stills from "2046" (Part 1) and "The Wonder Years" (Part 2).
Entertain yourself
Hong Kong Foxtrot
When he wrote "The Alcoholic" in 1963, Liu Yihuan was more than forty years old, and he experienced moving from his birthplace of Shanghai to Chongqing, the rear of the Anti-Japanese War, and then going south to Hong Kong alone, half of his life drifting to zero, in terms of the creative life of the writer, he was not young.
In his own words, "The Alcoholic" is "to write about how an intellectual who is not very balanced in his mind because of his depressed era uses self-abuse to seek to continue to survive", and when realism has exhausted the world's strangeness, Liu Yihuan borrows modern novel techniques to express his lament for social life.
The Alcoholic
Author: Liu Yihuan
Edition: Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House, June 2011
The novel is narrated in the first person, the writing machine old Liu depression can not be used to drink to dispel sorrow, in the text, the drunken subconscious and the apparent consciousness of the drunken awakening are interspersed with the march, "the sea is a big blue vat, the wind blows, the sea does the greeting of the long-farewell reunion", "Too many buildings have a messy feeling, conservatives still prefer serenades", "The raw flame needs a fan, and the third eye has seen cut hair chips"... Dream-style long sentences and broken chapters, "wine is not a good thing", "I drank a sip of wine", "I was drunk", self-questioning and self-answering between cups and cups, the joy and loss of lingering in the arms of women, Lao Liu tried to save himself and continued to sink, full of experimental words Under the temple of words, it is the torture of conscience and the poetry that gushes out.
Reading "The Drunkard", it is inevitable to think of the 30s New Sensation Masterpiece "Shanghai Foxtrot Dance", Mu Shiying uses montage, stream of consciousness, symbolism, and impressionism to present the ten mile ocean field of night and night song, this "paradise on hell", under the glitter of foxtrot, jazz and neon lights, urban people are sensitive and complex.
Liu Yihua, who was enlightened by Mu Shiying, relocated this game of drunken gold fans to Hong Kong, the more prosperous and depraved, more than enough, between the virtual and the real, life is bitter, the heart is depressed, human nature is distorted, when money loses conscience, serious literature is not cared for, professional writers for rice sorghum plots, can only paralyze social consciousness and self-cognition, wine and sex become life-saving straws, and pathology becomes ridicule.
Therefore, someone always draws a string of equal signs for "Old Liu - Liu Yimu - Zhou Muyun", and what is the actual experience of the writer?
"Down"
Author: Liu Yihuan
Edition: Writers Press, February 2001
For example, another work that Liu Yiyu prefers, "To the Upside Down", comes from the philatelic term, referring to a positive and negative double stamp, written about an old man who remembers the past and a girl who looks forward to the future, two lifelines that do not intersect, the trajectory and inner world of the city, there is no ups and downs in the plot, the novel was serialized in the Sing Tao Evening News in 1972, because the threshold is too high, the readership is limited, it ends until 110,000 words, and there is no chance to write a book until the 90s - unlike the role played by Liang Chaowei. Zhou Muyun, who has been endowed with countless romantic imaginations, Liu Yihu does not have those winds and snows, he just plays with the times with a pen, much more painful, but never depressed, is to entertain himself, but also to reflect, qu gao and widowhood are not harmful, his battle line is longer, but also regard it as a mission.
Entertaining
Pain and joy
Zhou Muyun may not be Liu Yiman, Su Lizhen in the dusk a cheongsam to buy wonton noodles, but there are traces to follow.
After going to Hong Kong, his family's wealth was scattered, Liu Yiren instinctively thought of selling articles for a living, tentatively wrote a thousand-word manuscript to send out, that is, he received 10 yuan in manuscript fees. Three millimeters a bowl of wonton noodles, a manuscript fee can buy 30 bowls, in the sixties and seventies, he wrote thirteen columns a day at his peak, more than 10,000 words, enough to cope with food and clothing, every day to get up and start writing, if the writing is smooth, charter a car to go to a newspaper to deliver articles, and then take his wife out to eat, it is already very happy.
Liu Yihuan in the documentary "They Write on the Island".
Cai Lan also recalled in the article that in the circle of literati in the south, parties like to play small mahjong, sometimes halfway through, the newspaper call to urge the draft, Liu Yimu asked his little brother to move a small table, take out the manuscript paper, and when people issue cards, "just use it as a sewing machine, and constantly weave words."
Selected Novels of Liu Yiman
Edition: Hundred Flowers Literary and Art Publishing House, 2007
These words woven out of leisure are unceremoniously called by Liu Yihuan "garbage whose purpose is only in exchange for the payment of manuscripts", you know, he has adhered to the writing industry all his life, does not live close to any institution, in addition to being a writer, he is also the editor of the supplementary journal, he adopts the strategy of squeezing, and inserts needles into the carefully selected serious literature in the text goods, recommends to the readers the works of Tai Jingnong and Duanmu Hongliang, and actively explores new people, also Sisi and Xixi's generation, have been promoted by him, it is said that he often takes advantage of the boss's lack of attention, Put the pure literary and artistic works of young writers next to the divineration, or take advantage of the boss's good mood and directly put them in a position of attention, in short, sprinkle the seeds of dissemination, how far can they float.
Bitter or not? In 1985, nearly retired, the China News Service invited him to run "Hong Kong Literature", which should have relieved him of the burden of entertaining people, but he gladly accepted, and even took the initiative to quit all newspaper columns, running for 15 years, leaving nearly 200 issues of achievements.
Taking retreat as an advance, like walking on thin ice, inheriting the past and opening up the future, for Liu Yiju, who believes in words, it must be painful and happy.
epilogue
Back to the documentary "1918", Liu Yiman's later life, daily still maintain the habit of going out for a walk, downstairs is a shopping mall, he has to go out every day, be supported or not, sit in a wheelchair, look at the window of a famous shop, watch the scenery of passers-by, take fresh every day, is the writer's self-consciousness, interviewed at the age of 95, asked what wishes, his answer is still "hope to continue to write different works", why? "That doesn't need to be encouraged, as long as you like it, you will use various ways to go this way."
Stills from the documentary "They Write on the Island", pictured is Liu Yihuan and his wife Luo Peiyun.
This road of Liu Yiman has traveled for a hundred years, entertaining himself and entertaining others, so that people have no self, gods and people have no merit, and saints have no name.
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