The Russian novel "What to Do?" written around 1862. Some of these writing techniques, today, still seem to be full of fresh meaning, can be described as timeless.
1862, how many years ago?
160 years.
Published "What to Do?" In 1863, during the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty, the huge impact of the Opium War was in the midst of turmoil in Chinese society at that time.
At this time, Russian society, as we can see through the novel, already has a complete education system, medical schools can train doctors needed by society, disease treatment can take scientific means, women can survive in society on their own, show their faces, open workshops, young men and women can gather freely, talk about social changes, life dreams, emotional trade-offs, there can be horse-drawn carriages on the streets as public transportation, and the Moscow Railway has brought speed and passion.
It can be said that "What to do?" The gap between the society described in "" and our current society is not very large, and we say that they all belong to modern society, when there is no objection. The gap between us and the Qing Dynasty's Tongzhi years is separated by an era, and it can be said that it does not belong to the same era.
Since we belong to the same social atmosphere as the Russian society of one hundred and sixty years ago, there is no barrier or obstacle to our understanding of the content, background and psychology of the novels of that era.
In the same era of Chinese literature, almost none of them can be obtained.
In the Chinese literature of the same period, the only women who could gain a foothold in society were prostitutes. Until the advent of "The Flower of the Sea of Iniquity" in 1903, prostitutes could only be used as the protagonists.
Going back, none of the novels of the late Qing Dynasty took the social image of women as the main target of the novel.
It was not until the May Fourth Movement that we referred to this one point in time as the "Age of Awakening."
Then, it means that the time before it was still a sleeping era.
This also understands "What to do?" Some of the ideologies that pervaded Russian society at the time of publication can be shared with our ideological identity today.
What to do? Some of the writing techniques in ", today, seem to be outdated.
For example, "What to Do?" "Cut into the heart of the characters, capture the fleeting flashes of the characters, and record the chain of words, which basically constitutes the typical narrative technique of the stream of consciousness.
This kind of stream of consciousness technique can produce a sense of reality that is captured in time to inner emotions, so that readers can feel the trajectory of psychological fluctuations and streamlined development paths, which can be called a technological revolution in novel creation.
Of course, this revolution, sometimes going to an extreme, becomes an elusive fictional text that relies on a pure flow of consciousness, leading to the emergence of pure stream-of-consciousness novels such as Ulysses that are difficult for most readers to understand.
And "What to Do?" This stream-of-consciousness technique in "" is just right, mixed in the description of reality, bringing the agility of the narrative and the vividness of the inner presentation.
Let's excerpt a paragraph to see how the novel directly intervenes in the heart of the characters, and from the perspective of "first person", the psychological ups and downs of the characters' hearts are fully presented.
The following section is verse 16 of the second chapter of the novel, which is translated by Jiang Lu from the People's Literature Publishing House.
In the novel, Verochica lives in a small citizen's family, her parents force her to marry a playboy, she wants to live an independent and free life, coinciding with the modern concepts held by the family's governess, the two people have a sharp heart, a heart, and finally married. In this part of the novel, she and the governess have become acquainted, have a good feeling for each other, discussed challenging the authority of the family, they went out together, reached a tacit understanding of their hearts, and thus multiplied their courage, and even openly flaunted the market, returning home together, lonely men and widows going out together, and their subtext is self-evident.
Apparently, she returned home with the governess, arousing her mother's suspicions. At this time, Verochka also made a decision about his future, and did not make a clear decision.
In this section, the novel shows Verochka's inner distress, directly converting the third person into the first person, in order to better and more closely explore the inner world of the characters.
In this section, the novel shows that the characters face the vast road ahead and once gave birth to the entangled psychology of life, and there are roughly three progressive psychological changes:
First, in the desperate dilemma, the heart of suicide sprouted.
The novel reads:
At this time Verochka was sitting in her room meditating:
Am I forcing him in? Mom stared at us so deadly.
I put him in a difficult position! How could he stay to eat?
Oh my God, what happens to me poor man?
He said he had a way; no, my dear, there was no way!
No, there is a way, that is, jump out of the window. If it was too painful, I would jump out of the window. ——
In this section, from the waves that she inevitably stirred up after returning home with her tutor, triggering her inner coping strategy, she had no other way to go, only to choose to "jump out of the window" to break her life.
The second is to describe her extended imagination of the chosen method of suicide.
How ridiculous am I: "If it's too painful," — isn't it painful now?
When you jump out of the window, you seem to fly quickly,—— as if you don't fall, but really fly down,—— which is probably very pleasant. But then I bumped into the sidewalk – ah, it was hard! Does it hurt? No, I don't think it's too late to feel the pain, only to feel very hard! For this was only a short moment's work; but before that, the air was like a soft fluffy mattress, so light and gentle to give way to both sides... Wonderful...
Not bad, but what about later? Everyone ran to see ,—— was broken, his face was injured, and he fell in a pool of blood and mud... No, if you can sprinkle some clean sand in this place,—— even the sand here is always dirty... No, sprinkle the whitest sand... That's fine. The face doesn't fall, it's clean, it doesn't scare anyone. ——
In this psychological description, the novel arranges imaginary possibilities for the characters to put themselves in the shoes of the scene, takes into account all the details of the events that may occur, can be said to be comprehensive, and even fully imagines their own terrible state after the tragic event.
The third is to depict the girl once again changing another way to end her life.
This section vividly portrays a girl's inner mood of suffering and loss in the face of a critical moment of life and death.
In Paris, poor girls often suffocated themselves with gas. What a good idea; great. Jumping out of a window is not good. Suffocation is good.
They were talking loudly over there. What do they talk about? No, I couldn't hear it clearly at all.
I'm going to leave him a note and write everything down. Because I had said to him, "Today is my birthday." "I was so bold back then. How can I do that? Because I was too obsessed at the time, I didn't understand things at that time.
Yes, the poor girls of Paris are called smart! Well, wouldn't I get smarter? You see, how ridiculous it was: as soon as they entered the room, they saw nothing, they could only smell a gas, and the air was green; they were astonished: what was going on? Where is Verochka? Mom angrily said to Dad: Why are you standing stupidly? Break the window! They broke the window and found me sitting next to the dresser, my head hanging down on the dresser, my hands covered. —"Verochica, have you been poisoned by coal"—I didn't make a sound. - "Verochka, why don't you make a sound?" "Ah, she's suffocating!" They cried and cried. Hey, how ridiculous it is: they actually cry, and mom has to tell people how she hurts me.
Yes, he would feel sorry for me. - Well, I can leave him a note.
Yes, I'm going to look at the situation and do it like the poor girls in Paris. I said I did it. I'm not afraid.
And what's so scary about that? Isn't this way of dying very good? But I'll have to wait and see what he says. No, there is no way. He just talked casually, trying to comfort me.
Why do people want to comfort me? There is no need to comfort at all. Since you can't help me, can you still comfort me? He was supposed to be a smart man, but he did it too. Why did he do this? This is not necessary. ——
In this independent chapter, there is no plot progress, it is completely a girl's extreme means to change her fate that may bring about various terrible consequences, making rich associations and sketches, taking into account the contradictions, exclusions, and nostalgia of a girl hovering on the edge of life and death.
It is precisely because the psychological grasp of the characters has reached such a delicate, three-dimensional, and comprehensive level that the difficulty and hesitation of the girl's choice can be vividly shown, and why she should persistently take the key step of escaping the family.
It can be said that in the literary description of this paragraph, the sense of reality brought about by the stream of consciousness approaching the heart of the character is classicly shown.
And what we always have to remember is that this is a technique that a Russian writer one hundred and sixty years ago has adopted with great skill.
Even today, we cannot say that this technique is not enlightening to reality.
This is the value and significance of famous works.