There was a saying: "No one is an island, every book is a world." "When you are busy with work and a difficult life, there are always shelters like books that can quietly and tolerantly accept your full mood.
Books do not speak, but the people who deal with books, people who make books thicker and thicker, but have a full soul, the documentary "But there are books 2" produced by b station let us hear their voices, in such an echo closer to the book itself and the story behind the book.
Six episodes, focusing on six books-related professions or keywords, library staff, cartoonists, translators, editors, social practitioners, and travel writers, each episode has a different style, with three or four protagonists strung together themes, and in the stories of these characters, I see three attitudes toward books: books are used to approach others, books are used to understand the self, and books are used to save lives.
These three attitudes are constantly expanded and serious in the beginning and end of the documentary, and finally attributed to the endless attachment and love for the book itself, which is transmitted to the audience through images, has a real and touching power, and is more intimate and simple than the blunt slogan of calling for reading, so that the method of trying to "confide" is more intimate and simple, and constructs a deep, interdependent world between books and people with simple and understandable words.
Books are used to get close to others
Whether it is the person who writes the book or the person who reads the book, the characters and the world in the book are the existence of the "other", and in the second episode "Becoming a Cartoonist", we see the comic book author Xu Xianzhe communicating with his characters, exploring the story of the other world under black and white pixels.
When the number of clicks and readings is intuitively and cruelly quantified, cartoonists need to devote their energy to creation day and night, burning inspiration, but the comic "Dart Man" is updated very slowly, with the pattern, routine formula one-click application to all works, even the style of painting is gradually converging When the creation method becomes the norm in the industry, the characters and stories in the comic become eye-catching props, they directly inherit the will of the creator, and use the character settings that have carefully calculated the reader's preferences to obtain traffic.
And Xu Xianzhe's creation is a "two-way rush" process with the characters in the book, after the initial character image formulation, all his behaviors are based on his own personality, experience and behavior habits, with more and more things experienced, comic characters are no longer the author's set task tools, but began to have their own trajectory, the author needs to think, what should be after the characters grow up?
Trying to enter the world of his own creation to empathize with what the protagonist knows and feels, this will undoubtedly be a painful and difficult process, when the characters he creates become objects, how to accept and understand each other, for the author is a new threshold for creation and a mountain that must be crossed, Xu Xianzhe is getting closer and closer to the protagonists of "Dart Man" in the groping, and he also understands more and more what a good comic is like.
And there are also people who take natural history as the "other", in which to seek the commonality between people and things, the sixth episode introduces the photographer Ta ke walking on the road, for him in the "Book of Poetry", in the rubbing inscription to find the former Central Plains landscape and civilization relics, is to dialogue with the ancients, in dialogue with the passing civilization, with cameras and films to restore the landscape of mountains and rivers, marching on the earth, from sightseeing to finally understanding the essence of the story of the earth,
In such a search up and down, books have become the ultimate goal of his creation, but also the source of his creative strength, the magnificent historical vicissitudes hidden under the black and white text, excavated, recorded, and then returned to black and white paintings, although the form seems to only change from words to photos, but this transformation process is constantly advancing in the landscape to seek personal and social, present and historical resonance.
Both the reader and the creator can be close to another soul in the process of reading the book, and this soul may be the author of the book, or the person in the book, or another life that reads the book outside the time and space partition.
Books are for understanding the self
The third episode of the documentary talks about the profession of translators, for readers they are easy to ignore the existence, they just use their own language to faithfully restore the meaning that the author wants to express, it seems to be an objective, stylized profession, there are many people who think that translators will gradually be replaced by artificial intelligence and high-tech translation machines in the future, but in fact, in addition to the name on the back of the book, their thoughts are actually the same as the author, running through every corner of the book, in addition to inheriting the author's will, They also integrate their understanding into the book in the process of translation and restoration, and encourage the reader.
Translating books not only requires excellent bilingual reading and writing skills, but also requires the literary appreciation of a book thoroughly, and when translating, the identities of translators and writers overlap, seemingly constantly understanding each other, but in fact, in this process, they are more aware of what they want in their hearts.
In a spiritual crisis of her own, Bao Huiyi discovered Sylvia Plath's poetry collection "Ariel", she spontaneously translated the book, from which she continuously drew spiritual strength, breaking the vicious circle of self-consumption in work, in the words of others, translators use empathy and sincere feelings to find a broader world in life.
In this search for herself, Bao Huiyi spent seven years slowly, but firmly carrying out translation work, which is an act outside of work and belonging to life, which has gradually become a habit, and the special significance of "Ariel" for her is that the poetry collection is not only the story of others, but also her own life, when it accompanies a person through the trough, translating manuscripts to become a fixed travel companion, books and self are already inseparable from one.
For Yang Wuneng, Faust and The Magic Mountain are also such special and inseparable from the self.
Yang Wuneng once had tuberculosis when he was young, his body was extremely weak, "Magic Mountain" is a mountain that is difficult for others to cross, the delirious writing style and a large number of professional terms design psychology, political science and medicine, not only is it difficult to read, the deep meaning that the author wants to express is hidden under the complex text, it is difficult to explore, and Yang Wu can have a sense of mission for such a difficult and profound content, and obtain endless strength from the suffering he has experienced in his past life course. Just as he went from being desperate and helpless to choosing translation as a career to finally identifying it as a lifelong ideal for a living, the difficulty was never the content of the text, but the courage and resilience to persevere.
Books are meant to save lives
The first episode, "Our Library," adds a quote from Borges: "If there really is a heaven, then heaven must be what a library looks like." "For the general public, who are far away from professional book editors, translators, and staff, the existence of a library is the most direct and closest way to get to books.
Sometimes, this kind of straightforward contact is a turning point to change fate, Jigme on the plateau enriched the spiritual world of villagers in all directions with a wooden library, in the winter vacation and summer vacation, here from a lonely field into a paradise for children to live and learn, absorb nutrients, high dropout rate, high illiteracy rate of remote areas, once was difficult to reach the blind area of science and technology culture, but with the completion of this library, the window to explore all the beautiful and vast worlds was opened, through the shimmer can see monotony, A rich world beyond the hard work of life.
The girl Ram is rescued by books, and she records her life with a pen and tells her story, here she is not the little girl who is not good-looking, nor does she have to feel inferior to her appearance, but the writer with a wonderful writing.
Walking out of the mountains, Ram revealed from the books that the world found his own way, and there will be more Tibetan children who will find the possible direction of life from books, in addition to the repetitive labor of farming and grazing, there are countless things that they can look forward to and achieve.
The documentary "But There Are Books 2" does not specifically introduce a book, but each episode is the shadow of a book, and at the moment when variety shows such as "Readers" are frequent, arousing the audience's interest in books and reading is a way to enhance the overall cultural literacy, and it is also a space for some immersive thinking in the era of nipple music.