"One last request, hug."
In the shot, when the white-haired father said this sentence to the young man who resembled his son, the tears swirling in his eyes could no longer be contained.
The former domineering collapsed in an instant after the son left, and the father began to become soft, less rational, no longer so self-righteous, even if he knew that he had entered the deception, he was still willing to eat - he captured the breath of the deceased son in this young man.
This is the most shocking scene in the movie "Requiem" co-starring powerful actors Weizi and Chen Jin. The film will be released this Friday, based on the novel "Requiem" by famous author and Mao Dun Literature Prize winner Zhou Daxin. The work is more documentary in its spiritual core, stemming from Chow's own personal pain— the 29-year-old only son who died of illness in 2008. After three years of being trapped, Zhou Daxin brought us this blood-weeping work "Requiem". The title page reads: "Dedicated to my son Zhou Ning, who died young" "Dedicated to all parents in the world who have lost their children due to illness and unexpected disasters." ”
"From this day on, you are completely separated from us. Mom and Dad can no longer see you playing on the basketball court in your vest, you can no longer see you surfing the Internet in front of a computer in a sweater, you can no longer see you frolicking in the snow in a down jacket, you can no longer see you reading bare-chested on the head of the bed..."
From that day on, Zhou Daxin and his son stood at opposite ends of the River of Life and Death.
The writing of Requiem was destined to be incredibly difficult. The whole book adopts the form of father and son's dialogue between heaven and earth, and carefully reviews the bits and pieces of the son's growth period from birth to adolescence, and the small pieces are also warm. The middle is interspersed with the father's reflection on the self, such as the strong guidance of the son's choice of marriage partner.
In the second half of the book, the space extends to the heavenly realm, and the dialogue between the father and son has more spiritual meanings--about the soul, about greed, about choice, about time, about leaving... Fly in the air and travel at will. In the meantime, there is the collision and reconciliation of the values of the two generations, and it also leads us to think about the Chinese-style father-son relationship, the dialectic of life and death, and the multiple possibilities of survival and happiness.
In the process of reading this book, I felt the most, although there was the pain of the cone of heaven and man, but also the inner abundance and tranquility reached after passing through the details.
In Zhou Daxin's view, Mozart truly understood the relationship between life and death, and when listening to the "Requiem" named K266, "My heart was peaceful and calm, my chest was as vast as looking at the starry sky on a breezy summer night, I was immersed in the artistic conception created by the music, and I experienced a kind of out-of-body ecstasy, and trance was like listening to the songs of the gods." ”
This is probably the main reason why the book is called Requiem.
The writing of "Requiem" has allowed Zhou Daxin to achieve self-healing, and he also hopes that this book will take care of more people who have the same experience as him. "I hope that parents who have lost their children in the world can get their comfort from it, so that they can cheer up and face a new life, because life will not be interrupted because we have lost our loved ones."
Just like the sentence on the poster of the movie "Requiem", "Heaven and man are not eternally separated, and they will be reunited after a long absence", on the ultimate way back in life, we will all meet again. Hopefully, then, we can all be at peace with each other.
The process of pouring out the pain is actually more painful
Sometimes I wonder if my body will allow me to finish this book
Q: Writing the book "Requiem" must have been difficult for you.
Zhou Daxin: When I wrote it, I realized that the process of pouring out the pain was actually more painful. You can't help but remember those painful moments, you can't help but look back at those painful scenes. As a result, the book was written very slowly, sometimes only a few hundred words a day, sometimes I had to stop and lie in bed because of my sadness, and sometimes I doubted whether my body would allow me to finish the book.
In the past novel creation, the hearts of the characters still need to be pondered, the story still needs to be fictionalized, and the joys and sorrows can still be controlled. This time writing about my life, the tear-soaked thing was put there, and all I needed to do was turn it into words. Turning real life into words is two different things from using words to express the lives of others.
Q: For you, is this kind of personal pain in writing a relief or more uncomfortable for you? Is there a healing effect?
Zhou Daxin: Write for liberation. This book has a certain therapeutic effect.
Q: Why did you choose to use the form of a father-son dialogue throughout the creation?
Zhou Daxin: The first half is more to comfort the soul of my son, using real-life materials; the second half is to comfort myself and all the readers who are about to face the end of life, using exactly what is imaginary.
After my son fell ill, I spent time with him day and night, and before he lost his speech, the two of us often chatted together like friends, talking about a lot of topics and being very frank. I knew what he was thinking, what he wanted to say, what he wanted to do. Coupled with the fact that our hearts are connected, there is a natural capacity for mutual understanding between father and son. I just want to say what I say to my son, and only through dialogue can we realize the wishes of our father and son, can we both feel better, and can we both play a comforting role in his soul.
The second half of the book, the part about heaven, is my own imagination, and I have not talked to my son before I died. This part was written to comfort his son and his own soul.
Q: Are socrates, Mozart, and others that you mention in the book people you would love to talk to? Why did you write about these?
Zhou Daxin: This is someone I would love to talk to personally. Most of them have thought deeply about the pain and trouble of life, about the question of human survival and death, and I have tried to find the meaning of human life in my dialogue with them.
After this decade
Start to maintain a calm mind about loss
Q: What do you think of the place and significance of Requiem in your creative career so far? It will be different from other works.
Zhou Daxin: This is a book I wrote for myself, and for all the parents of the world who have lost their children. It is a novel that has a specific audience in my creative career. To my surprise, many young people also read it, and some young friends told me after reading it that they understood and forgave their father.
Q: What was your first thought when you learned that "Requiem" was going to be adapted into a movie? Expected or unexpected?
Zhou Daxin: The first impression is to comfort parents who have lost their children who have not read "Requiem".
Q: Due to the unique way of writing this work, the difficulty of adapting this work should be said to be not small. The participation of many powerful actors such as Weizi and Chen Jin makes the film show a unique temperament. In terms of understanding the work, do you have much communication with the actors? What kind of run-in has there been?
Zhou Daxin: WeiZi and Chen Jin are both excellent performing artists, and I think they took this play because they felt it was valuable. I didn't communicate much with them, and they completed the acting task perfectly on their own understanding of the characters.
Q: This is not the first time that a literary work has been adapted to a film and television. Many of your works have been adapted into films, television series, radio dramas and plays. Based on your novella "Fragrant Oil Mill by the Pond of Fragrant Souls", the film "Fragrant Soul Girl" also won the Golden Bear Award at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival. Some time ago, Liang Xiaosheng's novel "The World of Man" adapted from the TV series of the same name also attracted great attention. What do you think of the relationship between literature and film?
Zhou Daxin: Film and television dramas can reflect the storyline of novels, but it is difficult to express things in spiritual connotation. Now that many people's literary reading is reduced, after the novel is adapted into a film and television drama, it can approach more people and attract people's interest in the original work, but writers cannot create to cater to film and television.
Q: This film is also a congratulatory gift to the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Japan. Cross-border collaborative adaptation should be the first time for you, right? What is your impression of the Japanese creative team of the film? Do you usually pay attention to Japanese movies?
Zhou Daxin: I have seen a lot of Japanese movies, and I appreciate the quiet mentality of Japanese filmmakers when they enter creation. I was impressed by the meticulous style of the Japanese creative team.
Q: The first release of "Requiem" in 2012; 10 years later, in 2022, the Sino-Japanese co-production of the same name "Requiem" is about to be released. Have you undergone any important changes in the state of your life in the past decade?
Zhou Daxin: There are some changes, that is, to understand that the second half of a person's life has been in the process of loss, gradually losing the luster of the skin, losing the melanin in the hair, losing the ability to do heavy physical labor, losing hearing, losing the bite, losing the sight, losing the cognitive ability, losing the ability to move, and even losing life. Start to maintain a calm mind about loss.
There is also a benefit after time disappears
She dulls our perception of misfortune
Q: We live in a time of rapid change, but reading your words, you can feel a calm power.
Zhou Daxin: The natural and plain way of writing is what I have always liked, and I have experienced more suffering - I have not been freed from the entanglement of suffering in my life, which makes me feel that it is really not easy for people to live, and I can tolerate everything, so the words under my hands have become like this, which is not an intentional choice.
Q: "Requiem" not only thinks about the meaning of death in life, but also, on a broader level, it also prompts people to think about what better family relationships, especially paternity, are. If you could do it all over again, what changes would you make to your parent-child relationship?
Zhou Daxin: Only give advice to his son, do not make choices for him, let him freely deal with the problems he faces in life.
Q: Has your view of life changed through this?
Zhou Daxin: The departure of my son made me know more truly that life is a short process, and the first paragraph of this process is that you continue to harvest things through hard work and make you feel "there"; in the last paragraph of this process, the Creator forces you to keep handing over things until you become a "nothing" again. Without literature, I would have lived more bitterly.
Q: How do you understand time?
Zhou Daxin: I myself feel that time has three characteristics: First, it cannot stay and will not flow backwards. This makes her particularly precious, once the past can no longer be obtained, lost is lost forever, so countless celebrities in ancient and modern China and abroad have warned us to cherish time. Second, there is no shadow left, and it is invisible when it crosses our side. This makes us not feel it immediately when we lose her, so many people have no fear of her or even push it away, and by the time they realize that she is far away, it is often too late. Third, because time is divided into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, people will have the illusion that they have a lot of time. Coupled with the fact that she has mixed with us on countless holidays, this is easy to paralyze people's nerves, so that people who squander time continue to appear, hoping that time will pass quickly. Of course, there is also the benefit of the disappearance of time, which dulls our perception of misfortune.
I know that from most of my life' experiences
How important reading is for a person to live intellectually
Question: Henan has seen many accomplished writers in ancient history and modern times, what do you think of the influence of the central plains on writers?
Zhou Daxin: First, almost every Henan writer has written works on rural themes. Because of the large proportion of Henan's agricultural population, most of the writers come from the countryside, and the countryside is their concern; second, Henan writers have a lot of suffering, which is also caused by history. Since ancient times, the Central Plains has been a place where soldiers and families must fight, and there are many natural disasters, and these sufferings are placed there, and it is impossible for writers not to pay attention to them; third, because Luoyang and Kaifeng are the ancient capitals of several dynasties, after the Song Dynasty moved south, the style of the Central Plains is no longer there, and people often recall the past, and there is a deep loss and nostalgia. Therefore, many Henan writers are good at writing historical novels.
Q: Not long ago, you built a zhou da xin library at your hometown of Dengzhou Huangbei Middle School in Henan. Why did you make this decision? What do you think of the social responsibility of writers?
Zhou Daxin: The number of libraries is a measure of the cultural literacy of people in a country or place.
It is an important place for a nation to improve its own cultural standards and quality. In Germany, with a population of 80 million, there are more than 14,000 libraries with a total collection of 129 million books. On average, more than 5,700 people own a library. In Israel, there is one library for every 60,000 people.
In many countries around the world, it is common for hundreds of thousands or even one million people to own a library. It is because of this gap that we find that the proportion of philosophers, scientists, financiers, musicians, writers, and poets in the German and Jewish nations is very high.
The emergence of digital libraries is a change in the way libraries receive readers, and has not changed the function and value of libraries. Physical libraries are the foundation for the establishment and development of digital libraries, and we cannot deny the existence of physical libraries because of the emergence of digital libraries. The two are interdependent and coexist, which is the best state of library survival. Only physical libraries do have an inconvenient side for readers, because each library has a limited collection of books; but only digital libraries, readers can never touch the real book, can not see the physical form of the book, can not smell the fragrance of the book, is also a pity. Even in the United States, where digital reading first appeared, digital libraries have not been able to replace paper libraries. This is especially true in Europe.
A library is ultimately a place to read. I understand from most of my life's experience how important reading is for a person to live intellectually, so I want to provide a new place for young friends in my hometown to read. With the support of the leaders of the Dengzhou Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government in his hometown, this small library was born.
I think reading is the investment behavior with the highest rate of return in the world.
As soon as a person starts reading, he will be rewarded. Only earn and don't lose. In any field in the world today, all successful people are successful through reading. I hope that because of this new reading place, more young people in my hometown will begin to read seriously and systematically, so that the life goals they pursue can be achieved.
Q: In today's fast-paced society, pure literature is becoming more and more marginalized. Everyone seems to be in a hurry, and there is less and less time to be allocated to reading. Can you talk about the significance of literature to yourself?
Zhou Daxin: Literature for me, first of all, is a way to pour out and pour out, she let me pour out the joys and sorrows in my heart, and obtain inner balance and peace. Second, literature allows me to convey to my readers my views on life itself, on human nature, on the process of life, on social progress and development, and on the relationship between man and the natural world, and makes me feel that my life still has some meaning. Moreover, literature allows me to create a new world that is not available in real life, and it gives me a sense of creative pleasure.
Q: Have you ever wondered what you would do if you weren't a writer in this life?
Zhou Daxin: I may go to be a staff officer in the headquarters of a unit, I like to write and draw on the battle map; I may also become a middle school teacher after changing careers.
Text and courtesy photo/ Ji Xiaoqin