Chapter 4 3. To Anne Curien I

Annie: Hello! Letter received.I'm currently co-writing a screenplay, largely for a living, and screenplays pay far more than novels and essays.Writing a film is basically an ordered work, and it must be written according to the requirements of the director and the film market.After finishing the first draft, the director is not satisfied and has to write another draft, which is very tiring and even raises blood pressure.So, right now I am a little afraid to accept your draft.I think, in this letter, I will talk about why I particularly like the works of Marguerite Duras and Robbe-Grillet.

In fact, I have read very little contemporary French literature, and I have only read a few works by Duras and Robbe-Grillet.So I might as well be wise and limit the topic as small as possible: just talk about my feelings about Robbe Grillet's "Last Year in Marienba" and Duras. I once said to friends who are engaged in comparative literature: why not write some articles between the Chinese and French "Last Year in Marienbad"?The forms of these two works are different, but their meaning is very similar.It is the most traditional way of writing Chinese novels. Cao Xueqin was born more than 200 years ago; "Last Year in Marienbad" is a representative work of the French Nouveau Nouveau School, and Robbe-Grillet is alive in the present.But this does not prevent me from seeing that the interests of the two works or two writers have very similar origins and defections.Robert-Grillet wrote in the introduction to his work: "In this closed and suffocating world, people and things seem to be victims of some kind of magic, as if in a dream... Driven by an irresistible temptation, it is futile to try to change this control and try to escape." And wrote: "She (heroine A) seems to accept being the person expected by the stranger (male protagonist X), Run away with him, to find something, something unknown, something otherworldly: love, poetry, freedom... maybe death..." I feel that this is exactly what Cao Xueqin wants to say in Yes, although we don't hear him say it directly.

That strange man X walked through the endless corridor and entered that luxurious, carved and lifeless hotel, just like that piece of "psychic gem" strayed into the world of mortals.That hotel is the same as the Rong and Ning mansions. The people in it are boring, rigid, and artificial, as if their souls have been taken away by the rules (magic) of the real society, or their souls have to be hidden in elegant clothes and pretentious clothes. Behind the expression, there lay unconscious, dying, hopeless.Only one woman is extraordinary (A in "Go" and Lin Daiyu in "Red"). This woman is the embodiment of the dream of life. In this lifeless world, only dreams can save us.This dream is love, the covenant of long-lasting love, and the freedom to flee in the future.what is love?It is the desire of the free heart and soul to resist the harm and killing of "worldly magic".Because of the domination of this "worldly magic", human beings have been caught in the war of souls. This war is not based on swords and blood, but on the suffocation, anesthesia and killing of free souls.In this world, in that desolate hotel and in the Rong and Ning mansions, a living desire needs the response of another life who is unwilling to die. At this time, love and freedom are synonymous, awakening the long-lasting love Our covenant is to get rid of magic and go to freedom together; if reality cannot escape, let art lead us into that ancient dream.I finally understood that the commonality of these two works from different times and different countries lies in the obsession with this dream, the attention to the realistic background of this dream being slaughtered, and the beauty of this dream ability.Although what this dream refers to is unknown, illusory, and blank, it is precisely because of this that it is the possible domain of infinite sublimation of human nature.This eternal dream is the root of literature and art.This root does not differ from country to country, and does not migrate due to the migration of time, because the fundamental difference between people and things, and robots, I think, lies in this.

I remember that in an article by Robbe Grillet, he said that certain scenes in "Last Year in Marienbad" originated from his early dreams.I didn't have time to find out which article he said that in, and I'm not even sure if he really said that, maybe that's just the impression I got after reading this work, so that I actually thought it was my own Had a dream.This may be because, in many of his works (such as "Envy"), there is a dreamlike expectation in the landscape description.The "thing" doctrine of Robbe-Grillet is indeed not as he hoped, getting rid of people's subjective conception and subjective color, and achieving purely objective reality.The reason why he hopes this way, I think, is that he wants to say: We must get rid of those inherent, rigid, and habitual concepts of existence, go out from there, and re-examine the relationship between man and the world. The infinite domain of the soul.So the truth in his writing is "uncertain truth".

Reality is not only reality, reality is also a dream.For example, will the night, the diverse dreams that permeate half the earth, disappear with the coming of day?No, they will continue to drift into the day and participate in reality.For example, during the day, who can deduce with certainty what a person will do next based on what he is doing now?So can you still think that a group of people going to work is just a group of people going to work?No, everyone is an unpredictable dream, he is not a chess piece in logic, he is an elusive chess player.For example, memory, are all your memories the reality that happened?No, there must be dreams there that never happened.But it is obviously absurd to say that dreams do not happen.Dreams have happened, happened as reality, and become part of our real life.If the fundamental difference between humans and computers is that computers cannot create things out of nothing, obviously, dreams are even the main feature of our lives.

Robbe-Grillet's writing is not realistic, or even dream writing. In my opinion, his writing is to call for people's dreams and their obsession and love for dreams.Therefore, in his works, there are unknowns, illusions and blanks everywhere, so that we can infinitely expand our dreams, that is, expand our lives.Life is just unfolded by dreams, just imagine minus dreams, what is left of a person?Robbe-Grillet has an extraordinary ability. He can always bring us to a point of view, let us walk into the illusory picture, sound or situation, and see it to create another meaning and get its meaning And forget its shape, suddenly remember the long source of life, and suddenly see the endless destination of life.That's probably what got me reading it.

In an era where crazy material desires and rigid rules deprive people of spirituality like "magic", dreams are especially precious. Writers must remember them, admire them, and follow them. When our love is overwhelmed by "magic", sex is plundered by it and turned into a commodity more and more widely, and literature is often reduced to geisha performances, how much we hope to hear the kind of solitary talk in Duras !We need her voice, that tone of voice, that kind of unadorned delicacy, heavy and light to bring us back to our dreams.Sometimes I feel that what is buried in the blank space of "Last Year in Marienbad" is this story.If a person, after going through vicissitudes, finally gets rid of the shock of "worldly magic" and returns to human spirituality, his articles will wash away the complicated techniques and have a Duras-style voice.Tell it sincerely and without evasion, so that you are not only in the present, but also in the past and future, on the young naked body of the "lover", in the aging face of the "lover", in the heart and soul of the "lover" who has drifted away.Then there is no need for any technique, rule, method, you are speaking to yourself, to God, to life and death. "Magic" is scared away by the broad and long fall, where your life's dreams come and go freely, that's the way God gave you, without intellectual fiddling, but casual poetry, the best music.I love it so much, but there doesn't seem to be anything more to talk about.Since the day I saw it, every step of my writing journey, that state is what I yearn for.But I can't.I thought, perhaps this is not something that can be learned, and imitation would be worse.Perhaps, it takes age to make the distance of time longer and longer before it is possible to walk into it.Maybe I haven't walked enough in that "magic" yet, haven't finished it yet, so it's not possible to get out yet.But I seem to have seen that the direction that literature should go is to speak freely in the blank space of the world, in the field that fashion disdains, there, in dreams.

I don't want to talk about Chinese literature and French literature, I just want to say that literature is the same, has the same and eternal roots. Annie: If you think this letter can be used, please delete the beginning and end and count it as an article. I am naturally very happy and grateful that Gallimer Publishing House is willing to publish my work.I also think the title you selected is very appropriate.thanks. I spent too much time writing that script this year, so I wrote very little else.We must not do this next year. That is to say Daan! Shi Tiesheng November 9, 1994