Chapter 62 Modern Consciousness in Section IV Fiction: "The Cabin on the Hill"

Can Xue's novels are very unique in literary creation after the Cultural Revolution.She shows an absurd, deformed, and nightmarish world with mutated feelings. The gloom, obscurity, fear, anxiety, prying, and perverted psychology of the characters and the mutual hatred and conflict of ugly human nature are entangled in her works, not only The tragedy of human existence is written, and some essential ugly characteristics of human beings are written.This feature of Can Xue’s novels seems to be very close to modern western absurd novels, but the pain of life itself, the surging out of the deep despair of survival and the cries and struggles on the edge of despair are not just a reflection of modern western absurd novels. The novel is a simple imitation, but has a close relationship with the reality she lived in and the history she experienced. The events described in her reality often remind us that during the Cultural Revolution, everyone may be spied on and informed. People don't trust each other, they don't hesitate to sell others in order to save themselves, even family and relatives defend each other, selfish, ruthless... When Can Xue puts the absurd experience and despair of life into the specific time and space background, she is very concerned about The revelation of the ugliness and cruelty of human nature has a strong realistic fighting spirit and a social mission to try to change this situation. "When there is light in the heart, darkness becomes darkness." From this, the light of life that fights against the cruelty of reality and the ugliness of human nature burns in her works, maintaining the existence of life in despair, and yearning for heaven in the void and pessimism. beauty.

Can Xue's novels generally give people a nightmarish impression, such as "The Cabin on the Mountain", "Yellow Mud Street", "Old Floating Clouds", "My Things in That World", etc., each of which is full of Without exception, the story environment makes people feel horrible and disgusting, and the characters always have a sense of fate-like fear living in it, or it can be said that they have degenerated into a symbol of some kind of fear.The short story "The Cabin on the Hill"13 is one of his masterpieces.It depicts a weird world through the narrator's weird sensory experience: "Everyone's ears are wrong." The narrator continued to hold his breath to her mother, "Under the moonlight, there are so many thieves in the world. We wandered around the house. I turned on the light and saw countless holes in the windows that had been poked with fingers. In the next room, you and your father were snoring so loudly that the bottles and jars were in the cupboard. I jumped up. I kicked off the bed, turned my swollen head sideways, and heard the man locked in the cabin banging on the wooden door furiously, and the sound continued until dawn." The narrator feels that the world is full of hidden threats , everything around her was unreasonable, especially her relatives also showed evil faces: "Father turned into one of the wolves every night, running around the house, howling terribly." "Mom Always against me in the dark", "She is staring at the back of my head fiercely, I can feel it. Every time she stares at the back of my head, the spot on my scalp where she stared is numb and swollen It can be said that the narrator has also lost her normal rationality and sensibility in such a terrifying environment, or she has lost the latter to produce all kinds of strange experiences, but she is obviously bound by this environment a molecule.In fact, since the narrative and the characters are in the same field of vision, it is difficult to distinguish whether it is the feeling of "I" that is wrong or the living environment. Almost cruel and dark perspective.

However, the work also mentions a "hut on the mountain" imagined by the narrator: "In the hut on the mountain, there is also a person moaning. Some grape leaves are carried in the black wind." This seems to imply that in her There is some kind of potential acquaintance with that unknown person, which makes her go up the mountain again and again, trying to find the trace of this acquaintance, and also trying to get out of this nightmare experience.But every time she was disappointed: "I climbed up the mountain, and my eyes were full of flames of white stones. There were no grapes, and there were no huts." The resistance doesn’t stop there. One of the more obvious metaphors in the work is that she “cleaned the drawers at home every day”, although this aroused the jealousy of others (“My mother has been trying to break my arm because the sound of opening and closing the drawers Drive her crazy". ) and destruction ("I found out that they rummaged through my drawers in my absence and threw a few dead moths and dead dragonflies on the floor, which they knew was my favorite thing.") , but she never gave up, always trying to get the drawers cleaned up, even working hard all night. "Cleaning out the drawer" is undoubtedly a metaphor for the effort to rebuild order and normal rationality. This behavior is the same as looking for "the cabin on the mountain". There is no hope of success in the novel, but it clearly conveys the desire for the evil of existence. Resistance consciousness.

"The Cabin on the Hill" records a special grasp of real life, describes the nightmarish evil and ugly scenes in life, and also depicts the anxious experience of people who cannot find salvation and relief, but at the same time, this description Contains a negative dimension, which reveals existence so repulsive as to demonstrate its meaninglessness.What is striking about this novel is that it opens up an abnormal language and aesthetic space. The ambiguity and illogicality in semantics, the disgust and illusion in aesthetics are all used to express the inevitable feeling of nightmare. At the same time, this creates the unique aesthetic effect of the work: it seems that a surreal light tears the scene of existence, and presents all the dark places behind it.

Notes: 1 Such as Yuan Kejia, Zhu Hong, etc. Yuan Kejia, a member of the "New Chinese Poetry School", was the backbone of the translation and introduction of Western literature since the late 1970s. The four volumes "Selected Works of Foreign Modernist Literature" edited by him had a wide impact; , was a modernist poet in his early years, which also shows the continuation of accepting foreign literature in this century. 2 See "Sinking Temple-China's Underground Poetry in the 1970s", edited by Liao Yiwu, Xinjiang Youth Publishing House, April 1999. 3 "Today" magazine is a bimonthly folk literature magazine founded by "Today's Literature Research Association". It was first published on December 23, 1978, and until the end of December 1980, a total of 9 issues were published.In addition, the "Today" literature series, "Today" literature research association materials, etc. are published.Its main editorial members include Bei Dao and Munk.

4 See Xie Mian's "Facing the New Rise", published in Guangming Daily on May 7, 1980.Sun Shaozhen's "New Aesthetic Principles Are Rising", published in "Poetry Magazine" No. 3, 1981; Xu Jingya's "Rising Poetry Group-Comment on the Modern Tendency of Chinese Poetry", contained in "Contemporary Literary and Art Thought Trends" No. 1, 1983. 5 See Bei Dao’s, which was first published in the inaugural issue of the bimonthly literary magazine “Today”, in which there is a sentence “Despicableness is the passport of the humble, and nobleness is the epitaph of the noble”. "Monument" is Jiang He's masterpiece, first published in the October 1980 issue of "Poetry".

6 Quoted from Xu Jingya's "The Rising Poetry Group-Comment on the Modern Tendency of Chinese Poetry". 7 As a matter of fact, the first well-known article "The Depressing "Hazy"" (published in the August 1980 issue of "Poetry Magazine") that criticized the new wave of poetry first sharply questioned Du Yunxie's poems. Du's poems were published in January of that year. No. "Poetry Magazine". 8 See Chapter 11, Section 1 of this book. 9 See Chen Sihe's "Modern Rebellion Consciousness in Literary Creation", see "The Pen Walks the Dragon Snake", Shandong Friendship Publishing House, May 1997 edition, pp. 77-105.

10 "To the Oak Tree" was first published in the first issue of "Today" (December 1978), and later included in "Selected Misty Poems" edited by Yan Yuejun and others, Spring Breeze Literature and Art Publishing House, 1985 edition, p. 54. 11 "Brig", included in "Selected Poems of Misty", p. 51. 12 "Absolute Signal", premiered in Beijing in November 1982.The script was first published in the fifth issue of "October" in 1982. 13 "The Cabin on the Mountain", first published in the 8th issue of "People's Literature" in 1985.