Allie Smith
Artful not only tells a touching story of mourning, but also a book that celebrates the power of reading and reading, and expresses the healing energy of literature and art.
Published in 2012, it was featured in the inaugural Goldsmith Award shortlist for "breaking through patterns or expanding the possibilities of fictional forms". The work integrates literary fiction and academic essays, and in the first person "I" narrative tone, tells the story of the journey of "I" after the death of a lover, "I" for a long time indulged in sorrow, unable to extricate himself, and finally with reading, slowly walked out of the dark tunnel of sadness and loneliness, saw the day again, and returned to normal life.
There is no greater pain in the world than the separation of life and death, the death of a loved one, which can be the darkest moment of life. Bereavement pain not only affects normal life, but also affects a person's physical and mental health, and even causes psychological diseases. The work uses an ancient mourning song as the introduction, describing the state of the protagonist's bereavement in the first "12 months and one day": time has not healed the grief, "I am still lost and lost, even more lost". The death of the lover means the end of the two people's lives together, but the human thing is that what was once "our study, your desk, our book" has now become "my study, my desk, my book". Alone, the study became the only place for "me" to go when he was in excruciating pain. On the desk are four unfinished speeches that my lover was still writing and not yet finished. In order to cheer myself up, "I" took a book from the shelf and read it, Dickens's Orphans of the Mist. It became the first book "I" read after "12 months and one day" of losing her lover.
However, for a person who has been immersed in grief for a long time, reading is not easy. Every day I once spent with my lover has become a memory that haunts "me" all the time, every way I once lived together, eating, sleeping, reading, watching movies, fighting mouths, traveling, anytime and anywhere like a tide, instantly drowning "me". "I" was in a trance and exhausted all day. Just sat down to read a few lines, all kinds of hallucinations came and went: auditory hallucinations of someone knocking on the door; illusion of a lover-like person in rags, dusty and dusty pushing the door in, seeing him sit down to watch TV, loading things in his pockets: water cups, keys, credit cards, pencil knives... "I" always meet "you" unexpectedly, on the way home from work, I smell "you" at home in the distance; when I wake up in the middle of the night, I see "you" sleeping next to me, and the outline of "your" sleeping position is still faintly visible under the light... It is in this confusion and hallucination that the protagonist struggles to read "Orphans of the Mist" intermittently.
The narrative of the work is from beginning to end, like the muttering of the protagonist "I" of unknown gender, and like the living "I" to the undead "you" after farewell to the affectionate and humorous pouring out. The dialogue of the entire character has no quotation marks, like the narrator's unrestrained, unbridled flow of consciousness. Reality is intertwined with illusion and imagination, making the work dreamy and confusing, full of mysterious and strange atmosphere. The prose style drama monologue narrative is truly touching, and the reader seems to be immersed in the scene, sometimes immersed in the beautiful remembrance of the past two people's world with "I", the time when "it seems to live in a poem, a painting, a story, a piece of music"; sometimes I hear and witness "I" touching the scene, feeling sad, because I can't help but cry out in pain: "Split me, use a sharp blade of the January moon sky, take a sharp cheese cutting knife, cut me from the top of my head to the heart, and see what will be inside?" ”
How deep the love is, how painful it is to lose love! These symptoms all indicate that "I" am on the verge of a mental breakdown due to excessive grief. The vacation provided by the company and the psychological diagnosis and treatment recommended by colleagues are like itching in the boots of "me", which is useless. In the face of boundless grief and sorrow, it seems that only reading can bring some comfort and light to "me". Much of the work presents what "I" was thinking while reading, and the changes in my mental and mental state as a result.
Dickens's famous book "Orphans of the Mist", as a must-read book for the SAT exam that year, "I" read it as early as 30 years ago, I thought I knew it well, but time has passed, 30 years of life experience, coupled with the bereavement mood at this time, when "I" picked up the book page yellow, about to degummed to read, there is a taste in my heart. Every character in the novel world, every event, scene, and even a word or word evokes different thoughts and associations of "I", especially the details that were ignored in the past, which are now closely related to "me". For example, in the opening chapter, when reading the three words "workhouse", "I" think of my grandmother, because I heard my father say that my grandmother worked in the laundry room of a workhouse. Since then, every time I see the word "workhouse", no matter where it is in the UK, "I" feel particularly kind. Of course, this sense of intimacy comes from "I"'s deep empathy for the protagonist's life and encounters. Oliver's orphan life of losing his parents from childhood makes the "I" who has lost his lover and is lonely and bitter, and he has a sense of identity as a "person at the end of the world". When "I" read the words "Oliver came to this miserable world," he thought of his own situation: "I felt again my own heavy sorrow, the world I was carrying." At the same time, at some point and somewhere, there was a person who thought it was a miserable world, which made me feel a little better on my back. Reading inspires "me" to resonate deeply, allows "me" to find companions, and makes "I" no longer feel lonely in the face of life and death.
In the work, "I" is an urban landscape engineer, compared to the academic lover who does text and literary research, "I" is a typical "ordinary reader" in Woolf's pen: reading without boundaries by nature and hobbies, having its own aesthetic taste and common sense for literature and art, and not being polluted and swayed by "literary prejudice". In the works, "I" have a keen intuition and vivid sensitivity to language and writing, and the words are full of taste and playfulness that are interested in puns, rhymes, rhythms, etc. Dickens's personalized language is "my" favorite, and "I" also like Dickens to call one of the novel's characters in a different way: the Artful, the Dodger, the Artful Dodger, Jack Duckens, Mr. John Duckens, "as if he were a work of endless change." The art of these languages gives "me" endless pleasure, so that "I" temporarily forget sorrow between taste and appreciation.
Cover of the English edition of Art Thoughts
Rereading also allows "I" to relive the dramatic scenes and vivid characters in the novel, giving "I" simple and pure happiness, and a beautiful experience of resonating with the characters: "I like how slippery Dodge wears a hat crookedly, the hat is always crumbling overhead, but it is always safe, it can't fall, and the kung fu is all in balance control!" I like how Fagin and his gang of boys taught Oliver to act —to teach them the tricks of theft. They acted so comically that the child, who had been crying, trembling, and fainting all the way, laughed vigorously until tears came out of his eyes that had recently seen the world." "I" also specifically mentions Dickens's depiction of Oliver's three dreams, whose artistic appeal not only deeply moves "I" to the tragic fate of mankind, but also gains the freedom to stay out of the world for a moment like the dream experience of the little protagonist who has experienced suffering.
In the 1940s, American readers reflected on the critical theorist L. Rosenblatt once pointed out that "reading is a constructive and selective process in a specific context", as a valuable experience, it has a "liberating and motivating effect" on the reader's current life, and expresses the meaning of reading to "me" positive empowerment. "I" is like this, finding my connection with the writer, the narrator, and the characters in the book, and slowly coming out of mourning and depression. The work describes how "I" changed when I woke up at the Brighton Hotel: "On this night, something fundamental about me must have changed, because I pulled up the shutters, opened the windows, I looked up at the sky, washed my face, and enjoyed breakfast. I went outside and walked a long way by the sea. At this moment, we finally see the sunlight dispel the dark clouds and shine into the dim and sad atrium of "I", although the tide of sorrow still sweeps in from time to time.
If reading novels allows "me" to be in a wonderful literary world and obtain great emotional comfort, then reading the 4 manuscripts of my lover not only allows me to go deep into the academic world of the other party and experience the pleasure of intellectual exchange with each other again, but also expands the private experience of "I" to a greater extent, allowing "I" to cross time and space, cross the boundary between reality and artistic imagination, and connect with the collective experience and wisdom of human beings.
Judging from the title of the lecture, Lover is a scholar of comparative literature, and his four lectures are titled "Time, Form, Margin, Dedication and Reflection", connecting a large number of works by writers and artists in different eras, regions and cultural backgrounds. Interspersed with "I" bereavement narratives, they form a vast and colorful network of texts in which the themes enrich, deepen and expand with each other. They interpret life, death, love, suffering, immortality, and the true meaning of art and creation. For example, the time in reading literature, from the oldest known narrative poem "Gilgamesh Epic", to the Renaissance Michelangelo and Shakespeare, to the modern Conrad and Mansfield, to the contemporary José Saramaggo, Vislava Simoska, the literary works of various cultural backgrounds throughout the ages, all present the power, vastness, ruthlessness, the inevitability of life, and the reality of life's shortness, interpreting the truth of everything in the world, except love and art, everything will be invincible to time. These themes should undoubtedly be in line with the bereavement of "I" in reality and its reflections on art, and sublimate them from an aesthetic point of view into the universal deep experience of human beings and their reflections; at the same time, they are also a new inspiration and inspiration for hope, completeness and love. Throughout the work, they are like a choir in Greek tragedy, evaluating and sublimating the emotional and psychological state of "I"; prompting "I" to recognize and soothe personal trauma, and embracing a broader friendship and love in the world.
Of course, the reading object of "I" in the work is not only a work with language and writing as the medium, but also a graphic art, such as watching film and television, painting and photography. The life stories of their creators also bring great aesthetic pleasure and precious emotional comfort to "I", the "ordinary reader". From James Williamson's "The Great Devour" in the early 20th century to Chaplin's Circus, to Hitchcock's silent film The Lodger, from "I" to the musical "Oliver! From the 1960s and the films starring Aliki Weiwkaki, known as the "national star of Greece", from the avant-garde paintings of the French painter Cézanne to the contemporary Japanese painter Yayoi Kusama, etc., whether it is the screen or the canvas, or the words, or the colors, light and shadow, and the notes, art is the same in conveying feelings, and the artists' creation and life experience have expanded the aesthetic experience and empathy of "I".
Finally, when "I" rubbed the stack of manuscripts of my lover and accidentally read a letter pressed under the manuscript paper, in the words of the letter, "a gift from the past to the future", the lover's voice and smile instantly crossed over, a warm and playful greeting, "How are you, baby" ringing in the ear, seeing the words as the face, "I" sweat straight up. The letter not only contains apologies for the act of "rudely" driving his lover out of the study on a certain day, but also the "confession" of hiding in the study that day, peeking at his lover's favorite movies, the "confession" of meeting and hating the night, as well as the excited sharing of academic inspiration and inspiration from watching the movie, and the imagination and blessings of "I" when reading letters in the future. Past, present and future, reality and imagination magically converge at that moment, warm and moving. The beauty of knowing the roots and loving each other makes "I" indulge in it and can't stop wanting it. Reading becomes a channel of channeling, building a bridge of telepathy and communication between lovers separated by yin and yang, and realizing reunion and dialogue with lovers in the world of words.
For reading, Smith once said, "All books require us to be there, they require us to be present." I like works that give people a 'sense of presence'. As we read them, we feel active as readers, we find that we are fully immersed in them, and we have the feeling that we are writing the story as we read. We need to be in the book, not choose to escape. That's reading. In this work, we fully feel the interaction between "I" and the "reading" during the immersive reading, and its mood gradually becomes clearer in the process. As symbolized by the title of "Metamorphosis" to be read in "I" in the next reading plan, "I" will be reborn after the "robbery", come out of the haze of bereavement, and return to the right track of life.
The role of reading in relieving sad emotions has made books have been said to be "medicine for the soul" as early as the ancient Greek period, and because of their irreplaceable and unique effects in emotional catharsis, relief, identification and support, literature and art have always been the most respected "medicinal materials" of "bibliotherapy". As a spiritual and emotional healing, literature and art even replace religious comfort for modern and contemporary people. The British writer Aland Burton once said, "Modern artists satisfy the psychological needs of men, just as their ancestors satisfy theological needs... Scripture can be replaced by culture, and culture will be our new religion. ”
About the nourishing and healing power of reading for the individual spirit, writer Smith has talked about it on many occasions. Because of her special love for trees in real life, she often compares the growth characteristics of trees to the subtle changes of reading people. In the work, the garden expert "I" derives the inspiration and strength of rebirth from the ability of trees to resist cold, self-healing and regeneration, calmly see life and death, and tenaciously save themselves. She has repeatedly quoted her fellow writers to express her voice, such as Graham Green's essay on how reading War and Peace feels: the book is "like a towering tree, always alive and ever renewing." Also, in 2018 for the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) to Virginia M. In the preface to Woolf's published collection, Smith quotes Woolf as a poetic expression of the meaning of reading "real works of art": every "fresh reading ... Like the sap of life flowing in their leaves, the sky and vegetation are adept at changing their form and color as the seasons change." Reading makes the classic literature and art transcend time and death, and the reader also undergoes transformation, healing and growth in each re-reading.
As a popular contemporary author, Ali Smith's works have won numerous awards and have been widely praised by critics. She talks a lot about reading and the power of reading in her work. In her 2011 novel There But For The, she wrote: "Just imagine how quiet a book on a shelf is... Just situated there, not opened. Then, when you turn it on, think about what will happen. Needless to say, for Smith, to open a book to read is to open up a whole new world. For "conveying pleasure through her work," she won the 2021 Pleasure of Reading Prize, founded and presented by Bloomsbury Press in the United Kingdom, where the judge and novelist Kamila Shamsie wrote:
"Reading Allie Smith's work always has a special pleasure. Her readers read the scroll for a long time before they delve deeper into the world—a serious pleasure that stems from the treatment of joy. She knows that the world is full of sorrow and injustice, and describes them with a sharp and touching brushstroke, but this instead enhances her celebration of love, for miracles, for art and friendship. ”
This passage just expresses my feelings about reading "Art Thoughts". "Art Thoughts" is another ode to the true feelings of the world, the tribute to reading, and the praise of great art.