Michelet understood that his situation was difficult and dangerous. He must generate passion, act, endure pain, overcome weakness, pity and hypocrisy, and overcome sense of ridicule. It is necessary to be a person with fierce conflict, a person with sincere feelings. - "The Indifferent Man"
After reading Moravian's "Indifferent Man", the biggest feeling is that Mikale is an indifferent person after all, not only him, but the people around him are powerless to struggle in some kind of inexplicable whirlpool, wanting to warm each other, but powerless to warm each other, and finally found that in addition to indifference, the rest is pretentious emotions.
Unlike the one we are accustomed to seeing the ending of the story, where the prince and the princess live happily ever after, "The Indifferent Man" does not give a perfect ending, leaving a huge blank space and helplessness, if expressed in one sentence, as written in the novel:
It's exactly the same as in a movie theater: the lights are on, and the audience looks at each other with disappointed and bitter expressions on their faces.
01
Moravia is to Italy as Lu Xun is to China.
In 1929, the 22-year-old Italian writer Moravia published "The Indifferent Man", which caused a sensation in Europe, and since then it has been out of control, and the best works have been published frequently.
Since then, "Roman Woman", "The Same Stream", "Contempt", "Joccialia Woman" and "Melancholy", etc., all show the author's amazing creativity and profound observation of the emotional life of modern society.
Because of his prolificity and the fact that most of his novels are based on the hypocrisy and moral scarcity of today's society, the rich expressions and experiences of emotion presented in the novels have infected countless readers.
Moravia is arguably recognized as a great writer who was too late to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, having been nominated for the Nobel Prize 15 times.
His novels also had a huge impact on film and television, and many works have been adapted into films, such as the famous director Jean-Luc Godard's film "Contempt", which is an adaptation of the novel "Contempt".
Among the many prolific novels in Moravia, if you really want to read, "The Indifferent Man" should be a novel that cannot be bypassed.
A comparison shows that after The Indifferent Man, Albert Camus's The Outsider, a representative of existential literature and "absurd philosophy," came out in 1942.
Therefore, this novel is also considered to be the first existential novel in Europe.
02
Camus once said that the important thing is not to be cured, but to live with the pain.
It should not be an exaggeration to look at the protagonists in "The Indifferent Man" with this sentence, but whether they think they are miserable or not, that is another story.
As Michelet often shows in the novel, he has devoted himself to decorating himself according to the sober aesthetic concept of the hero, so that he does not look so shabby and masturbates.
If you compare the overall scene of "The Indifferent Man" with a stage play, you will find that the stage is particularly small, basically limited to the villa of the Michelet family of three, plus a small area that extends and opens.
In this small area, what is shown is a magical drama about the psychological activities between people and people who seem to be living but constantly struggling in it, and no one can see the meaning of life.
Why read this book, if you reflect the present, but find it very interesting.
Since the advent of smart phones, communication between people has been inseparable from mobile phones, but what seems to be a convenient communication tool brings more communication and understanding, or does it make people farther away from each other?
The novel shows that I would rather be indifferent than pretend.
Nowadays, people may show that they don't need to pretend, because everyone is the same.
Whether it's on the subway, on the train, on the streets that come and go in a hurry, or even when friends are having dinner, it is no surprise that you keep your phone down and keep swiping the screen.
When we are all willing to become a low-headed party, is this really a "disease of apathy" in contemporary society?
Moravia, on the other hand, began to explore this crisis of ideas and the "apathy" of modern society nearly a century ago, and had to sigh that history does not repeat itself, but it is always strikingly similar.
There are not many characters in Moravia's novels, mainly Mikale, his mother, and his sister Carla's family of three, plus Michelle's mother's lover Leo and Lisa, who was once Leo's lover but now wants to become Michelet's lover.
These five people will seem a little shabby if placed on the drama stage, after all, the stage is not small, the number of people seems to be too small, but these five people in Moravia's novel "The Indifferent Man" shows the reader a ridiculous and ridiculous portrait of life, and such a portrait is inseparable from us.
03
Starting today, you will begin to live a new life.
This is a dream that all five people in the novel fantasize about, because as long as you adjust your mentality, tomorrow will become different.
The most brilliant thing about "Indifferent People" is the description of everyone's psychological activities, which are like daydreaming psychological activities, so that everyone's character image is very three-dimensional and moving.
The mother is already red and old, no longer attractive to her lover Leo, but she thinks that she can regain her lover's heart, but her unprovoked jealousy and nagging neuroticism push the lover with ulterior motives farther.
The falling flowers were deliberate, and the water was merciless, but they didn't know that Leo's eyes had been focused on Carla, who had once sat on his lap and was now an adult.
After all, compared to her mother, Karra is still a young girl, even if she has a little bit of a temperament that is uncertain, but she is young.
Daughter Carla faces this kind of original family, does not know what the future should look like, the only belief is: not as muddy as now, frivolous and shallow, wasted years... Make life meaningful.
But it's one thing to want to change, it's quite another to see how you need to change.
It was a century of conundrum for Carla, and in the end she chose to go, still not jumping out of her mother's choice.
Alive and well, she had become almost like her mother.
There is a classic saying: In the end, we all become the ones we hate the most.
The ridiculous relationship between mother, Leo, and Lisa is not over, but the focus of the latter two is surprisingly believing.
Leo has his eye on Carla, and Lisa has a crush on the handsome lad Michela.
In Lisa's view, as long as she and Michelet deepen their understanding of each other, love always slowly arises.
However, she never really understood the other person, and although Michelet was very depressed and wanted to be understood by others, she eventually found that no one really understood him.
In the novel "The Indifferent Man", the one who really recognizes himself as an indifferent person belongs to Michelet.
His indifference makes one less interested in anything, let alone other fierce emotional conflicts, for whom faith, sincere feelings, fierce conflicts do not exist, and his boredom makes all this seem sad, ridiculous, hypocritical.
In the novel, there is a passage in which Michelle tries to make Lisa understand him, and he says:
Because of these feigned feelings and gestures, these insincere words, these hypocritical thoughts, my life became a failed comedy... I don't pretend... Do you understand?
However, Lisa will not understand that in the face of her mother, sister and Leo, Michelet is not acting in her true colors, but in the role of performance, and she is thinking about what kind of behavior she should perform in the face of a situation.
Whether it is anger, laughter or coldness, all of this is performed in a cold psychology, which looks convincing, but in the end can not convince themselves.
In indifference, everyone wants to find ways to change their lives, to have a completely different tomorrow.
However, will it all have a perfect ending?
When you are accustomed to seeing a sad or perfect ending at the end of a novel or a film or television drama, you can't find it in "The Indifferent Man", because this indifference is always the most profound embodiment of the inner world.
In the end, the author still did not give an answer, as Michelet thought:
He wanted to cry, and life was like an intricate forest, covered with branches and leaves, covered with thick shade, surrounding him from all sides, and there was no light flickering in the distance.