The author | Miaowei
Excerpt from | Zhang Jin
Thirty Lectures on Literary Experience, by Miao Wei, Edition: Pu Rui Culture | Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House, January 2021
Jiang Wenli acted in a movie, "Li Chun", and the character she played, Wang Cailing, lived in a small city in northern China and worked as a music teacher at a teacher's college. Wang Cailing's dream is to transfer to Beijing and sing opera in a professional orchestra. She wanted to dedicate herself to art, which was a noble thing, but there was something ridiculous about her. She was deceived and deceived, she looked down on the people around her, but she needed the comfort of others. There was a young man named Huang Sibao in the small town, who had not been admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts for five years, hid in his room, stripped naked, and painted the human body in front of the mirror. Huang Sibao and Wang Cailing met, and what happened after that was always a little ridiculous. On the one hand, we see that two people who love art in the small town are carrying dreams and fighting against fate; on the other hand, we know that these two people cannot achieve any results, and it is better to admit their fate earlier. Are you saying that the movie "Li Chun" is a comedy? Its background color is very sad, Wang Cailing has noble sentiments, likes elegant things, but is not understood by the world. Are you saying it's a tragedy? Wang Cailing and Huang Sibao's misconceptions about themselves always make people feel ridiculous. When we watch this movie, we may cry or we may laugh.
Sometimes people watch a movie, or go to a play, they have psychological expectations: I watch this play, try to have fun, or I watch this play, bring two packs of tissues, and cry well. When I think of Chekhov, I always feel that I should cry a nose. How can so many suffering people on the Russian land not cry a nose? At that time, there was an audience member who cried when he saw Chekhov's play, and Chekhov wrote to him, and the letter said: "You said that you cried when you watched my play, and you were not the only one who cried. But I didn't write these scripts to make you cry, it was Stanislavsky who made my jokes cry. "Stanislavsky, the great Russian director, has directed several plays by Chekhov, but Chekhov said that I want a different effect, I want only to be sincere, to tell people openly, look at yourself, you are living a bad and boring life. The most important thing is to make people understand this, and then they will inevitably create another better life for themselves. Understand that you are living a terrible and boring life right now. What's there to cry about? Chekhov's letter, written cruelly- you are living a terrible and boring life now, what is there to cry about? He writes these scenes, falls in love with actresses, a lot of confidants with red faces, and he doesn't cry. But can we create another better life? It seems that it cannot be created. Let's take the movie "Li Chun" as an example. Wang Cailing realized that she was teaching singing in a small town, where life was very bad and boring, and she wanted to create another life and go to Beijing to sing operas, but she couldn't go, what could she do?
Chekhov has a play, "Three Sisters", about three sisters living in a Russian city, the eldest sister is not married, the younger sister is not married, and the second sister is married to a middle school teacher. The three sisters, all well educated. The three sisters also have a big brother, who is a reader who can play the violin and carve. Originally, his family expected him to do his studies and become a professor in Moscow, but he became a small official in this small town, married a very powerful daughter-in-law, and he was very depressed, gambling money, owed a bunch of gambling debts, and mortgaged the house. The eldest brother has given up his illusions, but the three sisters will always say that we are going to Moscow, and when we get to Moscow, all problems will be solved, and all troubles will disappear.
These three sisters, who had followed the officer's father to the city, couldn't see this place. Suddenly, a new unit came to the city, and an officer named Vershnin came, and Martha, one of the three sisters, complained to Wilschenen that this place was not good, and that in such a small place, knowing three foreign languages was an unnecessary luxury, a burden, like six fingers. A passage from Wilschnin's reply to Martha, probably the most famous line in the play, is often quoted, and Wilschenen says so—I don't think that knowledgeable, educated people, no matter what city they live in, and no matter how snubbed and gloomy that city is, is not superfluous! Let's take this city, where the 100,000 people who live here are, of course, uncultured and backward, and we admit that there are only three people like you here. The ignorance of the vast number of ordinary people around you cannot be overcome, and that is also a natural thing. Moreover, in the course of your life, you will continue to make concessions, you will be lost in the crowd of 100,000 inhabitants, and life will bury you. But you will still not be completely wiped out, and you will not be left without an impact. Maybe after you there will be six more people like you, and then there will be twelve more, and so on, and one day, people like you will finally form a majority. Two or three hundred years from now, life in the world must be very beautiful, and we should expect it, dream of it, and prepare for it.
This line, which does not solve the actual problem, suddenly goes to two or three hundred years later, but Wilschenin does comfort Martha. Martha's husband is a middle school teacher, more content with the status quo, more snug. Wilshinin had a wife and children, but he was not very happy with his wife. So, this Martha and Wilschnin fell in love with each other. The painful part is that Martha and Wilschenen may have a contemptuous attitude towards the vulgar world, vulgar people will steal affection, want them to make a monotonous life a little tricky, husbands and wives will deceive each other, but the two noble people, want to comfort each other, but also secretly talk about love, they actually have no better way to fight against the reality of their dissatisfaction, it is good to find a little comfort for each other.
Miao Wei, born in 1968, is a novelist. He was the deputy editor-in-chief of Sanlian Life Weekly and the editor-in-chief of Xinzhi Magazine. His published works include "Let Me Go to the World of Flowers and Flowers", "Sunday Morning Hike", "The Widow Has a Disease", "Bread Will Have", "Letter to the Big Strong" and so on.
Life is always particularly troublesome, particularly concrete, painful, always a little abstract. For example, you said, I can't pay this month's rent, there is no money in my pocket, this is the trouble in life, very specific, you have to find a way to solve it. But you say, my work is meaningless, it's not my dream job, it's a pain, but it seems abstract. significance? dream? Are you going to raise your salary? Or do you want to change jobs? We try to convert abstract suffering into concrete problems in life, but we also have to admit that some suffering is very abstract and cannot be converted. We look at the sister-in-law in "Three Sisters", Natasha, she also faces the troubles of life: she has a child, the child lives in a cold room, what to do? Just take over the sister-in-law's room, let the sister-in-law and sisters live in a room, and make room for their children. Slowly drive them away, let them marry, and occupy the whole house. The house is too noisy, someone wants to do a masquerade ball here, what to do? Tell them that the prom is canceled and that you are not welcome. The old servant was useless and blasted away. She always gives straightforward solutions to life's troubles. There is only the immediate trouble, no inner pain. It's a good attitude to life. Look at her husband, the eldest brother of the three sisters, Andrei, his pain is more abstract, look at his line -
Where have I been young, cheerful and intelligent, where have I been, my dreams and thoughts of perfect image, and the hopes that illuminated the present and the future? Why is it that life has only just begun and we become bored, tired, uninterested, lazy, indifferent, useless, unhappy? Our city, which has existed for two hundred years, has inhabited a hundred thousand inhabitants, but we have never seen a single person different from the rest, whether in the past or in the present, there has never been a saint, a scholar, a painter. These people only know how to eat, drink, sleep, and then, die. The reborn people, who also eat, drink, and sleep, use the most despicable slanders, vodka, cards, lawsuits, to call them monotonous changes in life; the wives deceive their husbands, and the husbands lie to themselves, and at the same time pretend that they have not seen anything, have heard nothing; this evil appearance has inevitably affected the children, and so the little sacred spark in the hearts of the children has slowly extinguished, and they have gradually become poor corpses similar to each other, exactly like their parents.
The happiness and freedom that Andre longed for was liberated from a lazy, lowly life, to change people's mental state, and as for the advice he could give, it seemed that he should not get married, and he would definitely regret it when he got married. Let's look at Irina, one of the three sisters, who dreamed of returning to Moscow, thinking that as soon as the environment changed, the pain would disappear. By the time of the fourth act of the play, she realized that she could not go back to Moscow, and she lamented that she had become old and ugly at the age of twenty-four, that she was planning to get married, that she had accepted the fate of fate, but would ask what her pain was for. In real life, we often have the illusion that a certain ideal life is in another time and space, either in Moscow, or in Beijing, or in the past, in the carefree time of youth, and then marriage and children were ruined, or in the future, as long as the obstacles in front of us are removed, endure for a few years, save some money, and then we can chase our dreams. We deny that the present moment, living elsewhere, in the future, in the past, is not in sight, but as we get older, we understand that life is constantly dealing with these troubles in front of us. Life has always been a rush.
What other abstract pain do we have? Do we still think that the overall living conditions of a city and a country need to be improved? Chekhov had a short story called "Gooseberry", in which the storyteller was named Ivan and his brother was named Nikolai, who worked hard every day and saved money to buy a farm in the countryside, raise some ducks, and plant gooseberry trees. In his forties, he finally realized his dream and bought a manor. The older brother Ivan went to the countryside to visit his younger brother Nikolai, and Nikolai took out a gooseberry for his brother to eat, and his eyes were full of tears, thinking that this gooseberry was a gift from God, but Ivan felt that this gooseberry was too unpalatable. Nikolai realized his dream and lived his good life, but his brother Ivan felt very heavy, and he said this—
I saw a happy man, whose dreams of heart had clearly been fulfilled, whose goals in life had been achieved, who had longed for something in his hands, who were satisfied with his fate and with himself. For some reason, usually when I think of people's happiness, I can't help but feel a little sad, but this time when I see happy people with my own eyes, I have a heavy feeling that is close to despair.
The younger brother Nicholas bought the manor, finally planted a gooseberry, and could not sleep at night, so he got out of bed and took a gooseberry to eat, and after eating another one, like a small rat. His brother Ivan felt desperate and miserable because of this, and he believed that the happy and satisfied people were generally insensitive, and they no longer realized that the current state of life needed to be improved, and that disasters would come sooner or later. In simple terms, Nikolai solves life's troubles and fulfills his dreams, while Ivan is entangled in abstract pain. To tell the truth, most of us, like Nikolai, longed for a garden of our own, for our little gooseberry.
What is the life you crave? Is it the here and now?
Editor | Zhang Jin
Introduction Proofreading | Zhao Lin
Source: Beijing News