Xiao Hong
played by Tang Wei in the "Golden Age" in "Hulan River Biography" is about Hulan, an ordinary small city in the north of the 1920s, and the ordinary life of ordinary people. When the book was written, Xiao Hong had just lost a child and separated from Duanmu Weiliang, who was also in Hong Kong. The depression and depression of reality forced her to hide in her childhood memories to find warmth. In this work, apart from Xiao Hong from the childhood perspective, there are no characters throughout. It only focuses on the group of insecure people: the elderly, children, women, and poor, who are insulted and harmed in society. Inability to get rid of.
Child’s perspective, helpless reality
"Grandfather Houyuan and I" form a complete childhood retreat. Xiao Hong uses plain text to record the rare warmth she experienced in the world. "The flower blooms, as if the flower wakes up from sleep. The bird flies, as if the bird is in the sky. The worm calls, as if the worm speaks. Everything is alive." This is Xiao Hong's style of writing , The childish tone of the child, like a poem with a jingle bell. Xiao Hong was 29 years old when he wrote "Hulan River Biography". After we grow up, we are trained in standardized language and it is difficult to speak in childish language. Xiao Hong was able to recall the moments when he was with his grandfather in such an obsessive or devoted attitude, which shows his escape from the real world and his loneliness at that time. Plato believes that the freedom of poetry is similar to the freedom of children, the freedom of play and the freedom of dreams. Xiao Hong was also suffering from internal ailments, external wars, and loneliness from the mainstream at the time. The reason why she can express it in words is that she wants to borrow her childhood to resist the desolation of reality.
When Xiao Hong was a child,
was faint, but full of loneliness and desolation
"If it catches a rainy night, it will be particularly bleak, widows can cry, widowers will get up and wandering". From the perspective of children, Xiao Hong wrote a lot of people for us in the form of line-drawing text-selling tofu, dancing gods, returning daughters, reunion daughter-in-law, Feng Weizuizi... she is a little girl. , Speaking, I don’t know why some people die or why they live, but lonely people have to live day by day. People in the small town of Hulan River are like Mr. Russell’s metaphor: "Rain in the desert": He said that some people are like "Rain in the desert." If there is a rain in the desert and no one sees the rain, then we can say that the rain does not exist. “You die if you die, you live if you live, it’s no big deal.” In his tone, it’s like jumping rubber bands when I was a child. It doesn’t matter if I lose or lose, but the lightness of my tone just reflects the weight of life. The tiny people living in a corner of the small town, quietly, no one knows whether they are alive or dead, they have not lived vigorously, day after day, year after year, people’s life continues in the cycle, no more Happiness, no more sadness, just living indifferently and numbly, with a faint tone, but the living state reflected has given readers a heavy blow.
The comic strip recording the scene of the reunion daughter-in-law's death
The gentle brushstrokes and the distant compassion
"There are no beautiful stories, just because they are full of my childhood memories, they can not be forgotten, unforgettable, they are recorded here", so when Loving grandfather, dangling second uncle, and little reunion daughter-in-law who was tortured to death, all appeared under Xiao Hong’s brushstrokes. Xiao Hong didn’t say how violent the world was, but it was like the personal pain we felt in you and me. Follow these characters to experience joys and sorrows. "I also felt sorry for my characters at first. They are slaves of nature, slaves of all masters. But after writing and writing, my feeling has changed. I don't think I deserve to be compassionate to them, I am afraid they should be compassionate to me! From the bottom to the top, maybe it can be applied to peers. My character is taller than me." This is the dominant creative spirit reflected in her children’s perspective. British female writer Virginia · Wu Wolf said that feminine style is women's freedom. She links the status quo of women with the social environment and economic and political status, and explores the source of women's oppression and restraint. Xiao Hong knows herself without a teacher. Her writing has no protagonist, no center, just sadnessThe feeling of compassion tells the sadness and bondage of women or the weak in that era.
Xiao Hong
Xiao Hong in the eyes of others and "Hulan River Biography"
Xia Zhiqing later expressed regret that when he wrote "History of Modern Chinese Novels", because he "had no chance to read Xiao Hong's novels", he praised Xiao Hong as a " An immortal writer, immortal for hundreds of years", "Hulan River Biography" is a "really good work". The contradiction said "Hulan River Biography": "a narrative poem, a colorful painting of local terroir, a string of sad and euphemistic ballads", Xiao Hong wrote us a poetic rural land with her unique child and feminine perspective Amorous. In the words of the German scholar Gu Bin, the "red line" that runs through the entire work is the "power of memory", "it strung these seven chapters at the beginning"; in this work, Xiao Hong shows "poetic flavor" Abundant retrospective ability".
Conclusion When
was in Tokyo, Xiao Hong once mentioned a painting she liked in a letter to Xiao Jun:
A child sleeping under the eaves, on a chair, leaning on a soft pillow. The one who came next to him was probably her mother, and the one with a scythe outside the fence was probably her father. The stone corridor under the eaves, the reddish night in the distance, the thatched eaves, the windows open under the eaves, and the two legs of the child hanging down. That’s great, to tell you the truth, because I saw that girl as if I saw myself. I was like that when I was little, so I love her very much.
Maybe Xiao Hong at that time had already begun to return home spiritually, letting her soul begin to take refuge. Because of the sinister and turbulent situation, Xiao Hong was always in a wandering state "on the road", fragile and sensitive. But she has always remained extremely sensitive to the pain of the weak and caring for the people at the bottom. She did not simply praise or criticize, but felt the pain of the characters’ skin. From the perspective of affection, she stared at the piece that once brought her. The warm land of China, with line-drawing text, records the desolation and helplessness brought to women by the time. "It's like the sun is shining on the blind man's head. The blind man cannot see the sun, but the blind man feels warm." She did not rush from the sky to the earth. Her desolation was hidden as far as possible, but we still felt it. What remained in our hearts was the warmth after the desolation. Respect for people, caring for people, and deep humanitarianism in the works, this is the most precious quality of Xiao Hong's creation, and it is also the reason why her works have continued to flourish today.