Always Flying Happily - Voynich,"The Bullfly"

The gadfly is the work of the Irish writer Ajel Lillian Voynich, depicting the life of the Italian revolutionary cattle fly.

The protagonist Arthur was born in a wealthy Italian merchant and is the illegitimate son of a wealthy merchant's wife and father Montagenelli. Arthur was discriminated against by his half-brother and sister-in-law, but did not know the truth. Arthur revered Father Montanelli and regarded him as a good teacher and father.

Italy was being invaded by Austria at the time, and Arthur decided to join the Young Italian Party in its struggle for national independence. After Montanelli was transferred, the new priest, Cady, tricked Arthur into revealing their actions and the names of his comrades in a confession, and he was arrested and imprisoned along with his comrades.

His girlfriend Jama mistakenly thought Arthur was informing and slapped him. At the same time, Arthur learned that he was an illegitimate child and fell into extreme pain, so he went into exile in South America. Thirteen years later, he returned to Italy and became an unwavering revolutionary, a "bullfly" of both culture and martial arts.

During one operation, he was arrested and imprisoned. Montanelli tried to persuade him to surrender on the condition of fatherhood and sonhood and renunciation of the bishop's position; the bullfly tried to use his tragic experience to make Montanelli choose between God and his son. But none of them would give up their faith. In the end, the cattle fly was righteous, and Montanelli was also insane and died of insanity.

The novel vividly reflects the struggle of the Italian revolutionaries against the Austrian rulers and for the independence and unification of the country in the 1830s, and successfully shaped the image of the revolutionary bullfly.

"The Bullfly" is set in Italy on the eve of the Revolution of 1848, which is related to her friend and spiritual mentor, the Russian Public Opinion Party revolutionary and populist writer Kravchinsky (formerly known as Sergei Mihajlovich Stepniac, Engels's friend, author of "Underground Russia", "The Robbery of the People's Opinionists", "The Cabin on the Volga River", etc.).

Although Voynich himself traveled through Italy in the footsteps of his spiritual mentor and met some of the revolutionaries of that year, he had no experience in the Italian revolutionary movement and had no personal understanding of Italian society, revolutionary organization and thought.

Voynich worked in the newspapers of the Russian exiles who remained in Britain, and befriended many exiled Russian intellectuals, and her husband was also a revolutionary. Her ideas were not so close to the Young Italian Party as they were to the Russian populists.

In "The Bullfly", there is the "Red Belt Society" led by Arthur's peasants waging armed struggle, and there are Party members such as Joma and Martini who have long been committed to the "non-bloody" struggle of organization and propaganda, and they have alliances and differences with the liberals and constitutionalists who advocate compromise with the "enlightened" Church.

In addition, the hour said that it also alluded to the "short knife society" with assassination and conspiracy as the main means, which almost moved all branches of the Russian narodniks to Italy.

The conversation between the revolutionary Bullfly and Joma and Martini repeatedly involves the means of revolution and the view of religion, which also originated from the Russian Narodniks, which to a certain extent makes up for the lack of experience of the author.

And those of us outsiders, if we do not have a special understanding of foreign history, read the author's description of the progressive forces in Italy, and do not feel too "crossed".

"The Bullfly" opens up a revolutionary narrative in which the revolution begins with the revolutionary's own unsatisfied love. The Oxfly and His Father, Lover, and Her Lover involves four people, namely Arthur (the cattle fly), Father Montagny, Joma (Mrs. Borah), and Martini. These four people are centered on "Arthur-Bullfly", and his dissatisfaction alone constitutes the dissatisfaction of the four.

Revolution, in the final analysis, is to make man man and to mend his dissatisfaction. Only from this point of view can we understand the final martyrdom of the cattle fly - this is precisely not the failure of the revolution, but the success of the revolution.

In Voynich's writing, the revolutionaries are pathological, a paradox, or sartre's "stickiness." The revolution begins with the revolutionary's own unsatisfied love desire, in order to repair his own actions.

However, if the revolutionaries want to continue the revolution, they must be absolutely abandoning their righteousness, which is getting farther and farther away from the original goal, and the inhumanity and irrationality of the revolution are magnified to the extreme.

Whether I am still alive or I am still dead, I am a bullfly, flying around happily, which may be the sentiment of a revolutionary!