Critics used to associate "One Hundred Years of Solitude", "Tin Drum", "Ulysses", "Portrait of a Young Artist", "Catcher in the Wheat Field" and other works. For the average reader, these analogies are actually of little value, you don't read the original book, or you still don't know what the book says, what it expresses, and where the good is.
After carefully reading it, I described the reading experience as follows, hoping to give some objective and popular introductions to friends who have not read, and have a more in-depth exchange with friends who have read.
June 2020 edition of "The Sorrows of Belgium" and the accompanying "Country of Klaus"
I. What kind of story does "The Sorrows of Belgium" tell?
The story of this book is not complicated, it is set in Belgium during World War II, telling the protagonist Louis from the age of eleven before the war to the end of the war eighteen or nineteen years old, around the father's Seneve family and the mother's Bersitz family of the joys and sorrows, from Luis's point of view, through the "I" and "he" people staggered way, reflecting the joys and sorrows of the family, family, and country in the wartime, the general context of the story is as follows:
The protagonist of the novel, Louis, appears as an eleven-year-old convent school boarder. Lewis, who loves mischief, organizes several children to appoint himself as the "Four Ambassadors", making trouble, exploring, bullying classmates in school, and fighting with nuns. A little longer, Louis entered the seminary again. After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, the situation in Belgium was turbulent, Louis went to work as a printing apprentice, studied at Ghent Business School, participated in the Flanders Nazi Youth League, went to Germany to participate in the activities of the children's rural expansion organization, and after the end of World War II, he wanted to participate in an essay contest at home and write a novel called "Sorrow". In this simple life course, interspersed with the confusion of the life of the young Louis in the process of growing up, the bitterness of sexual desire, and the mania of youth.
Louis's Seneve family, to which he belonged, belonged to three generations, including a self-righteous grandfather and Louis's godfather, a nagging grandmother, a father who was a somewhat idealistic and a bit dull printing plant owner, and several aunts and uncles. Her mother, Constanze, was a straightforward woman from the countryside, belonging to the Bersitz family, who had the same nagging grandmother, Melk, as well as several aunts and uncles. The members of these two families, some of whom made a living during the war, some who married Jews, some who had an affair with the Germans, some who participated in the resistance movement, faced the real problems of material shortage, survival, resistance, compromise, the Great Purge and so on before and after the war, of course, less complicated emotional experience of each person, all these trivial things, by Louis's observation and narration, strung together, constitute a colorful picture of wartime Belgium.
Reading "Belgian Sorrows", a 758-page tome, has no magnificent epic structure, no thrilling and strange storyline, and is mostly trivial family life and psychological activities, which requires a certain amount of courage and patience to read.
Plot diagram of The Sorrows of Belgium by Hugo Klaus
What kind of sorrow is "Belgian sorrow"?
Shortly after the publication of "Belgian Sorrow", Yilin Publishing House invited the translator Mr. Li Shuangzhi to conduct a live online exchange with book friends, and in the question session, the author, without reading the book, according to the slogan, carefully asked a question: "Can we regard the sorrow of Belgium as the sorrow of Europa?" Mr. Li Shuangzhi replied with a smile in the voice live broadcast, "Belgian sorrow" is the protagonist's grandmother facing the grandson who stole money mischievously, complaining that others are annoyed by people, and sighing "Belgian sorrow, it is you!" It's an angry joke. I only then knew, I was timid, "to know is to know, not to know is not to know", do not pretend not to understand. After this live broadcast, I quickly closed or temporarily put down a few books I was reading, and solemnly opened the "big brick" book, page by page.
What kind of sorrow does Hugo Krauss express in his book? I will also do the next "search for chapters and excerpts from the old carving worm" to sort out the "sorrow" mentioned in the book to the reader.
"Belgian sorrow" is the mantra of Louis's grandmother Melk, and on page 236 it first appears when Melk recalls the past: "It is as if I have borne all the sorrows of Belgium." "This shows the embarrassing life of Melk when he was a child. Since then, "sorrow" has become a common word, and Louis has emerged from the daughter of the favorite pharmacist, from his mother, from his father, and from the mouths of those around him, both personal and national. There are two main places where the term "Belgian sorrow" is explicitly proposed, one is page 515, after Louis stole his aunt's money, Grandma Melk sighed: "Belgian sorrow Oh, it is you." "Then there are many mentions that Louis participated in the essay contest after he was a little older, and wrote a novel, which was originally titled "Sorrow" and later renamed "Sorrow of Belgium".
Judging from the "Belgian sorrow" mentioned in the novel itself, it is only an exaggerated expression of personal emotions, a metaphor for saying one's own troubles in a big way, and does not elevate family love and hate to the national level. In the booklet "The Kingdom of Klaus," which accompanies the book, the author Klaus, in an interview, bluntly said in response to some comments: "They actually missed everything. They confused the themes, the events involving war, and the collaboration with the enemy with the book. Visitor Seth asked: "For you, this book is more about the growth of teenagers than about the depiction of the external and social environment?" Klaus: "Of course. For me, at least, the essence of the book is entirely on another level. From this, it can be seen that Klaus's motivation is still a coming-of-age novel, and the interpretation that rises to the national, national and even European level is only an extension of the consciousness of critics and readers. Of course, as many writers have mentioned, after the work is published, it becomes a child of arbitrary criticism, and many interpretations and understandings are no longer limited by the author's original consciousness, but extend to infinite space. In the preface to The Villains, Borges said: "Sometimes I think good readers are poets who are more secretive and unique than good writers. Reading is always an activity that comes after writing: more patient, more tolerant, more rational than writing. "The Sorrows of Belgium in particular needs such a patient and tolerant reader.
On the map of Europe, Belgium, a small country with a small population, is called the "crossroads of Europe" and is surrounded by Germany, France, and the Netherlands
In the minds of Belgians, what was the state of Belgium during World War II? Before the war, some Belgians developed a cult of german Germans, full of distrust and self-deprecation in their country. And look at some of the people's views on the country in the book.
- "The belgian state is going to collapse anyway, and that's how history has developed." (p. 125)
" We never harass other countries. Never before in our entire history. It's always someone else who comes here to start a hateful war. (p. 201)
- "O Fuehrer, the Belgians are peaceful and hedonistic, and the Belgian army is so weak that the soldiers do not listen to the officers but boo them. Rest assured, Fuehrer, you can use the North Sea as a border by adding this small piece of land to your empire. (p. 235)
- "We always have to obey others. We have not done anything else in our entire history. (p. 307)
- "Belgium is not a country, it is a state. (p. 310)
" We Belgians or Flemish people, because of the small size of the country, will only be stingy when thinking about problems, because we have little weight and can sweep away at any time with a small broom or a small dustpan." (p. 490)
During World War II, Belgium's political direction was determined by the situation and status, and it was imposed on it by the great powers, and the common denominator between Louis's sorrow and Belgium's sorrow was that it was an indescribable sorrow that naturally arose in the helpless state of "man is a knife trick, I am a fish meat". The vacillating and isolated mentality of the small country and the widows caught between the big powers has left a deep undertone to Belgium's sorrow. From this point of view, even if Klaus's original intention did not have too many feelings of home and country, louis's long-term sorrow and The sorrow of Belgium in World War II still have a great internal connection, from Louis's sorrow to Belgian sorrow to Europa's sorrow, this related chain is objectively existent.
Hugo Klaus revisits the city where he lived as a child
Is "sorrow" the theme word of boys' adolescent confusion?
Louis is a "bad boy", lying, stealing, indulging, sometimes pitiful and sometimes hateful, and Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" protagonist Holden, Louis is not very popular, but the memories of growing up and the restlessness of youth that happened to him, who has not experienced it? From the beginning of dislike, to the final sympathy, watching Louis grow up, the reader will also experience a journey of understanding life.
Louis's adolescence can be perceived from two aspects, one is the strange world seen in the eyes, and the other is the awakening and embarrassing experience of its own nature.
Lewis faces the world around him, with national, social, and more family influences. During World War II, Belgium was conquered by Germany and became a member of the Axis Powers, respecting Germany and dividing the weak country by the Resistance Movement, and Louis's family members divided into different factions and followed the path they chose. The people and things experienced by monastery boarding schools, seminaries, and business schools have given Louis an intuitive understanding of the hypocrisy, betrayal, and cruelty of the adult world, which has made the sensitive teenager of adolescence Louis increase the feelings and sorrows of life. On the family side, the father and the mother of the two large families do not stop, the family members in politics, marriage, personality are very different, life is like a chicken feather: the father fled, the mother cheated, grandfather and aunt, uncle and aunt, aunt and Louis have incest, the world is so unreliable, unstable, Louis has a great annoyance with the family, to the parents.
In the growth period of sex, Louis's sorrow is even more difficult to describe. During his stay at the monastery, he developed a same-sex affection for Frig, and after being alienated by Frig, he developed a strong sense of revenge. He and Frig later met again, and the last thing he received was news that Frig had committed suicide due to a sexually transmitted disease, a same-sex affair that lingered in Louis's mind. On the opposite sex, he truly admires Simone, the daughter of a pharmacist, but Simone falls into the arms of others. Then there is be beca, a neighbor of his grandmother's family, Beka, who has no obvious yearning for beca, but in a long-term relationship, he has a real sexual experience with beca. What embarrassed and saddle Louis the most was the unruly nature of being seduced by his aunt Nora and the doctor's widow, so that Louis himself sighed: "First of all, Nora's aunt, and now this doctor's wife, all took the initiative to attack him!" Does he look so easy to conquer? "What you like can't get, often teased by women, can Louis's youth not be sad?
"Precocious and early degeneration" is the summary of the protagonist Louis's youth near the end of "Belgian Sorrows". In fact, from the age of eleven to eighteen or nineteen, Louis's unusual youth, set in the turbulent Europe of World War II, is neither precocious nor depraved. The whimsy and misdeeds of youth rebellion are, at best, the atypical experiences of a quasi-little, and his so-called precocious puberty and depravity are mostly caused by the social environment and the adult influences around him. In order to dissolve the psychological pressure of the complex world, Louis created in his mind the concept of an angel "Mizel", both like an angel and like a mosquito, always haunting, participating in and watching those people and things that he could not understand.
Comparatively speaking, the turmoil, confusion and sorrow of the adolescent of Holden, the protagonist of "The Catcher in the Rye", are common to human beings, and there is not much social background left or right, which belongs to the stage characteristics of natural growth. Louis's sorrow is different, except for the phased characteristics of human growth, the war-torn Europe, the chaotic family, painted his youth with too many colors, and his sorrow is a reflection of the thought of a specific boy in a specific family in a specific country in a specific era, which is unique and cannot be copied. This reminds me of Wang Wenxing's "Family Change", which is also a growth novel, its background is the life of a civil servant family after the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan, the protagonist Fan Ye's dependence on his parents, disgust, rebellion, and reflection process, in addition to the characteristics of the times, but also permeated with the genes of traditional Chinese family culture, but also a unique youth sorrow.
Expanding the connotation of the word "sorrow" to represent the curiosity, confusion, loneliness, exploration, and rebellion common to human adolescence, I feel that it is more appropriate. Under the common "sorrow" curtain, the sorrows of different individuals in different regions at different times have different, such as Louis in the Belgian town during World War II, Fan Ye who lived in Taiwan in the 1950s, and Amir and Hassan who were in Afghanistan in "The Kite Chaser".
"Sorrow" can be called an important theme word for boys' puberty.
Hugo Krauss (right) revisits his father's old home
How can the depiction of "sorrow" be more powerful?
Nobel laureate in literature J.M Coetzee believes that "The Sorrows of Belgium" is one of the greatest novels in Europe after World War II. In my opinion, Coetzee praised this novel because he found commonalities in ideas.
In Coetzee's work "The Student Age of Jesus", the protagonist David is also a child, with endless questions about life, through David's eyes, the author tells the cold in the high place under the constraint of Simon's morality, the beautiful Anna and the ugly Dmitry's secret and twisted private affairs, the estrangement and indifference between men and women, showing the complexity and struggle of human nature, longing and despair. This kind of calm writing can also be felt in "Belgian Sorrow", except that Hugo Klaus's pen is not as cold as Couche's pen, Couche's pen is a scalpel, Klaus's pen is a microscope, and the two writers dig deep into the beauty, ugliness, confusion, struggle, complexity, and impulse of human nature in different ways.
How can the "sorrow" of youth be expressed more powerfully? In my opinion, facing the beautiful and ugly, calmly and objectively describing the common, personalized youth emotions, without exaggeration, deformation, and concealment, is the best way. Goethe's improvisational work "The Troubles of Young Werther", a thin little book, has impressed many readers because of the analysis and reproduction of their true feelings. The warm theme of the French film "Spring of the Cattle Herding Class" also needs a dirty principal to set off, which is even more precious. "Belgian Sorrow" cannot be simply equated with Klaus's childhood, but the author takes his own childhood experience and thoughts as a template, integrates elements of others, plus the thinking and accumulation of adulthood, and restores a period of "precocious and early degeneration" sad youth with objective and calm brushstrokes. Klaus took the objective account of what he saw in his eyes, showing what he was thinking in his mind with a stream of consciousness, and said slowly without hurry, sometimes like the nagging of grandma and grandma, although trivial, but small words, the truth of life penetrated into the trivial narrative, the sorrow of the youth, the sorrow of the family, the sorrow of the country, are also woven into ordinary life, and always jump out to affect you and sting you.
Klaus's rare brutal depiction of "The Sorrows of Belgium", a live restoration of the driver Holst's killing of his wife Laura, is full of blood and violence This is a fierce note in the overall gentle music. Laura is an elegant, mysterious, attractive woman with a seemingly background, supposedly a bustard in the sex business, who marries a driver and is eventually killed by him. The author seems to have deliberately arranged this glimpse-like character, so that the beautiful woman who is unattainable by ordinary people ends up with a tragic ending, reflecting the unpredictability of life and the cruelty of fate. This is quite similar to the bridge between Anna and Dmitry in Coetzee's "The Student Days of Jesus".
In terms of the structure of the book, Klaus divided the book into two parts, "Sorrow" and "Belgium", and the "Sorrow" part is mainly about pre-war family life, divided into several chapters, each chapter has a subtitle, and the structure is clear and concise. The second part, Belgium, is no longer divided into chapters, but is recounted in a flood of water, presumably intended to reflect the disorderly social state of Belgium during the war. Structure is also part of the content, and this form allows "Belgian sorrow" to present different intentions before and after the war. The structure is also more special is Bolaño's "Chilean Night", the whole book is translated into Chinese 100,000 words, only divided into two paragraphs, the first paragraph occupies all 100,000 words, without pause, without rest, the words are generally endless, and the second paragraph has only one sentence: "Then this hateful brainstorming broke out." The novel came to an abrupt end, and this deliberate novel structure was also one of the contents that accompanied the text of "Chilean Nights". For a master writer, content and form are never biased, like two sides of a coin, leaning on each other.
Louis's youth is faced with a war- and chaotic society, a family that struggles to make a living and a chaotic relationship, and a sorrow that must be experienced by growing up. Klaus borrowed Louis's mouth, without concealment, the pain, confusion, and doubts faced by adolescent boys, and the reader was able to find a place that matched his own experience from the protagonist and between the lines, and was moved by those who had experienced but were ashamed to talk about it, felt but could not express the plot, and felt a kind of spokesperson's pleasure of speaking in his heart.
When the "sorrow" hidden in the heart, when someone says it for you, well, you don't have to regurgitate painfully, as the song "The sun is always after the wind and rain" sings, let the "sorrow" run to the sun to bask and replenish calcium. From then on, sorrow will become light and windy, and even turn into a smile.
After reading "Belgian Sorrows", if you have a sense of relief, congratulations, you have upgraded!
Translation Forest Publishing House June 2020 edition of "Belgian Sorrow"
Taiwan Crown Publishing House, June 1997 edition of "Belgian Sorrow"