" Beijing Literature " 70th Birthday Classic Review
Yu Hua's "A Kind of Reality" was published in "Beijing Literature", No. 1, 1988. Before that, Yu Hua had published "A Long Journey at Eighteen Years Old", which was highly praised by Mr. Li Tuo, the deputy editor-in-chief of "Beijing Literature" at the time, and attracted the attention of the literary world. That novel seems to have been included in middle school textbooks, and has had a wide-ranging impact.
"A Kind of Reality" should be said to be Yu Hua's strong challenge to the difficult problem of how to describe reality in literary works. It forms a dialogue with traditional realism. Traditional realism should reflect the essential laws of social history and grasp the essence of real life, but that essence is largely determined by the ideology of society. For example, Scar Literature must describe the historical essence of "the 'Ten Years of Unrest' was a disaster caused by the 'Gang of Four', and veteran cadres and intellectuals were infinitely loyal to the Party." The reform literature should create some reform heroes and write the pioneering spirit of forging ahead. Works like "Director Joe's Inauguration" and "New Star" all express these contents. In short, in the performance of real life, there is a strong social consciousness running through it. That is to say, there is a stipulation for social history and the reality of life, and literary works build narratives, describe characters, and grasp the essence of life toward this stipulation. By around 1988, there was a certain distance between literature and the dominant ideology of society. Wang Meng wrote an article at that time called "Literature: After Losing the Sensation Effect" ("Literature and Art Newspaper", January 30, 1988, signed "Yin Yu"), in fact, "literature has lost the sensational effect", that is, literature is no longer Starting from the ideological hotspot to start the narrative, it no longer responds to the ideological hotspot. Some writers go back to the subject themselves, to find their own ways and means of feeling the world.
In this historical change, Chinese literature has been further deeply influenced by world literature, especially European and American literature. In the historical process of reform and opening up, the influence of Soviet-Russian literature has been gradually replaced by European and American literature, especially by modernist literature. At that time, and Kafka and stimulated Chinese writers a lot: novels could still be written in this way, and writers could still understand reality in this way! Kafka's " Metamorphoses ", "Country Doctor", "Hungry Artist", etc., did not hesitate to describe the cruelty and absurdity of life. He regarded these as the essence of life and the truth of things. This is particularly stimulating for Chinese writers. Mo Yan and Yu Hua have both talked about "The Country Doctor". Mo Yan once said that the country doctor received a request for a visit on a snowy night, but he did not have a horse. But when he went into the yard, he saw three tall horses in the stable, and he put on the horses and went to the doctor. How did the horse get out? There is absolutely no reason. Yu Hua was surprised by the cruelty of "Country Doctor". Kafka describes the country doctor holding a lantern to see a rotten wound the size of a bowl on his patient's thigh. Kafka writes amazingly detailed. In the past, this was very ugly, horrible, and dirty, but Kafka took it as an extremely important aspect of life, and spent so much pen and ink to express it. This writing style and concept have a great influence on Chinese writers.
Back to Yu Hua's "A Kind of Reality", the novel is about a story that happened between children, but it affected the whole family and destroyed the whole family. The 4-year-old Pippi is the son of Shan Gang, and saw his cousin, who is only a few months old, the son of Shan Feng, sleeping in a cot. Pippi thought he was amused, and when he heard him cry, he slapped the child in the face after the adults had gone out.The child let out a loud cry, which both delighted and annoyed Pippi, so he went to pinch the child again, and the child cried even louder. Pippi was very angry. He picked up the child and accidentally dropped the child to the ground, killing him. When the adults came back, they found that Shan Feng and his wife were both crazy. Shan Gang wanted to pay 5,000 yuan to settle the matter, but Shan Feng refused. He asked Pippi to lick the blood of the child who fell to his death on the ground. Shan Gang and his wife said they would lick it, but Shan Feng disagreed, so he had to let Pippi lick it, and Pippi went to lick it. As a result, the mountain peak flew up and kicked Pippi to death. This downhill and his wife are also crazy. Then they get revenge on each other, and their method of revenge is unique. Shan Gang tied up the mountain, smeared boiled meat bones on the soles of his feet, and let the dog lick it. The dog licked the itch on the soles of his feet. This move is really vicious, and Shan Gang wants to get away with it. As a result, Shanfeng's wife sued Shangang, and he was shot. Yu Hua also wrote very meticulously about the process of his execution, starting with one shot and not dying, and then another shot. But Yu Hua was not reconciled, and finally wrote that Shangang was donated by Shanfeng's wife to the hospital for human autopsy, and the organs were dismembered.
As you can see, this is a tragedy caused by a child's mistake, and it poses an extreme challenge to family ethics. Children are ignorant and make mistakes. Brothers must kill each other cruelly to relieve their anger. Here, the brothers are blood relatives, but the children are their own direct blood relatives—even among blood relatives, there is such a distinction, which is actually quite surprising.We may have seen many novels writing stories about the opposite ends of brothers, but after reading "A Kind of Reality" many years later, we will still be surprised at how Yu Hua could see such limitations and complexity of human beings? The blood relationship between the brothers is far less than the blood relationship between the father and the son. But it's not as scary as having to kill his brother to relieve his anger. Shanfeng must know that kicking a dead skin is a fatal blow to Shangang. But in the grief of his son's death, he must kill Pippi to relieve his anger. That hill has only to take revenge. The novel also presents a channel for the rise of hatred. Shangang and Shanfeng's wife are both contributing to the flames, adding fuel to the fire. The hatred must be amplified to the point of maximum death before giving up. Shanfeng's wife finally let the doctor dismember Shangang, and she was relieved.
In this novel, the whole family ethic is completely destroyed by revenge. Revenge in the past was revenge for the family, here it is revenge within the family. The usual revenge is the murder of the father, but this is the murder of the son. The Shangang and Shanfeng brothers killed each other, in fact, such a revenge also killed their own father. Since both of them are their father's sons, this should be the last thing their father wants to see. Their mother, however, was a dull old man with little awareness of the family tragedy that happened. She only cared about her dying state, feeling that her internal organs were rotting. The family ethics was completely torn up by Yu Hua, everyone fell into madness, and rationality was stagnant and numb. The West has the Oedipus complex, the prototype of killing the father and marrying the mother. "A Kind of Reality" seems to be an interpretation of the killing motif in Chinese classical dramas. I wonder if Yu Hua has been influenced by local operas in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.There is a drama in the local drama in southern Fujian, which may have been brought over from Jiangsu and Zhejiang. It is called "Killing Zi Bao", and it tells the horror story of the father's mistake and the killing of the son. Professor Wu Yaozong of City University of Hong Kong once wrote an article analyzing Guo Moruo's early novels, and found that many Guo Moruo's novels wrote stories about killing children. The Consciousness of Killing Children and the Modernity of Novels," Guo Moruo Journal, No. 1, 2011). "A Kind of Reality" is about killing each other's sons, which can be said to be a slight deformation of the story of killing sons, but in fact it also adds a certain modernity experience. Yu Hua directly presents the things that should not happen in life with the most frightening details, and writes them so vividly and horribly. This is an important feature of the novel "A Kind of Reality", and it is also one of Yu Hua's novels. Basic style features. Another important feature of
A Kind of Reality, which I summarize as "coldly accurate". Yu Hua's meticulous performance of the death process, such as Pippi fell to death his cousin, Pippi was kicked to death by the mountain, Shangang tied up the mountain and let him be licked to death by a dog, and the process of being shot and dismembered by Shangang was very Cold. In Yu Hua's "Nineteen Eighty-Six", there is also such cruelty. It describes the detailed process of a history teacher slashing at himself. This should be regarded as the beginning of Yu Hua's writing of such cruelty. Later, Yu Hua also wrote a novel " classical love ", which also wrote about the process of dismembering people. That novel can be regarded as a parody of "Resurrection", but the ending is much more tragic. A Kind of Reality is Yu Hua's work that expresses this cruelty to the limit. Among the previous works, "April 3rd Incident" and "A Long Journey at Eighteen" have not been so extreme."A Kind of Reality" writes these cruel contents in the context of the collapse of family ethics. It is cruelty and cruelty, and it is cruel to the extreme.
Yu Hua's novels are so concise and accurate because they are cold. He doesn't want those superfluous things, just grasps the essence, and can explain the most frightening fact in life. I remember that in the winter of 1988, Yu Hua ran alone to the place where I lived in Wangjing Xibajianfang, where he reversed for a long time before he got there. When he arrived, he discussed a question with me: what is reality? He told me that he had just crossed the road, and he felt that it was not true that there were so many people walking around in front of him. Only when a person in the middle of the road was hit and killed by a car would definitely frighten him and leave a shocking impression on him. At that moment, he felt that the existence of life was real. Then he turned his head and pointed to the balcony opposite my window and said, I don't think that balcony is real, it's very pale. But if a girl jumped off the balcony, it would remain in my memory forever. He felt that the life experience was associated with a shock, with his psychic shock.
His idea is very cold, but I can understand. I said that if you sit across from me, I can feel you. This is the truth that ordinary people feel. As a writer, it is understandable that you should use your pen to write the truth that touches you the most. The author of "The Great Gatsby" Fitzgerald once said a sentence, to the effect that if it is not something that breaks your heart, why do you write it? From this point of view, there are indeed some writers who view the real problems of literature in this way. I can't say that all writers have to be like this, or that this is what literature is all about. You can write ordinary, and write calmly and plainly.But some writers just want to write about the kind of experience that hits his heart the most, and he feels that it is the most real. Yu Hua grasped this type of "truth" and wrote with a ruthless hand. If he started with a more ruthless hand, it would be concise and precise.
Critic Zhang Qinghua once said that Yu Hua is a writer who does subtraction. I think this is very accurate. After doing the subtraction, Yu Hua's language and feeling were sharpened, he just walked on the edge of the blade. Yu Hua wrote an article about McEwan, saying that McEwan is "a writer who walks on the edge of a knife". He greatly appreciates McEwan's concise and stern narrative style, and we can also say that Yu Hua is China's McEwan. In this way, most of Yu Hua's novels are relatively thin, so there is no need to write so thick. Many Chinese writers have to write very thickly, as if not writing so thickly would be unrealistic, and feel that novels have no weight, but Yu Hua dared to write thinly. You can see his "Alive", "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood", and " Shouting in the Drizzle" are quite short, but they are all very powerful.
Through "A Kind of Reality", we can also see the characteristics of Yu Hua's language description. His language actually expresses his distrust of the outside world. He always feels that there is a distance between language and external reality, and that it is difficult for language to express the object world. He must tenaciously approach the most essential reality in a state of distance. He wants to write down the most important feeling, the most important moment, and the most important result. Like in the novel, Pippi falls to the ground with his little cousin in his arms, the mountain kicks Pippi away, the mountain ties up the mountain, and so on. He felt that the others were useless, and none of the others could express the reality of the object world. What can overcome distance is the kind of language that hits the nail on the head.
It can be said that Yu Hua made a radical response in 1988 through "A Kind of Reality" to questions such as "how does literature describe reality" and "how does fiction express reality". It can also be said that he made an extreme experiment. This work is still very powerful when I read it to this day. It makes people feel the power of Yu Hua's writing, as well as the cruel and desperate and suffocating reality behind it.
December 29, 2019
