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Street view of Savannah
There must be a lot of opinions about who is the most famous city in the United States, about New York; and there must be a lot of opinion to say who is the most magical city in the United States, and the Americans themselves say that it is Savannah.
This small harbor in the southeastern United States in Georgia was selected as one of the "twenty most beautiful towns in the world", and the mysterious organization "American Occult Spirit Society" identified it as the most frequently haunted place in the United States, calling it a "ghost town". In the past three hundred years, frequent wars, plagues, and fires have made it truly a "city built on the dead", and each hotel and restaurant has a legend of danger and spirituality, the devil is the city's business card, the cemetery is the tourist attraction, the requiem is the background sound of the street merchants, and the seductive features are simply unique. Countless admirers stroll to the Bonaventure Cemetery in search of Johnny Mercer's tombstone, wondering if the "Moon River", created by him and sung by Audrey Hepburn, will echo, the river of heartbreak, the river of dreams.
Three hundred years back in time, Savannah belongs to robbers, wizards, black slaves, adventurers, is a sword and sword shadow colorful happy rivers and lakes, let people full of pride, but also make people full of thoughts, provoked captain Flint in "Treasure Island" drunk here, the map of Treasure Island handed over to posterity; the camera pans to the end of the last century, Savannah belongs to fishermen, tourists, tobacco merchants, dreamers, is a tireless romantic base camp to keep the homeland, just on the bench in the park of Savannah Street, Ran all over the United States Forrest Gump to tell his legendary story, Tell passers-by and tell us, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what the next one will taste like." ”
The movie "Forrest Gump" The plot of Forrest Gump selling chocolates was filmed in Savannah
In the cracks of time, there was once an Irish writer who staggered from Savannah to Atlanta and through Miridgeville, all the way to record the "red neck" and strange Southern America. Because the story she wrote was so wonderful and unique, Americans who have always loved the new and not the old still awarded her the "National Book Award" seven years after her death, which broke the sky and was praised by readers as "one of the best American National Book Awards in history".
At the height of spring every year, Lafayette Square in downtown Savannah hosts a grand event. A group of enthusiastic fans gathered from all directions, banding together, assembling delicacies, offering roosters, erecting peacock screens, and some people dressed as gorillas, all elements of her novels, marching and reveling like a festival, in honor of Flannery O'Connor, a writer born here (March 25, 1925) who died more than half a century ago, just like Odense on the Danish island of Fienne, which holds an annual festival to commemorate Andersen.
Flannery O'Connor, like her hometown of Savannah, is as distinguished and integrated, and she is remembered by American readers and misunderstood by Chinese readers. She was born in the spring, and she buried all the good stories in the spring.
Every spring the citizens of Savannah celebrate O'Connor's birthday
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A Chinese writer once said of O'Connor: "O'Connor's writing method is very peculiar, she will tell you that you can write whatever you want, because you don't have to care about anything else, you just have to care about the evil of man... She was born to know where the devil was. ”
Why do Chinese readers often misunderstand O'Connor? Cultural background creates a bias in understanding, which is not shallow. To write this article, I asked a friend of Savannah, USA, what he thought of O'Connor. The answers he gave were "defamiliar, humorous, grotesque" and "defined 'American South' in his own unique way", with a bit of girlish "cuteness" in his writing.
Childhood O'Connor
One said she was "evil" and the other said she was "humorous and cute", and the contrast was so great that the misunderstooder did not think and understand in a specific time and space context. Sometimes, misunderstandings are biased but also fresh, just like the twentieth-century Argentine writer Borges read the famous work "Obtaining Lin Solution" by the Chinese Tang Dynasty writer Han Yu, and read existentialism.
But, in the case of O'Connor specifically, misunderstandings can lead to alienation from readers: How many people will read a female writer when you label a woman writer "evil"?
Admittedly, O'Connor's pen is indeed fierce enough, the characters in her novels often die of death, murder, drowning, fire, sudden death, robbery, car accidents, and wild cat scratches, only you can't think of it, without her can not write; the character's living environment is dangerous, driving tourism will be wiped out by the whole family, disabled girls sitting behind closed doors will be cheated by the wandering countrymen to take away the wooden legs; the character personality is also violent, obedient, different from ordinary people.
O'Connor's novel is so bloody for two reasons:
One is the environment in which she grew up, abnormal is normal, strong to survive, just look at O'Connor's own name "Flannery", Irish Gaelic is "ruddy, brave" meaning, even if today look at the United States South, there are still brave and fierce "red necks", out of the door with a spear, rampage, so O'Connor has always claimed to be a "realist writer";
The second is her religious beliefs, in the Protestant United States South, the O'Connor family is the only Catholic Church, she said that her creation is also salvation, "The Catholic Church believes that all creation is good, sin is the misuse of good, most of the time, we misuse the good without grace."
O'Connor House in Savannah
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Sometimes, O'Connor is not only not "evil", but also very obedient, obedient, like a well-behaved woman. In late 1957, she was going to organize a book club with a non-Catholic friend who had the name Andre Gide on it, but because the author had homosexual tendencies, his book was banned by the Vatican. O'Connor wrote to the diocese bishop asking for permission to read Gide. It's like a college girl secretly writing to the head of the department asking for permission to see Shiina Yuna Hatano Yui Ogawa Azami, where to find this kind of well-behaved child!
O'Connor was well-behaved and weird, blamed on her peculiar southern accent, on her quirky joke-telling skills. If you read the novel carefully, you will find that inadvertently, she can always shake a burden silently and make you smile.
I don't believe to see O'Connor's famous article "Good People Are Hard to Find", a family driving out, when the mother reminds her son to drive the speed limit paragraph, if you understand the world, and then make up the picture according to the clue brain, you will glimpse her reality, vitriol, and that kind of imperceptible humor, as if listening to crosstalk:
She reminded Barry that there was a speed limit of fifty-five miles here, and that patrol officers were hiding behind billboards or bushes and catching you before you could slow down.
Throw the supposedly solemn image into the realm of obscenity and stupidity, and the funny branches will slowly grow, and the smile will come out of the corner of the reader's mouth.
In the novel "Displaced People", there is a description of this:
He followed Sark to the barn, threw him down, dragged him to Mrs. McEcker's back door, and demonstrated to her what had just happened... He swore before Jesus that if there was a half-lie, Almighty God would give him death.
It seems that the original scene has reappeared, but will this swear and full of lies remind you of the scene in the movie "Journey to the West", where the Supreme Treasure convinces Bai Jingjing with Bodhi? Also, the Purple Qing Sword was across the neck with tears in her eyes and said to Zi Xia that she loved you for ten thousand years?
Supreme Treasure and Bodhi play "Original Scene Reappearance" in front of Bai Jingjing
The humorous O'Connor, literally without any funny language, but because of the literal laughter fruit, people are happy, people can't help but be funny. You can go to YouTube and listen to her own novels, and you can always hear the occasional burst of laughter.
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The laughter is gone, but what is behind the laughter? It was the roar, the low roar, the roar against fate, the roar of longing for love, which had always been diffuse and mute between the lines of her novel.
O'Connor lived his life without marriage, let alone children, and devoted himself entirely to literature. What is literature for? William Faulkner, one of O'Connor's half-time associates and a fellow American Writer, said that literature gives "self-respect, pity, and sympathy" and, more clearly, that it can bring some kind of compensation and comfort to our unsatisfactory, imperfect lives. O'Connor is imperfect, much less so, and I think that if she were given one more life, she would rather not have this compensation and comfort, but simply embrace the "usual good times" that she never had.
Coming from a middle-class Savannah family, she did not have to worry about food and clothing, and moved to Atlanta as a child, then to a farm around Milledgeville, which she renamed Andalusia, the same name as the distant, enthusiastic southern Spain she had never been to; she was dependent on her mother and a flock of birds, unfortunately suffering from lupus erythematosus at a young age, and had to walk on crutches for the rest of her life.
O'Connor walked on crutches with peacocks he had bought for $6.50
After being plagued by illness, many things cannot be done, and it is impossible to speak and roam the country like in the early years, let alone experience love.
Has she ever had love? There have been, and she wrote into the novel, that is, the famous "Good Countryman".
The story is simple, a country boy disguised as a Bible salesman, cheated the disabled girl Harga's wooden legs, and the first kiss. This is also a rare kiss in O'Connor's novel, a rare kiss, and a kiss by the author himself:
As they walked to the edge of the woods, he put his hand behind her back again, pulled her over, and kissed her hard without a word.
The boy lay down beside her, one hand under her body, the other around her, and began to kiss her unhurriedly, making small noises like fish... The girl was indifferent at first, but after a while she also began to kiss him, and she kissed his face and kissed his lips again, stopping there, kissing him continuously, as if to dry his breath. His breath was as clear and sweet as a child's, and those kisses were as wet as a child's. He murmured that he loved her and fell in love with her at first sight, but the murmur was like the whisper of a child being coaxed to sleep by its mother.
He hugged her and kissed her savagely until she said, "Love, love." ”
In the novel, the young man who sells the Bible is portrayed as a liar who takes the girl's wooden leg and disappears without a trace; in real life, the young Danish man who took O'Connor's first kiss returns home, and even though he is married, the two communicate with each other.
The young Danish man, named Erik Langkjaer, passed by an Andalusian farm one day in 1953 and became acquainted with O'Connor and her mother. At the time, he was not selling the Bible, but college textbooks. According to Brad Gooch, a professor of English at William Patterson University in New Jersey and author of O'Connor's biography Of The Flannery, the relationship between O'Connor and Langogar "bears at least a hint of romance," and is considered to be more than a friend and not yet a lover. On a walk, they experienced a fatal kiss together. According to the man," the kiss went something like this:
Her mouth was almost completely loose, which made my lips not touch her lips, but her teeth. It made me feel like I had received a death warning, and that kissing stopped... I felt like I was kissing a skeleton, and in that sense it was an unforgettable experience. ❶
O'Connor is a mature writer, but never a mature woman, she does not know how to fall in love, how to kiss, just touched the edge of love, fell behind. In 1954, Rancogar left the farm and returned to Europe, where they continued to pass on the book. When the man was not married, O'Connor wrote "I miss you" at the end of the letter; a year later the man was married, and when he learned that he was still coming to the farm, O'Connor was still full of expectations:
In any case, you should know that my best wishes, emotions and prayers will accompany you on this new adventure... We are very happy that you are planning to return to the South and hope that we can help you and make your wife feel at home here. Think of us as your own people, because that's how we think of you. ❷
Look at this affectionate letter, and then look at the bleak and resentful novel "The Good Countryman" published in 1955, was it written by the same person? It is the same person who wrote it, which is the true voice of an ordinary woman, facing the negative person, scolding "you bastard, get out", thinking "Don't leave me, come on".
In 2015, the 90th anniversary of O'Connor's birth, the United States issued a commemorative stamp. In the photo, O'Connor has a pair of ice-blue eyes
O'Connor longs to be loved, but he can't find love, complains that the man is unhappy, that he has no knowledge and no skills (Harga in the novel is a lame female doctor, and has a pair of ice blue eyes like O'Connor), and also complains about his mother and neighbors, and stands by and does not teach himself emotional experience, and does not remind himself to beware of bad people.
O'Connor is in trouble, and the people around him can't count on it, only on their own. Desperate, she had to borrow Harga's mouth in the novel to vent her anger and shout "give me back my legs" — if she had sound legs and a healthy body, she could let go and chase after them, whether the other person was a bad person or a lover — but she didn't.
"Give me back my legs", this is an extremely wonderful novel language, but also a roar from the bottom of the heart, a roar of fate. After becoming seriously ill, O'Connor rarely traveled far, and it was even more difficult to go to Denmark to find his former love. In 1958, she crossed the sea and traveled to Lourdes, the largest Catholic pilgrimage site in Europe, was this really a pilgrimage, or was she holding her breath and showing herself and others that she was capable of hiking? We don't know, except that she always cared about her disability, and even writing a letter to her pen pal was like a live broadcast: "I have to use my two aluminum legs to leave." ”
O'Connor's short life had only that one moment of love; all her love experiences, only that first kiss of imminent separation.
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This laughter, this roar, intertwined O'Connor's short but rich life. And in the poor, pale, large and large emotional blanks of her life, she weaves one maverick southern story after another, depicting one colorful southern style painting after another:
A full yellow moon appeared among the branches of the fig trees, as if to roost there with chicks. He said that people must go to the countryside to see the world in full, and he hoped to live in such a remote place and watch the sun set every night according to God's will.
- "Saving People Is Saving Yourself"
The peacock jumped on the tree, its tail hanging down in front of her, and it was full of dazzling planets with eyes, each with a green edge, a moment of gold and a moment of orange sunlight flickering on it. She might have seen a picture of the universe, but she was absent-minded and didn't notice that spots in the sky had broken the dull green of the trees.
- "Displaced People"
The bull, dyed silver by the moonlight, stood under the window, tilting its head as if listening to the movements of the house—like a stoic god descending on mortal dust to court her... Pale pink light suddenly overflowed the window, and as the shutter cracked, wisps of light slid down on it. It took a step backwards and lowered its head, as if to ask for a look at the wreath it hung from its horn.
- "Greenleaf"
O'Connor was born in the spring, and on March 25, Aries, he often saw a spring in his pen, only reading cartoons drawn since high school, sincerely, sharply, and sharply laughing at everything around him- classmates, teachers, environment, system, and full of courage.
Like a bright red geranium, O'Connor bloomed naturally in the spring, but before the hot summer of life, it had withered halfway on the Andalusian farm, and withered in the spring of life, and lived for thirty-nine years.
O'Connor Comics: "Time to applaud me in time to notify me Ha"
O'Connor Comics: "I don't like to look at these old paintings either, but it doesn't hurt my reputation as an art lover."
O'Connor Comics: "Is there any book that teachers specifically recommend?"
O'Connor's collection of short stories