A symphony of the fate of "King Lear"

Feng Xinping/Wen

One

Many of Xue's works are usually based on extravagant research and bitter meditation, followed by heavenly inspiration and harsh carving. The long stories "Abandoned", "Bethune's Children", "Empty Nest" and "Hillary, Mihe, I" are not the same, "Hawker", "Victory in the First Battle", "God's Chosen Photographer", "Guangzhou Riot" and many other short films are also the same. And "after a full forty years of life accumulation, after a full decade of academic preparation, after sixteen months and a day of lonely climbing" (Xue Yihuan), he finally reached the latest peak of his literary life at noon on March 8, 2020. Corresponding to such painstaking and painstaking solitude, the vision and boldness of Writer magazine and the speed and scale of its publication: from the March to May 2020 issue, the three issues of Writer published Xue Yifeng's long new work "King Lear and 1979".

When life faces a crisis or a turnaround, people's psychology will have all kinds of strange reactions. Xue Yifeng, who is good at "taking advantage of the danger of others", can combine the spectacle of his personal heart with the ingenuity of the complicated scenes of the times. The diary written by a "voluntarily unemployed" person for a year reflects the mental state of the Chinese of the 1980s ("Abandonment")," the intellectual and emotional conflicts experienced by a radical and sensitive college student in the southern cities after his expulsion touched on many aspects of Chinese social life in that era ("The Farewell of a Shadow"), and a historical labyrinth constructed by thirty-two long letters written by a Chinese historian with a harsh fate to Dr. Bethune, the father of the spirit. Covers nearly forty years of Chinese history since the 1970s ("Bethune's Children")," the inner activities of an empty-nester who has suffered telecommunications fraud for a day, based on china's earth-shaking history over the past eighty years ("Empty Nest"), and the Frozen of a chinese man with two exotic women on Mont Royal Montreal, showing the dilemma of modern people in the era of "globalization" ("Hillary, Mihe, I").

As can be seen from the title of the novel, "King Lear and 1979" is a tragic character who has experienced vicissitudes and coincides with a special year to be revived, and more accurately, a family that has suffered a lot is about to usher in a new life. For example, "Letter to Taiwan Compatriots" means that the historical problems of the younger son-in-law are no longer a practical obstacle to his application for graduate school; the headlines of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States have aroused his father's long-lost American dream, and "King Lear", which he regards as a treasure, can finally see the light of day; more importantly, a report in the People's Daily entitled "The Central Committee decided to remove the hat from the four types of elements who have been reformed" shows that the father finally no longer has to be a "landlord" and he no longer has to be a "farmer" (his eldest daughter will take him into the city to live). And all that. The incredible year of 1979 made new waves one after another in their increasingly calm lives. And the door of his father's memory is also frequently open, and the experiences he vowed to forget all rolled in like a flood that broke the embankment...

Two

Characters who can be completely independent of the author and authors who can be completely independent of the characters do not exist. In fact, each work is a metaphor for the composition of the author and the characters. At the beginning of the novel, Xue Yihuan wrote clearly: "Dedicated to my grandfather Mr. Tang Zhenyuan." In 1979, he lived in Ningxiang County, Hunan Province, and was the 'King Lear' of the Fourth Production Team of the New Brigade of the People's Commune. As he writes on the title page of Empty Nest: "Dedicated to all the 'empty nesters' like my mother who have suffered telecommunications fraud, the humiliation of that day destroyed their lifelong vanity." The protagonist of the latter is the eldest daughter of the former, King Lear. The mother of the two is very similar to Xue Yihuan's grandmother. She had superior births, amazing talents, and feminine intelligence, but she was a double victim of "feudalism" and "revolution." At the bottom of society, she experienced the most fundamental changes in China's modern history. But she was not crushed by the changes of the times, not crushed by the insults of the outside world, not crushed by "no". The woman, who had endured many tribulations and humiliations, lived with open-minded humor to the age of ninety-seven. Her experience and personality made Xue Yihuan firmly believe that the spirit is indestructible and the spirit is the ultimate victor. According to Xue Yihuan, many of the details in this novel come from Grandma's amazing memories.

In contrast to her grandmother, who combines wisdom and humor, sharp teeth and lively and cheerful, Xue Yihuan's grandfather is not smiling or good at words, but he is also quite talented: he has a bachelor's degree in economics, has served in the Executive Yuan of the National Government, is also good at sports, obsessed with Peking Opera, and knows English. This talent is quite similar to "King Lear", and his experience is even more similar to the latter: Grandpa was once an accountant in a large state-owned factory in Shenyang. After the "Four Qings", he returned to his hometown in Ningxiang with his family to work as a farmer. He could not have anticipated the coming of the "catastrophe," nor could he have imagined that his personal composition would be upgraded (or demoted) from "clerk" to "landlord," transforming "contradiction among the people" into "contradiction between the enemy and ourselves." As "a family history obscured by fiction", many of the characters and events in "King Lear" and 1979 are "pure fiction", and those from life have been deliberately processed and dismembered by the author to meet the aesthetic needs of the work itself.

Three

In 2013, when his grandmother recited a batch of Tang poems such as "Long Hate Song" for Xue Yihuan on a long-distance phone call, he excitedly wrote "Grandma's "Long Hate Song"" without missing a word. This essay made the fragrance of osmanthus flowers drift to a wide range of readers through The Reader magazine. Two years later, on the day of my grandmother's 95th birthday, the Southern Metropolis Daily published Xue Yifeng's short essay "The Most Ordinary "China's Most", and "Sister Gui" once again became a "public figure". In 2017, Xue Yihuan once again wrote "Sister Gui Between Life and Death" with deep affection. He wanted his grandmother, who loved words, to live forever in his words: "I don't know what 'now' means to my grandmother. Her time in this world is running out. However, she had extraordinary vitality. After many years, this life force will make me make her up. She would follow my memories and imagination into an entangled story, all the way back to her ancestral home, her birthplace... She would start her life all over again through my fiction. I was looking forward to that moment. I look forward to reproducing her delicate figure and her delicate voice in exquisite language. I looked forward to her recognizing me again, recognizing me with her eyes. In terms of narrative weight, "King Lear and 1979" is a book dedicated by Xue Yihuan to his grandfather, and in terms of emotional intensity, it is a work dedicated to his grandmother.

This extraordinary woman has two extraordinary grandchildren. One of them was awarded the "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts de France", and the other was identified by people as "the most fascinating outlier of Chinese literature". They used to be teenagers with hearts in their hearts and young people who were in love with each other. The latter not only commemorates their friendship with the essay "The Knight Associated with Me", but also writes his "painted cousin" as the second son of "King Lear" and "King Lear" and 1979, while he himself appears in it as the son of the eldest daughter of "King Lear".

The spiritual exchange between this early-wise teenager and his grandfather had both broad topics and profound thoughts. King Lear did not expect that he would be able to get so many surprises and such a big shock from his grandchildren. He did not expect that this surprise and shock would completely dissipate the frustration he had suffered in the hospital. He even felt that this intellectually-related enjoyment had been gained only in his life from "two and a half" people: one was the "Kent" in the play "King Lear" in which he participated in rehearsals; one was a young man who nearly became his own son-in-law; and the eccentric English poet could only be counted as "half", because there was a gap between them in the "mother tongue", even though he was the king lear he had chosen.

Four

My father's preoccupation with reading "King Lear" was a scene and a constant scene in her mother's life, and it also became a lingering doubt in her life. The book that she did not know how to let her husband fall into the mind or wander his mind was exactly like the "Mulan Ci", "Long Hate Song", "Yueyang LouJi", "Peach Blossom Origin", and some chapters in "Mencius" and "Zuo Chuan" that her mother herself often sang. These different scriptures have the same effect in a troubled life: they all consciously or unconsciously use the "spiritual victory method" to support their sanity and spine.

The mother could not become the spiritual confidant of the father throughout her life, and the father who held the mother's urn and faced the village suddenly realized that whether it was the world in which they lived as an "exploiting class" or the world in which they became the "object of dictatorship", the mother was full of stubborn love, "This love that is not affected by rich and poor, is not interfered with by honor and humiliation, nor is it discriminated against by the old and new, of course, because the mother has an unbreakable and simple faith in the foundation of life and the beauty of life: she believes that the basis of life and the beauty of life come from the depths of the earth. Coming from the purity of the well water and the sweetness of the well water, she believes that the place where there is well water to drink is her home... This sudden realization filled my father's whole body with warmth and intoxication at once, as if he had just drunk a fine wine made from the deepest well water. "King Lear and 1979," which is already quite epic, has been elevated to a higher realm because of his father's epiphany, or more accurately, because of his mother's love. As the Zen master said: The secret of life lies in love and laughter.

"King Lear" is a work of how people become inhuman because of their suffering, but the real "King Lear" retains the quality of human beings because of the care and ability of love. The woman who accompanied him for nearly 40 years not only did not plunge him into the abyss of despair (he, as a class enemy, tied with hemp rope, wearing a top hat, kneeling in front of all the villagers), "because of the warm water vapor, because of the warm touch, because of the calm but warm tone", but also allowed him to gain the most thorough epiphany about life in the darkest moments of his life (he no longer cared about "public space", and began to see his face as worthless). And the "most hated" and "hated" between him and his three daughters did not harm the natural love between them. It is love that has never been resorted to language, and there is no need to resort to language at all. What is particularly valuable is that after crossing the wave, my father no longer regarded the public trial meeting as the bottom of his life, but only regarded it as an episode in his own life path. "Darkness cannot dispel darkness, only light can." Hate cannot dispel hate, only love can. (Martin Luther King) and 1979 is a book of love and forgiveness.

Five

Strictly speaking, each writer's subject matter is limited, and therefore they are all "repeating themselves" to varying degrees. This is a characteristic of the business of writing itself. Rather than saying that Xue Yihuan is exploring the same theme with different works, it is better to say that he has always practiced the simple truth that literature is humanism. It is difficult to summarize Xue Yihuan's literature in one sentence, but "personal" is the subject of all his works. The suffering and struggle of the individual, the subordination and struggle of the individual, are projected into the relationship between the individual and history in the direction of oppression, loneliness, death, love, etc. At the same time, the individual's emotional tremors and soul throbbing, the individual's inner world and secret feelings are presented in detail. In the double excavation of history and soul, xue Yihuan's profound humanitarian spirit and broad compassion are infiltrated.

Although focusing on "individual" is the creative purpose that Xue Yifeng has always adhered to, continuous innovation in form is also the artistic criterion of his faith. The process of preparation for his creation is always the process of content waiting for form. Sometimes a wait is five years, sometimes a wait is ten years... The "Hawker" in the Shenzhen people series waited for thirty-three years to wait for its most perfect form. 1979 was an incredible year. For the whole country, it can be called the "first year" of China's reform and opening up. From the first day of the new year, it is full of sharpness, full of sincerity, full of surprises. For the "King Lear" family, 1979 was a "year of turnaround", with endless streams of happy events and overwhelming responses. The biggest happy thing is that the wrong case of "King Lear" as the head of the family has been completely rehabilitated. This means that the "hat" that has been attached to the family for a long time no longer exists, and of course, it means that the members of the family will no longer suffer social discrimination because of such a father, father-in-law and grandfather. Corresponding to such a "content" of far-reaching historical significance is a "form" based on a rich reality.

Consisting of 33 stanzas, "King Lear and 1979" takes what happened to the "King Lear" family in 1979 as the core, and the narratives of each section are connected end to end, advancing sequentially, and under the surface of the turbulent reality is a torrent of the past of a family spanning 50 years of turbulent history, while at the same time using Shakespeare's masterpiece "King Lear" to care for the fate of the protagonist and his spiritual journey. Under the solid and thick structure is a huge emotional tension and narrative space. And the text is always accompanied by the philosophical reflection of "King Lear" on his own destiny. These intertextual, mottled parallel narratives incorporate the eternal themes of literature into personal experience, and the works not only present a macroscopic social perspective while focusing on the individual, but also show the elusiveness of fate to the fullest.

Six

The novel is already outstanding in this regard, and what makes "King Lear" and 1979" reach the realm of literary Mahayana is not only the "fragile" or humble temperament revealed between the lines, but also the last section of "King Lear" to give his true love to the end ceremony. On the surface it was just a ritual for him alone, but in reality it was a ritual he had done in the name of "destiny", "Yes, he was going to turn the imagination of the whole night and the whole ritual into life, into reality, into the deepest notch on the earth, into the longest sigh in time." Mother's last journey to heaven is not only solemn and sacred, but also poetic, "Father's whole body and mind are filled with warmth and drunkenness." In this warmth and drunkenness, he tasted the beauty of the wood pulp into the water and the magic of paddling, and he did not feel that he was trying to exert himself at all, but felt that he was enjoying himself, just like the fisherman who mistakenly entered the fairyland and was not happy in "The Tale of The Peach Blossom Origin". As he paddled, his mother's soft chanting echoed in his ears from far and near. The father looked around shyly, and then couldn't help but sing along with the woman he had lived with for nearly half a century. The father was so intoxicated by this love, naughtiness, delicacy and passion between you and me, that he did not know how he stopped in the middle of the reservoir, and how he poured his wife's ashes on his hands little by little and scattered them to the surface of the water one by one. ”

Looking back at the ups and downs of the two people's life of ups and downs and sufferings, such a sincere and empty mountain-like picture, it is obviously not enough to describe the brightness of the rain over the sky, or the rainbow after the storm, and it seems to lack something to compare it to the melody of gratitude to God in the last movement of Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony". As far as the compassion and compassion presented in a detachment are concerned, it is more similar to the fourth movement of Bei Jiu, except that the latter's "Ode to Joy" is like sunlight breaking through the thick clouds and sprinkling on the earth, brilliant and shocking, while the former's tao Yuanming's "Peach Blossom Origin" is like a starlight on the sea, quiet and distant. The two are very different in artistic conception, but both express the will of human beings to pursue freedom and the hope of gaining fraternity, and they are also great works that transcend their respective nationalities. The tolerance and compassion in it are not so much the profundity of historical criticism as the natural fruits of aesthetic photography.

This symphony of fate, like "King Lear", reaches the peak of life or the climax of the narrative in the "name of love", and the dialogue between "King Lear" and his little grandson in the sleep after the ceremony is like a long melody, making the narrative of "King Lear" and 1979 present an unfinished or open situation. My father said to his grandson, who wanted to be a great writer, "A great writer should know how to write a 'story that won't end.'" Then he sighed and said, "Unfortunately, by the time you become a great writer, I will no longer be alive." "The little grandson's face also appeared a faint sadness." The stories I write will bring you back into the world. He said. Such a response is exactly like Xue Yifeng's promise to his grandmother outside the text, and the result of its fulfillment is "King Lear and 1979".

The little grandson "wants to discover the whole mystery of human nature", and Xue Yihuan said that he wants to create an "encyclopedia of human nature". The loop between virtual and real is like Escher's painting at the same time as the transition point to the starting point, the picture transitions from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, and like Bach's Cannon and Fugue melody smoothly transition to the beginning at the end of the mouth, it repeats in the harmony of different dimensions, full of endless dynamics and vitality, conveying an infinite cycle of artistic tension. This "form" corresponds to another epiphany at the end of the father's journey: "He suddenly realizes that the bell that his mother rings is actually the meaning of their return, or even the meaning of their lives, because the bell can tell them that the homeless souls of the patriarchs are still multiplying, and their lives are still going on." ”

Seven

Xue Yihuan's previous five novels are all about the family, but what the family brings to the protagonist is not warmth and comfort, but diaphragm and anxiety. The two arrogant young people eventually "disappeared" helplessly, the two middle-aged people in the dilemma had an unforgettable disillusionment, and the lonely old man was directly at the end of death. The "home" in "Abandonment" is an extremely depressing place. Family members of the diaphragm can neither care for each other by blood nor use reason to understand each other. Turin saw this, but could not change this, nor was he willing to change it. At the end of the narrative, all the male characters "leave" that "home." The inability to reconcile is the tragic feature of Abandonment. In contrast, at the beginning of King Lear and 1979, all the female characters (King Lear's three daughters) "return" to the big "home" one by one. It was the first true reunion the family had ever had (the eldest daughter, who had "cut ties" with her family at night Chinese New Year's Eve 1949, had not set foot on her hometown for 28 years).

Written in 1989, "Abandonment" is a catharsis of a young thinker and writer about the deep anxieties of reality, history, and life. Thirty years later, "King Lear and 1979" still has the same original intention, but what is revealed between the lines is not anxiety, but calmness, and that catharsis has also been sublimated into compassion, which reflects the author's hard literary quest and courageous personal cultivation outside the text. If Xue Yifeng's previous works were the fountains of the pharynx and the rushing rivers, then "King Lear" and 1979 is a calm sea, a vast lake. Its writing is calm and generous, the architecture is grand and spectacular, the emotions are real and full, the details are rich and vivid, and the realm is open and deep. This higher-level masterpiece is destined to be recorded in the history of Chinese literature, and Chinese literature finally has works that can rival the masterpieces of Western modernism.