Slowly, I discovered that the more constraints adult life gave me, the less time I had for myself.
The older I get, the faster I feel like time flies.
——Victor Husnot's "Time Traveler"
Recently, when I was riding on the streets of Beijing, I always thought of these words. So the memory was pulled back to the distant childhood. The blurry back in front of you, the clear profile of the face beside you, every detail, every element, are collaged into a picture of the past. At an intersection, the red light turns green. Fragments of memory were left behind. But I was pushed forward by the crowd and had no time to turn back.
But what if, what if the years could be turned back?
1
Time goes back to one year ago.
When I saw the original comic for the first time, I was struck by these sentences on the back cover. Victor Hussenot's brushstrokes are different from the black and white of Marc-Antoine Mathieu, or the coldness of Christophe Chabouté. His paintings The wind is very gentle and delicate, blending poetry and philosophy. This time, the theme he wanted to explore was "time."
The protagonist in the book comes to the adult world from childhood and realizes that time is random, mysterious and constantly flowing. He also discovers that everyone has an accurate concept of time, such as the philosopher Saint Augustine believed that recollection, expectation, and intuition were three ways of spending time. For the protagonist, he also has his own trichotomy of time: historical time, individual time, and daily time.
However, when faced with the question "What is time?", he still felt powerless: "If no one asks me, I know the answer; if I try to explain it to the person who asks the question, I say It’s unclear.”
The protagonist had two dreams. For the first time, he was placed on a strange map. This map was composed of a series of novel and unique names such as "Continent of the Past", "Relic Islands" and "Archive Place", which brought together the most unforgettable moments in his life. At the moment, unfortunately some areas are closed and inaccessible.
He went from one side of the map to the other, realizing that one of the qualities of time is its invisibility. The so-called "map" is just one of the many phantoms of time, and all attempts to capture time, such as the measuring instruments invented by humans, are nothing more than images, they are not time.
Under the guidance of imagination, the protagonist came to the time subway for the second time. He was solemnly told that in the time subway, numbers are kings and sacred symbols. Without numbers, there would be no time!
Time Metro provides three time lines: year line, age line, and hour line. Each line is built on a time calculation method of social life. Traveling on the "hour line", the protagonist discovers that his time trichotomy "historical time, individual time, daily time" corresponds to the three digital times on the time subway "age time, age time, hour time".
The first rule of thirds is the psychologically perceived time. The second rule of thirds, although it represents the same time, is calculated numerically. These two trichotomies are both opposite and complementary to each other. They are two sides of the same reality. This means that time exists in two different forms in our mental world and in our daily reality. So, which one is more important, psychological time or digital time?
With such questions, the protagonist sets foot on the "chronological line" and looks back at the long and splendid history of human civilization to find answers:
In 4000 BC, humans learned to use Finger counting.
In 2100 BC, counting and the movement of celestial bodies were combined into one, and the moondial was invented.
In 1500 BC, the original ancient Egyptian calendar was invented.
In the ancient Roman era (1400 AD), mechanical clocks for measuring time appeared.
From 1600 to 1700, Galileo and Newton successively introduced the concept of time in physics, and Newton proposed absolute time.
Much later, Einstein proved that Newton's theory was inaccurate.
It seems that digital time is more real than psychological time. Finally, the protagonist comes to the "age line". On this line, time advances by one year for every station passed, and all passengers will become one year older and sail towards the future without realizing it. Fortunately, someone caught him in time, otherwise he would have sat there until the end of his life. The protagonist immediately took the subway in the opposite direction and slowly became younger until he returned to his normal age.
At this moment, he suddenly realized: He would no longer chase this time that could neither be seen nor caught. The only real time is the "life time" that passes between our breaths.
The moment we close the page, we seem to have an epiphany with the protagonist: Instead of being immersed in nostalgia for the past or longing for the future, it is better to cherish every present moment. Just like what was said at the end of the sixth season of the French version of SKAM: La vie, c'est maintenant.
2
Victor Yusnot, born in 1985, Graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Nancy, France in 2010, and was twice nominated for the Youth Award at the Angouleme International Comics Festival.
The young cartoonist admitted that he has shown a strong interest in comics since he was a child. Like other cartoonists, he was also influenced by classic comic works such as the Tintin series, the Spiru series, and "Akira". However, Husnot did not really draw comics at that time, but turned to learning painting skills.
During the same period, he also developed a strong interest in movies, including Eric Rohmer, Fran?ois Truffaut, Pedro Almodovar, and Stanley Koub. Works by Rick and others touched him and helped him better understand how to talk about deep and complex feelings. In addition, in terms of philosophy, Camus and Sartre also left a deep mark on him.
There is no doubt that the "Ubabo" genre at the end of the 20th century had a profound influence on Snow. As early as 1960, Raymond Queneau created "Ulibaud", or "Workshop of Potential Literature", and Fran?ois Léonnais immediately announced that this trend could not stop at literature, but should revolve around with a larger "OU-X-PO" covering all areas of human knowledge. It was not until 1992 that "Ubabo", the "Potential Comics Workshop" finally appeared.
Initially, "Ubabo" was initiated by Thierry Groensteen, Lewis Trondheim, JC Menu and others, whose iconic work "Moins d'un quart de seconde pour vivre" (Moins d'un quart de seconde pour vivre) ) illustrated by Jean-Christophe Menu and written by Lewis Trondheim, first published in 1990 by L'Association in the ?perluette series.
In 2011, Yu Snow published his first comic "La Casa". The area inside the squares in the book represents the real world, and the blank space outside the squares represents the imaginary world. This comic It continues the concept and connotation of his earlier "le gaufrier" (le gaufrier), from which a certain "Ubabo"-like feature can also be discerned, that is, l'itération iconique.
Yu Snow explores the essence of human existence by depicting daily life and social life in each square.
In 2014's "Au pays des lignes" (Au pays des lignes) and 2016's "Chemin des souvenirs" (Memory Road), he put aside the traditional narrative mode and once again played the game of "codes". In Les gris colorés (2016), color has replaced words to express the characters’ feelings and thoughts.
In "Les ?toiles du temps" (2017), he took the use of watercolor to the extreme. Not only that, the storyboards this time are also ever-changing and surprising: sometimes it is a high wall blocking the front, sometimes it is a tool in the hands of time, sometimes it is a cloud, a book, a hand or a carriage... ..."Time Traveler" is like a slowly moving image train, leading readers to decipher the code of time in colorful watercolors.
3
Speaking of time, each of us is familiar with it. In Eastern and Western cultures, time has always been an eternal theme. Since ancient times, China has had a famous saying, "The dead are like a man, and they never give up day and night", admonishing people to cherish time.
There is no shortage of narratives that slowly unfold around time in Western literature. In "The Ancient Times and Other Times," the newly minted Nobel Prize winner and Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk uses fragments and mixed narratives to tell the story. This method depicts eighty-four fragments of time, collaging a beautiful historical picture.
Or, time is the changing light and shadow of Rouen Cathedral in Monet's paintings, the meticulous restoration of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang bit by bit, and the time of "Ten Years", "The Thief of Time" and "You Were". The inner throbbing behind those popular melodies of "Youth". Abstract time can become so concrete. Year after year, we are pulled and entangled by time, and we are closely dependent on time.
As mentioned in the book, each of us can have a private definition of time. The same goes for me as a reader and a translator.
"Time Traveler" always reminds me of the summer of 2019. At the time, it had been less than a year since I left school and started working. There were many moments when the constraints imposed on me by the adult world made me almost breathless. Fortunately, I met some kind adults. I often remember that summer. In the afternoon, I walked through the cracks in the sunshine to go to the coffee bar to get a cup of iced Americano. In the evening, I walked in the shadow of the trees to check out delicious food in the Xidan business district. At night, in the empty Huguo Temple, we walked to Pinganli to catch the last bus 4 Line number. We went to 798 to see the Araki Flower Show, went to the Tianqiao to watch "Onegin" and "Notre Dame de Paris", were happy "Meixi Lake Girls" at the Erqi Theater, and had family dinners in Fenghui Garden again and again. It was them that constituted my most unforgettable time coordinate of that summer.
Our favorite Japanese food store survived the most difficult days of 2020. I went there again a few days ago, and the sentence on the set is still there: Compared to the ending, the first encounter is so wonderful. The night you read it to me in Japanese, I cried until I burst into tears. If I could turn back the years and I didn't have time to express my gratitude at that time, please sign for it this time.
I feel very lucky to have come across this book last summer, and I am really happy to be its translator. It accompanied me through that unusual time, and I also poured a lot of effort into it. Maybe you also encountered it in a certain midsummer, or in the middle of winter, in early spring, or in late autumn. As time goes by and the seasons change, I hope it can bring you some comfort. I hope you can like it as much as I do.
4
Before publication, the editor and I discussed the Chinese title. The French title is L’?toile du temps, literally translated as "The Star of Time".
We thought about it for a long time and finally settled on "Time Traveler".
Perhaps, each of us is a time traveler in these long years.
Li Qi
Summer 2020 in Beijing