This year, the "first of the top 100 English novels" " Ulysses " celebrated its 100th anniversary of its publication. Looking back at 1922, there seems to be nothing more sensational than the publication of "Ulysses". In February, with the strong help of the famous Shakespeare Bookstore owner Sylvia Bichi , the famous James Joyce , the first time this masterpiece of James Joyce was released in a complete version. This batch of Ulysses published by Shakespeare Bookstore has a total of 1,000 volumes, each numbered from 1 to 1,000, of which No. 1-100 is accompanied by the author's signature. Within one month, the first 1,000 volumes of "Ulysses" wrapped in a blue-green cover were sold out.
"Ulysses" tops the list of many of the "greatest English novels of the 20th century". Because in the English-speaking world in 1922, in an era when novels were still dominated by traditional narrative and social realism, the emergence of "Ulysses" allowed readers at that time to see what a novel that was unprecedented in terms of style, scale and ambition. It is reported that there are more than 300 academic monographs triggered by it in today's world that try to interpret this novel.
is a sharp comparison with this. Some comments say that "the average IQ readers may get nothing from it." In fact, as early as the same year that "Ulysses" was published, someone predicted that "no 10 out of 100 men and women could finish reading "Ulysses". Indeed, this is a book that few people will try to read, fewer people will finish, and fewer people will reread. No one can tell what exactly Ulysses wrote. It is excellent stream of consciousness literature : storyline, the protagonist's behavior, thoughts, and memories, which are spliced into a whole novel. There is no obvious hint when changing perspectives between different characters. This is the most technical ambition of Joyce . What's even more incredible is that this novel with more than 700 pages (the Chinese translation is as thick as more than 1,000 pages) only wrote one day on June 16, 1904 - to be precise, what happened in 18 hours. These all constitute its unique attraction, attracting the greatest minds alongside Joyce: such as Carl Jung, the leader of psychoanalysis, the poet T.S. Eliot, the author of "Waiting for Godot", Samuel Beckett, the British female writer Virginia Woolf, and Simone de Beauvoir are all curious about this strange work.
Dublin:The first novel has been like this Describing a city in detail
When it comes to "Ulysses", which is regarded as the pinnacle of modern English, people will think of the compassionate but seemingly cowardly Bloom, his plump and coquettish wife Molly, and the quick and sharp Stephen, but I think that the reason why "Ulysses" can become a masterpiece has been passed down for a hundred years but still cannot be read, because there is also a fourth protagonist in the book - if we can put aside our opinion on the concept of "protagonist" - it is the ancient and modern city of Dublin.
Before Joyce, no novel described a city in detail like "Ulysses": in addition to private spaces such as houses or castles rented as houses, there are also closed public spaces such as schools, bars, libraries, newspapers, bathhouses, and hospitals, as well as open public spaces such as beachfronts, cemeteries, streets, and mobile sales stalls; not only have sets as distinctive spaces, but also vivid daily activities, and distinctive dynamic group portraits. These literary spaces written by Joyce are not static objects and spaces such as corners, drawers, boxes, bird's nests, etc., as Bashra calls them, but the "spiritual atmosphere" with the light, shadow, taste and sound of urban life, and the life space full of fireworks on earth and urban dynamic dramas. No wonder Joyce also includes the organ column when telling his friend Stuart Gilbert's main imagery and techniques in each chapter of "Ulysses", because the Dublin in his works is alive.
From Chapter 4, the author's brushstrokes enter Dublin city from the suburbs. Each chapter corresponds to different human organs such as kidneys, genitals, heart, lungs, esophagus, brain, etc. In Joyce's eyes, Dublin is not only a city, but also a huge life form.Later in " Finnegan's Wake ", Joyce expanded this life form to the suburbs of Dublin. When he described the protagonist HCE as a giant, his limbs were Fengrass in the northwest of Dublin, Pamploch in the southeastern suburb (later included in the jurisdiction of Dublin City ), the neighborhood of Kelmayborg in the southwest of Dublin and the northeastern suburb of Baldoir. At this point, the giant living body in Dublin officially entered the literary portrait corridor as the protagonist.
Joyce's image of Dublin is mainly in Chapter 10, and of course it also spreads many chapters in the book like the protagonist Bloom. This chapter ten, named "The Swimming Rocks", is a thrilling image shaping of space and space. It is called "the extreme development of the paradigm of Flaubert" by Russian writer Nabokov. It is said to be "extreme" because in Flaubert's "H Madame Bovary ", the famous reciprocity narrative only involves two scenes upstairs and downstairs, while "The Swimming Rocks" consists of 19 pictures. These 19 pictures are no longer dominated by the previous protagonist Bloom or Stephen, but each scene has its own main and secondary characters, including the governor, priest, politician, businessman, drunkard, beggar, teacher, racer, young people having sex, college students wandering, children buying food... The 19 pictures are put together, like a picture of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival", where Bloom, Stephen and Molly all appear, but they are just a wave in the abortion, and Molly even has only one arm. No Dubliner here can be the protagonist, because this protagonist is Dublin itself.
However, don't think that these 19 images are just 19 bashra-like static spaces, or fragments of the puzzle game. Many of these 19 pictures are complex spaces paralleled by different spaces, and these pictures are all moving. In addition, what makes readers feel more dazzling is that people and things will walk from one picture to another. In the fourth picture, a leaflet with the words "Ilia is here" floated from the ring bridge along the Lifei River to the customs terminal in the sixth picture, and then drifted to George's terminal in the seventh picture. This is more like the central monitoring system consisting of multiple screens that are only available today. Different small screens form large city pictures. People on one screen may appear in another screen.
This chapter of Joyce is even more complicated than today's multi-screen videos: not only has three-dimensional space, but also three-dimensional time, because these 19 pictures do not occur in the order of time passage. In the first picture, Father Kangmi completed the trip across Dublin, but in the second, fourth, twelve and thirteen pictures, he would still be a figure in the parallel space to complete a certain action he had done in the first picture. In this way, these connected people and things are like bonds, combining the 19 time and space in motion together to become the "Dublin giant" with three-dimensional time and space.
Of course, Joyce made Homer epic " Odysseuji " an implicit but parallel narrative in "Ulysses", allowing the roaming of ancient and modern wanderers to be both a journey of space and time, and is also a three-dimensional image of a giant in time and space in weaving Dublin.
Twin Cities: Dublin in reality and Dublin in novels
According to Joyce's famous biographer Ehrman, Joyce liked to wander around the streets and alleys of Dublin when he was young. In the writer's earlier novel " Portrait of a Young Artist ", Joyce revealed that he had been accustomed to "a life wandering around", and the "everywhere" here refers to the various parts of Dublin. In "Portrait of a Young Artist", Joyce wrote: "Just just as the twilight of autumn that was drifting with misty years ago attracted him to walk on the silent avenue of Brock, the mist of autumn has now attracted him to wander around the streets." Brock is a suburb in southeastern Dublin, where Joyce lived aged 10-11. In fact, Joyce's father was forced to move everywhere due to financial reasons.According to statistics, Joyce left Dublin at the age of 22. Before that, he lived in Dublin for as many as 16 places, which made him familiar with every corner of the city as if he was going home. Additionally, in the unpublished novel The Hero Stephen, Joyce describes his obsession with words. He said, "not only did he find words that could be put into his treasure house in Scott, but he found them in the shops, in advertisements, and in the mouths of people walking around." It can be seen that for Joyce, Dublin is not only a space for life, but also a place for his spiritual worlds such as emotions and literature.
Indeed, Dublin is a city that can evoke emotions. But it does not evoke legendary history and poet chanting like Luoyang . The geographical landscape of Dublin itself has a convincing charm, especially the Lifi River that runs across the city.
In 2004, I went to Dublin for the first time. After flying tonight, I checked into the hotel on Daim Street, and I could no longer tell the difference between the east, west, south and north. But the next morning, after walking a few steps, I saw the Liffe River that ran across Dublin in the morning light, and time and space immediately became clear. The water of the Life River is like a black gem. Although it is opaque, it is extremely clear and flowing endlessly, and it can't be seen at a glance. The obvious signs of fluctuations and tides on the high embankments on both sides, the white seagulls that perch or fly, and the fresh and cool sea breeze will make people realize that the sea is close at hand. This may be why Joyce chose the flyer drifting in the Liffey River as a sign of time in Ulysses, and why Joyce's last book, Finnegan's Wake, began with the Liffey River and ended at the Liffey River. This river that combines the tenderness of women and the coldness of men has become a symbol of the eternal time that revolves around and the continuous flow of human consciousness.
There are 18 bridges on the Liffe River. Among them, four bridges are related to literature. The three are directly named after the poet, namely the Becket Bridge, the O'Casey Bridge and the Joyce Bridge. In addition, there is a bridge in the suburbs of the city, namely the Hannah Livia Bridge. Hannah Livia Folulabel is the heroine of Joyce's "Fennigan's Wake" and the embodiment of Liffe River. Joyce Bridge is named after a building beside the bridge, namely Joyce House, where the dinner in Joyce's famous short story "The Dead" takes place. In addition, there is a church next to the Liffe River related to Joyce, which is the church of Adam and Eve, now known as the Church of Francis. In the opening sentence of "Fennigan's Wake", the Liffe River "flows through the House of Adam and Eve", which refers to this. Obviously, Joyce intends to connect the Lifei River to the long history of mankind and become a temporal geographical space.
"Ulysses" is undoubtedly qualified to boast about shaping a city in literary language. In Joyce's own words, if Dublin City is destroyed, people can completely recreate a Dublin according to his novel. American scholar Bloom once said, "If London is Shakespeare and Dickens, then Dublin is Joyce." It is precisely because of Joyce's meticulous record of the streets, buildings and citizens' lives in the book that the city has become a pilgrimage place for literary lovers around the world. Now in Dublin, there is even a tour route to Dublin with Ulysses, called Ulysses Tour. The tour guide will take tourists to read "Ulysses" while enjoying the scenery of Dublin.
Duo: The hustle and bustle of Dublin and the beating of Ulysses
It can be said that it was not until the 19th century that European and American literature began to explore how to express urban life. Before this, the literary background was mainly countryside, manor, family or palace, and interpersonal relationships were relatively close. Of course, some sensitive writers, such as Balzac , realized the changes in interpersonal relationships brought about by cities very early. The old man Gao in " Gao Lao Man " has moved into a boarding apartment and is in the society to support his elderly care. The tragic ending of Old Man Gao is that although he accepted a retirement apartment, his emotional style is still the traditional rural family bond.Therefore, when the social relationship between his two daughters has changed, he became a victim who still holds traditional emotions under changing social conditions.
Cities, especially cities, have shifted from relying on family mutual assistance to relying on social services, and life relationships have shifted from being limited to fixed groups to being a dual flow of self and others. The status of an individual depends more on his own social value rather than his bloodline and origin. Joyce's important contribution is that he has long realized from the principles of truth and expression of form that traditional literary forms can no longer shape the image of the city. Therefore, Ulysses must break the pattern of love-hate entanglement between one person or a limited number of people, and write about the real people coming and going and the hustle and bustle of the city.
In fact, before Joyce, the futurist leader Marinetti pointed out that with the development of technology and cities, human life has undergone earth-shaking changes. "A ordinary person can take a day's train from a lifeless small city with an empty square (where the sun, dust and wind are quietly playing) to a large capital full of lights, dancing people and shouting loudly."
Dublin is the "capital" of Ireland. Although it was a British colony at that time, it could only be regarded as the capital. However, both are capital in English, and the distinction is mainly political. At that time, Dublin had a population of only 404,400 (statistics in 1911), but considering the size of the city at that time, some studies pointed out that the density of Dublin's permanent population at that time was even higher than that of today's Dublin. Cars and carriages are walking together on the street, and the hawking of 彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩彩� The unique white noise in modern society may not be as good as today's cities, but for people who have just entered urban life, the sound is more harsh and the sense of city is more vivid. There are more than 80 characters in "Ulysses", not to mention those mentioned. At that time, in many works with cities as the background, there were probably only a handful of people moving in, while in "Ulysses", there were so many people that people could hardly remember. At the same time, the protagonist walks among them but rarely acts, and is more like a bystander than an acter. It is this dazzling crowd portrait, the protagonist's wanderer posture, which shows the truth of urban life better than traditional love, hate and affection: he passes by many people every day, but he is the lonely person in the crowd.
Benjamin keenly noticed in " Lyric Poet in the Age of Developed Capitalism" that from the 19th century, the urban masses began to highlight, "like the saints depicted in medieval paintings, they also hope that they can be portrayed in contemporary novels." Baudelaire was the first poet to portray people in the city. Benjamin accurately captured the performance of modern cities in Baudelaire's " Flower of Evil " and analyzed them in the book, which is the images of Baudelaire's wanderers, plotters, idle people, poets, scavengers, drunkards, etc.
The city crowd of Ulysses also contains a large number of wanderers, plotters, idle people, poets and drunks. For example, a man named Farrell just wanders the streets and has no conversation with the owner Bloom or others. And he always walks along the curb, "always walking outside the telephone pole", that is, keeping a distance from passers-by. His image is like a ghost, thin and skinny, occupying very little space, and the umbrellas and canes hanging on his arms are still shaking with his steps. Interestingly, such a trivial city wanderer, Joyce gave him the longest name in the book: Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell. Such names generally come from a noble family with a long history and need to remember their ancestors, but Joyce did not mention any of Farrell's relatives, nor did he accompany him. He wandered alone in the city like a ghost, with history but not remembered, as Baudelaire said: “In this bad and chaotic world, I lost myself and was pushed forward in a daze by the crowd.Like an exhausted person, I no longer look back on those meaningful years. This made people extremely disappointed and regretful, with only commotion and nothing else appeared before him - neither revelation nor pain. "
Joyce recorded with a long name not Farrell's family history, but with such a solemn name, so that the city wanderers would present their profound meaning in the contemporary world.
In 2015, the Scottish Tron Theater once went to Shanghai to perform the stage play "Ulysses". The poster is the famous Molly who was thinking about it on the bed, but it left the deepest impression on me It was a group of people drinking and chatting at the "skinned" food stall at 1 a.m., which corresponds to Chapter 16 of the original novel. At that moment, the breath of Dublin once again hits the face, and the actors spread the expressions of Dublin citizens, either arrogant, restrained, self-righteous, or boastful, on the stage through expressions, bodies and language. Although many lines are taken from novels, the actors' performances make these familiar The words and sentences have sounds, colors and tastes, which make me involuntarily recall the Irish bars at midnight, the jingle of cups, the buzz of chatter, and the desire, vanity, greed and wisdom that surges. Then, I suddenly realized that the seemingly scattered Chapter 16 is the clever stroke of Dublin city life! Only a genius like Joyce dares, and can imagine, in Chapter 15, Bloom's brothel The highest point of fantasy is that when most writers choose to come to an abrupt end, a chapter of the chatter is added, just like the sea retreats again after the turbulent waves, and returns to the deep, deep, and black gem-like whispers of the Life River, just like the famous poem by Pound : "Faces appear in the crowd, and petals on the dark wet branches."
Author: Dai Congrong Professor of the Chinese Department of Fudan University and translator of Joyce's "Fennigan's Wake" Chinese version
Planning: Chen Xihan
Editor: Xu Luming
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