Chapter 9 see the sun

In April 1849, Dostoevsky was arrested at the same time as three dozen other intellectual groups who joined the Petrasevsky faction on the charge of "ideological conspiracy".After eight months in captivity, he and twenty young men among them were sentenced to death. On December 22, the prisoners who were about to be executed were taken to the Seminov playground, where they heard the verdict and kissed the cross.Prisoners were all in their final garments—white shirts; and were hanged in groups of three, one at a time.Dostoevsky was sixth, and thinking he had a minute to live, he thought of his brother.

Later that day Dostoevsky wrote to his brother Michael from his cell.The naive Dostoevsky did not suspect that the pardon issued at the last minute before the execution turned out to be a gimmick. He was released immediately when the order was issued, and returned to the army to resume his post), he just wanted to use extremely high willpower to frighten, torture, humiliate and mock these lives that can be played between the palms of his hands, to hasten death, to force Health, make it submit. But what concerns Dostoevsky in his first letter after his near-death is that, on the way to the Seminov playground, he sees a crowd from the window of the prison wagon; Once this group of people spread the news of the execution to Mihail, Mihail would definitely feel pain for him. "Now you can take it easy on me, brother!" Dostoevsky wrote, "I have not become discouraged or discouraged. Life is everywhere, in us, not in us. In something other than my life. . . . This is the business of life. I do feel it. The idea goes into my flesh, into my blood."

Dostoevsky, who knew he was doomed, saw a group of people from the window of the caravan.This group of people reminded him not of "Oh! They are so happy to live, and I am going to die soon" or "If only I were one of them", this group of people made him think. What came up was the scene of them running to tell each other, going to Mikhail to report the terrible news of the death penalty, the solid and trivial details of life, the banal and huge details-compared to death.And death is not like that; death is another thought, death is the thought "It would be nice if I didn't die!", death is the thought "Look how happy they are alive, I don't have that chance anymore."Death came before Dostoevsky, but he saw the life content of living like an ant, reporting news, spreading sorrow, and jumping alive.Death retreats, retreats to any corner beyond the small caravan window where it can be frightened, tortured, humiliated and ridiculed by those in power.

Milan Kundera (Milan Kundera, 1929~) Chapter 8 "The Road in the Fog" (Kundera's works quoted in this book are all Taiwan editions. - Editor) unreservedly praised Kafka's At the same time criticized George Orwell.One of the subsections is titled "Window".Kundera wrote: Kafka writes K in the open window, full of people who know nothing about the protagonist’s world and are indifferent to it, but are full of mediocre life and rich details—people smoking cigarettes and holding children in the window, sitting barefoot in small wooden boxes People reading newspapers, boys swinging around handcarts, girls in tight pajamas drawing water at the pump (“her pitcher was full”), and, of course, in the court hall, one after another A classic grotesque scene of an ugly, skinny college student pushing down a woman at the gate and having sex with her while listening in.

Kundera believes that even in the cruelest moment, K. still retains the freedom to decide to open the window to "Tolstoy's landscape", towards the cheerful vulgarity that people have deprived K. , gay and vulgar liberty.Yuyan Kafka "created a very poetic image of a very poetic world". Compared with Kafka, Kundera did not brag about George Orwell because he denigrated the Stalinist literary tradition of Socialist Realism (Socialist Realism).After the latter became famous with "Animal Farm" and other books, it did gain reputation because of the cultural confrontation between the two major groups of the Cold War and the East and West; The truth about the practice of the ultimate ideal” and made a big fuss.Kundera believes that there is no "window" in this "long-term reference book for anti-authoritarian professionals for decades": "There, one does not see the girl and her jug ​​full of water; Closing to poetry; novel? A political thought (reading) masquerading as a novel... The bad influence of Orwell's novel consists in the ruthless reduction of a reality to its purely political aspects...I refuse to use its benefits against The propaganda of the struggle against despotism justifies such a reduction."

Dostoevsky's life was full of misfortunes.The new sentence commuted him to four years of hard labor in the Omsk prison in Siberia, after which he was assigned to the infantry regiment as a soldier for six years.From 1850 to 1859, only barely finished Notes from the House of the Dead; yet he was also lucky—for the most part, he was not actually strangled, and, when death was near, he lost himself from the caravan window. saw life. It was not the novelist himself who was about to die, but a group of well-meaning strangers (such mediocre and happy people) who went to inform Michael of his death.Glancing through a window, our novelist seems to "see" the lives of others.That scene is naturally fictitious at the moment, but because "everyone goes to report death" is virtual, the novelist does not submit to the imminent threat of death at that moment; the virtual "everyone goes to report death", the virtual Mikhail's heartbreak .We don't need to over-explain or evaluate how fearless or fearless Dostoyevsky was in the face of death, but we can find it in this inadvertent memory after he survived: it is a novelist's vision—virtual event, opening a window beyond death.

We are used to hearing literati boasting that their love for literature is as much as life, and that writing is life.However, if the novel can be regarded as a kind of life, it has to possess a subjectivity beyond all domination (morality, custom, ideology, and even all kinds of guiding powers over it). In 1922, the Russian writer Samirchin, who was born three years after Dostoyevsky's death, wrote in "New Russian Essays": "Art must be self-disciplined, while real literature can only be written by madmen, The hermit, the heretic, the visionary, the skeptic, the rebel are born."

Zamyatin (EI Zamyatin, 1884-1937) participated in the student movement in the early 20th century and became a Bolshevik against the imperialist Russian system. He also suffered a fate similar to that of Dostoevsky: he was arrested and then exiled.However, not long after, from 1920 to 1921, he wrote this novel from the perspective of a heretic and a skeptic, but he became a political victim of the Stalin era.The ban on publication was not officially lifted until 1988. Before that, in addition to being circulated in the former Soviet Union in the form of manuscripts, there were also English, French and Czech versions.Meanwhile, a large portion of the world's literary population is unaware that George Orwell's book (or " Tribute to the classic").However, there is indeed a very important distinction with these two books.This distinction marks whether the novel is or is not a life.

In Zamyatin's novel, D-503, the commander-in-chief of the "Integer" spaceship construction of the "Single State" development universe, is described. A world incompatible with the state environment of modernization, mechanization, mathematicization, and domination, that is, the "ancient museum" that preserves the state of nature.Even through the passage of the "Ancient Pavilion", we came outside the wall ("green wall") of the "single country" and saw the so-called nature. It goes without saying that "Single State" is the Oceania in the book published more than twenty years later, D-503 is the Winston Smith in the book, and I-330 is Julia in the book.

Narrating Winston and Julia having an affair in the hazel grove.The idyllic scenery dotted in between is the peach blossom garden that Winston dreamed of.Orwell did not forget to add a thrush here, singing the implicit and touching sexual foreplay of the hero and heroine.But at this moment, Orwell couldn't help explaining this scene of joy to Winston: "Not only personal love, but also the instinctive indulgence of animal instinct will smash the party to pieces." However, this It is also a narrative that smashes fiction to pieces and reduces life to the bottom of politics until it becomes invisible.

In Zamyatin, D-503 saw an old woman at the entrance of the "Ancient Museum". He asked her about the whereabouts of I-330, and the other party told him.Then he looked at a clump of "silver wormwood that has been carefully preserved in its prehistoric state" at the old woman's feet.The old woman stroked the wormwood leaves—"The sun was shining on her knees, forming yellow stripes. And for a moment, me, the sun, the old woman, the wormwood, the yellow eyes-all became one, and we were firmly Connected firmly by some kind of vein, in which flows a common, violent, marvelous blood.../I am so ashamed to write here now...I stoop, in A deep kiss on the wrinkled, soft moss-covered mouth. The old woman wiped her mouth and laughed." Although predating Orwell, Zamyatin is not the first novelist to treat the erotic drive (D-503's intrinsic motivation for chasing I-330) as antithetical to political gripping forces.However, Zamyatin abandoned this simple, dry and superficial comparison, preferring to enter the impulsive interior of D-503, looking for the source of power: a beam of warm, unruly, Even if it shines on the "old woman's lap", it emits golden sunlight.In the "single country" of D-503, sunlight has always been adjusted and lost its own color level.Zamyatin did not "mash the party to pieces" with a penis. In the eyes of a true novelist, the party or the political, moral, evil powers it represents are too small to be smashed with a penis. From the beginning of the 20th century, creators and critics who believed in the theory that "fiction reflects society and feeds back to life" often regarded the great novelists of the imperial Russian era as their masters, and even dismissed them as the peak of the art of fiction.This type of argument tends to use the beliefs revealed in the novel, the compassion shown: the care conveyed, and the justice defended are the yardstick of the novel's aesthetics and even the realm, which is actually tantamount to seeking a fish while cutting a boat to find a sword. A year before Zamyatin went to prison, Chekhov died at the age of forty-four.As early as the end of "Light" written by Chekhov when he was twenty-eight years old, he emphasized: "Nothing is known in the world." Judge, should be a fair witness." "Writers—especially artists, should honestly show, as Socrates and Voltaire said: Nothing is known." Nothing is known.This is not some vague statement, nor does it need to be labeled with humility.If a novelist can repeat what he said three times, if Zamyatin's "madman, hermit, heretic, visionary, skeptic, and rebel" can be corroborated, the works of these people can only be based on these people. self-discipline in their works, these people have also lost their qualifications as "lawyers".Since the novelist's subjectivity and self-discipline are synchronized, he will not want to smash any party to pieces when he has an erection.Otherwise, that subjectivity is hypocritical and hypocritical. Dostoevsky's letter to Mikhail also wrote: "I still have my heart in my body, and the same flesh and blood. I can love, I can suffer, I can hope, I can remember, And this is life after all. On voit le solei (see the sun)."