Chapter 47 fog

There is a passage in Wilde's "The Decay of Lying" about the fog in London, which reminds me of Gissing, who seems to mention it a few times in "The Private Paper of HR".The English fog, repulsive as it is to live, is always lovely to read.As for the book, I sometimes see the foggy landscapes made by Turner, which are even more fascinating. The taste of fog is the same as that of moonlight. It is to make clear things blur, so that people have room for fun, so that they can't be seen at a glance.However, compared with the fog, the moonlight is quiet and the fog is stagnant. The moonlight makes people free and easy, but the fog makes people troubled;

Because of the climate, it is rare for China to see the dense fog that engulfs the sky and turns the day into night like London.However, in the countryside every morning when the dew is not dry or the sun is not out, you can always see a band of white mist on the mountainside or among the trees, but the time is not long.In Shanghai, there is sometimes a bit of mist in the early morning; however, unless you are like me, who likes to get up early and run outside, you can see that most of the real Shanghainese always sleep until ninety o'clock before turning over, I am afraid Never dreamed.

Three or four years ago, I was studying in a school in Zhenjiang. The school building was built on top of a small hill surrounded by rolling mountains. Every morning when I woke up, I could always see a good foggy scene.At that time, I seemed to be working very hard, and I always got up early to study. The distance between the dormitory and the bathroom was across a field. When I got up and walked across the field every morning, except for rainy days, I could always see whiteness and thick fog outside the wall. , only the tops of trees and mountain peaks are visible, like floating islands in the sea, which reminds people of the scene in the Bible, when God destroyed the world with a flood, Naiah saw the scene outside from the ark.At that time, the ground was completely submerged, and only the tallest peak in the world exposed a little spire above the water—this kind of foggy scene often floats in my mind, but the time is gone, and I have no choice but to pursue it in my dreams. It's gone!

When I was eleven or twelve years old, I was studying at the foot of Lushan Mountain in Jiangxi, and I saw fog every day. "Who has seen the true face of Lushan Mountain", Lushan Mountain is almost always in the middle of nowhere, and we, like the villagers in Irving's Rap Van Winkle, always use it as a weather watch. In Chinese landscape paintings, there are sometimes fog scenes, but there is a white band left between the clear leaves and trees, which seems too dull. Gissing himself once said that the fog in London had embarrassed him many times.This was when he was a poor Garreteer, unable to write because of the fog, and unable to find money. The poor lamp oil was exhausted, and the bread was dry. He could only sleep in bed and starve all day in the dark.

The happiest time, of course, is when he has money at hand.No matter the street outside is covered with pale yellow or gray fog, no matter it is noon in the day, he always closes the shutters, lights candles, deceives himself, forgets the outside world, and pretends to be a mild night. August 10, 1925