Original Xie Shujun
Used to go to the library every month to return books, borrow books, wander around in the library, be attracted by the fresh cover of the pale yellow field of "Out of Africa", and be more impressed by the sentence "I am always empty-handed, because I have touched everything" on the cover, my heart was excited, like receiving a beloved gift, so I borrowed it back to read it carefully.
When I open the first page:
In Africa, I have a farm at the foot of The Gonggar Mountains. The equatorial line runs through this highland, which stretches a hundred miles to the north, and the farmstead sits at an altitude of six thousand feet. During the day, you will feel that you are high above, close to the sun, but in the early morning and evening, it is resolutely quiet and peaceful. It can be cold in the middle of the night.
I couldn't keep reading anymore, it was like I was fascinated. Some people say that this is a love letter to the people of Africa, I am sure!
Out of Africa is a long autobiographical novel by danish writer Karen Brixon, and I think it reads more like a beautiful essay. Expectedly good-looking, it immerses me in a quiet and peaceful world. The novel was published in 1937. It tells the story of a real-life experience of the author's operation of a coffee farm in Kenya, Africa, from 1914 to 1931.
In 1914, the author, as a colonist and Christian, lived with her baron husband in Kenya and ran a coffee farm. Her marriage later broke down and her lover Dennis was accidentally killed in a plane crash. The farm is facing bankruptcy. The bankrupt mistress ended her life in Africa and returned to her native Denmark in 1931.
The author Karen's writing is extremely beautiful, smooth, elegant, and reads as fresh and idyllic as the babbling of a stream in the forest. I yearn for the african landscapes she describes.
"Some artemisia grasses that don't know their names are fragrant and smell like thyme or swamp peach. Some of the aromas are too mellow and almost choke the nose. All the flowers, whether growing on the grasslands or on the vines of the primeval forest, are as delicate as the flowers on the hilly terrain. But there are exceptions, and only when the long rainy season has just come, the clusters of fragrant and large lilies will bloom vigorously on the grassland. Look around, boundless. Everything in sight condenses into greatness, freedom, and incomparable nobility. ”
"The sky is always pale blue or purple, piled up with large, surging clouds, light and endlessly changing, tumbling and fluttering. The sky is full of vibrant blue, and even the nearby mountains and woodlands are dyed with this bright but deep hue. ”
"The long weeds covered with water droplets hang low, and the various herbs in the wilderness emit a strong and even spicy taste. Before long, cicadas in all directions will also begin to sing. In this vast grassland, this grass is me, this clear air and the distant mountains are me, and this tired herd of cattle is also me. I breathed softly in the night breeze in the thorny bushes. ”
……
Such delicate descriptions abound, and Karen is truly in love with this land, where the grass and trees make her happy. She had already chosen a tomb site in this land, and she would be buried in this land after her death, but unfortunately, various things happened later and she failed to do so.
Whenever I read a fragment of her depiction of the natural beauty of Africa, I would always stop, close my eyes, and begin to wander through the desirable scenery in the book, as if I really saw such a beautiful scenery. It's an instinctive, true, unskilled depiction that goes straight to the heart.
Karon's farm is adjacent to a wildlife sanctuary and is frequented by large wildlife. This, she says, gives the farm an extraordinary charm, as if we were neighbors of a great king. The animals were so close at hand, how exciting and fascinating.
In Africa, she said, there is a magical world in the primeval forests. On Sundays, if you have free time on the farm, you and your minions, Farah, take a tent and food and ride a horse into the forest to observe wildlife. For a person who loves animals, it's your own paradise.
She wrote, "We had just turned a corner in the woods when we suddenly saw a leopard lying in the middle of the road, with colorful patterns and beautiful abnormalities. ”
"Through the lush woods, I saw a huge forest wild boar, a rare guest in the forest, followed by a sow and three young pigs, and the whole family ran at a rapid pace, reflecting the sun-drenched green behind them, like several silhouettes of the same shape, large or small. The view is incredible. ”
"Once encountered a huge lizard basking in the sun on a large rock. The skin is as colorful as a pile of sparkling gemstones, or the colored glass in the panes of an ancient church, and as you get closer to it, it will flee in a daze, sprinkling sky blue, green, and purple marks on the stone, like the brilliant glowing tail of a comet. ”
"At the end of the long rainy season, the night air is cool, and fireflies appear in the woods. Fireflies fluttered in the air, up and down, like undulating waves, and as if they were performing some kind of bending their knees, following the rhythm of their own flight, making the faintly lit small lanterns on their bodies flicker brightly and dimly. ”
"A herd of mighty, cast-iron bison emerged from the morning fog under the bronze sky."
"Before sunrise, under a crescent moon, I saw a majestic lion with heroic hair, which was crossing the gray plains, walking on the way back from hunting, casting a thick shadow among the shining grass."
There are many more such descriptions, and the huge wild animals are close at hand, which injects endless vitality and surprises into the author's life, and in retrospect, it is a wonderful and unique feeling.
Such a harmonious and beautiful picture, I think of a word: life, living life, strange life, unparalleled life.
When I read "I can't count how many times, in the silence before dawn, I heard the crisp and pleasant bell of Lulu the antelope in my dreams." In my sleep, my heart is often filled with joy", my heart also softened, I wish I could have such a scene! Animals and people are originally a family that loves each other.
This hot land of Africa has nurtured this group of spiritual wild animals, and the warm wild animals have moistened the soul of the author, of course, the author Karen is a person with a pure heart.
Years later, when she picked up her pen and wrote about this group of animal kingdoms, we can still hear the pulse of each animal in the text, perhaps the author has never stepped out of that foggy morning, that sunset twilight, that moonlit night, because there is a group of lovely beings wandering in the author's heart.
The author, Karen, also has a deep love for the people of that land. The indigenous people she writes about are like glowing elves and gilded bodhisattvas.
She was a white, baroness, a manor owner, and in the context of that era, she never looked at the indigenous people of colonial Africa with a lofty, superior, and colored eye, and even in the face of indigenous misunderstanding, she still communicated and integrated with the indigenous people with a peaceful, curious, and appreciative attitude.
She is local and hospitable. It is written that the little shepherd boys often herded their sheep to the lawn to graze, and they went barefoot and quietly walked into the house of Karen's Ngor Manor. The older of them was about ten years old, and the younger was two years old. As long as they don't sit down, don't touch things, and don't talk nonsense, they can walk around the house as long as they want, no matter how long they stay. Karen's home is like a paradise for children.
She also had a bodhisattva heart, was warm and helpful, and was very popular and respected by the sharecroppers. Almost every day between nine and ten o'clock, the sharecroppers on the farm are treated. One of the many patients is the indigenous boy Kamanta, the son of a widow of a sharecropper on the farm. When Karen first met Kamanta, he found that his legs were covered with severe abscesses from his thighs to his ankles, and the little boy was thin, painfully gaunt, and his eyes were disorienting, and Karen tried to treat him for abscesses. In those days of treatment, Kamanta actively cooperated, rain or shine, and never lacked consultations. The treatment of the carbuncle was extremely painful, he never cried out a pain, but calmly and calmly endured it silently. Karen has been doing her best, but the recovery situation is not optimistic, and finally decided to personally drive Kamenta to the hospital for treatment.
After three months of treatment in the hospital, Kamanta returned to visit his people and then returned to Karen's house as if he had made sense. Since then, Kamanta has been a servant at Karen's side. He worked tirelessly for Karen and went far beyond his duties. When Karen asked him why he did this, he always replied that he would have been dead for many years without Karen. Later, Karen's discernment, Kamanta is very talented in cooking, sent him to learn to cook, in terms of cooking, unique ingenuity, amazing, became a well-known and outstanding chef.
The sharecroppers on the farm were illiterate, and Karen often wrote letters to them, and for the education of the indigenous people, Karen opened a school for the sharecroppers on the farm and hired locals to teach them. The old corrugated iron barn was converted into a narrow classroom. The children of the sharecroppers sat on the benches every day and listened intently to the lectures, and the sound of books was full of sounds. Karen says the school is her entire farm's favorite place, and it's the heart of the spiritual life here. She spent countless wonderful evenings here.
Among the many characters that appear in the book, I can't help but say that one character I greatly admires is the dashing Dennis Finch Hatton. In Africa, Karen meets her lifelong confidant, her lifelong love, Dennis. Dennis graduated from Eton College and Oxford University, and was hailed as a close friend by Hemingway, the Prince of England, and others.
He was a handsome and brilliant athlete, an excellent and brave pilot, and he was brilliant in just half a lifetime.
Dennis has a humble personality, is free-spirited, loves life, loves nature, lives in his own world, has his own life pursuits, lives clearly and transparently, resigns himself to everything, lets others say and think casually, and does not care!
In Africa, Cullen said, the coffee farm is Dennis's only home, and he lives in Karen's house when he returns from hunting, and Dennis has had a great time on the farm and comes and goes freely. Dennis especially likes to listen to stories, and Karen is very good at telling stories. At night, he piled the cushions in front of the fireplace as comfortably as a sofa and sat on them with Karen. Karen crosses her legs like Shanruzod in One Thousand and One Nights. Dennis's eyes were clear and he listened to every story with interest from beginning to end.
On the farm, the two of them often drank and talked all night long; again and again they took The Karen Tseresa's whip to the forest to hunt, camp, surround the campfire, turn on the phonograph to play songs, and they either hugged each other, listened to songs, or looked up at the stars.
They fly romantically almost every day, for long or short periods of time. Karen said dennis was most grateful and intoxicated by flying his little "moth"-like plane with her over the continent.
The view from the overlook is magnificent:
"Rainbows lie across the sunny green plains; huge piles of clouds stand tall and upright, chasing and dancing with the mighty black storm."
"The sudden rainstorm smashed out a series of oblique rain lines, making the surrounding area white."
"A lake breaks into view, the bottom of the lake shines white under the clear waves, and the lake, overlooked from above, emits an unimaginable blue, so clear and transparent, that in an instant it almost makes you dizzy, and you can't help but close your eyes, this blue, shiny lake, like a brilliant sea blue gem embedded in the yellow-brown wasteland."
"We lowered our altitude and saw the light blue lake, where tens of thousands of flamingos lived, and as the plane approached them, the flamingos scattered and circled into fans and rings, like the glow of the setting sun, and like the exquisite oriental patterns on silk or porcelain, we stared at them intently."
Reading such beautiful passages of text, it is very graphic, as if I am immersed in the scene, willfully thinking that my next travel destination is Africa.
Later, Dennis was tragically killed on a flight, and Karen was devastated, for Africans, Dennis died no less than the loss of a loved one.
With the exact news of his death, Karen returned to the manor for the first time, and recalled to his good friends his last wishes, which seemed strong and calm to others. She persevered to the last moment in the vast fog of the top of the mountain under extremely difficult circumstances, just to find a cemetery with the widest view for her beloved. The affection in this makes any text degenerate into a pretense. The African land embraced Dennis, reborn him and became one with the earth.
Dennis's friend Martin gave Dennis an epitaph: "Although the fire of death has reduced me to ashes, I don't mind because everything in my eyes is so good." For Dennis, this rating is so apt!
Regarding the meaning of life, Karen says in the chapter "I will never let you go unless you bless me", "I hope for the repetition of life because he wasted his years, did nothing, and died." Compared with the length of life, she values the quality of human life. In this life, people have had love in their lives, have been happy and full, have not wasted time, and have full of good memories, which is enough.
After the farm went bankrupt, Karen left, still running for the natives of his farm estate, and finally found a piece of land that took them all in. In addition, in order to fulfill the blacksmith's wish to have a ring, she sold the furniture and scraped up enough money to buy a ring with rubies as a parting gift for the blacksmith. When she left the farm, empty-handed!
Every chapter in Out of Africa is worth savoring, and it is a rare good book to bring me a conversation with a noble soul. Karen's heart did not leave Africa, and her words can testify!
Out of Africa was later made into a film of the same name and won seven Oscars. The novel is quite different from the movie, and the film is based on the love between men and women. In the movie, what impressed me the most was that when Karen proposed marriage, Dennis replied, "I wouldn't love or love you more because of a piece of paper." ”
He gave Karen two gifts, a gold pen with which Karen recorded the legend, and a "seeing the world through the eyes of God." So she saw flamingos on the saline lake, saw large fields like mosaics, and saw the earth rumbling when the sky spoke...
Photography: Taking root
Appearance: Alai