This article is reposted from: People's Daily Overseas Edition
Temperament of the Lonely Brave
——Reading Helegena's Novel
Xiaoya
"People's Daily Overseas Edition" (2023.07.20, Edition 07)
Recently reading the novel of the Mongolian writer Helegena, the melody of "The Lonely Brave" can't help but sound in my heart. The difficulty in life is to fight against loneliness. Because of the difficulty, the confrontation itself has the temperament of a lonely and brave man. The spirit and character of Heilegen's works have something in common with this.
In the works of Helegen, the protagonist who has created many images of the lonely and brave. Some of these characters are ordinary people but have unusual experiences, and some of them have been defamiliarized and artistically processed to become like "gods" in epic works. In "Passerby, Welcome to Hatubuqi", the uninvited guest "Acha", who is as tall and mighty as a camel, is always in high spirits. He has an astonishing capacity for alcohol and is skilled in eating meat. People clearly find that his eating looks like the "Big Baru Thorn" in "Secret History of Mongolia". The author uses the appearance of "Acha" to describe the new life scene of Hatubu. The author also tries to look back at history. "The Man Who Came to the Pastoral Village Through the Night" is like a raving in the middle of the night. The group of people dressed in ancient battle uniforms and armor wandered through countless nights just to find their own children and grandchildren, and warned them that "greed is the devil." These people who have come from history are the channel for the author to find the spiritual blood. Returning to reality, the characters in Heilegen's pen are also brave and full of tragic colors. In order to get back the blown scarf for his beloved girl, Ping An in "The Steam Train Whistles Past", like Don Quixote, fights against the whizzing steam train. In "Move Your Mouth, Don't Move a Knife", the image of a ruthless protagonist gradually becomes clear in the broken narrative trap, and even in the end, readers can't tell the truth of the matter. The perfect combination of history and reality is Basang in "The Sea of Basang". The image of this tough guy on the grassland conveys that "people can fail, but they cannot be defeated. The body can suffer, but the inner will is sacred and inviolable." Basang, a lone brave man, broke through the siege of suffering with his tenacious will, and built a great love among people in the vast world.
These images of the lonely brave have opened up a multi-dimensional space on the emotional link. Halgenna made the structure of the works more and more grand, breaking through the historical, national and geographical restrictions, and gained a freer and broader world at the spiritual level.
In terms of narration, Helegan tried to get out of the comfort zone. He has created many novels named after works of masters or predecessors. On the one hand, the author pays tribute to the master in his own way, and on the other hand, it also shows his creative pursuit. For example, "The Third Bank" is taken from Rosa's "The Third Bank of the River", "My Uncle Jiret" is taken from Maupassant's "My Uncle Jules", and "Going out to Work at the Age of Eighteen" is taken from Yu Hua's "Going Out at the Age of Eighteen". Although the title of "Midnight Indulgence" is not obvious, it is a work in which the author pays tribute to Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" in the form of a short story. Hellegen has never spared his fanaticism as a fan. From his works, readers can deeply feel the space-time dialogue with the master's works, and there is a huge tension in it. We can even understand it as a state of confrontation, which may be due to the stubbornness of a lonely brave man in Heilegen's bones.
Reading Helegan's story is more like an adventure, in which we will encounter all kinds of strange people and strange things. In "My Uncle Jireh", Yireh, who is ignored by the whole village, always squats among the pigeons on the roof, staring at the sky like a big bird in a daze. You can't understand his behavior, but you can capture the deep warmth through the channel of "love". In "Wendugeng Chagan", Principal Chaolu built a wooden horse out of wood, a wooden horse as mysterious as the one in "Homer's Epic", which brought abundant rain to the long-dry land. "Secret History of Mongolia" has been mentioned more than once in Helegana's works, and some plots and scene settings are also traceable. His creations are steeped in national culture, which has also become part of his spiritual pedigree.In such an adventure, readers approach the spiritual core of Hellegen's works step by step.
Helegan himself is also a lone warrior on the road of creation. With courage, endurance and adventurous spirit, he constantly absorbs and creates, and gradually forms his own style, dedicating more real and powerful new works to readers.
