Winter childhood in literature: fireworks in Knausgao and soot in Ugresic

Editor's note: In childhood, what are the key words of winter?fireworks?snow?family life?In "In Winter" by Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard, and in "Museum of Unconditional Surrender" by Croatian-Dutch writer Dubravka Ugresic, the two writers write about their impressions of winter.

The same reminiscences of the winter of childhood, which also revolve around parents and family life, show different emotions: Knausgaard "shows off" his own fireworks skills, believing that it is a better place than his neighbors, and Ugrecich describes the scene of soot falling on the snow, where the children first wipe the black ash from the snow and then imprint their little bodies on the snow.

Interestingly, they also all revealed the environment in which they lived in childhood. Similar to each other and sharing a collective life is the common memory point of these two authors. The Knausgaard neighborhood consists of a long row of identical houses, and Ugresic's home is in the workers' village, where her mother takes her to a public bathhouse. Those memories of fireworks and soot may also be similar to the childhood memories of Chinese readers.

Knausgaard: Fireworks

I love fireworks, but not the kind that is confined to the ground or floating on the ground, such as firecrackers, Christmas crackers, fireworks sticks, ground rotating fireworks, fountain fireworks, my love for fireworks is limited to fireworks with a fuse ignition, which can show off its glory high in the night sky. I've loved these fireworks for as long as I can remember. When I was a child, I grew up in a residential area, in the middle of a long row of identical houses, with the same driveway in it, surrounded by gardens of the same size, and although things were different in each house, on the surface everyone lived the same life.

The biggest exception is Chinese New Year's Eve, when in the hours around midnight, especially in the last few minutes before twelve o'clock and in the minutes after, all the children will stand beside their mother and go to the garden to watch the father bend down to light the fuse of the firecracker, until the fuse is on fire, and the father will run back with the others, standing and watching the firecracker leave the ground, rise into the air, and fly high into the air with crackling fireworks, not only for the family, but even for those outside the back wall, and for all the residents of other residential areas. Once a year, fireworks illuminate everyone's true thoughts and true identity. Oh yes, these colorful colors, this dazzling brilliance, not only burst out explosively, but also hang in the sky, and then slowly fall, sprinkled in the dark night sky, telling everyone where they came from. At least in my father's mind.

In Winter

[Norway] by Carl Owe Knausgaard Translated by Shen Yunlu

Ideal Country, Shanghai Joint Bookstore, 2024-1

When the first high-rise firecrackers began to burst and crackle in the residential area early in the evening, he just shook his head and sat in his chair, unlike my brother and I would rush to the window to look—it must have been the neighbor around the corner on the side of the road, who had no patience and couldn't wait, not knowing what to do. When the clock approached twelve o'clock, one after another burst into the sky from different locations around us, my father would soberly comment on each firecracker, sometimes admiring it with two sentences, "Hansen's firecracker is very good", but sometimes he would criticize two sentences, if it happened to be a whole box of fireworks from the garden, it felt as if he was a servant of these splendid fireworks, and did not deserve such a splendid picture. "What a waste of money!" he might say. Other neighbors might just put a firecracker or two, and it wasn't very spectacular, and then it became stingy and boring.

All these things imply all the time, that only he, or rather through him, knows exactly how to set off firecrackers, neither exaggerated nor low-key, neither wasteful nor stingy, but will succeed in setting off perfect firecrackers, and other families will soon witness our firecrackers and nod their heads in appreciation. My father would set up the location of the drying rack in advance, which could be used as a battery for a large firecracker, and some bottles would be placed around it, and then small fireworks would rise from the bottles. I've never seen my father look so happy at any other time as he did when he set off a firecracker, he held a lighter in one hand and a fuse in the other, and then suddenly stood up and trotted a few paces toward us—usually he never ran—I never saw the kind of glint in my father's eyes when the fuse burned the gunpowder and the firecrackers flew up. First there were small fireworks, about twenty seconds before twelve o'clock, slowly spreading and climbing to the largest, crowning it with a huge Thor, a huge butterfly-like creature streaked across the sky above the residential area, as if to mark the end of the year and the beginning of the new year. Maybe no one praises or criticizes this particular firework because our fireworks are swallowed up by the launch of other fireworks, but it doesn't matter, because these twenty minutes of the year are full of joy and power, there is no doubt that the image of fireworks is painted above our heads, painted in a world above this world, this moment stacked with beauty and wealth is not an illusion, it represents a real message, it turns out that our lives can be so gorgeous.

Ugresic:

Coal ash

Soot was one of the first words I learned when I was born, and it was as natural as mom, dad, bread and water. We live in an industrial town with a coal ash plant in the town. My father was a worker in that factory. Oil was also a natural word at the time. Not far from our town, there was an oil well, and soot was something that came out of the oil.

The place where we lived was called Xincun (full name is Workers' Village), and the houses in Xincun (including our home) were built at that time with the concept of a future modern worker's home.

Museum of Unconditional Surrender

Dubravka Ugresic Translated by He Jingzhi

Ideal Country: Yunnan People's Publishing House, 2024-1

My mother used to take me to the public bathhouse at the coal factory (which was much easier than lighting the modern water heater at home). The worker's eyelashes were covered with soot, as if he had put on makeup, and he blinked like a doll. I remember taking hot showers in the cold stone compartments, black water flowing in all directions like a stream, seeping into the grey soapy water.

My mother wrestled with soot every day. In the morning, she wipes the windowsill with a damp rag.

"It's gray again......" she would say, smearing the windowpane with her index finger, her most accurate measuring instrument, and then raising her index finger to say solemnly, in the tone in which Marie Curie had discovered the radioactive material, "see?"

"See. I replied as I stared at my mother's fingers, stained with black greasy powder.

Every day she would open the window, look outside, look at the sky, pout in disgust, and close the window again.

"There is ash in the sky again!"

Coal ash, like the fifth element.

On a gray day, the sky is drizzling with soot particles. On days when the sun rises, the air seems to be filled with small golden spiders. I often hold my breath and watch them creep in silently and inexorably. When one of these little spiders lands on my hand, I crush it, and the golden one turns into a greasy little black dot.

In winter, when it snows that day, soot spreads overnight on top of the snow. In the morning we would wipe away the gray dirty snow, look excitedly at the white patch below, and play the game of angel making, that is, imprint our little bodies on the snow.

In my memory, the word oil has always been associated with the expression Tito himself. One year, when an oil well was opened, our chairman, Tito, was there in person. The oil spewed into the sky with incredible force, and all the guests present were drenched. The new clothes my father made especially for that event could no longer be worn.

"It's impossible to even turn it over and put it on......" the mother said sadly.

(The book excerpt is published with the permission of the publisher, Li Guo, and the title is self-authored.) ）