After leaving school, it seems that I seldom read theoretical articles, but the author and title of this book are really amazing, and I can't leave my eyes for a moment. Ouyang Zi is the translator of Simon Beauvoir's The Second Sex, the author of the collection of novels Rapunzel, and a comrade-in-arms who fought side by side with Bai Xianyong in the position of modern literature. Many years later, Ouyang made a critical article for his friend's novel collection Taipei People.
As Ouyang Zi wrote in the preface:
Many people have read Taipei People, and many people have been touched by it, but most of them are only vague impressions. It's like walking into an old house inadvertently. It smells good and smelly. You are attracted to it, but you don't necessarily know that it is harmful. You know this is an illusion, but you don't know why this illusion occurs.
Ouyang Zi answered all this.
The appellation of "Taipei people" is essentially different from that of "Beijingers" and "Shanghainese" in the general sense. It is not only a regional term, but also a pronoun. These people-all from the mainland-came to Taiwan Province Province with the retreat of the Kuomintang government. It's just that at that time node, some are not as good as weak crowns, and some are in their prime. However, ten or twenty years later, they all entered a period of decline in their lives. This is the background of the novel.
The transformation of space and the flow of time bring not only black hair to white hair, but also unbearable mental burden. These people who have been forced to migrate to Taiwan Province Province, regardless of their social strata, have their own past. In the disappointment of hope day after day, everything in the past has become extremely warm and desperate.
Like Park Gong of Song Dynasty, Shun's gracious sister-in-law and Mrs. Dou, some of them are Confucian generals, some are socialites, and some are maids and servants. No matter rich or poor, they are all burdened with a past that they can't let go of, or sink into reality, or indulge in the past, and they can't get rid of it until they die. Their next generation, however, will not have this kind of trouble-because they have no "past".
Dream in the Garden is the most famous novel in Taipei People, which has been appreciated by many readers and critics. The whole article, like a dream and a title, is the author's comparison of past and present, soul and body, life and death by means of stream of consciousness. So is the whole book. But Bai Xianyong, as a novelist, won't let ordinary people easily see the chisel marks.
Before this collection of novels, the author quoted Liu Yuxi's Wuyi Xiang, "In the old society, Wang Xietang flew into the homes of ordinary people", and pointed out the theme of Taipei people with poetry as the introduction. No matter from the single article or from the fourteen articles as a whole, the strong contrast between the past and the present is chilling.
The middle-aged or elderly people in the story have a past. The youthful vitality of the past haunts them like ghosts in today's crowded and hurried environment. At that time, Taipei people were still expecting to counterattack the mainland and be masters of their own affairs. But the years are not fake, even if there is such a day, they will not see it. They are very sad, don't know who to hate, and can only live by memories. And the better the past, the more cruel the present. More ironically, memories may not be true after being polished too many times, while helpless people live on such deformed memories.
In the world of Taipei people, soul and body tear at each other and never give in. "Spirit" is love, ideal and spirit-in fact, it also corresponds to the past. "Meat" is sexual desire, reality and body-in fact, it is in contrast to the present. In most novels, spirit and flesh are opposites. How decent and noble it is for Mr. Lu to abide by his duty and wait wholeheartedly for Miss Luo's family to stay in the mainland. When the reality shattered his dream, the noble Mr. Lu immediately immersed himself in boundless sexual desire and even had a tragic ending. Spirit and flesh are uncompromising.
In the novelist Bai Xianyong's view, although the past has passed away, it is so sacred that it can even save the present. When Jin Daban remembered her love with Yueru-this is her spirit-she immediately became gentle and compassionate. The gentleness of this dusty woman at that moment was torn from the past to the present. Without the past, Jin Daban should not deserve any sympathy.
Time is the biggest thief in the universe, whether you are a prince or a soldier. People from all walks of life in Taipei-people with special historical memories-will get old and die.
At this level, Ouyang Zi thinks that Bai Xianyong is a "negative fatalist". First of all, in many novels, words such as "injustice" and "evil" will appear. Of course, when these words appear in the article, we can first see the actual situation of the old society in China objectively described by Bai Xianyong, but we can't say that these words don't reveal some potential thoughts of the author.
A more obvious example is the lonely flower. Here, the author seems to think that people's "evil" comes from heredity and cannot be rid of. Juanjuan in Lonely Flowers inherited insanity and sinfulness due to incest, which doomed her tragic ending. The article implies everywhere that Juanjuan is the reincarnation of Five Treasures (a girl who died tragically). They are all fatal misfortunes, just like the god of fate with a baton, awe-inspiring and inviolable.
"Taipei people" describes such a world for us, which is a corner of distant national memory. In the present world, it seems to be getting farther and farther away from us. Sometimes I talk to younger friends about Bai Xianyong. Some people say that "beauty is beauty". So, sometimes, we should know where this "beauty" comes from, so that we can remember it better.