No path in the world is repetitive, and no life is replaceable. Everyone is experiencing a life that belongs only to themselves, the richness of the world and the narrowness of personal space make reading appear in front of our eyes, reading opens up our personal space, makes us realize the vastness of the sky and the vastness of the earth, and makes our life path from singular to plural.
Today, Xiao Yijun brings you a selected article from Yu Hua's "Reading is Beneficial to Physical and Mental Health".
Chekhov's waiting
Text/Yu Hua
Ann Ba Chekhov wrote the screenplay The Three Sisters in the early 20th century, with Erga, Martha and Elina. Their father was a dead general, their brother's dream was to become a university professor, they lived, they had no ideals, only dreams, that is, to go to Moscow. Moscow is a testimony to the good times of their childhood and the only yearning they aspire to as adults. Day after day, year after year, they waited, the years passed, they still sat in their chairs, Moscow still existed in the yearning, and the act of "going" was always a symbol, constantly overdrawn by Erga, Martha and Yilina.
The story begins in a provincial city far from Moscow and ends there. This seems to be the fate of all waiting-themed stories, and the cycle begins, and the goal that the narrative aspires to reach ends up at the beginning.
Half a century later, Samuel Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot, Estragon and Vladimir, two tramps who waited repeatedly, waiting for the man named Godot who would never come. Finally, the end of the script restores its beginning.
These are two plays in which the styles are so far apart that they are as distant as the two eras in which they live, or they represent, first, two different eras, and secondly two different writers. Half a century later, Lin Zhaohua's drama studio changed "Three Sisters" and "Waiting for Godot" into "Three Sisters Waiting for Godot", so another era stepped in.
Interestingly, the three epochs have a balanced harmony in time distance, which seems to be a deliberate choice of fate, and if so, this lofty destiny seems to have an aesthetic hobby. The reason why Lin Zhaohua merged these two dramas into one is actually very simple, in his own words, "waiting". "Because of 'waiting', the 'three sisters' of Russia and the 'tramp' of Paris meet in Beijing at this moment."
It can be said that it is precisely some of the coincidences between Chekhov and Beckett that gives Lin Zhaohua a handle and makes him believe their own words: "A drama should be the result of the stage artist sprinting with the ultimate style." This sentence, which is both a manifesto and an advertisement, is really just a self-defense for legalization. What is the ultimate style?
1901's "Three Sisters" and 1951's "Waiting for Godot" may be the ultimate style, and in 1998, Chekhov and Beckett no longer have to live from it. Or rather, the ultimate style can only be seen by borrowing the gaze of the times, and in the eyes of history, the rebellion of Chekhov and Beckett seems insignificant, and what is important is that they show the continuation of emotions and the development of ideas.
Lin Zhaohua's "Three Sisters Waiting for Godot" may be the ultimate style today, of course, it can only be today. In fact, the real meaning only exists on the stage, and the defense or praise on the stage cannot be foiled by the clouds.
Placing chekhov's melancholy beauty and Beckett's sad vulgarity on the same stage and at the same time is surprising and gratifying. Lin Zhaohua blurs the lines when the two scripts are connected, while still highlighting their respective language styles.
The stage begins with a puddle of water, which then encloses a wallless house with a glass of night sky as quiet as the night sky, and occasionally singing without lyrics in the background. The three sisters are besieged by water, and their waiting is intensified from the beginning into an unattainable pure wait.
Estragon and Vladimir retained their identities only when they were driven to the foreground, and retreat meant fifty years of old age, which meant a change of status, becoming a lieutenant colonel and a baron. The two men roamed the river of time, one moment going to make love to Martha and Elina, and the other running back to wait for Godot.
At this time, you can better appreciate the beauty of Chekhov's prose and the vulgarity of Beckett's poetry, the style of the stage is like a show meeting a soldier, and the strange unity is harmonious because of the confrontation of styles. Beckett's lines are full of life and full of beijing streets, and Chekhov's lines are more like emanating from the depths of memory, distant as if fate is reciting.
Lin Zhaohua hoped that the audience would be able to listen, "listen to the voice of the master", and he thought that this would be enough. The results of listening allow us to find that behind the contrast in appearance, there is more consistency. It seems that a same-sex marriage is taking place on stage, and the reasons for the union are not different, but the same.
"The Three Sisters" seems to be Chekhov's inner narrative, like the otherworldly "Prairie", calm and beautiful, rather than a clever work like "The Death of an Official". Chekhov's waiting is like an extending road, but its direction is not far away, but deeper and deeper.
Erga slowly ages in her waiting; Elena's waiting deprives herself of the love she really had for her—the Baron, the model of unrequited love who eventually dies in a duel; Martha, the only married of the three sisters, seems to confirm the saying that if there is marriage, there is an affair. Martha suddenly falls in love with the Lieutenant Colonel, who is just a shadow of the Moscow they yearn for, wrongly projected into the dreary provincial city, and when the sun moves, the Lieutenant Colonel is thrown elsewhere.
The three sisters who followed the general's father to the city and their brother Andrea lost their fate after their father's death, and their fate was buried in the city along with their master, their father.
"It was because of our father, my sisters and I learned French, German and English, and Elina also learned Italian," Andrea said. But it's not worth learning this! ”
Martha said: "It is a useless luxury to have three languages in this city. Not even luxury goods, but like the sixth finger, it is a useless appendage. ”
Not the "sixth finger", Andrea married a woman who did not understand beauty, and when his wife had an affair with popov, the chairman of the local self-government council, his acquiescence made him a member of the local self-government, and Andrea succeeded in separating his own inner reality. In this way, Chekhov naturally transformed this tragic character into a comedic character.
Erga, Martha and Elina, they seem to be Chekhov's lovers, or Chekhov's "Moscow of Longing". Like other men who want their lovers to be clean, certain surging ideals in Chekhov's heart created the fate of the three sisters. He defended their self-esteem, but also their extravagance and uselessness, and finally made them the "sixth finger."
Therefore, fate predestined that they would not change themselves in waiting, waiting to extend forward, but their lives were retreating, except for those birch trees that were still beautiful, everything was becoming worse than before. The cultural class in this city is an army, and only the soldiers can say something to them that they can understand, and now the army is leaving.
Elina stood on the stage, she was restless because she had suddenly forgotten the Italian word for "window."
The genius of Ann Ba Chekhov needs to be carefully savored. As the years passed, the youth faded, and when the wait became boundless, the three sisters were also enduring ever-expanding loneliness, sorrow, and depression. At this time, Chekhov's narrative is extremely light, so that Yi Lina does not mourn her fate, but only makes her sad that she has forgotten the Italian word for "window".
Like his compatriot Tchaikovsky's Pathos, a lyrical minor key appears to end the great and desperate orchestral music. Chekhov did not need a prelude to despair, for the three sisters had become accustomed to their own sorrows, and the sorrows they had become accustomed to were heavier and more profound than they had just endured, like icebergs blocking the course, which would not melt, but at some point cracks appeared. When cracks appeared, Elina couldn't remember the Italian word for "windows."
Samuel Beckett seemed more willing to make the sound of an era, and when Godot, who would never come, never came, Estragon said, "I'm breathing so much!" ”
Vladimir proposed to take some deep breaths for the sake of physical health and to kill time, but the result was boredom with breathing. What could be worse than hating this thing to make Estragon hate his breathing? Becket turned the curse into a metaphor, and he let the times he did not like curse himself in the most vicious way, without speaking foul language.
Like Chekhov, Beckett's waiting was drawn from the beginning as a prison, or his waiting was more empty and therefore more pure.
The Moscow of the three sisters is real, and although in Chekhov's narrative Moscow always exists in the waiting of Erga, Martha, and Ilina, that is to say, in Chekhov's metaphor, moscow itself has a reality that makes the lines of the three sisters always have a credible direction.
Estragon and Vladimir's Godot is suspicious, and in highly poetic and abstract narratives, Godot's character is a bit unreliable as a symbol.
It may be said that Godot seems to be some of Beckett's secret excuses; or perhaps Beckett himself knows nothing about Godot. Thus the waiting of Estragon and Vladimir also became arbitrary and dispensable, their lines like a scattered sand, like a life they had pieced together, with no goal and no meaning, they stood there just to talk and talked, like the two chimneys in the field were about to smoke, but they were full of life.
The interesting thing about Beckett is that if we pull out any of Estragon and Vladimir's lines, we feel that Beckett has given us a living reality, but when we put them back into the original narrative, we find that Beckett actually gives us a surreal chowder.
About ten years ago, I read a woman's words. Before that, I feel compelled to remind her that this lady has loved only one man in her life, her husband. Now, we can come and hear what she has to say, she says: "When I have a man completely and completely, I can feel like I have all the men."
This is her love, a wise, insightful and rich and broad love. When she has a man completely and completely, and tastes it meticulously, she has reason to believe that there is only one man in the world.
The same idea has emerged in some writers, Borges said: "For many years I have thought that almost infinite literature is concentrated in one person. He went on to give the following example: "This man was Carlisle, Johannes Besher, Lafar Cancinos-Athens and Dickens. ”
Although Borges lacked the qualities of the lady's fidelity, and he seemed unconcerned in transforming literary lovers, they were equally proficient in the way. For them, the amount of literature and the amount of life can be futile, what is really interesting is the way, the way of appreciating literature and tasting life.
Marcel Proust was probably the one they admired unanimously, and the writer, who was accompanied by asthma, once spent a stay in a traveler's find, lying in bed, looking at the walls painted in the color of the ocean, and then he felt the smell of salt in the air. Proust still feels the breath of the ocean, admires it and enjoys it when he is far away from it. It is indeed the joy of life, but at the same time the joy of literature.
In Kafka and His Pioneers, the erudite Borges found several pioneers for Kafka, "I think his voice, or rather, his habits, is recognized in the literature of different families and different eras." In doing so, the shrewd Borges did not intend to embarrass Kafka; he actually wanted to reveal the "continuing" character that existed in the long literature, and after stark examples and rational logic, Borges told us: "The fact is that every writer has created his own pioneer." ”
At the end of this conclusion, we find that some of the original characteristics from literature or art, certain ancient qualities, have been preserved in the way of modern art, so that the "continuing" character in art can be continuously realized. For example, wait.
In his voluminous Remembrance of The Age of Water, Marcel Proust turns waiting into a self-narration of savoring his own life, and we can often read of some of his sweet idleness when he wakes up in bed, "when he wakes up instinctively, he asks from it, and in his eyes he can know what place he occupies on earth and how long it has passed before waking up." Or he was staring out the window, and the sunlight was shining through the shutters, making him feel like feathers were in the shutters.
Only when there is no goal, and when you are waiting for a certain decision of your own, will you have such a mood and eyes. The process of waiting is always a little idle, and this is precisely the good time to experience the existence of life. Proust was different in that he began before he fell asleep—"I lovingly pressed my cheeks to the bulging cheeks of the pillow, which were as full, delicate, and fresh as the faces of our childhood." ”
The subject of waiting is also repeated in Dante's long verse, in the fourth song of the Divine Comedy of Purgatory, Dante sees his friend, the Florentine instrumentalist Bellaga, hesitate before embarking on the path to salvation, asking him why are you sitting here? What are you waiting for? Then Dante tried to end his wait, "Now hurry up and go ahead..."
You see the sun has hit the meridian,
The night had crossed from the Ganges to Morocco.
Proust's waiting and Dante's waiting are the time that flows in the narrative, just as the river caresses a certain stone on the shore, Proust and Dante let the water of their narrative touch all the waiting stones on the shore, and their waiting goes on and on and on. Therefore, the waits in the Divine Comedy and Remembrance of the Watery Years are always short-lived, but they are full, like "butterflies, although small, also experience a lifetime".
Closer to the waiting for The Three Sisters and Waiting for Godot is the Brazilian writer João Guimarão Aes Rossa's The Third Bank of the River, a six-thousand-word short story that corroborates Chekhov's words, when Chekhov said, "I can express a long subject briefly." ”
"Father was a dutiful, dutiful, and frank man." The narrative of the story begins in such a simple way and ends with the same simplicity. This man, who was "no more pleasant or troubled than anyone else," one day ordered a small boat and thus began his years of floating on the river and never coming ashore.
His actions brought shame to his family, and only the narrator, his son, out of some unspeakable instinct, began a long wait on the shore. Later the narrator's mother, brother, and sister all leave and move to the city, where only the narrator remains waiting for his father, who waits from a child until he is white-haired.
Finally he appeared in the distance, there, right there, a vague figure sitting at the back of the ship. I shouted at him several times. I solemnly swore to heaven and shouted out as loudly as I could what I was desperately trying to say:
"'Daddy, you've been floating on the river for too long, you're old... Come back, I'll take your place. Right now, if you will. Whenever I want, I will step on your boat and top your place. ’
“……
He heard it, stood up, and paddled at me with his oars... I suddenly shuddered. Because he raised his arm and waved at me—for the first time in so many years. I can't...... I was so frightened, my hair stood straight, I ran away madly, I escaped... Since then, no one has seen him again, heard of him..."
Rosa's talent transcends reality in his story, and as his title suggests, the third bank of the river actually exists, just as Moscow exists in the yearning of the three sisters, and Godot exists in the boredom of Vladimir and Estragon.
What this story has in common with Chekhov and Beckett's plays is that the whole meaning of waiting is the failure of waiting, whether it comes at the cost of losing some short moment or consuming a lifetime of happiness.
We can discern the appearance of waiting in almost all works of literature, although it changes its image from time to time, sometimes it is an exciting subject, otherwise it is a narrative, an action or a psychological process, or it can be a detail and a line of poetry, which is endless and ubiquitous in our literature.
Therefore, Chekhov's waiting is not the beginning of waiting, and Lin Zhaohua's waiting will not end.
For this reason, we can believe Borges's words: Almost infinite literature sometimes concentrates on one person. At the same time, you can believe the woman's words: there is only one man in fact. In fact, when Borges or the lady expressed that she was proficient in a certain process, she was also expressing their ambitions, and in their bones they wanted to have unlimited power. At this point, the love of the artist or woman is actually the same as the tyrant.
"Reading is good for physical and mental health"
Written by Yu Hua
Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House
Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House
Shanghai Culture Publishing House
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