At this moment, I overheard an American folk song 100 years ago. I was deeply moved by its bleak meaning and decided to write a book. So, 1992, he published the book "Living".
This book tells the story of an old man named Fu Gui. He has been hit hard by life, but he is still strong. Fu Gui was originally a playboy addicted to gambling. He lost all his money, which made his father very angry. He can only live the life of an ordinary farmer honestly. In his life, due to natural and man-made disasters and other reasons, all his relatives have left him one after another, and he can only live alone with an old cow in his later years. Although life is so sad, he is still tenacious and open-minded, which makes people feel sad.
The book "To Be Alive" expresses the thinking about the courage and meaning of life and touches the hearts of countless readers. Living won the Italian Greenzana Carver Literature Award in 1998 and the China Book Special Contribution Award in 2005 for its outstanding achievements. Alive and another work by Yu Hua, Xu Sanguan Selling Blood, were also selected by hundreds of critics and literary editors as the ten most influential works in the 1990s. Yu Hua was awarded the Knight of French Literature and Art in March 2004 for this book.
It can be seen that Living occupies a very important position in Yu Hua's creative career: it is not only the product of the change of his creative style, but also the symbolic achievement of his creation.
Yu Hua appeared in the literary world in the early 1980s. He and the works of Su Tong, Ge Fei and Sun Ganlu have formed a literary trend, which is called "avant-garde literature" by critics.
Yu Hua's avant-garde novels in this period are full of cruelty and blood. Many works directly describe death, and the details are creepy. For example, in the novel "Classical Love", Liu Sheng, who went to Beijing to take the exam, found a woman who had spent the night with him after failing in the imperial examination, but when they met, the woman's leg was being cut off and another girl who was sold had not been killed.
Why did his early works have such a tone? Yu Hua once talked about his early life in the hospital. His parents are both doctors, and he was also a dentist at first. He was bold as a child and often slept in the hospital morgue in summer. The hospital is used to seeing life and death. In that special era, he often sees some bloody pictures.
This experience had a great influence on his later writing. In his early works, such as 1986, mistakes by the river and a kind of truth, Sisyphus showed the ugliness and darkness of human nature in the process of describing death and violence, filled with gloomy and cold atmosphere, and constructed a hellish world without any light of human nature.
Yu Hua called the novel style of this period "violent aesthetics", and he later reflected that:
As an adult, he gradually knew what the scene was like when he was a child, so he often had nightmares and was under great mental pressure. At the same time, avant-garde literature pursues obscurity in words, which is difficult for readers to accept.
Therefore, after becoming famous as a pioneer writer, Yu Hua began to try to make adjustments and consider changing the writing theme. The theme of his first novel Crying in the Drizzle is still the ruthless analysis and criticism of human nature, which shows people's emotional despair in the "cultural wasteland" period. However, the theme of the work began to face reality, telling the suffering and fate of civilians, and showing their super endurance and tenacious will to survive.
His writing techniques began to change synchronously, and Yu Hua explained the change of his writing style like this:
After the transformation, Yu Hua believes that the mission of creation is not to vent or blame, but to show people the good side of human nature, that is, nobility, which is a kind of detachment after understanding things.
He gradually stepped out of the resentment and isolation of pioneers in the past, paid more attention to objectively evaluating the world, and looked at the value and significance of human existence objectively. Living, published in 1992, is the most successful work of Yu Hua after his transformation, and also his masterpiece and peak work. He himself once said that he would never write such a novel again.
Yu Hua explained the origin of his writing in this way: One day, he heard an American folk song "Old Slave", in which the old slave experienced a lifetime of suffering and his family left him first, but he still treated the world well without saying a word. This song touched him deeply, so he decided to write his next novel, that is, this song "To be alive".
So, what is this song that moved Yu Hua? It is also a duet of a relationship.
1860, Stephen Collins Foster (1826- 1864), a famous American composer living in new york, heard that one of his friends, an old slave of his wife Jenny's family, had passed away. The old slaves led a hard life. In his later years, all his relatives died before him, and finally he died alone. His fate can be said to be a portrayal of the tragic situation of all slaves at that time.
Foster had a long friendship with the old slaves, so his death made Foster deeply sad. The old black slave asked the author to write a song for him before his death, and the author agreed. So he wrote a folk song "Old Black Joe", which became the famous folk song "Old Black Slave". The lyrics read:
When writing this song, Foster himself was in a difficult situation: his parents died, half of his brothers and sisters died, and the living also wandered around to make a living. He himself suffered from family and marriage changes. Perhaps I felt very sad after hearing the news of the old slave, so I wrote this beautiful and sad song. Obviously, the author not only mourned the old slave, but also lamented his own situation.
In this world, only where you will go is the most painful. As Jiang Yan, a writer in the Southern Dynasties, said, "Those who forget me have just left!" The song "Old Black Slave" tells the feelings of people who have experienced vicissitudes in ancient and modern times, at home and abroad, so it has been sung for a long time and its charm is timeless.
Inspired by the old slaves, Living also guides readers to know the real life and gives people real enlightenment, so it occupies a special position in Yu Hua's creative career.
The story of To Be Alive begins with the narrator "I" listening to Fu Gui's life story in the summer sunshine. Fu Gui, an old man, was born in a landlord's family before liberation, and lost all his property because of gambling (which made him lucky that he was not executed as a landlord after liberation).
On his way to get medicine for his mother, the Kuomintang army arrested him as a soldier. On the battlefield, he was captured by the People's Liberation Army. He chose to go back to his hometown (this is different from choosing to continue to be a spring student of the People's Liberation Army). Although Chunsheng later became a county magistrate, he died during the Cultural Revolution.
After returning home, he and his wife and children lived a tense and warm life. Later, his son Youqing died because he donated too much blood to the wife of Chunsheng, the county magistrate. His disabled daughter Xia Feng finally got married and lived a happy life, but she died in childbirth. After his wife Jia Zhen died of illness, his son-in-law Hill died unexpectedly. Finally, his grandson Kugan, who lived alone with him, ate too many beans and died.
Looking back on Fu Gui's life, there are many similar death stories.
Yu Hua described a fable story about life and will with simple and powerful brushstrokes, and told the vicissitudes of China society for 50 years with rich life experiences.
All his relatives died in this story called "alive", but he didn't have such "luck". He can only live, because this is his fate. God won't let his life escape until a cow has plowed all the fields that should be plowed, and before a man shoulders the burden that should be shouldered. By the mouth of the rich, the author tells people such a truth:
This calm and slightly gentle narrative style makes readers realize that although there are no bloody accusations, heartbreaking screams or even anger in the works:
With the help of the double-layer narrative structure, the novel truly and objectively shows the readers the personal tragedy of the people at the bottom of China. The disaster of Fu Gui's survival and the death of relatives one after another are full of tragic colors, and also highlight the endurance of life in suffering.
Why is Alive so popular? First of all, as a novel, it is very clever in narrative techniques; Secondly, it has a very heavy historical depth, showing the historical vicissitudes of a nation for more than half a century; Third, and most importantly, the proposition it discusses hits the nail on the head and responds to many people's concerns: What is the meaning of being alive?
Especially in today's society, many people are confused and depressed. I gave up my life in a difficult life, even in the event of unemployment and business failure.
"Living" discusses the question of "how should people live", and Yu Hua gives a very clear answer:
The popularity of a novel depends on its inspiration to readers. Why is this novel so touching? This novel touches on the important and essential problems of human existence, so it constantly inspires people.
Yu Hua's works are full of existential philosophy. It's not hard to understand. The era when he started writing was the era when western existentialism prevailed. At that time, China people's ideological belief was that after high-profile idealism was disillusioned, they were deceived and full of absurdity about human existence. Many people don't know what the meaning of existence is, just like the famous Pan Xiao wrote a letter to discuss confusion: "The road of life is getting narrower and narrower?"
Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher who first swept Chinese mainland, said that the world is absurd. People came to this world by accident, and faced with the rapidly changing, lithium-free, disorderly, purely accidental, chaotic and unreasonable objective outside world, people felt restricted and hindered everywhere. In this boundless world, people can't control their own destiny, only feel sick and want to vomit.
Fu Gui's life in The Living Hero is full of absurdity. In his early years, as the heir of the small landlord, he idled around and did nothing, eating, drinking, whoring and gambling, and no one could control him. Finally, he "got" himself into a poor family and had to live as a tenant farmer.
When he threw himself down and lived a good life, his bad luck began: his relatives died one by one, and whenever he wanted to start his life again, fate waved him and sent him to hell; When you saw him struggling to climb out, thinking that he was going to start his life again, fate changed his face and pushed him down again.
Sartre also has a proposition that "existence precedes essence". Just like a seed accidentally falling into this world, there is no essence at all, only existence. If you want to establish your own essence, you must prove it through your own actions. Man is only the result of his own actions. Man is free in this world, and his choice of action is free. This is because there is no innate pattern in people's choice, no guidance from God, and no judgment from others. Man is the only commander of his own actions, but he is responsible for his own actions.
When all the readers were desperate and thought that Fu Gui might die, Fu Gui never intended to give up his life and move on. The revelation he gave us is:
If you want to live, you must learn to reconcile with fate. Fu Gui, like an old slave, is a strong man, living under the repeated blows of fate. The secret of their survival is that they have learned to endure the destruction of fate and constantly expand the thickness and breadth of their lives in the torrent of time.
Living is the responsibility of every life. What Yu Hua wants to tell readers is that although life is full of suffering, the road still has to go on. Yu Hua appreciates the word "alive" and thinks it is a powerful word. Its strength does not come from shouting or attacking, but from enduring, enduring the responsibility given by life, enduring the happiness and pain given by reality, boredom and mediocrity.
Responsibility is the meaning and value of human beings. As Sartre said, people are absolutely free, so no matter what happens, everyone must take full responsibility for their own choices, behaviors and values. In the real world, human existence is not isolated and pure, but always in a certain situation. Through one person's choice, he is implicated in all mankind.
In other words, we are not only responsible for ourselves, but also for everyone. This is the meaning and value of people. Maybe there are some things in life that you can't predict and change, but more need you to be responsible and take responsibility. Therefore, live no matter how painful it is. It is also your responsibility to live for the people you love and those who love you.