"My Children and My Daughters" in Events and Time: Based on Žižek's philosophical interpretation and Wang Anyi's literary theory
Wen | Pang was shocked
"In a circular structure, several events cause and effect to each other."
In his masterpiece "Events", the Slovenian writer and scholar Slavožižižek explores the concept of the word "event" for us, and explains the meanings associated with "event" in simple and simple words. Given his dazzling aura of "one of the brightest international academic stars since the 1990s" and "Hegelian thinker," his interpretation of "events" is becoming widely accepted and invoked, and the theoretical basis used by literary critics as the logical existence of "events" in novels has become very easy to understand—because most novels arrange at least one event.
"Time is always a pressure for us, and when the beginning and the end are decided, how to spend it in the middle is something we have always had to deal with." In addition to the incident, the writer Wang Anyi focused the difficulty of novel creation on the "treatment of time". In "Novel Classroom", she uses many cases to analyze the art of time processing in novels.
In Žižek's philosophical interpretation and Wang Anyi's literary theory, the two words "event" and "time" are two words with the same sound but different meanings, each pointing to the two most important methodologies of novel creation. Although the context of novel creation is different, Chinese and Western ideas can be completely integrated, and Zizek's Birkbeck College class at the University of London and Wang Anyi's Novel Class at Fudan University have completed cross-cultural inspiration for novel creators around the world with the help of this convergence.
Female writer Yuan Yuan's novel "My Children and My Daughters" takes the "event" of the "Small Ascension" policy adjustment as the introduction, bringing out the emotions and reactions of multiple families in this event, the calm and stable life is broken, and the endless, ring-by-ring "events" of size are circulating in the timeline of the novel, how can parents and children gradually reconcile in contradictions? How does the "Little Rising" profoundly affect China's family ecology? Yuan Yuan carefully sets up a number of staggered events, and in the timeline of the novel, he unveils the secret pain and love in the body and mind of the "parents of the world".
It seems to be a coincidence, but it also seems to be inevitable, Yuan Yuan, in the writing of "Parents under heaven", draws on Žižek's philosophical interpretation of "events" and also follows Wang Anyi's literary theory of "time" processing art. She wrote the most difficult and important themes of "parents in the world" and "my children and daughters" in a light to slow way, and also completed the extremely complicated and chaotic event laying out and time processing with a very exquisite and ingenious structure, making her novel creation more perfect in the unified beauty of the theme and the mature beauty of the structure.
Sensitivity to event and time processing
The sensitivity to the handling of events in space and time in the novel is reflected in Yuan Yuan's early novellas.
The space of the novella "A Wall Apart" revolves around the city, and most of the time takes place in the dark night, and the event is a robbery that will not be publicized beforehand. In this work, Yuan Yuan writes about a handsome robber, a frustrated returnee, a returnee's "quietly deteriorating" girlfriend, a woman who is a beauty artist and a cigar peddler, whose lives overlap and intersect at multiple spatial points, and swim at the same time in multiple time periods, they are acquaintances, lovers, and roommates, but they do not know each other's inner cards, and no one knows the bottom card of fate.
This is about the first time that Yuan Yuan has maturely framed the two most important elements of the novel, events and time. But the theme and brushwork are not like women's, but are full of male sharpness and strength. In the creation talk, Yuan Yuan admitted: In the past novels, I have tried my best to write about the interlacing of light and dark in human nature, to touch the complex inner picture, and the fate secretly promoted by mysterious forces. In this novel, mysterious forces also drive relationships between people. People are connected and separated. It is precisely because of the separation that the moment when the human heart opens the gap is so beautiful.
However, critics disagree with the male sharpness in "A Wall Apart". Jiang Fei, an associate professor at the School of Literature and Journalism at Sichuan University, said in "The Gap Between Relatives and Enemies and a Wall" that Yuan Yuan had "gentle words and a weak heart." Jiang Fei believes that Yuan Yuan can never face the cruel details, she should break through the gentleness of a kind woman and sharpen her pen, which is exactly the distance between the kind writer Yuan Yuan and the wanton outstanding writer Yuan Yuan, which is really "a wall apart".
In Jiang Fei's comments, Yuan Yuan's long debut novel "Kiss and Hatred" was hooked. He imagined that Yuan Yuan's writing would "break through the wall and pass" did not happen, but after showing a certain sharpness in "A Wall of Separation", he retreated to the gentleness and weakness of "Relatives and Enemies".
"Family and Hatred" writes about the love and concession of parents and children in confrontation, with patience and compassion in cruelty, and is indeed a detailed picture of the internal landscape of Chinese families. The heaviness of the theme and the cruelty of the event make the ethical problem of the closest relatives and the most hated that plagues thousands of families into three points, but also let people think deeply about the formation of the ethical problem of "kinship and hatred". In Jiang Fei's comment: Once the space of life coincides for a long time, affinity and hatred are also contained in it. Yuan Yuan's weaving, because of the previous countless short and medium-length underlays, has become more and more mature in "Relatives and Enemies". Yuan Yuan borrowed "Family and Vengeance" to show her sensitivity as a female writer to the themes of love, family and marriage, and tried to use the handling of events in the novel to echo a certain hidden reading expectation of readers, especially female readers, who hoped that readers could gain experience from events, train their eyes, and grow wisdom.
After "Family And Hate", "The Bachelor Dong Progressive" and "Dear Marriage" are two novellas that can be interpreted by each other, until "My Children and My Daughter", she is following the main line of this writing, silently and powerfully digging.
Yuan Yuan never imagined himself as a great novelist or a pioneer of the novel style. In the past twenty years of writing, she has actually been trying to penetrate into the deep torrent of the eternal topic of "home", into the philosophy and ethics of "home", into the sensitive inner layer of social subtlety, to spy on the profound meaning of "home" and the complex emotions between parents and relatives. From "Relatives and Enemies" to "My Children and My Daughters", she gradually felt the need to record in the novel the shock wave of the gradually formed new ideas and new worlds, the inherent family paradigm and the ethics of their relatives.
Inspiration and reflection in "Events"
Du Xiaohan in "Relatives and Enemies" must have Yuan Yuan's own shadow, but the prototype is more likely to come from the female friends around her. Because the reader "can read richer and more authentic empirical content from the narrative of Du Xiaohan." This does not necessarily echo the writer's experience, but it must be related to the writer's sympathy.
The great change in the "small ascension" policy was the first "incident" that Yuan Yuan handled. Different parents have different perceptions of this "event". According to Žižek's definition of the incident as "beyond the cause of the cause" and "destroying any existing stability structure (scheme)", the mothers of Mi Ying and Xiao An and Song Lihua, the three "Xiaoshengchu" students, have different cognitions and coping strategies: Mi Ying is busy on the outside, while the inside actually has an orderly proposition; Xiao An is angry, and there is almost no opinion on the incident, and her husband Jin Feng is "not a big temper", and in the big event of "Xiao Shengchu", because of his and Xiao'an's "roaring incident" and "Xiao Shengchu". The family past of the slap incident, so in the planning of the "small ascension", the two people can not be regarded as a concerted effort; Song Lihua is a painstaking operation, a scheming, speculation everywhere, and is the most shrewd person in the big event who does not suffer losses.
Although he knew that the big event they were facing would eventually be solved, Yuan Yuan still used 15 subsections to lay out the detailed process of the three mothers' response to the incident, the purpose of which was of course to present the educational ecology of the parents under the big event and in the big city, and the social environment that changed their personal destiny at any time. She takes the big event of "Xiaoshengchu" as the beginning of the novel, and grasps the hot spots and difficulties that parents in this era will encounter, so that the reader's idea of trying to gain experience from it has been satisfied to a certain extent. Among them, there is also deep anxiety and sympathy for her identity as a "parent". There is no doubt that "the city is the center", and today, parents in the city face more troubles than ever before, not to mention that most parents in the city have moved from the countryside to the city in the past one or two decades. "People who enter the center do not immediately make themselves the soul of the center. The city has become a new 'siege city', it is like a valley, the sea is full of rivers, but it swallows everything and destroys everything. It can be said that the "Xiaoshengchu Incident" is a prelude to the carefully laid out circular events of the entire novel, which establishes the tone of "care, sympathy, understanding" and even compassion in this novel, whether it is Mi Ying, Xiao An, or Song Lihua, their attention to the child's "Xiaoshengchu", whether they work hard or not, and how much they have paid in the process, are beyond reproach.
The most cruel and close-to-real event in the novel is the conflict, struggle and final reconciliation between Ren Jing and her son Lu Qiutao around their artistic specialty painting. This contradiction chosen by Yuan Yuan is widespread in the real world, but Yuan Yuan writes this contradictory event in a calm narrative. Lu Qiutao is difficult to give up the hobby of painting, and the lack of mastery affects learning; Ren Jing, a mother who is not wide and harmonious, forcefully isolates the hobby so that he can return to normal learning. The contradictions are almost irreconcilable, the threat of death floats up, the joy of learning and the courage of life sink, and the details of the incident are shocking: On Saturday, Lu Zhentao finished his homework in the morning and sat down in front of the easel in the afternoon. Ren Jing, who has always been worried that her son has delayed his studies because of his hobbies and interests, can't bear to move his hands after "negotiating" again without results: "Ren Jing didn't say more, rushed up, ripped off the paintings on the easel, threw them on the ground, and lifted the easel with both hands to move into her bedroom." Conflicts inevitably occurred, and Lu Qiutao said sadly, "If you don't let me paint, I will die." At this time, Ren Jing's mother joined in, "A hug of the grandson, called the little name of the landing pillow Tao, trembling and shedding tears: 'Nonsense! Nonsense! What nonsense are you talking about! Don't scare me! The old man joined Ren Jing's mother and son in this "painting encounter", and Yuan Yuan properly controlled the time nodes and details of the three generations in the same scene. But the climax of the conflict has not yet come, how to present the transformation or sublimation of emotions? Well, Yuan Yuan ingeniously arranged a small detail at this time: "Ren Jing's mother didn't say everything about it, and the phone rang suddenly." Ren Jing was shocked, and Ren Jing's mother was also shocked. The phone rang crisply and sharply, shaking the whole living room as if it were dead, Ren Jing suddenly came from it, how did she and her son come to this step! Thinking that the telephone ringing let the contradiction buffer, Yuan Yuan did not, arranged the second small detail in the big details, so that the contradiction escalated: "Lu Pillow Tao did not answer the paper handed by his grandmother, his body shook, and the person came to the desk." Out of sight, he held an art knife in his hand. In the wrong eye, the blade pressed on the mouth of the tiger in his right hand. Ren Jing, whose soul was scattered, wanted to go forward and take the knife in his son's hand, but no matter how powerful he was, his legs were no longer legs, and his tongue was not his tongue. The details end after the old lady fell to the ground and "she also fell to the ground." In such a fast-paced narrative, Yuan Yuan does not forget to arrange telephone ringtones and art knives in the rapid drums and strings, based on the rationality and nature of the plot promotion, such large details set small details, where Yuan Yuan has the heart to design, it is clear that the details are found by himself.
From the above details, it can be seen that Yuan Yuan's other kung fu is to force Xiao To write about the psychology, mood and language of the characters. Wang Zengqi recalled Shen Congwen's creative class at Southwest United University, "The most emphasized point is: 'To paste to the characters to write'. Ren Jing's psychology, mood and language, Lu Qiutao's psychology, mood and language, including the psychology, mood and language of the old lady, are exactly the exquisite strokes of "sticking to the characters to write". In "My Children and My Daughter", there are many such exquisite strokes, and the psychology, mood and language of almost every character who appears are highly consistent with their identities, which is very charming.
What makes people even more breathless is the complete collapse of the parent-child relationship, who said that Yuan Yuan's narrative has no sharpness? In the "event" setting of "My Children and My Daughter", this is a small number of "bloody" tragic writings. Although Yuan Yuan finally pulled the mother and son back from the cliff where the parent-child relationship was about to collapse, no one could deny that the objective death conflict made us have to sweat for the fragility of the parent-child relationship and be afraid of it. Yuan Yuan will not give parents who are in the same predicament a remedy for improvement in the novel, because this method does not actually exist, but they can probably get inspiration, reflection and even lessons from this incident, as a novel, this is enough.
The most infuriating and sighing incident is that "problem student" Lin enters the special school month by month. It is rare for divorced parents to reach a united front on this issue, which shows the seriousness of Lin's problem month by month. Yuan Yuan did not hesitate to meticulously present the problem of Lin Yueyue, whether it is universal and cautionary is no longer important, she wants to express herself as much as possible on this incident as much as possible an attitude of parenthood, this attitude has nothing to do with right or wrong, but it needs to go deep into the hearts of the problem students, go deep into reality, let the final solution of the problem be both logical and leave enough imagination space, so the father sent in, and finally the mother released, let Yuan Yuan manipulate reasonably, and the "problem student" will become better? The novel is not responsible for providing the final answer, the event is here, like a huge wave that has been set off, it finally slowly calms down into a fine stream of water, lin and her parents, have to return to daily life.
Compressed "time"
After the "event" is finished, let's return to the question of "time".
Wang Anyi said: "Time is an explicit task for drama" because it needs to consider "how to spend a night". I think the same is true of novels, and the most important thing to fill in the "length" of a novel is to deal with the problem of time. All "incidents" will be resolved, and all contradictions will be alleviated. In "My Children and My Daughters", all children will grow up, all parents will grow old, the problem is that the reader wants this interesting or thrilling process, the process is time, "the time of the novel" is not natural time, therefore, the treatment of time is also an important issue for novelists to face.
The timeline of "My Children and My Daughter" begins on the eve of the announcement of the "Small Ascension" policy and ends in the second semester of the second semester of the second year of junior high school, which is about to enter the third year of junior high school, and this time arrangement is quite the ingenuity of the novelist. Yuan Yuan obviously cannot arrange the two important times of "Xiaoshengchu" and "Chugao" in a novel, and the transition of "Xiaoshengchu" is like a battle, bringing out all kinds of parents and children. A wave has passed, that is, in the first two years of the first two years, the seemingly calm but the waves are not stopping. The wave in front is just a daily preparation, the daily life can only be equipped with so many meridians of life, one after another, one problem after another, in the cross-narrative of the novel, time is walking slowly and rhythmically, a day, a week, a month, a semester, a school year, and then two academic years, looking into the third year of junior high school, facing the big event of the middle school entrance examination, the novel suddenly closed, time stopped, the characters ended, and the endless imagination of the future had to be handed over to the "natural time" outside the novel.
At this point, the time boundary between the time and nature of the novel is still there, but the reader seems to have been unable to distinguish between the virtual and the real, in fact, what is the importance of the virtual and the real, the length of the "event" is long or short, the appearance of the characters is thick or light, the idea of the novel is shallow or deep, all around the time, the details, plot, thoughts, character personalities, etc., are serving the connotation of "parents under the world" and "my children and daughters". Yuan Yuan abides by the time limit on the capacity of the novel, transforms the "undescriptable into narratable", compresses the lengthy natural time in reality into the length of the novel after meaningful planning, and the useless time is eliminated and filtered. Starting from the "Plain of Shuaizhou in March", we see the line of time, to the "Saturday in mid-October", to the turn of autumn and winter when the fog is getting heavier, into the early December when the ginkgo leaves fall, and then into the "After the Lantern Festival", another spring, and then "the rain in the Qingming Season", to the "summer dusk", the path of time walking, in the novel, is clear, but it is also compressed, countless families, countless parents, countless children, all in this compressed time, Gradually out of the tense relationship, the capacity of time is solid enough to support the process of the novel, the novelist here "success and retirement", but do not forget to bury his skills in the processing of the time of the novel in verse 31: "Time is a thing that is both fast and slow. When it's slow, the days of the sameness seem to be endless; fast, at the snap of a finger. ”
The treatment of time, in addition to the aforementioned "internal and external interlude" of the novel time and natural time, there is also the "before and after response" in the novel time: Yuan Yuan tries to write the characters' subtle and complex inner world in a pair of echoing time, illuminating their thousands of turns of mind and the rapidly changing world and human feelings, which makes people feel empathy.
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