Born in Shanghai on December 7, 1918, Liu Yihuan, Liu Yihuan moved to Hong Kong at the age of 30. His works include "The Alcoholic", "The Upside Down", "Terauchi", "Typing Mistake", "Island and Peninsula", "He Has a Sharp Knife", "Model Stamps, Ceramics" and so on. Among them, "The Drunkard" is considered to be China's first stream-of-consciousness novel, and together with "Opposite", it inspired Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai to make the movie "2046" and "Fancy Years".
Liu Yiman's "The Drunkard" and "The Opposite" inspired Wong Kar-wai's films "2046" and "Fancy Years" respectively. The picture shows Zhou Muyun, a newspaper editor played by Liang Chaowei in the two movies.
The documentary series "They Write on the Island" filmed Liu Yihuan: 1918. The picture shows Liu Yihu personally copying the text of "The Drunkard" on the original manuscript paper used that year.
The Alcoholic
Author: Liu Yihuan
Edition: Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House
June 2011
"Down"
Edition: People's Literature Publishing House
June 2018
The literary world withered, and the predecessors traveled one by one, this time, it was the hundred-year-old Liu Yiman.
Remember two years ago, "They Write on the Island" held a press conference at the University of Hong Kong, the protagonist of the documentary "1918", 98-year-old Liu Yihuan sat in the audience, he was inconvenient to listen to the speech, asked Professor Huang Shuxian of Lingnan University to speak on behalf of him, Bai Xianyong, Love (who died in March this year), Lin Wenyue, and the protagonists of several other films, counted as his descendants, their talk, Mr. Liu may not be able to hear, but still in the way of personal presence, as a support and greeting to literature.
Liu Yiman's writings are best known to the world as "The Drunkard" and "Opposite Down", which inspired the creation of "2046" and "Fancy Years" respectively. Wong Kar-wai also mourns the grandmaster with a sentence in "The Alcoholic", "All memories are wet", and at the end of the preface to this novel, which is hailed as China's first stream-of-consciousness novel, he confesses, "All these years, I have been entertaining others for life, and now I want to entertain myself."
Entertain yourself Hong Kong Foxtrot
When he wrote "The Alcoholic" in 1963, Liu Yihuan was more than forty years old, and he experienced moving from his birthplace of Shanghai to Chongqing, the rear of the Anti-Japanese War, and then going south to Hong Kong alone, half of his life drifting to zero, in terms of the creative life of the writer, he was not young.
In his own words, "The Alcoholic" is "to write about how an intellectual who is not very balanced in his mind because of his depressed era uses self-abuse to seek to continue to survive", and when realism has exhausted the world's strangeness, Liu Yihuan borrows modern novel techniques to express his lament for social life.
The novel is narrated in the first person, the writing machine old Liu depression can not be used to drink to dispel sorrow, in the text, the drunken subconscious and the apparent consciousness of the drunken awakening are interspersed with the march, "the sea is a big blue vat, the wind blows, the sea does the greeting of the long-farewell reunion", "Too many buildings have a messy feeling, conservatives still prefer serenades", "The raw flame needs a fan, and the third eye has seen cut hair chips"... Dream-style long sentences and broken chapters, "wine is not a good thing", "I drank a sip of wine", "I was drunk", self-questioning and self-answering between cups and cups, the joy and loss of lingering in the arms of women, Lao Liu tried to save himself and continued to sink, full of experimental words Under the temple of words, it is the torture of conscience and the poetry that gushes out.
Reading "The Drunkard", it is inevitable to think of the 1930s Neo-Sensation masterpiece "Shanghai Foxtrot Dance", Mu Shiying uses montage, stream of consciousness, symbolism, and impressionism to present the ten mile ocean field of night and night song, this "geographical paradise", under the glitter of foxtrot, jazz and neon lights, the sensitive and complex hearts of urban people.
Liu Yihua, who was enlightened by Mu Shiying, relocated this game of drunken gold fans to Hong Kong, the more prosperous and depraved, more than enough, between the virtual and the real, life is bitter, the heart is depressed, human nature is distorted, when money loses conscience, serious literature is not cared for, professional writers for rice sorghum plots, can only paralyze social consciousness and self-cognition, wine and sex become life-saving straws, and pathology becomes ridicule.
Therefore, there are always people who draw a string of equal signs for "Old Liu - Liu Yiman - Zhou Muyun", and what is the actual experience of the writer?
For example, another work that Liu Yiyu prefers, "To the Upside Down", comes from the philatelic term, referring to a positive and negative double stamp, written about an old man who remembers the past and a girl who looks forward to the future, two lifelines that do not intersect, the trajectory and inner world of the city, there is no ups and downs in the plot, the novel was serialized in the "Sing Tao Evening News" in 1972, because the threshold is too high, the readership is limited, it ends until 110,000 words, and there is no chance to write a book until the 90s - unlike the role played by Liang Chaowei. Zhou Muyun, who has been given countless romantic imaginations, Liu Yihu does not have those winds and flowers and snows, he just plays with the times with a pen, much more painful, but never depressed, is to entertain himself, but also to reflect, qu gao and widowhood are not harmful, his battle line is longer, but also regard it as a mission.
Entertain people Pain and joy
Zhou Muyun may not be Liu Yiman, Su Lizhen in the dusk a cheongsam to buy wonton noodles, but there are traces to follow.
After going to Hong Kong, his family's wealth was scattered, Liu Yiren instinctively thought of selling articles for a living, tentatively wrote a thousand-word manuscript to send out, that is, he received 10 yuan in manuscript fees. A bowl of wonton noodles for three millimeters can be bought for one manuscript fee. In the 1960s and 1970s, at his peak, he wrote thirteen columns a day, with more than 10,000 words, enough to cope with food and clothing, getting up every day to start writing, if the writing went well, he chartered a car to deliver articles to newspapers, and then took his wife out to eat, which was already very happy.
Cai Lan also recalled in the article that in the circle of literati in the south, parties like to play small mahjong, sometimes halfway through, the newspaper call to urge the draft, Liu Yimu asked his little brother to move a small table, take out the manuscript paper, and when people issue cards, "just use it as a sewing machine, and constantly weave words."
These words woven out of leisure are unceremoniously called by Liu Yihuan "garbage whose purpose is only in exchange for the fee", you know, he has adhered to the writing industry all his life, does not live close to any institution, in addition to being a writer, he is also a supplement editor, he adopts the strategy of squeezing, and inserts needles into the carefully selected serious literature in the text commodities, recommends to the readers the works of Tai Jingnong and Duanmu Hongliang, and actively explores new people, and the generations of Sisi and Xixi have been promoted by him. It is said that he often takes advantage of the boss's lack of attention to put the pure literary and artistic works of young writers next to the divination of the young writer, or take advantage of the boss's good mood and directly place them in a position of attention.
Bitter or not? In 1985, nearly retired, the China News Service invited him to run "Hong Kong Literature", which should have relieved him of the burden of entertaining people, but he gladly accepted, and even took the initiative to quit all newspaper columns, running for 15 years, leaving nearly 200 issues of achievements.
Taking retreat as an advance, like walking on thin ice, inheriting the past and opening up the future, for Liu Yihuan, who believes in words, must be painful and happy.
late
year
I want to write something different
Back to the documentary "1918", Liu Yiman's later life, daily still maintain the habit of going out for a walk, downstairs is the shopping mall, he has to go out on a tour every day, be supported or not, sit in a wheelchair, look at the window of a famous shop, watch the scenery of passers-by, and take fresh food every day, which is the consciousness of the writer. When interviewed at the age of 95, he asked what he wanted, and his answer was still "I hope to continue to write different works", why? "That doesn't need to be encouraged, as long as you like it, you will use various ways to go this way."
This road of Liu Yiman has traveled for a hundred years, entertaining himself and entertaining others, so that people have no self, gods and people have no merit, and saints have no name.
□ a handful of green