Chapter 35 1985 "The Temptation of Gandese"

Genre: Fiction Author: Ma Yuan Original publication: "Shanghai Literature" Published: Issue 2, 1985 Introduction: "The Temptation of Gangdise" was published in the second issue of "Shanghai Literature" in 1985, and it is one of Ma Yuan's masterpieces.It was later included in Ma Yuan's collection of novels "No Sailboat on the West Sea".The novel describes the mysterious customs and customs of the Gangdise Plateau based on the experiences of several young foreign seekers after entering Tibet, and subtly conveys the mythical world of Tibet and the primitive life of Tibetans with the help of unique artistic techniques. The "seduction" of state to modern civilization and the inner meaning of this temptation.

The novel does not have a complete storyline, but interleaves several unrelated stories.The fierce Tibetan god hunter Qiongbu was invited to hunt bears, but he found a snowman in the Himalayas; the explorer Lu Gao knew a beautiful Tibetan girl Yang Jin, but Yang Jin died unexpectedly in a car accident; Going to see "sky burial" with Yao Liang, but was rejected by the celestial burial master, and the legendary life journey of the younger brother Dunyue who is naturally fanciful and the honest brother Dunzhu.The novel uses Mount Gangdise as the distant background of people and events, narrates the charming scenery and magical customs of Tibet, and shows the charming way of life and living atmosphere.

About the author: Ma Yuan, born in 1953 in Jinzhou, Liaoning. In 1982, he entered Tibet to work and began to publish works.Published collections of novels "No Sailboat in the West Sea", "The Temptation of Gangdise", "Fiction", and the novel "Up and Down Are Flat", etc.Most of Ma Yuan's works absorb the strengths of magical realism artistic expression, and show his own characteristics in narrative form and time-space processing.As a representative writer of trendy novels, Ma Yuan has made unique contributions in the creation of novels in the new era.Previously, from scar literature, educated youth literature to root-seeking literature, most authors were still under the urge to "communicate something" and "say something", but Ma Principles shifted the focus of creation to "how to write", in the narrative of the novel bold experiments in strategy, narrative language, etc., thus arousing formal consciousness in a country that has always lacked a sense of form, triggering a narrative revolution in novels, and making a silent but powerful contribution to traditional literary concepts and traditional aesthetic habits. challenge.

Features: There are several aspects of the work that stand out.First of all, the author's expression of Tibetan life does not focus on the changes under the influence of the external world, but focuses on the basic living conditions of Tibetans, such as hunting, grazing, and sky burial; Such as the celestial burial that outsiders are not allowed to visit, the hot spring landscape in the snowy night, the huge sheep's head-shaped stone towering over the swamp, etc.This mythical world is consistent with the original desolation, mystery and splendor of Tibet's natural scenery, and is also in harmony with the rough legends of Tibetan life, thus completely forming a unique "world of the early people".

Secondly, in order to match this mysterious world, the author adopts a unique narrative method.Several stories have no connection, they are established independently and connected together; the clues of the stories are not very clear, and often come and go suddenly; events often have no definite time and place, or are omitted in the process or in the result; Although it is narrated in the way of storytelling, it does not have the foil, exaggeration and intentional shaping of characters in the usual novels; the characters and stories in the novel are driven by stronger concreteness and deeper chance, and on the one hand, they unfold endless changes. On the one hand, it reveals the mysterious core of the story.From the beginning to the end of the work, there is no unified person, and there is no continuous character, but the person is constantly changing.The first-person direct narration is used when narrating the old writers, the second-person narration is used when narrating Qiongbu, and the positive narration method is used when narrating the experience of Yao Liang and Lu Gao watching the sky burial and the stories of the brothers Dunyue and Dunzhu.The explorer Lu Gao is largely an extension of the author's personal experience, and at the same time is the main perspective of the whole story.This confusing and confusing narrative method that intertwines the author-narrator-characters breaks the inertia and expectations of readers when reading, and creates an effect of alienation, so that they can make a clear and rational judgment on the content of the work.In these senses, "The Temptation of Gangdis" is a good taste of the narrative revolution of contemporary novels.

Artistic features: The novel breaks the boundary between content and form, truth and fiction, regards the narrative itself as an aesthetic object, conducts a revolutionary experiment in the narrative method of the novel, and brings a strong impact and challenge to the traditional concept of fiction .Its main features are as follows: The first is the application of "meta-narrative" technique.The so-called "meta-narrative" refers to a method of deliberately exposing one's own narrative behavior and writing activities to reveal the fictional nature of the novel.This technique is constantly used by Ma Yuan in the novel.In Section 4 of the novel, the first-level narrator "I" jumps out directly and declares to the readers that the story here is not a love story; in Section 15, he stands up and directly discusses the "structure", "Clues" and "remaining questions", such as why Dunyue disconnected inexplicably, why didn't she write a letter to her fiancée Nim?Then, the narrator rudely told the readers in a flattering manner, suddenly saying, "Soon after enlisting in the army, he died on duty" and so on.Ma Yuan's approach is obviously out of technical considerations in the novel. This technique of consciously exposing the fictional nature of the novel can produce a alienating effect, telling readers clearly that fiction is fiction and that fiction cannot be regarded as reality.Ma Yuan's "meta-narrative" method not only satirizes the plot and inertia of traditional realistic novels and the integrity and authenticity of reality based on this, but also fundamentally questions the integrity, continuity and authenticity of experience. It is at this point that the "plausible illusion" of the novel is shaken.

Second is the structure of the novel.In terms of structure, it adopts the method of illogical layer combination of four inconclusive stories.The novel consists of four stories (fragments): the story of the old writer, the story of the hunter Qiongbu, the story of Lu Gao and Yao Liang, and the story of Dunzhu and Dunyue.These several stories (fragments) are almost unrelated, but there are some overlaps in the characters.The combination of these mysterious story fragments with no beginning and no end, and the extraction of causality, is not only a subversion of the structure of the novel—a subversion of the novel’s essence as a holistic and orderly fiction, but also makes those mysterious , The factors of seeking knowledge constitute a strong mysterious atmosphere.But the author never intends to tell readers what these mysterious factors are?Are they real?Or is it just people's hallucinations and conjectures?And all kinds of questions have no results in the novel, just waiting for readers to read and think.

The third is the arbitrary choice of narrative style.The narrative method is restricted by the logic of causality, but in Ma Yuan's novel, narration, interlude, and multiple alternate uses have no fixed rules, and there is no time continuity.This is actually a deliberate violation of the fixed concept of time in the novel. The fourth is the arbitrary conversion of narrative perspective.In his novels, Ma Yuan sometimes uses a restrictive first-person narrative, sometimes an omniscient third-person narrative, and even a second-person narrative; even though it is the same first-person, the speaking subjects represented are different.There is no unified narrator and unified narrative perspective, so there is no unified novel world.

Narrative method: A considerable part of the meaning of this novel has been separated from the content of the story, and is attached to the narrative process and narrative method.Therefore, in order to truly understand this work, it is necessary to read the original text.The meaning of the novel that the synopsis provides you is detracted from the narrative process. The structure method of the novel "The Temptation of Gangdise" is extremely unique and also has a considerable independent meaning.The author Ma Yuan focuses on "writing" when dealing with the materials to be written.The same material and different writing methods will give birth to different meanings. The writing method, that is, the structure, in this sense, is 50% of the content of the novel.Ma Yuan mobilized all the initiative of the structure, so that the content of the story he narrated unexpectedly gained richer connotations, that is, the author made the content he wanted to narrate generate new meaning and new value under the unique structure.

"The Temptation of Gangdis" has written several unrelated short stories.Qiongbu and Snowman, the death of Yang Zhen, going to see the sky burial, the story of Dunzhu Dunyue.If these unrelated stories are not in Ma Yuan's unique structure, you can't connect them, let alone create new meaning and value together. Coupled with a god-like perspective and self-confidence, some places are rigidly spliced ​​​​to bring them into a new whole.In this new whole, these scattered story elements are respectively exercising their original story functions, and at the same time shouldering new value functions.Poor cloth and the snowman better reflect this point in "The Temptation of Gangdise".

First of all, after the story of Qiongbu and Snowman is included in the whole of "The Temptation of Gangdise", it has gained a wider space. The death of Miss Zhen mirrors the story of Dunzhu Dunyue and so on.It is precisely this kind of comparison that gives readers a new basis for understanding. On this basis, readers may ignore the meaning of the story of Qiongbu and the Snowman itself, and associate it with watching the sky burial, and then dig out new meanings from it. And the new meaning that has been excavated already has a new overall scope, which is forever separated from the original narrow world. From the novel "The Temptation of Gangdise", it is not difficult for us to see the power of structure in Ma Yuan's novel creation. He seems to be carelessly playing with the structure (that is, the composition of the novel), and through the process of "writing", he contributes to the novel. The story adds one new layer after another.When constructing novels, he adopts an attitude of being absolutely subjective at times and at times extremely objective, allowing the content of the novel to wander freely between the two extremes. Good flexibility, the whole of the novel is like a three-dimensional world, not only rich, but all roads lead to Rome.It provides a considerable gap for readers to read, and can fully mobilize the subjectivity and randomness of readers' reading. How do you think about this novel, or what do you think, how do you understand it, are all allowed in Ma Yuan's novels. Language change: Freedom is a must for Ma Yuan's novel creation. "The Temptation of Gangdise" fully embodies the meaning of these two words from the perspective of narrative, the relationship between time and space, and language change. original meaning. The language changes in "The Temptation of Gandese" are colorful.People call you, me, and him, which is almost used, "I know you will scold me for coming to you so late." "This is poor cloth. Poor cloth can't speak Chinese, and you can't speak Tibetan. You drink tea. In the evening As soon as I told Yao Liang about this, he told me, "The characteristics of language changes in this novel are very consistent with the structural changes, just like the saying goes: talk to whoever you meet.Sometimes the objective narrative of the third person unknowingly turns into a person's inner monologue, and then quietly connects with the third-person narrative.This fade-in and fade-out effect is very subtle.And this language change makes the reader's entire reading complete in a jump full of elasticity and vitality, avoiding lengthiness and tediousness. In short, Ma Yuan, as a master storyteller, always wants to lead readers into a new world.Well, smart readers may have found a trick to read Ma Yuan's works: no matter what he is talking about, watch how he says it.And vice versa, no matter what he says, and what he says, if you take both aspects as the main ones, you run the risk of getting caught up in a kind of perpetual entanglement.