Chapter 8 The fable's arrow shoots between light and shadow

I had the first version when I was in elementary school, a sixteenth color comic strip with a story on each page or two.This book made me discover that animals can talk like people, and even trees, the sun and the north wind are quite interesting.That doesn't confuse me, what Aesop really confuses is that the "memory" at the end of the story is often different from what I read myself. Like the story about the north wind and the sun, who compete to see who can make the traveler take off his coat.The north wind blew hard, but the traveler held onto his clothes even more tightly, and the north wind blew harder, but the traveler added another coat.The sun gradually dissipated heat, and the traveler felt hot, so he took off the added clothes. The sun became stronger and stronger, and the traveler finally couldn't bear it, so he took off all his clothes and jumped into the river to swim.The "memory" at the end of this fable says: "Gentle persuasion is often more effective than rough force." But isn't the sun rougher than the north wind?If the game is set up to see who can get the traveler to add a piece of clothing, then the north wind will obviously win. Does the moral of this story have to be said that "rough force is often more effective than gentle persuasion"?

Adult readers can have more worldly experience to wonder: how can we regard a fable as a carrier of teaching or truth when the meaning it refers to is so transferable or even reversible?Or, the allegorical part at the end of the fable—that is, the passage that is repeatedly brought out in the form of "this story is..."—is just an attempt by the fable writer or editor to make a ridiculous absurdity that cannot exist in the real world. Stories (such as: the fox invites the stork to eat, the frog wants to compare its body size with the cow, etc.) can only be designed to have more "meaningful connections" with the real world.In other words, the writer or editor of the fable found that the fable must have a moral (for example: this story says that those who see far can survive. "Swallows and Other Birds"), only through the meaning conveyed With the function of teaching lessons, people will not care about how the fox invites the stork to eat?And how does the frog look up to the cow?Here, the allegory does not necessarily express a truth, its existence is to allow readers to admit that the absurd story is justified because it has meaning.Just think about the story of "The Swallow and Other Birds"——

Is the moral of the story really just that "he who sees far is spared"?Or "those who see far are doomed to turn their backs on their kind"?Or is it "those who are far-sighted are doomed to betray the secrets of their own kind and cling to higher powers"?Or "Humans appreciate species that can sell secrets among their own kind in order to attach themselves to higher powers"?Or is it "God appreciates people who see far-sightedness and who can betray their own kind and betray their secrets in order to cling to a higher power"?These meanings, which seem to be neither closer nor farther from the truth, can be extended and expanded infinitely; the lessons they bring are not necessarily better or worse than Aesop's original ones.In the final analysis: the meaning of Aesop's fables does not matter whether it is right or wrong, the meaning is only a semiotic need-with meaning, the fable seems to be an arrow that has found its target.

We can indeed imagine that the critic who finds a moral for a novel has a harder time than the fable writer or editor who adds a moral to a fable.The novelist shoots an arrow with his bow in his arms, and the critic follows him, marking a target where the arrow lands, and then he can declare to the readers who have not followed it: what is expressed in this novel and what is it? What, what fits what what and what.If the critic had been as well-meaning as the human being admiring the swallow in the previous story, he would have drawn the arrow where it landed as a bull's-eye, surrounded by layers of concentric circles, claiming that the novel refers exactly to what and what— "Humans think that swallows are very intelligent, so they leave swallows to live with humans", "Only swallows are protected and can build nests under the eaves of humans with peace of mind."Of course, critics can also draw the target position slightly, even very far away.

The question is probably not which critics have good intentions and which critics lack good intentions.The search for allegorical meaning in fiction involves the art that for centuries has been bound by something like the allegorical allusion of the old fable.People can't imagine that the novel is like a "pointless" deed done by a warrior.How many characters do not really exist in the real world can be accommodated in a novel, but they can speak human words and do human affairs like living people in the real world-isn't this better than a fox can invite a stork to eat, a frog wants to eat? Is the story more grotesque than fatter than a cow?Because of its absurdity, the novel, like a fable, also has its semiotic needs; it must have an allegory, it must refer to something, it cannot be shot with a single arrow, and it does not know where to end, it must fall in a place where it can On the wall, on the floor, or something for those who read it to draw targets for it.Look at the other side of this metaphor: it is impossible for a novelist to write in order to prepare to refer to a certain target, because if there is such a target, it must be drawn as a result of a work that has appeared earlier. , it is impossible to accommodate a second arrow above a bullseye.Here, what the hard-working critic must understand is that there are infinitely many possibilities to draw a target for a falling arrow.

To put it in a Chinese phrase: "Zhuangzi wrote many 'fables'", there is even a chapter in one book.After this word is used to translate fable and allegory, it will make Zhuangzi and Aesop, Phaedrus (c. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, 1729～1781), Orwell (George Orwell, 1903～1950) looks like wrestlers participating in the same archery competition.However, I would rather follow Zhuangzi's arrows behind Aesop's foxes, frogs, and swallows, because he brings me closer to the referential theory of the art of "fiction". Zhuangzi once used "water in a wine glass" to describe language, thus creating the word "卮言".Due to different containers, the shape of water also varies accordingly. This nature of not having a fixed shape and changing with the container is Zhuangzi's understanding of the essence of language.So, what exactly is the container that holds the language?The American thinker Charles Sanders Pierce, who once constructed semiotics, used the word "interpretant" to summarize those who "can understand that a certain sign (sign) represents certain objects (object)".The so-called hermeneutics are groups that are restricted by a language system that has already been formed; It may come from outside what Chuang Tzu called the "container for language".

Here, "the water in the wine glass" has two extreme and opposite meanings.On the one hand, this water (language) is extremely free, and it can be understood in a unique way if it is placed in any container (interpretation); but on the other hand, it can only be understood in a specific container. Therefore, the language being understood is extremely unfree.Zhuangzi couldn't escape the duality of freedom and arbitrariness in language, so he embarked on his journey of fables or similes of "likeness but not reality".In "Qiwulun" and the two articles, he used "Wangliang" (everything that is neither one nor the other is "Wangliang", which means that it is like a human being, but a ghost, and not a ghost. There is also a Said: "Wang Liang refers to the slightly shaded area between light and shadow that looks like a shadow but not a shadow) and the dialogue between "scenery" (shadow), vaguely points out his views on "language" and "the meaning of language" . "Wang Liang" was very curious about the state of "Jing" indefinitely (suddenly leaning and looking up, sitting and rising, walking and stopping). When asked why, "Jing" replied "Wang Liang" with a metaphor: "I am The shells of cicadas and the skins of snakes are specious things. When fire and sunlight appear, I will appear; when darkness and night come, I will disappear.”

There is only a specious relationship between language and the meaning of language, and there is also a fluid and specious relationship between allegory and allegory, and between novels and their references.No wonder Mr. Qian Mu can only use an analogy to "fable" when summarizing a book. He said: "Zhuang Zhou's water, which has been drunk for thousands of years, is too weak. It's too salty, and it can't quench your thirst. On the contrary, I feel that this water is ever-changing, and it seems to have all kinds of strange smells. Drinking it will make you love it more, but it still can't quench people's thirst."

Indeed, in Zhuangzi—and in the novelist as well—there is no defined thirst medicine to be offered. Novelists don't tell you how your life should be lived, don't tell you what your work refers to, don't give you any convenient answers that can be condensed, summarized, boiled down to, because convenient answers that can be regarded as allegorical levels often Both are stupid answers. One of my favorite "Aesop's fables" is this: Like the bad doctor in the story, the fable's writer or editor has given us a moral that wants us to think we are "cured": "Bad things always show their flaws unconsciously."

If the allegory can really be reduced, summarized, and boiled down to this sentence, the most precious secret in this fable—how "blind" the old woman is—would suddenly be understood, and at the same time lose all interest. In front of countless readers and the interpretations they represent, the works are spread out, and not all of them are identifiable and definite answers, and not all of them are the meanings or meanings that can be cultivated through various knowledge tools; spread out There are also the general mysteries of "Wang Liang" (the name of this "similarity" and "Jing" (the essence of this "similarity").In Franz Kafka (1883-1924), Joseph K. is brought to court without knowing why or why he should defend himself.In Camus (Albert Camus, 1913-1960), Meursault left the world with the same questions as Joseph K.When Camus commented on "Hope and Absurdity" in Kafka's works, he mentioned the following fable.A psychiatrist in psychotherapy poses to a maniac fishing in a bathtub: "Do the fish take the bait?" The other responds rudely: "Of course not, you idiot! It's a bathtub! Camus then pointed out: this indescribable world where absurd effects and logic are combined is Kafka's world.For Camus himself, the world is the same-the novelist discovered that the world has a face like cicada shell and snake skin, a face of "seemingly but not", a world that cannot be explained in terms of "what does it mean?" He would rather portray an old lady who "hasn't noticed how bad things show their flaws", between blindness and non-blindness, between light and shadow.

A young writer interviewed Faulkner (William Faulkner, 1897~1962) and said: "What are the artistic advantages of writing novels in the form of fables? In the novel "A Fable", don't you just use Is it an allegory of Christianity?" Faulkner gave no answer, but it was very ingenious—he neither explained nor argued; he just told an allegorical simile: "Just as a carpenter building a square In "A Fable", the Christian fable happened to be the most suitable fable for this story, so I adopted it." Faulkner goes in circles, don't think he answered the interviewer; there are many things novelists don't say, especially convenient answers.