Similarly, no one will think of the opportunity to discuss this date. This kind of thing is a national habit and has its reasons for existence. At dusk, when we go to the cemetery, all we do is go to our grave and clean up the dead leaves that cover it and make it vague. Although the dead leaves of that day were nothing serious, at most, they were some annoying things that had to be removed, changing water for those vases and cleaning up the traces of snails crawling on the stone tablets. Occasionally, it can be suggested to clean the dry leaves two or three days in advance. In this way, when 1 65438+1October1comes, the cemetery will be clean, and family members can pray in front of the grave, without having to do the troublesome thing of sweeping the grave, which often causes unpleasant scenes, and at the same time, it will not affect our duties on this anniversary. But we never accepted that hint. We never believed that we could stop exploring the tropical jungle in the north, although we would pay the price. These are traditional habits and have their own reasons for existence. We have heard our grandparents seriously answer those cries without * * * doctrine countless times, reminding people that the accumulation of dead leaves on graves only proves to everyone how annoying they are in late autumn, so that everyone can participate in the labor that will begin the next day with higher enthusiasm.
The whole town was called to take part in the sport. After we came back from the cemetery in the evening, the town * * * has placed a small pavilion painted white in the middle of the square. We came to the exhibition hall one after another, waiting in line to issue cards. The queue is like a long line, so most people go home late. However, we are glad to receive our card from a town official. In this way, from the next morning, our work will be registered in the card booth every day: when we hand over bags containing dried leaves or cages containing Egyptian meerkats to the relevant personnel according to the task, a special machine will punch holes in the cards. Children are the happiest because the cards given to them are particularly large. They are happy to show it to their mother. They were also sent to do all kinds of light work, but mainly to monitor the activities of Egyptian mongooses. The work assigned to us adults is the most difficult, because in addition to managing the Egyptian meerkats, we have to put the dried leaves collected by the Egyptian meerkats into sacks and carry them to the trucks in the town. Old people were assigned to operate compressed air spray guns and spray snake essence on dry leaves. But the work of adults needs to be extremely serious and responsible, because Egyptian Liao often slacks off and doesn't work as we expected. After a few days, the actual workload recorded on our card is not enough, which increases the possibility that we will be sent to work in the northern jungle. As you can imagine, we must try our best to avoid this situation, although we will have to admit that it is as natural as the movement itself and will not think of protest; But human nature, we have to try our best to make Egypt Liao work in order to get the highest score on our cards; In order to make the movement successful, we must treat Egypt Liao, the elderly and children strictly.
Sometimes we ask ourselves, how did the idea of using snakes to refine leaves come about? But after some unpleasant speculation, we finally realized that the source of habits, especially those useful and correct habits, disappeared in the deepest part of the race. One day, the town will admit that the people in the town are not enough to pick up the fallen leaves in autumn. Only the Egyptian mongoose, which is rich in China, can achieve the goal. An official from a city near the jungle found that the Egyptian mongoose, who had no interest in dried leaves at all, would go crazy about dried leaves once they smelled snakes. It must have taken a long time to get this discovery and study the reaction of Egyptian mongoose to dried leaves, and spray dried leaves with snake essence for Egyptian mongoose to collect as revenge. We are in an era when everything has been established and arranged, and Egyptian mongoose breeders need necessary personnel to train them. Every summer, exploring the jungle will bring back enough snakes. For us, these things are so natural that we only occasionally, with great courage, ask questions that our parents answered seriously in our childhood. In this way, they taught us to answer the question our son asked us one day. Strangely, this desire to ask questions can only be expressed before or after exercise, even so, it is still difficult to achieve. 165438+10.2, as soon as we received the card, we devoted ourselves to the tasks assigned to us. The correctness of every movement is so obvious that only a madman will doubt the usefulness and way of exercise. But we should foresee this possibility, because the legal provisions printed on the back of the card stipulate the punishment in this case; But no one remembers that they should act according to the law.
We are always amazed at why * * * arranges us to do work, and the life of the country is not chaotic because of sports. We adults spend five hours cleaning dry leaves every day before or after implementing our schedule in the office or shop. The children gave up physical education class and civil and military training classes at school. Old people use sunny days to leave nursing homes to do distribution work. Two or three days later, the movement achieved its first goal, and the streets and squares in the central area have been swept away with dead leaves. We who manage Egyptian mongooses must be more cautious, because as the movement goes on, Egyptian mongooses will become more and more relaxed. In this way, it falls on our shoulders to point out this problem to the inspector in our area and ask him to order the spraying of snake essence to be strengthened. The inspector won't give this order until he is sure that we have made every effort to keep Egyption working. If it is proved that we rashly ask for snake essence spray, we will be in danger of being transferred immediately and sent to work in the jungle. However, when we say that we are in such danger, it is obvious that we are exaggerating, because jungle exploration, like sports itself, is also a routine work of the country, and no one intends to protest for an ordinary obligation.
Some people say privately that it is wrong to assign elderly people to operate sprayers. Since this is an ancient habit, it shouldn't be a mistake. However, sometimes it will happen that the elderly are inattentive, spray a lot of snake essence on a small piece of ground in the street or square, and forget to spray snake essence on the ground as large as possible. In this way, the Egyptian mongoose will pounce on a lot of dried leaves, collect them together in a few minutes, and send them to our waiting place in bags; But later, when we were sure that they would still work tirelessly, we saw them stop and smell the leaves around, as if at a loss. They went on strike with obvious fatigue and unhappiness. In this case, the animal trainer blew the whistle and the Egyptian mongoose immediately returned to work. But after a while, we found that the snake essence was sprayed unevenly. They have reason to resist a job that suddenly made the Egyptian Liao lose interest. If there are enough snake spirits, this kind of tension will never appear, which will make us, the elderly and the urban management worry about our responsibilities and bear great anxiety; But people have long known that the supply of snake essence is difficult to meet the demand of sports, and jungle exploration sometimes fails to achieve its goal, forcing the city to deal with a new battle with limited reserves. This situation has aggravated the fear that more recruits will be recruited in the next mobilization. Of course, the worry we are talking about is obviously exaggerated, because conscription is a national practice, just like the movement itself, and no one would think of protesting for an ordinary obligation. We talked less about exploring the tropical jungle, and the people who came back kept their mouths shut because they had vowed not to let us know any news. We are convinced that we will try our best to eliminate any worries, and there is no need to worry about what will happen when we explore the northern jungle. But unfortunately, no one can turn a blind eye to the wounded and sick. There is no point in saying this: so many relatives or acquaintances will die in every expedition, which makes us speculate that to catch snakes in the jungle, we will meet the ruthless resistance of neighboring residents every year, and our compatriots will have to face their cruel and legendary evil behavior and sometimes be defeated. Although we don't speak in public, we are all indignant: a country doesn't clean up dead leaves, but opposes us catching snakes in the jungle. We have never doubted that we can ensure that the expedition has no other purpose in entering the territory of neighboring countries, and the resistance encountered is entirely due to an unreasonable arrogance of neighboring countries.
The generosity of our country is limitless, even in matters that may disturb public peace. So we will never know-it needs to be emphasized that we don't want to know-how our glorious wounded were injured. As if to avoid our unnecessary worries, * * * only released the list of uninjured expeditions and the list of the dead. The coffin of the deceased was brought back by the same military train that carried the explorer and the snake. Two days later, * * * officials and residents went to the cemetery to attend the funeral of the deceased. We * * * refused to adopt the vulgar practice of joint burial, but let each expedition member have his own grave, and set up a stone tablet in front of the grave, so that relatives can engrave the inscription on it without any obstacles. In this way, whose grave is easy to identify. But in recent years, the number of the dead has been increasing. In order to expand the cemetery, * * * expropriated the surrounding land. Therefore, it is conceivable that from the morning of 1 65438+1October1,how many people will go to the cemetery to sweep the graves of the deceased. Unfortunately, autumn is already deep, and the streets and graves are flooded with dead leaves. It is difficult to identify these graves. We often wander around for hours at a loss and ask where the grave we are looking for is. Almost all of us have brooms, and we often sweep the dead leaves on a grave for a long time, thinking that it is the grave of our deceased, but it is still wrong. However, slowly, we finally found the grave. Time has passed for a long time, so we can rest and pray silently. Although we are struggling to find the grave, in a sense, we are happy, because it proves that the leaf sweeping movement that will start the next morning is beneficial. Although we didn't have the help of the Egyptian mongoose, we felt as if our dead were inspiring us to clean the leaves. Only when the new share of snake essence and the coffin of the deceased brought back by the expedition was distributed to the next day, and the old people sprayed it on the dry leaves, could the Egyptian mongoose help us.
(translated by Zhu Jingdong)
Precautions:
Northern tropical jungle adventure: that is, catching snakes in the jungle.
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A writer seldom considers reading style when writing, but what they consider most is reading effect; There are also many writers who may not even consider this issue. They are used to the accommodation of readers. Whether the readers are accommodating or not is another matter. On the other hand, Julio Cortazar likes reading as a game. His masterpiece hopscotch is a novel full of game colors. The author provides two reading methods: the first is to read from chapter 1 to the end of chapter 56 in sequence; The second is that when reading the first 56 chapters in sequence, the content of the last 99 chapters is skipped, which looks like the kind of "hopscotch" game, so the content of the novel is richer and more complicated. A game-like mentality has always influenced Cortaza's writing, making him full of absurdity when dealing with many serious subjects. For example, this "True Pride" is always full of black humor and symbolism.
"No one remembers the law that stipulates that people must clean dry leaves, but we are sure that no one will think that they can not clean it; This kind of thing has a long history, and it was talked about as early as when I was a child. In fact, there is not much difference between the basic action of tying shoelaces or opening umbrellas and the action of1sweeping dead leaves from 9: 00 am on October 2. 165438. " From the beginning, the author made extraordinary efforts, and regarded simply cleaning dry leaves as an unconscious habit of the people. Argentina is one of the countries with the highest education level in Latin America, and obviously Coltazar also has his own views on this issue. This article is not only about how to clean dry leaves, but also has a broader symbolic dimension behind the author's words.
The author then described it in more detail: cleaning dry leaves or catching snakes in the distant jungle is a traditional habit from a personal point of view. Call on the whole town to join this "industrialized" large-scale movement. Children, adults and the elderly have their own duties and have special cards to consider personal performance. People skillfully domesticate Egyptian meerkats and spray snake essence to help with their work. Everyone is "in an era when everything has been established and arranged", and its "correctness is so obvious" that "only a madman will doubt its usefulness and way of exercising". Moreover, this large-scale movement has not caused chaos in national life. The dangers people encounter when catching snakes and the private discussion about the assignment of work have not affected the exercise, because "since this is an ancient habit, it should not be a mistake." Even when more and more people suffered from the expedition and * * * had to requisition land to expand the cemetery area, "we never doubted" and "China's generosity is infinite". In fact, there is only one fundamental force that drives people to act-habit-which is the core of the vocabulary repeatedly mentioned by the author in the article, such as habit, tradition, convention and so natural. This habit has been deposited in people's blood for a long time, which makes people ignore the mandatory factors at the beginning of formulation, and people live according to it, but forget the non-mandatory power and this.
In this essay, the author described an absurd and bizarre scene with a very serious style, a complete black humor. As for the author's intention, every reader can draw his own conclusion without the guidance and preaching of others. But one thing is certain, Koltaza has always been very concerned about politics, even surpassing his predecessor Borges.
Since 1930s, Argentina has been ruled by military and literati alternately. 1946 In February, Peron, the leader of the Justice Movement, was elected President of Argentina, proposing "Peronism" with the slogan of "social justice, political sovereignty and economic independence". 1955 In September, Peron was overthrown in the rebellion of the three armed forces, and General Ronaldi, who led the rebellion, became president. In June165438+1October of the same year, Ronaldi was overthrown by another military leader, Alambru. Since then, Argentina has changed six presidents. It was not until 1983 that Alfonsin came to power by universal suffrage, restored the constitutional system and vigorously promoted the process of democratization that the political situation was stabilized to a certain extent. It should be admitted that the coming to power of a soldier has undermined the construction of democracy in Argentina to a certain extent, and Cortaza has every reason to express his views on this. His literary skills have expanded his space of expression, and True Pride is a symbolic picture depicted in this context. As the title of the article shows, what is "real pride"? Perhaps it is a sense of anxiety about national politics, perhaps it is a numbness and obedience to social rules, perhaps it is a national intellectual's love for the land under his feet. ...
(Liu Qiwen)