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Xili's "The Pain of Ruins" Reading Notes: If We Have No Way Back

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    ?

    Shan Shilian

    (He pitches the tent,

    So they had a small family,

    It immediately took back their floating souls.

    ¡ª¡ªExcerpt from Chapter 31, Section 116 of "The Pain of the Ruins")

    How exciting city life is, how boring city life is.

    Since the 19th century, countless buildings piled up with cement, stone and steel bars have become the main landscape of the civilized world. Farmers from all over the country abandoned their homes and ancestral graves and entrusted their dreams and lives to this behemoth.  Free, rich, vigorous, decent, only urbanites are modern people!  However, among the French writers from Rousseau to Baudelaire, German art from Romanticism to Expressionism, and English poets from Wordsworth to Eliot, there is hardly a writer who is a little more polite to the city, hypocritical, snobbish.  , Depraved and insatiable, the city is the abyss of human nature.  Therefore, when generations of rural people move toward the city with full confidence, generations of writers and artists are full of disappointment, taking their end point as their starting point, and describing their starting point as an aesthetic beauty.

    Urbanization is the classic road of modernization, and anti-urbanism is the basic theme of modern aesthetics.

    The Chinese who are undergoing modern transformation cannot avoid this modern dilemma.  Xili successfully expressed this in "The Pain of Ruin".  A man and two women: Luo Zi, a "reductionist" painter who underestimates fame and wealth and pursues self and eternity; Shily (Zheng Li), who indulges and strives to satisfy her desires; Joan, who is rational and dreamy, always waiting for love to save.  A southern city, night and lust, beauty and success, bars and bourgeoisie, men's desires and women's hypocrisy, and ultimately drugs, mixed with busyness and emptiness, decadence and intensity.  It is the serious life, the art of a few people, and the persistence of self that make Roz and Joan the "ideal characters" of the novel. What is particularly surprising is that they often discuss "love" and pure art together!  The environment is not too difficult for them, Luo Zi is a celebrity recognized by the police, and Joan has a quiet life on the university campus.  Luo Zi was surrounded by clouds of beauties, and Joan also had the sincere eyes of a mature man.  All the troubles and hardships of the common people have nothing to do with them.  But they just couldn't stand this city where fame and fortune agglomerated, and in the end they really stayed away from the "golden city", implemented "Oriental maximalism" from the canvas to their lives, and returned to their hometowns truly, trying to recreate the ancient culture of Bashu.  , rebuilding their lives in the mysterious "Sanxingdui".

    The novel's highly sensitive and delicate narration of urban secrets, and its intense capture and enthusiastic rendering of the daily atmosphere are honest and fresh, with full urbanity.  It is in the latter aspect that Xili fully demonstrates her language ability, personality preference and value concept, making herself an urban writer.

    It is difficult to talk about this novel.  Xili has the ability to make her words convey her feelings like music, but readers cannot appreciate its beauty through a few general comments.  It's just that the return of Luo Zi and Qiong is too eye-catching after all, and pointing out its unreality may highlight the success of the novel.  Not every urbanite has a poetic origin, and they also have boring days, even if only rarely; they also have a desire to escape, but it is difficult to implement.  Luo Zi and Qiong did it, because first, they were not urbanites, or even Han Chinese (Luo is a descendant of the Qiang nationality, and Qiong is a direct descendant of the Yi people).  The glitz and glamour of the city not only did not unravel their hometown and mountain complex, but activated their psychology of "it's better to go back".  Second, Roz is a visionary who intends to turn beauty into reality, and a longing for the distance forever on the road; while for Joan, "the meaning of the 18th century and the 19th century are the same".  Often, urban romance is often associated with hypocrisy, and rural warmth is easily dyed with fantasy, but Xili's design for this inseparable pair of men and women is fully credible, and does not always beautify the ideal of "going back"  .  Joan's death in "Sanxingdui" seems to be a clear hint: this is not a generally feasible solution for urbanites.

    In fact, in terms of life choices, artists are privileged, and beautiful women have more choices than ordinary people.  The problem is that urbanites on a larger scale have no home outside the city, and if they have no place to come from, they have nowhere to go.  Realistic tenacity and enthusiasm.  So despite being passionate and intelligent, Xili does not confirm a way out for urbanites, she just provides an urban situation with the story of Luo Zi and Joan's beautiful failure, which is boring and colorful, which makes people dream about  And harsh and ruthless.  We understand again that living elsewhere is a necessary psychological preparation for living in the city.

    Undoubtedly, anti-urban literature did not stop the pace of leading to the city, but the excellent criticism of modern literature and art does help to adjust and improve urban life.  For contemporary Chinese urbanites, rather than counting on a tent that can take back our floating souls, it is better to say in the "Bible" Song of Songs quoted in Chapter 18 of the novel:

    I said, I want to get up

    Parade in the city

    in the street market

    in the wide

    ? Find what I love

    However, this is much more difficult.  (Remember the site URL: www.hlnovel.com
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