I have been reminiscing about Lengshan for the past two days. I'm not interested in stories in novels. War and suffering are only the background of narrative dependence. I was thinking about Inman and Ida. Why can they love each other? They are obviously completely different. Ida is as beautiful and elegant as exotic flowers and plants, but she maintains an alienated and impatient attitude towards the secular world, and her words and deeds are always out of place. An eternal outsider, obsessed with fantasy, fragile and lonely, frozen with the world. She is a poem in itself. Inman is an independent and simple thinker in a small place. His life is simple, but his heart and eyes transcend the boundaries of cold mountains. He doesn't belong to a circle either. They are two lonely wanderers, longing for each other's warmth and light. This kind of love is forever old. Except for each other, the world is desolate for the mind.
Mentally homeless people are more likely to have a blind date with nature. In the process of growing up, it is often accompanied by escaping from the old dream of resisting our growing environment. But the road to escape often leads to unexpected sad places, and even years later it is discovered that it has returned to its original place. A cultural expert said that she was homeless because of her family, region and beliefs. She once believed that the life of an artistic visionary was essentially her home, but after a long search, she didn't "go home".
Restricted and bound by family, region and religion, I am homeless. I believe that I am suffering from heartbreaking alienation from a sacred group composed of radical artistic visionaries. I thought they were eager for me to join them. For most of my childhood, I dreamed of finding my way home. In my imagination, home is a completely open, new understanding and reconciliation place, where people can create freely.
"Power to Women" from Illegal Culture —— Bell Hooks's Rebellion Symbol
Inman and Ida are happy, although their life span is not long. They are spiritual relatives to each other. In those years when life existed in the wild, there were eternal moments. They cherish each other, reflect each other, and warm this life.
Speaking of "going home", many people can no longer really go home when they are adults and enjoy the warmth, relaxation, happiness and harmony of going home. Times change, youth and aging, family conflicts, relatives are often emotionally close but alienated. Going home is emotional, but it is also sad.
May we have a "home" to go back to mentally and emotionally.
Two:
This is a beam of light from an era that has long since passed away, awakening people's universal piety and awe of literature. Cold Mountain should enlighten our writers: If a person still has faith in literary writing, what attitude should he adhere to.
As usual, Lengshan has a novel before a film, which is adapted from a novel. But like many people, I didn't know there was such a novel until I watched the DVD, so I went to find it. Although Nicole Kidman and other famous actors are excellent in acting, photography and music, I want to say that if you give up reading novels because you know the outline of the story on DVD, it will be a considerable loss, and it is not an exaggeration to say that you are buying gifts. The difference between the two is like tasting a delicious food in person and watching the host of the TV food channel enjoy himself in front of the camera.
The content of the novel is easier to summarize. According to the family story handed down from generation to generation from his great-grandfather, the author charles fraser tells the story of Inman, a wounded Confederate soldier, who fled the battlefield for love and returned to his hometown and his lover Ida before the war. This theme is reminiscent of Homer's epic Odyssey, which is a basic theme of western literature. Parallel to Inman's trip home, another narrative clue revolves around Ada. With the help of Ruby, a brave and tenacious young girl, she tried to revive the abandoned farm left by her father's death. Inman's lonely and miserable long journey is intertwined with Ada's struggle, and their long-term isolated life is coming to an end.
Strictly speaking, as far as this novel is concerned, although the story is attractive, it is not very complicated and tortuous. Storytelling is only one dimension at most, far from covering its full value. More treasures are beyond the story. They are hidden in the text of the novel, independent and self-sufficient. It is a combination of charm, rhythm and artistic conception of language. They are things that are difficult to express in film language. They must be seen and felt through quiet reading, deep immersion of soul and active participation of imagination. This is a huge and profound theme about nature, life, love and death, which has very rich meanings.
But I don't want to talk about it here. I only try to do some rough "technical analysis" at the level of text reading, and briefly introduce the meticulous and meticulous work at the micro level. It is on these basic elements that it proves the qualities that an excellent literary work should possess.
Language is full of texture, picture sense and rich symbolic meaning at the same time.
This quality can be seen in a few random places in the novel.
This is the beginning of the novel. Ida hasn't been freed from the pain of losing her father. She is confused about her future:
"Often, she raised her eyes from the book, swept across the fields, crossed the misty mountains, and looked at the distant cold mountains and towering blue mountains. Sitting in a chair and looking out, you can find out all the main colors and patterns corresponding to her current mood. One summer, looking out of the window usually gives people a feeling of gloom and depression. The humid air floating in the window is full of corruption and growth, and it is confused and uncertain in front of you. It feels like looking into the distance through a telescope. The influence of moisture on eyesight is like inferior lenses, which makes the distance and height increase, and the sense of space changes at any time. Through this window, Ida experienced various forms of moisture visible to the naked eye-thin fog, dense fog in the valley, scattered clouds hanging on the hillside of a cold mountain, and gray rain that kept pouring down all day, hanging in the sky like a broken hemp rope. "
This is the description of the first physical love between two lovers after Inman finally found Ada:
"She turned her back on Inman, nervous and embarrassed. Then, she took off her clothes, held them on her chest and turned to Inman. Inman wrapped the blanket around her waist and sat up. All along, he lived like a dead man, and now life is unfolding in front of him, within reach. He leaned forward, pulled the clothes out of her hand and pulled her to his side. He put his palm on one side of her thigh, then slid his hand to her waist, put his forearm on her hip, and touched the shallow pit of her lower back with his fingertips. His fingertips moved upward, touching her spinal segment by segment. He stroked the inside of her arm and slid his hand to her side until her hips became smooth. He lowered his head to her soft abdomen. Then he kissed there. She smelled like chestnut smoke. He pulled her to his side and hugged and hugged. She put a hand on the back of his neck to make him stick to herself more tightly, and then she put her white arm around him as if forever. "
This is a passage at the end of the novel when Inman was shot:
"She ran to the men lying on the ground and looked at them one by one. Finally, she found Inman at a certain distance from them. She sat down and held him in her lap. He wanted to talk, but she motioned for him to be quiet. Sometimes he is awake and sometimes he is in a coma. He had a brilliant dream about his hometown. A cool spring water gushed from crevices, black land and towering old trees. In his dream, time seems to appear at the same time, and all the seasons overlap. There are many fruits on the apple tree. Strangely, the flowers on the tree are still in bloom, and the edge of spring is frozen. Okra has yellow and chestnut flowers. Maple leaves are as red as October, there are spikes on the corn tips, chairs full of things are dragged to the fireplace in the living room, pumpkins are shining in the fields, laurel trees are crawling all over the hillside, impatiens are arranged in ditches, white flowers are blooming on dogwood, and purple flowers are trembling on bauhinia. Everything comes together. There are white oak trees, flocks of crows, or at least the souls of crows, dancing and singing on the high branches. "
How long has it been? We have alienated this kind of language full of texture, picture sense and rich symbolic meaning. Literature is the art of language-this is the most basic and self-evident common sense, but in recent years it has often been regarded as a major proposition and seriously discussed on various occasions. The reason is that too many works are shaking this cognition. In the works of many writers and even famous writers, we have read so many rough, grandiose, mixed, blunt, ambiguous and unrestrained works. Works like Cold Mountain, with calm narration and delicate description, set up a vivid elevation angle for us, but at the same time, it also makes us feel more and more anxious about the lack of our literary character.
He devoted his life to writing this novel.
To get into that state, a writer needs considerable literary talent, but more importantly, an attitude. In the final analysis, only with that attitude can we finally acquire that ability. This is a quality forged by piety, patience, meticulousness, tenacity and profound belief in labor.
Time, as an important measure, confirms this point. This 300,000-word novel took the author Fraser seven years. He lives in the mountains of North Carolina, raising horses for a living with his wife and daughter, like a hermit. He bathes in the morning sun and sunset every day, breathes the breath of forests and grasslands, and truly blends into nature from body to soul. Mountains and rivers, streams, the sky and the earth surround him all the time, making him feel the rhythm of nature.
Even though he is so familiar with his surroundings, he still dares not write easily. Like some of us writers, he likes to flatter and take shortcuts, and often confuses the past where he is not sure. He also called it "rational imagination" and "transcendental writing". In an interview, the writer said that he spent a lot of time recording the ecological environment in the mountains of North Carolina: wild plants, crops, fruit trees and seasonal changes. In order to find out the habit of a plant, he consulted many professional books. Therefore, every part, every detail, everyone's clothing and expression, every leaf, every rock and every tree in his works are accurate, delicate and vivid, with a carved texture, which makes people feel that they can directly pick up a brush to draw. The whole work is fine and solid, just like those famous buildings in the west that have spanned centuries. Each pillar and arch coupon is made of carefully selected solid stone. In the long construction process, those architects and craftsmen forged them into artistic structures that will not be lost in time with their pious attitude and requirements for Excellence.
In seven years, the author devoted his life to writing this novel, sacrificing a lot of fun in life and probably neglecting his responsibilities to his family, which made his wife unbearable and eventually divorced him. Let's just say that his writing journey was long and arduous, comparable to Inman's homecoming.
Opening the key to Alibaba's treasure house is still a simple page turning action.
The story surrounding the creation process of this work conveys patience, meticulousness and tenacity, which seems like a myth to many writers today. It seems that they should only happen in an older age. As far as today is concerned, they have become an inappropriate behavior, an action that people talk about but don't intend to follow seriously-because the price paid is too high. In this era, only "efficiency" as the leading factor, advocating speed aesthetics, writing fast and producing high output are the skills, because it seems that only in this way can we expect to gain some share from the limited attention of readers. More definitely, only in this way can it be cost-effective in terms of economic benefits. What we compare is the number of words, the number of publications, and the income from remuneration for manuscripts, which is a dimension centered on quantity. In this case, few people are willing to spend seven years, meticulous, and write a work of 300,000 words. Driven by the hand of the market, everyone worked hard and enjoyed it. I once saw a woman writer write an article, claiming that she wrote several long stories and how many short stories a year. At the same time, she did not delay the trip at home and abroad, and her words were full of self-satisfaction.
But what does this mean? Literature has its own scale, which compares with the sharp eyes of writers, the depth of life exploration and the weight and thickness of the soul. Those things that deviate from this goal, although they may be popular for a while because they cater to some floating and short-lived concerns in society, may bring good economic benefits to writers, but they will only be a cloud in the sky and a ripple on the water.
Cultivate and then reap, pay and then talk about return. This rule covers a wide range of life and is also applicable to writing. Value is the internal condensation of labor. If you make a lot of efforts, you will have more power to infect and enlighten people. Opportunism will never be a masterpiece. Many writers have no patience to observe things, including their own hearts, so it is difficult to capture the rhythm of the soul and describe the accurate face of life. Pages are often full of specious feelings and suspicious details. In this way, it is naturally difficult to grasp the essence of existence and enter its deepest meaning. This will not only lose the trust of readers, but also be irresponsible to yourself. There is a folk proverb: a basket of rotten peaches is not as good as a fresh peach. When you complain that your work is ignored by readers, you might as well change your role and think about this sentence. After all, God is just. At this point, Lengshan is also the most convincing example. An obscure subject, an unknown author living in the corner of a mountain, can become famous overnight and be invincible, relying on the inherent artistic charm of his works. Even from the market point of view, it has made great returns, as evidenced by its long-term ranking on the best-selling list. "Business Times" is used to the sham as the genuine, and a large number of fake and shoddy goods are boasted, but as long as they are real pearls, they will always shine, so don't worry about being covered up for a long time.
Regrettably, this work was born at an untimely time, in an environment where images replaced words and became the darling of the times. People don't have enough patience to taste the charm of words. Therefore, although this book has many characteristics of famous works, it has no chance to enjoy the glory that many famous works in history once enjoyed. This makes sense. If it is not made into a movie, it won the American Book Award, but it is hard for ordinary readers to see it. This is an era of images, and the screen has become an invincible weapon in the world. A few scholars' popular explanations of literature and history in CCTV can set off a rolling upsurge of reading traditional classics. But everything has its own rules. No matter how successful the film Cold Mountain is, it can't convey the charm and charm contained in literary language. They are unique and difficult to translate. Opening the key to Alibaba's treasure house is still a simple page turning action.
Compared with the glory that once existed in history, although the status and influence of literature today can no longer be compared, as long as literature still exists, there will still be a yardstick that transcends the times, so the works will still be evaluated. There will always be a few works, which became the literary peak of that era by virtue of their excellent quality, and had many admirers at that time, especially in later generations. Cold mountain should belong to this category. At present, in addition to its text value, I think the exemplary role of Cold Mountain lies in its re-establishment and emphasis on a writing attitude. This is a beam of light from an era that has long since passed away, awakening people's universal piety and awe of literature. Cold Mountain should enlighten our writers: If a person still has faith in literary writing, what attitude should he adhere to.
Three:
My opinion has always been that movies are basically not as good as books. It is said that this is an epic with the same name as Gone with the Wind. The loneliness that pervades the whole book has an inexplicable desolation.
When the war broke out, people began to find that they would no longer be like themselves.
Ada wrote 103 selfish letters, but Inman, who was displaced in the war, turned himself into a deserter who wanted to go home by himself because he only received three letters, making him wander like a beast in the war, but did not look back. Even when he returned to the original cold mountain, he had become numb, cruel, fragile and no longer handsome and healthy; Ada, who has been waiting for her, has turned into sensitive, no longer elegant, no longer the elegant Ada who plays the piano, but has become surprisingly strong and brave. Although the war destroyed everything, when Inman was shot and lying in the snow, he said his last words to Ida lying on him: "I'm back." Then the crow flew, and it was over.
Cold Mountain has finally recovered its former tranquility, just like a long time ago, and its appearance is almost as beautiful as before. However, without Inman, Ada lived well, and the life before the war no longer belonged to her. She is as brave and strong as she has been waiting for. She knows that Inman has been walking in the direction of Lengshan without hesitation.
The strength of struggle in difficulties, the light of faith in the darkness.
The war changed the original face of the world. After all this, people can never go back to their original lives. A few years later, when the world suddenly becomes as beautiful as an illusion, people with wheat-colored skin will still have scars in their hearts exposed to the sun, sometimes aching, reminding us that we have lost too much and hope that everything will be fine in the future.
I remember when I was watching the movie Cold Mountain, I saw this scene:
The old lady who saved Inman gently stroked a snow-white goat and said, "Goats are the best companions of human beings. They give you goat milk to comfort you. " As he spoke, he cut neatly into the goat's neck with a sharp knife in his right hand. Sheep blood gurgled out and dropped a bowl. The little white animal lay soft and didn't even moan. The old lady put the sheep's blood aside and reached out to continue stroking the goat's head. "You are really a beauty." She said. The expression and tone are sincere love.
Perhaps, time has taken away eternity, and eternity has taken away all the beauty and glory of our world, so all that remains is loneliness.
Four:
My hometown is the jujube stone written by Xiao Gan, the stamps in the poem, the garden of Lu Xun's childhood, the Beiping city of Lin, the border town of Shen Congwen, and the Chun 'an that Meijun dreamed of. Compared with young wanderers who run away from home, their attachment to their hometown is often seen in various masterpieces. However, people's emotional expression of hometown, that is, native land, is often weakened into a simple description of the scenery. At first glance, there is always a sense of indifference. Cold Mountain, as an award-winning work of 1997 American National Book Award, successfully got rid of this spell, shattered and refined the author's feelings for his homeland, and appeared in his works like a drizzle.
I don't know why, maybe it's influenced by the movie of the same name. A large number of introductions and book reviews interpret Cold Mountain as a love epic. However, in my opinion, Cold Mountain is a story about home, life, hope and struggle. It expresses the author's feelings for the land and clarifies the author's attitude towards life. Secondly, it reflects the cruelty of war and the immortality of love.
Cold Mountain is set in North Carolina during the Civil War and developed in two main lines. One is Inman, a deserter from the southern army, who went through hardships to return to her hometown, and the other is Ida, a rich girl, who rebuilt her home with the help of Ruby, a hardworking and poor girl. No matter how the author exaggerates the cruelty of the war and Inman's physical and mental injuries, or even borrows a deserter's words, "I chose to join the army at the beginning, but now my choice has changed", it cannot excuse Inman's behavior. However, the behavior that must be responsible has been understood by me in the author's slow exposition. As a person, Inman has the nature of seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages. When he saw Vichy trying to kill Laura, Inman knew instinctively that he had to leave because of his desertion. However, his sense of justice got him into trouble and saved Laura. What impressed me deeply was that he skipped Grandma Laura's breakfast at Laura's house, which was the only time Inman didn't take the initiative to pay the bill-anyway, he saved Laura's life and his behavior was enough to make up for the meal. After resisting the fierce northern army with fewer enemies and helping the lonely young widow Sarah, Inman also had the idea of staying and living with Sarah, which was somewhat a betrayal of Ida's spirit, although he finally chose to leave. It is not difficult to see that Inman is not a standard tough guy image. He can only be regarded as a good man-a good man of flesh and blood. Everything he did was based on his nature, which was the simplest nature of these people, which made Inman choose to leave the army and flee to Lengshan. Rough mountain road, long journey, from summer to winter, across the cold and heat, Inman had to drag his injured body and rely on his feet to complete every step. Apart from the lack of food and the danger of being hunted anytime and anywhere, Inman's pain is beyond words. In the face of all this, apart from living in the mountains since childhood and the field life experience entrusted to him by Lengshan, the only thing that can support him to move on is his wings and beliefs. The author grasps this point skillfully, and sets off Inman's strong belief by describing the harsh environment, thus depicting the beauty of his homeland, and describes the author's own yearning for a quiet life in the cold mountains with what Inman saw, heard and thought.
The author's other "megaphone" is Ruby, a girl from a poor family. Like Inman, she was born and raised in a cold mountain area. This honest but sensible handsome girl, hard-working and persistent, is more popular with me than the heroine Ida. Because of her experience, she grew up in the mountains almost like a "wild child", and because of this, she understood and understood Lengshan. This is biased to some extent, but in a certain period-wartime, everything is true. It's hard to imagine that Ada's life would be desperate without Ruby. A good girl whose fingers have never moved at all has been reading, drawing and playing the piano all her life. So, when her father died suddenly and the employees were driven away by the war, she couldn't cope with everything on the farm at all. Survival is before us. With Ruby's help, from learning to stir butter to going to farmland without books, from chopping wood and plowing to selling pianos, from working passively under Ruby's supervision to striving for independence, from leaving the carriage to leaving a back road for herself to making up my mind to live in Lengshan, Ida's experience not only reflects foreigners' love for Lengshan, but also can be regarded as a growth history from a little girl to a woman. The former is described by the author to show his love for Lengshan, while the latter is more sought after by himself. Maybe it has something to do with my own experience. Ida's growth is far more attractive to me than Inman's journey. I have to admit that IDA has taught me a lot. She taught me how to enjoy life while working and housework, and also let me know that I should shoulder housework and responsibilities while enjoying life. Ruby has also grown and improved. Under the influence of IDA, the illiterate girl slowly began to love books and stories. Before going out to work, she turned to show Ada a book before leaving. Writing here, I have vaguely realized a compromise thought similar to China's Confucianism, and realized the proper balance between life and existence. Just like Grandma Yang, she loves sheep. I believe she touched the lamb out of love. However, the next step is a sudden knife-Grandma Yang loves sheep, but she also needs these sheep to live.
Perhaps because of the author's weakening of love, I didn't particularly care about Inman's death in the end. I had to leave, only because he returned to my hometown for a few days. I feel a little regret, because he really got Ada's love and is about to fall into the arms of death. However, this faint regret was completely relieved and relieved after seeing that Ada gave birth to Inman's child, Ruby forgave and accepted Stebrod, and lived happily with several children. This also confirms what Grandma Yang said-pain is in our hearts, unlike happiness, it won't stay for a long time. This is a gift from God and a sign that he cares about us. In Cold Mountain, Grandma Yang is an unborn philosopher.
After reading it, I feel that Cold Mountain and The Reader are somewhat similar, both of which are about war and love, but the main purpose of writing is neither love nor war. A faint feeling is dissolved in the book, which not only needs to be read slowly and experienced carefully, but also the rich feeling is difficult to summarize and describe. If you want to understand beauty, you must read it yourself.