After 2016, the author of "The Temptation of the Border: In Search of Yugoslavia", inspired by Peter Handke's texts, decided to become an essentialist, from experience to travel, she walked through the six Yugoslav republics without stopping, rebuilding the logic and poetry of life.
Writer Zhang Yiwei believes: "I guess her view of literature is the meaning of action and itself. Under her sky, even suffering has a new translation, a new interpretation, a new life. ”
The gender of the travelogue
Text丨Zhang Yiwei
Last year's failure to apply for a research project was not worth mentioning, because the process of failure is very familiar, especially for me, who has been going through it for six or seven years, it just means that the document is thrown into the "wastebasket".
The moment of thinking about the topic is the happiest, and only the process of thinking and the friendship that arises from it are worth cherishing. I originally wanted to do some collation and research on women's travelogues and biographies, especially when I realized that there were only three female travelers in the literary sense that I could think of.
Every year, when I take the "Travelogue" section of the "Journey to the West" general education course and the prose writing class, through "The Legend of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty" and "Notes on the Book of Water", to the inspiration of "The Travels of the Old Disabled" and the modern prose paradigm, I trace the origin of the travelers' motives and methods, see what they see, and learn the weaving structure of their deep descriptions of geography, landforms, climate, language, and folklore along the way. Nowadays, there are not many women who write travelogues, especially in the cross-media field, where the combination of audiovisual narrative and travel is much more vivid than the words themselves.
Although the gender perspective is not decisive for the aesthetic essence of the article, as stated in the book "The Female Traveler in the Grand Tour", "historical contingencies and ideologies can sometimes create a unique discourse on women", and from the second half of the 18th century, the travel narrative of Western women began to move from the relatively closed family to the public level, and women began to look for listeners in societyand go straight to the threshold of contemporary. ”
Unfortunately, because I didn't get any support, the new year came, and I switched a new direction to adapt to the rigid form, accumulating digital zombies for the "wastebasket". That old gray topic was put on hold indefinitely.
The turning point came this spring, when my old friend Börlind suddenly came to Shanghai to find me and gave me a copy of her book "The Temptation of the Border: In Search of Yugoslavia", the title page of which reads "There is also a fire on the border", as if it was providence, rekindled my cooling enthusiasm.
Kashiwa Rin/Author
Single Reading· Casting and Engraving Culture, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House
It is difficult to say that this is a typical travelogue, or investigation report, or border ethnography, but it seems to be somewhere in between, and it can be regarded as a literary metaphor for wandering the border, with a looming temptation, to attract the writer to put aside the paradigm of discipline and make some new attempts.
The genre chosen by the author, or the strategy she uses to organize her essays, is contrary to the journalistic orientation of "immediacy", revealing the depth of reflection and the significance of the invention. The crux of the matter is how she establishes her personal relationship with the vanishing Yugoslavia.
The belief preparation of the travelogue is not weaker than that of other prose writing disciplines. For example, when monks write travelogues, of course, they do it for faith, and the miraculous deeds they describe may not be considered non-fiction in the scientific sense. It's an interesting topic. Some may think that there is a clear line between fiction and non-fiction, but this is not the case, especially in contemporary times. Some of my young students are constantly challenging the ethical boundaries of prose, for example, they ask me if I can dream in prose, if I can play games, if my father in the game is an RPG, and only I can see him with the help of a device, can the emotional experience of "me" and him meet in the game medium be considered non-fiction? That's the beauty of borders.
Lovers of literature, whether from the level of history, maps or consciousness, will be attracted to it and become revolutionaries on the issue of "borders".
The superficial explanation given by Börlind is "necessity in chance". Of course, there are reasons, including the first time she watched the translated film "Walter Defends Sarajevo" when she was in the third grade of primary school, and the attack on the Chinese Embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War in 1999. In 2016, Börlind, who was still working at the Beijing News, interviewed three great writers: Alexievich, Amos Oz and Peter Handke, and their dialogue opened up her curiosity about Yugoslavia.
I suspect that there are two kinds of people who are best suited to a career in writing, one is born to be wrong, like the three people interviewed by Börlind, and the other is brave enough to face the land of right and wrong, and Börlind belongs to the latter. After 2016, inspired by Peter Handke's texts, she decided to become an essentialist, from experience to travel, to reconnect with strange lands and strangers. She traveled endlessly through the six Yugoslav republics, learning different languages, and through the indescribable "Serbia", she traced how the turbulent places since Cuba established a civilized order, how to establish the logic and poetry of life.
Her way of observing and writing is interesting, not empirical, but nuisant, conceptual, but she is not drawn to abstract discourse. For example, in the Slovenian coastal town of Piran, Yugoslavia, Börlind met a German girl, Marianne, who introduced her to Xiamen in southern China, which I guess resembles the seaside landscape of Piran.
"It's a very literary island in southern China, but the water has turned gray," Börlind said. Marianne replied, "Love does not come to the grey island, because love is blue." Börlind immediately thought of Igor Shitker's landscape documentary "The Postcard", a woman waiting for her husband's reply in the Balkans during World War II. The blue sea gave the infatuated lady the hope she had waited. But there will be no reply, it is the fate of this land. In her own way, Börlind mimics the sympathy and ambition of her favorite Oz to encompass the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a family relationship. Oz blessed the solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with the metaphor of "lover" becoming "neighbor", which seems to be a silent voice that looks through the autumn water.
The world is not at rest, but for those who work in literature, it means a generous invitation. With her weaving skills, Börlind renames the "essentialism" in her heart, stepping out of the boundaries and feeling the pain of others. She is not always welcomed because she is an outsider. Behind her recognition of the new language and her determination to build empathy is actually related to her view of literature. I suspect that her view of literature is the meaning of action and itself. This is very interesting, not only can the traditional female theme and female aesthetics not restrain her, but even "non-existence" cannot persuade her.
Her travels have laid all kinds of opportunities for her to make friends, from the impossible to the possible. Her days and nights are unlike most of us writers of the same age. "Authenticity" is a web of connection for her, a literary text generated by experience. History is over, and the future is not yet visible. Standing in the "contemporary", she uses traumatic memories and people with origins, as well as bridging the familiar and the unfamiliar, the unknown to the known, one after another, forming her own literary time, and also bringing the theme of "travelogues" a vision of a cosmopolitan returning home based on "painful care". Under her sky, even suffering has a new translation, a new interpretation, a new life.
Article Editor: He Jing ; New Media Editor: Yuan Huan
Pictured: Stills from the movie "Song of the Wanderer".
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