This content is from the audio program "Sexual Encounter Library" co-produced by One Way Space and Dragonfly FM
Sexual Encounter Library Stop 27
Coordinates: Lisbon
Travel Book: Lisbon Nights
Music: "Que Deus Me Perdoe"
Meet the Woman: Helen
After a two-week hiatus, the Library of Encounters came to The Capital of Portugal: Lisbon. The westernmost city on the European continent, across the sea from the "Nazi", the United States, became the birthplace of the Exiles of World War II.
In this former, declining seaside empire was born the music Fado (Fado), a mixture of personal sorrow and unknown destiny, and the literary work Lisbon Night, which depicts the plight of the exiles. In a charming and tragic atmosphere, the protagonist of the book finally finds that he does not know the person he loves...
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(The following is an excerpt from the 27th issue of "Sexual Encounter Library")
【City of Encounters: Lisbon】
"A somewhat run-down, poetic city"
While in Armenia, I stumbled upon Remarck's Lisbon Nights, which I had stuffed into my bag before I left, and I found that I was always fantasizing about a place as the most beautiful thing. Because I've never been to Lisbon, I often fantasize about it.
I fantasized about Lisbon because many years ago, I watched a movie called "Night Train to Lisbon", about a Swiss professor, who accidentally saw a collection of poems written by Portuguese poets, thought it was very moving, and took this collection of poems to find the poet's life.
Poster of "Night Train to Lisbon"
It turns out that a moving and sentimental story is found. Because before 1974, Portugal was in an authoritarian rule. This young poet, who was a doctor and also a very poetic man, wrote a lot of moving articles. He became involved in the rebellion, the underground movement, and finally died.
The film was actually a demotion of a rebel through the mouth of a professor in the German department, and I was thrilled to watch. I remember that the protagonist wrote a sentence in it, which roughly means that in an authoritarian society, rebellion should become the responsibility of man, the responsibility of a truly free man. The whole film is beautifully shot, starring Jeremy Irons, and the other actor is also very handsome, with a kind of aristocratic poetry. That movie struck me a lot. It's a reminder of something.
Stills from "The Night Train to Lisbon"
Lisbon is in my mind the capital of a former empire, the capital of a declining empire. The Portuguese Empire was once so glorious that such a small country conquered such a vast area that Macau on the edge of China was also ruled by it.
At the same time, it also featured writers like Pessoa, whom I loved, and because of this film, I was deeply impressed with the city. It should be a somewhat rundown, but poetic city. And beneath its exterior, there is a strong tension of resistance.
【Travel Recommendation: Lisbon Night】
"A place where the hopes of all the exiles come together"
This Book of Lisbon Nights is about the plight of exiles. For a time I was particularly interested in the life of an exile, a man who suddenly lost his hometown, in a strange place, lost all his friends, the basis of survival, and even the language. There are also exiles who face the threat of death. In the midst of such fear and powerlessness, how can a person re-understand life and understand himself?
Some people are fascinated by such things. Including our bookstore, named "One Way Street," it was also because its writer Benjamin, in his final life, was in exile.
Lisbon Nights
Author: [de] Erich Maria Remak
Publisher: Shanghai Translation Publishing House
Translator: Zhu Wen
The United States was like a paradise in the "Nazi era" at the time, and for many exiles, it was safe to flee there. In exile, a passport or ferry ticket to the United States is extremely precious, and they become a symbol of life. Benjamin was on the verge of escaping, but committed suicide by losing his passport.
In that desperate situation, what does hope mean to you? One ferry ticket means all the hope in your life. In the book, he mentions Armenia, where I have just been, and he says that "Mount Ararat is America." Mount Ararat is where Noah's Ark appeared in the Bible. When I went to Armenia on a trip, I saw Mount Ararat, which was covered in snow and was always in the clouds. It is considered by the locals to be a sacred mountain and one of the important birthplaces of human civilization.
Remak said that Mount Ararat is America, and America is Mount Ararat, and it represents a new possibility. Just as Noah's Ark could save his life when the Flood came, some ships to the United States, each like Noah's Ark, will take your life to another place.
So Lisbon became a place where rebirth was possible, both desperate and reborn. The exiles fled the Nazis, who were approaching and were about to conquer almost the entire Continent. Lisbon, on the Atlantic side, the westernmost part of Europe, crossed the Atlantic by boat from here to the United States, and was a place of freedom, so it became a place where all the hopes of the exiles were gathered.
Mount Ararat, located near the northeastern border of Turkey's Ödel Province, is more than 5,000 meters above sea level and is turkey's highest peak
What does that tension feel like? The novel describes the situation at that time: Lisbon in the late 1930s. In the book, the protagonist remembers his story, his life, his love, and his feeling of escape. I especially want everyone to read this novel.
I'll read the beginning of the book today, and I was immediately drawn to it when I first read it.
I stared intently at the boat. It was lit up with dazzling lights and anchored on the Tagus River. I've been in Lisbon for a week, but I'm not used to its carefree lighting. In the countries I left, at night, the cities were as dark as coal mines, and a lantern in the darkness was more frightening than the plagues of the Middle Ages. I come from twentieth-century Europe.
The ship was a passenger ship, and it was loading cargo on board. I knew it was going to sail tomorrow afternoon. In the glare of the bare bulbs, boxes of meat, fish, cans, bread, and vegetables were being loaded into the cargo hold below; on the deck, porters were carrying luggage, and they quietly carried boxes and bales as if they had no weight at all. The ship was preparing for the voyage—like an ark in the age of the Flood. It is indeed an Ark. In those months of 1942, every ship that left Europe was an ark. Mount Ararat is America, and the floods are rising day by day. Floods have long since engulfed Germany and Austria, and now Poland and Prague are submerged, while Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Oslo and Paris are also sunk, many Italian cities have smelled of seepage, and Spain is no longer safe. The Portuguese coast became the last hope of the exiles. For them, justice, freedom and tolerance are far more meaningful than homes and livelihoods. This is the gateway to America. If you can't get there, you're out of luck, and you're doomed to run through the ravages of consulates, police stations, and government offices, where you won't be given visas or work and residence permits, a camp, bureaucratic habits, desolate loneliness, nostalgia, and a pervasive, withering indifference. In times of war, fear and distress, this became commonplace: the individual no longer existed, and only one thing was important— a valid passport.
Erich Maria Remak
The author, Remarck, is a writer that young people like very much, and his language has a very sincere fluency. Lisbon Nights describes the lives of exiles, and after Nazi Germany came to power in 1933, a large number of writers and artists, many of them Jewish, were banned. At that time, Remark, like Thomas Mann and like Zweig, was a banned writer. He later fled to the United States, where he worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood, where he died in Switzerland on September 25, 1970. The day he died turned out to be Lu Xun's birthday.
【Voice of Encounter: Que Deus Me Perdoe】
"Fate is uncontrollable like the sad Fado"
The song I'm sharing today is a tune from Fado, and the word "Fado" comes from the Latin word Fatum, which means destiny. All of Fado's music is sad and contains the uncontrollable nature of fate. It is said that in Lisbon, all cafes and bars will hear these Fado. It's like you've always heard flamingo songs in Spain.
Every music has its own great tradition, just like the new pop music, Teresa Teng will cover the white light, will cover Yao Li, to the younger generation of Faye Wong will sing Teresa Teng, each generation has a tradition of paying tribute to the previous generation.
Portugal Fado played live
These great singers, like great writers, can sing about the pains and struggles of a nation, an era, a society, and the inner, which is also a kind of Fado characteristic. Portugal is a seaside country, a powerful empire in its heyday, and going to sea means many adventures and unknowns, including death, grief of losing loved ones, and stories of foreign lands. Fado contains such a worldwide, widespread message of personal sadness, and it's all mixed together, which is what makes it most fascinating.
【Beauty: Helen】
"Maybe you don't know the person you love"
I like the description in this book of the protagonist's wife, the pseudonymous Mr. Schwartz, who hid her name after five years on the run, fearing that she would be captured by the Nazis. He wanted to go back to his hometown to see his wife, and it was a very dangerous act.
After seeing his wife again, he had a new discovery about her, she was different from what he imagined, which was a very interesting thing. You will find that you don't know the people you think you love, or the people you get along with. When you observe him from a new distance, you will find that he is a very different image from what you originally thought.
He said he was sitting there:
Think back to a little Amazonian warrior, naked, with a glass of wine, asking questions, not backing down, both witty and brave. I realized that in our former lives, I didn't know anything about her, and I didn't know how she had endured when she used to live with me. It's like having an animal for fun, a cute lamb. Or I thought so, and I treated her like a lamb. It was as if the animal I loved turned out to be a young mountain lion, who was not interested in any blue ribbon or soft brush, but could take a bite out of the hand that reached out and stroked it.
That's how he rediscovered his wife, who had thought she was a little pet, but turned out to be a young cougar, perhaps five years of time to bring new changes to his wife. I also like some of his very small descriptions of his wife. He said:
She circled around the bed like a dancer. Placing her glass on the floor beside her, and then reaching out, she was tanned by the sun I had never seen before, naked and carefree. Like a woman who knows she's attractive and that people often say that to her.
There was a two-week hiatus in the middle of the show, I said I was going to take a break, and then I ran out. I went to Tbilisi, which I talked about in issue 25, and then to another city, Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, for a week, and now I'm back in Huajiadi. I found a characteristic, in fact, real travel is not necessarily better than imagined travel.
Edit | Yoko
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▼▼ The sea of Lisbon