Literature Guanlan Book Club
Starting from the offline reading clubs of colleges and universities and social organizations across the country, China Writers Network gathers literary enthusiasts, listens to literary voices, and transmits literary ideas. Whether it is a new work, a good book recommendation, or a classic re-reading, topic discussion, what jumps on the paper is not only a solidified text, but also a beating thinking. Articles come in a variety of forms, either discussion or commentary. Welcome more book clubs to join our big family, online and offline, and enjoy the collision.
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The Green Yi Reading Club was convened and directed by Wei Yi, associate professor in charge of contemporary Italian literature at the University of Foreign Chinese in Beijing, and attended by graduate and undergraduate students majoring in Italian. Members read and discuss Italian modern and contemporary literary works together, focusing not only on the classics of masters such as Calvino and Echo, but also on the latest Italian literary scenes such as the "Stregga" Literary Prize, hoping to use language advantages to promote and study Italian literary works in China, and encourage more readers to understand Italy's historical traditions and current life in reading.
The Pianist at Sea is a well-known film that tells the story of the life of a 1900 legend. What many people don't know, however, is that it was adapted from the play 1900: Monologue by Italian writer Alessandro Barico. Abandoned in first class, adopted in 1900 by the ship's sailors and named after him by year, he gradually displayed his unschooled talent for piano, and was deeply impressed by those who heard him play on board. Spending his entire life at sea in 1900, he never set foot on land despite his curiosity about the outside world, and eventually disappeared forever along with the Virginian, which was detonated by its abandonment. This reading will provide an in-depth interpretation of this short, concise but thought-provoking classic from multiple perspectives of the text.
1900: Monologues, Italian edition, 1998
Zhou Zihan
1900 is the "invisible man" who wanders away from normal society.
1900 has lived in a finite space since birth, the scope of his life is countable, the things he can do are limited, and for him, the world beyond the vast and boundless sea is out of place and completely different. When people encounter unknown things, the first thing they do is to quickly look for similar models in their minds, so 1900 thought of pianos with beginnings and ends, with only 88 keys. The world, on the other hand, is different from the piano, and he compares the world to the keys of God's piano, which makes him overwhelmed, uneasy, panicked, and wants to escape. "The whole world in my eyes is beautiful and terrible. Too beautiful. Fear took me back. This fear of the unknown alienated him from the land. He thinks it's the part he can't and doesn't qualify to control.
On a social level, 1900, without status symbols, was an "invisible man" who wandered away from normal society, but his existence was based on his music. In music, he can unscrupulously exert his talents, gain the value of survival, and appreciate the meaning of survival. Is it cowardly to avoid being confined to music and not taking steps? Why didn't he get plenty of inner satisfaction in music? Although 1900 eventually accepted the end of self-destruction, his presence was forever engraved on the keys of the piano, and the beautiful music he played was forever haunting the cabin.
Kim Hye-ying
The social and tragic joy of the Virginian
The Virginian is like a mirror that reflects the dying old age of European civilization and the rising of the New World in the United States. In the smoke and sparks of the industrial age, every ordinary person who aspires to change his destiny shows an uncontrollable smallness. However, compared with the joys and sorrows of all sentient beings, the world of 1900 is like an incomparably diminishing point outside the world, standing still in the interlaced dimension of time and space for a long time. And with each step forward, his figure grew smaller and smaller in front of the huge Virginian, which was a real smallness, and it was irreconcilable with the secular world in 1900.
The Virginian has counted the number of round trips. Thousands of people were able to meet in the music of the 1900s, and the common moment allowed the soul to breathe, but the music stopped, and they did not hesitate to move towards a very different life. 1900 still lived peacefully on the parallel lines of these roads. In this unknown corner of the world, he glimpsed the changes in the world, experienced the decline and rise of civilization, and he was always alone, accompanied by a piano, perched on a giant ship that seemed to be about to be annihilated, floating in a blue that could not see where and what was going to end.
Tan Yuwei
Reality and ideals, this shore and the other shore
"As long as you still have a good story and can tell it to someone, you're not tossing around." If 1900 is the beautiful story, his close friend and trumpeter Max is the witness and narrator of this beautiful story. Max admired his friend's talent and from the beginning persuaded him to try his life under the ship. Max and 1900 are not the same person, the former is overwhelmed by life, but also chooses to return to the world, and the latter prefers to find God's eternal notes in a limited but perfect world. The embodiment of reality and ideals hurriedly intersected on the Virginian and went their separate ways. Later, reality was moved by the ideal, and the original intention of the ideal did not change. The closest distance between 1900 and land, wearing Max's camel coat, remained in the third stage of the gangway forever, and perhaps it was this "failed" landing attempt that allowed Max to see that his friend was on the other side, and he was on this shore. Max was born on land, and he eventually returned to land. Max on the ship is so intoxicated with every note that he even sheds tears, while he feels that it is useless to blow the trumpet in the face of war, and he is imprisoned, and he regards the memory as redemption. Later, when reality pays homage to the ideal, the illusion will dissipate.
Max may be just one of the epitomes of the industrialization era and war, they still have in their hearts the faith in purity and beauty, that faith or into human form, or into a flowing melody, maybe one day, they are overwhelmed, telling themselves: "Stand up and go, it's over, this time it's really over." ”
Zhou Zhuojing
Music and life
Whether in a novel or a movie, music is an indispensable part of the storyline, which can not only set off the atmosphere, promote the development of the plot, show the psychology of the characters, but also create a mood of blending scenes and outline the characters more three-dimensionally vividly.
In Barico's play 1900: Monologues, the protagonist spends his life with music and the sea, and music is a unique way for him to know and understand the world on land and communicate with it, and the melody flowing out of the interlacing of 88 black and white keys is the whole melody of his life. It can be said that music is the sustenance and spiritual reliance of 1900 feelings, and it is also the soul of the whole work. 1900 perceives the unknown world outside through the music of others, and expresses the world constructed in his own mind through the sound of the piano. At the same time, as a person who was abandoned on the ship without knowing his identity, not knowing where to come from, and not knowing where to go, the life of 1900 is like an illusory experience, except for the people on the ship, no one in the world knows of his existence, but the sound of the piano flowing out really carries the traces of his existence, and the notes of high or low are the best testimony of his life.
Playing Love
Ennio Morricone - 50 Years of Music(92 Original Scores Recorded By Ennio Morricone in Concert)
Pan Chen
A space of multiple meanings
In Western literature, the ocean gives birth to myths and mysteries. Legend has it that there is no end to the voyage, and it always carries the "madman" who has lost his hometown. The birthplace of 1900 is the sea, blue is the background of his life, but the end of his journey cannot be found on the turquoise route. The sea is boundless, full of unknowns, and frightening. However, In this infinite space, Barico constructed a limited kingdom for 1900, the Virginian. The ship wrapped the 1900 tightly, giving him a sense of security. The wind and waves at sea are the background of the 1900s play, and even the heavy rain on the deck becomes poetic. At the same time, the land in the eyes of 1900 is more like the sea in the eyes of ordinary people, "the land is a ship that is too big", the material is too rich, the choices are too complicated, and modern civilization will bind people.
In addition to land, sea and virginiana, the text also shows space in the subjective sense. The limited keys are a key to the world of music, which opens up the vast spiritual space of 1900. In 1900: Monologues, Barico contrasts the finite with the infinite, the abstract and the material, and 1900 is an outlier in this regard, because his understanding of the sea and land is different from ordinary people, and he refuses to integrate into modern civilization. Only the Virginian can hold the spiritual world of 1900 — the ship that cradled his birth and where he was buried. As he descends the escalator step by step and turns upwards, his connection to the land is completely broken, and the end of death is foreshadowed.
Xiang Shi Zhen
The moral of the reality of the tide of migration - the choice of land and sea
At the beginning of the 20th century, a large number of immigrants rushed to the United States. At the same time, the Industrial Revolution led to a dramatic increase in the mechanization of agriculture in the United States, and new immigrants who could not find a place in the countryside flocked to the cities. Under the combined effect of the Industrial Revolution and the wave of immigration, the United States quickly changed from a traditional agricultural society to an industrial society. However, how to smoothly integrate new immigrants into American society under the rapid social changes is also an urgent problem to be solved, and sharp social contradictions and cultural incompatibilities are the gaps between new and old immigrants.
The 1900 in the text has never set foot on land, let alone has all the identity documents needed to integrate into society. By the standards of the outside world, he is a non-existent person who has abandoned his social identity; and the new immigrants in the real society have not experienced the inner torment and wandering of 1900 when faced with how to integrate into the new society. However, they could only make a desperate bet and take the courage to take root in this new continent, otherwise they would have no way to retreat and be forced into a desperate situation. The rapid change of traditional society and the completely unfamiliar social environment were the dilemmas that every new immigrant had to face under the tide of immigration at that time. The alienation and incompatibility of the 1900s from the present world also reflects the background of the times and the embarrassment of the new immigrants to a certain extent.
Liu Sixuan
Barico – a master storyteller
Barico is a master storyteller, and he puts the "magic" in his works on the surface.
In almost every story, the author creates a heterogeneous character with different traits, but all of them are far beyond our imagination; a heterogeneous space, where time is stagnant, where heterogeneous characters wander freely in this small world, and which becomes deep and broad, but will eventually lead to destruction, such as virginiana in 1900: Monologues for 1900, Crystal Palace for Ohher in Castle of Rage, and Gwen in A Man Who Disappears into the World. Rooted in some real historical fragments, coupled with the imagination of the imagination, Barico tells a modern fairy tale, seemingly absurd and bizarre, but full of warmth and beauty.
It is worth mentioning that Barico himself is a multi-disciplinarian: he graduated from the philosophy department, worked as a columnist for music and cultural criticism in newspapers, wrote novels, plays, and produced television programs. These rich experiences are not only evident in his work, but also help him to construct a unique form of text, filled with philosophical speculation, music, commentary, poetry, excerpts, imagination and other elements. Among them, music is Barico's unique killer skill. In 1900: Monologues, the music not only has a deep connotation, but the addition of music also makes the whole story more tense.
Barico's story is short, concise, poetic, and effortless to read, which not only meets the literary standards of "lightness" and "speed" mentioned by Calvino in the "Literary Memorandum of the New Millennium", but also fits the popular "shallow reading". Nevertheless, Barico's protagonists have a distinct trait, that is, to pursue a slow pace of life, or to focus on each simple, precise action, which is also a major reason why they are "out of place" with the real world. Therefore, after the reader quickly reads a short story, he is left with a thought of "slow".
Wu Chen Jiexian
The dramatic character of Barico's writing
1900: Monologue is actually a literary script. From a descriptive point of view, Barico uses precise language to build a world far away from the real society, full of dramatic tension but not complicated. The author gives 1900 the ultimate freedom that he never has to compromise in order to be a "normal person" in other people.
The one-act play itself is a very "lonely" genre of drama, which has a striking overlap with the character of 1900. In this work, the form and content of art are perfectly integrated. On the basis of the few characters in the one-act play, the setting is not changed, and the plot is simple, Barico successfully attracts readers: his language is rich in literature, whether it is fluent lines or accurate depictions of the psychological ups and downs of the characters, which have achieved the actor's interpretation. In creating this work, Barico also took into account the lighting and set required for the play, so the environment depicted in "1900: Monologues" is actually simple and pure, and the Virginian has become the "utopia" created by the author.
In his previous works, City and Ocean and Sea, Barico was equally interested in creating a place where space and time were relatively independent to unfold the narrative. We can see that this romantic story construction continues into the writing of 1900: Monologues. However, since 2018, the four new works of Mamus, "A Man Disappeared into the World", "Three Dawns" and "The Young Bride" have shown a more specific story: instead of using a sense of isolated space to reflect the lightness of the story as in "1900: Monologues", it adopts a more realistic form, showing the author's perception and thinking about life.
Zhang Xinyuan
The collision of the film and the script
Director Tornatore's degree of reduction and completion of the script "1900: Monologue" is very high: compared with the text, the film can bring the audience more visual and auditory impact. Take the classic 1900 and the jazz inventor Morton "Fighting the Piano" as an example: Tornatore constantly switches cameras, cross-waving 1900 with his hands crossed, Morton with a sullen face, and a female audience with a wig dropped, etc., the film is obviously fuller. As far as the script is concerned, Barico has unique and ingenious features in terms of writing tense and wording. In addition, compared with the slightly dry film narration, the script can give people a sense of substitution and leave sufficient imagination space.
The film also includes an encounter with a girl in 1900, which became one of the reasons why he decided to disembark. In the script, love only exists between 1900 and music, and Barico does not explain too much the reason for 1900 to get off the ship, although it is slightly abrupt, but it makes the character image of 1900 more unconventional, and the whole story is more legendary and imaginative tension. In the film, the addition of love elements highlights 1900's determination to stay on the ship, as well as his simple guardianship and dislike of real society, and the storyline appears relatively complete and coherent. The film pays more attention to the coherence of the plot and the impact of the senses, while the script is more literary and legendary, and the two have their own advantages, which can be called excellent works of art.
Recommended in previous periods of the book club ●●
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| book club | My Feast in the Wilderness: A Poetic Childhood Story
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| book club | The northeast story of the "sub-generation"
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| book club | Why do today's young people love Wang Zengqi even more?
// 4
| book club | How do post-00 college students interpret "The Right Bank of the Erguna River"
Source | the 6th edition of the special issue "Literature Guanlan" jointly organized by | Literature And Art Daily and China Writers Network on September 16, 2020
WeChat Editor | Deng Jiefeng