The Chinese writer with the highest demand for the Nobel Prize, why is it Residual Snow? | Beijing News column

▲Recent photo of the writer's residual snow. Beijing News data map

The 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature went to Norwegian writer Jørn Fosser. Interestingly, in this year's Nobel Prize odds list, Fauser ranked second, and the first place was Chinese writer Yan Xue.

In recent years, Residual Snow is also a regular on the Nobel Prize odds list, which inevitably makes people wonder: Why is Residual Snow, which domestic readers do not pay much attention to, so popular abroad?

Snow is obscure, and readers often complain: "I don't know what she's writing." Not only ordinary readers complain, but also professional researchers complain that this is called the "mystery of residual snow", and even "anti-understanding", "witchcraft writing", "maze connotation" and so on.

Even Yan Xue herself said: "When I finished writing, I didn't understand what I was writing. It took a while, sometimes half a year later, to understand. ”

Fragmented, vague, unclear, upside down... Scholars Yao Xiaolei and Chen Ying in "The "Dissociation" of the Self: A New Solution to the Spiritual Code of Residual Snow Literary Creation", give a convenient way to understand the text of Residual Snow: it presents the world of understanding the detached person.

Dissociation is a psychological term, popularly interpreted, which means that in the eyes of schizophrenia, matter is still material, but the relationship between each other has disappeared. For example, looking at the cup on the table, we can easily understand the relationship between the two, but in the "dissociation eye", the cup is a cup, the table is a table, and what is the relationship between them has become a mystery.

Snow Residue's works vividly depict such a world after losing their relationship. In this world, beauty is no longer beautiful, life loses purpose, common sense is weird, and even who I am becomes a big problem... In the postmodern society, it is inevitable that there will be a sense of loneliness and absurdity, which makes the feeling of residual snow universal, and is praised as "real" by more and more readers.

The "dissociation of the world" of the residual snow has a strong revelatory significance: what we see may not be true, and those "as it is" and "can only be so" may just be misunderstandings.

For example, red represents romance, but in nature, there is no red, it is only a small section of the spectrum, which can bring strong stimulation to the human eye, but many animals cannot see it. Although the human eye can see red, it cannot see more light - the range of "invisible light" is far more than "visible light".

As Nietzsche said, when we think the world is reasonable, we ignore its more and irrational parts.

▲Manuscript of the work of residual snow. Beijing News data map

And this may be the value of residual snow's writing: when modern people are immersed in "reasonable" dreams, residual snow gives it a blow. Our logic, habits, common sense, and even language may have fallen into the quagmire of self-talk and circular argumentation, and those "taken for granted" and "obviously so" simply cannot withstand scrutiny, otherwise there would be no such noisy modern society.

Instead, it is in the "dissociation eye" that the world recovers its mystery and becomes amiable and respectable. This mystery also makes love possible again - the world is not meant to be conquered, we can look at it in a different posture and find ourselves. And this is likely to be the reason why foreign readers pay special attention to residual snow, and it is also a high probability to continue to accompany the Nobel Prize odds list.

Residual Snow's novel is not suitable for the Suoyin school, because each sentence is ambiguous, and they are also in a state of "dissociation" from each other, and only after reading through it can you experience its aura in a trance, which is a huge compassion - in the boundless red dust, and Residual Snow knows your loneliness and confusion, she has already arrived there, she has been waiting for you.

Reading the snow requires patience, and people who are used to being irritated by the slowdown of opening a web page by a few tenths of a second are naturally difficult to access. She became famous in the 80s, and her works were a must-read for university Chinese students.

But the real coquettes of the times are Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ma Huateng ... As long as they want, they can easily transform into artists, thinkers, topic makers, entertainers, etc., so who is willing to endure thousands of inner torments to cultivate the "dissociation eye"?

Secular success shines on people's progress, and spiritual penance seems out of place. However, rapid growth will always turn to normal, just like going through a long adolescence, and the fun will gradually stabilize.

There are always a few readers who like the residual snow and love her unique warmth. When the writers of the same era returned to pragmatic writing, it became possible to write novels like this, to express such a different world, to be so introspective... Her paranoia, her perseverance, her loneliness, and self-appreciation have also become a redemption.

Everyone does not have to read the residual snow, and whether it is concerned by the Nobel Prize odds list has nothing to do with writing. It is natural to like the works of residual snow, and it is also a fate to dislike it. Therefore, there is no need to compare the residual snow with Fausser - treating writers as Olympic competitors and aiming for gold medals is not necessarily conducive to the development of literature.

Written by / Tang Shan (media person)

Editor / Chi Daohua

Proofreading / Lin Zhao