Text/Po Mu laughs
Hello, Sorrow is Françoise Sagan's best novel, like the most beautiful silhouette of the Champs Elysées in spring.
This novel and the 18-year-old Sagan, like a magnolia with buds waiting to be released, and like the early cherry blossoms that have just emerged, people will subconsciously be more pitiful, attribute unsatisfactory to youth, and call the faint evil charm "charming literary elves". "Hello, Sorrow" is Sagan's first novel, but it won the "Critic Award" in the French literary circle. In the 1950s, the novel was printed in 840,000 copies in its first year of publication, translated into 22 languages within five years, sold 5 million copies worldwide, sold 1 million copies in the United States, and topped the New York Times bestseller list, becoming a sensational "phenomenon" for a long time.
Sagan, an 18-year-old girl who became a multimillionaire and a youth idol, painted a bright and individual footnote to that era with the image of "the youth spokesman of an era". It was the era when the suffering after World War II gradually went away, the material life gradually enriched, the economy began to prosper, and the soul began to travel rapidly. "Youth endorsement" was not what it is today, it was Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" in 1951, It was Kerouac's "On the Road" in 1957, and Sagan's "Hello, Sorrow" in 1954.
Moreover, Sagan is really very beautiful, and many French people still comment that the short-haired Sagan and the short-haired Sophie Marceau have their own beauty, but they are equally "fascinating". Even if Sagan wasn't from her day, the French were willing to say she was Natalie Portman in "This Killer Isn't Too Cold," Dominique Swan in Lolita, and Jane March in Lover. In the hearts of many French, Sagan not only spoke for an era, but also seemed to stay at the age of 18 forever. Her later novels, which became bestsellers, were dubbed "France's largest exporter on a par with Chanel 5", and the "Sagan phenomenon" influenced the French literary scene for more than half a century.
Some people are destined to shine brightly, and they never know how to keep a low profile, and in their dictionary there is no such thing as "guarding the clumsy Hidden Front". Sagan became famous as a teenager and became famous, but it seemed as if she had never had any "literary ambitions" and "noble ambitions", and she wantonly squandered her fame, money, talents and youth - rebellious, unruly, ostentatious, high-profile, adventurous, lonely, love, alcoholism, drag racing, debt... However, even such a Sagan was sincerely loved and even loved by the French all his life. Sagan, who always has short hair, has an angelic delicate face, smoke does not leave his hand, women dress up as men, and a wandering skeleton, capturing the hearts of countless talented celebrities, becoming an idol imitated by countless young girls, and even the French nobility has been circulating her meaningful super friendship with Sartre and former French President Mitterrand.
Some people are "just like you don't like me, and can't get rid of my appearance", but there are a very small number of people who have reached a higher level, they are "although you can't get used to me, but there are more and more people who like me", Sagan is undoubtedly one of the prominent representatives. The world is big, and there are always people who are destined to be hated, just like the novel "Hello, Sorrow" itself. From the point of view of literary criticism alone, I really can't put it in the category of first-rate novels. Of course, there is also such a view in French literary criticism that Sagan and her novels are not first-rate. And from the perspective of our traditional "three views", "Hello, Sorrow" also has many places that are not easy for people to understand.
The story of the novel itself is not complicated: the father and daughter of a single-parent family, the 40-year-old father Simon is afraid of the midlife crisis, a little bit of a giant baby in spirit, because it is "very pleasing to women", so addicted to changing girlfriends like a marquee, 17-year-old daughter Cecil is rebellious, mentally precocious, and love is dashing and laissez-faire. Because of the early death of her mother, Cecil remained at boarding school until the last two years when the father and daughter lived together.
The father and daughter do not have the traditional estrangement and confrontation, on the contrary, "childhood" and "youth" have become the spiritual core of the harmony between the life of the father and daughter. The father is keen to try to grasp the "tail of youth", while the daughter is super fond of squandering the "capital of youth". Because the family is very well-off, both father and daughter like a lazy and hedonistic life, frequently attending various dinners and parties, and even the daughter has an inexplicable affection for her father: "I also quickly fell in love with him deeply, because he was kind, generous, happy, and full of love and pity for me." "Fathers and daughters who come and go in and out on various occasions are more like friends and even lovers.
However, all this is broken by the beautiful and dignified Anna, at least by a serious threat. The figure of Anna is a symbol of the "adult world" and is the standard of the French version of "good wife and mother". She captures Simon's heart and asks Simon to put remarriage on the agenda. Anna began teaching Cecil, as a mother, how to "live better and be a lady." She cares about Cecil's studies, urges her to seriously review and prepare for the exam, and even like a mother, she tells Cecil to change her habit of not loving bread, saying that it is good for her body...
Although, in the heart of the young girl Cecil, Anna is very admired, she naturally understands that this noble high-society woman with a noble temperament is very suitable for the continuation of the father's string, and also feels that Anna is "with noble interest and elegant warmth" to let herself enter the standard "elegant life". However, the girl's sixth sense is unusually acute, and her intuition tells her that Anna is "kind to people, but not close, and she shows a kind of perseverance and a heart that is full of trepidation." ”
What exactly is "frightening"? The most direct point in the novel is that it threatens the way of life that Cecil likes very much, even if this way of life is seen by mainstream society as unlearned, unmotivated, squandered life, and even willingly degenerated. Deeper psychoanalysis is that in Cecil's subconscious, both she and her father are defending the "world of youth" and the "kingdom of childhood" with an act full of absurdism. Anna does not represent herself, but a symbol, the crushing of "adulthood" on "youth", "childhood" and "youth", and the black cloud crushes the city.
However, the "city" was not destroyed, but Cecil shelled the "black cloud" with a scheming, resourcefulness, precociousness and even evil charm that far exceeded his age. In the novel, it is written that Cecil performed various tricks and finally made a bureau. The precocious Cecil sees through the intelligence of her father's former mistress Elsa and holds her psychology properly. Through a series of non-girlish operations, she makes Anna "happen to run into" Simon and Elsa "rekindle" old feelings. Even a mature woman like Anna is not an iceberg, but will have a heart, pain and crying. As struck by lightning, Anna was disheartened and left, and finally drove in an accident on a treacherous mountain road, and died.
Some say anna's death was an accident, while others say anna committed suicide with a broken heart. But for whatever reason, Cecil couldn't stay out of it, and she did seem to feel some sadness and sorrow. A full month after Anna's death, she and her father "lived at home, like a widower, and an orphan girl, having dinner together, having lunch together... You only have me, I only have you, we are all alone. However, the "youthful" father and daughter always easily get out of the haze of emotions, and a month later, the two lifestyles were activated again, and the father and daughter began to talk about their respective sexual encounters.
The novel concludes: "Anna, Anna! I repeated this name very low, very long, in the dark. Something welled up in my heart, and I closed my eyes and called out its name to greet it: Hello, sorrow. "With the beginning of the novel" In the face of this strange feeling, in the face of this feeling that disturbs me with tenderness and annoyance, I hesitate for a long time, and want to put a name for it, a beautiful and solemn name: sorrow. It seems to form a mixed echo.
We can say that Hello, Sorrow is not a "good book" imagined, and we can't even identify with Cecil's values and practices. It's like we can acknowledge the fact that Sagan was "the face of the youth of an era" without echoing her maverick lifestyle. Sagan is often talked about with Beauvoir and Duras, but Sagan does not give them a satisfactory answer. Throughout his life, Sagan did not take a step towards the altar of a thinker. She has been wandering in the thin literary context of the little Bourgeois style that many people criticize, "for the sake of giving new words to force melancholy", and has always been addicted to the "drunkenness, chaos and depravity" that are painfully loved by more people, including those who love her.
Sagan is famous for a picture of a kitten wrapped around her, in front of the camera she still has short hair and a dark turtleneck sweater, looks heroic, her thin face has a bit of hangover-like exhaustion, and there is a slight inexplicable loss of concentration in her big raised eyes, but more of a childlike purity, which forms a certain gap with the cigarette that is about to burn out in her right hand, like a helpless little girl lost in the dark forest of adults...
The world doesn't have to be like this, so why should everyone be the same?
Some people will be destined to freeze in a moment, such as Sagan and her 18 years old.
—END—
#Reading ##情感 #
Focus on reading auxiliary bits, all kinds of long articles to return.
Welcome to @Deepin Book Crazy Treasure Wood Laugh