Chapter 34 epiphany

They came to the teeing ground, a flat field paved with turf, next to a bow-backed fruit tree, clusters of buds, pale in color. "Let me go first," said Rabbit. "Be quiet first." He was very angry, but his heart calmed down, and the beating of the heart was neither fast nor slow.He doesn't care about anything, he just wants to get out of this mess as soon as possible.He wishes for rain.He kept his eyes on the ball to avoid Iklitz.The little ball sat high on the tee and seemed to have left the ground.He reached his shoulders and swung his bat at it.He heard a hollow sound, a unique sound he had never heard before.The swung arms lifted his head high, and the ball was out of place, hanging in the air.The ball looked paler against the beautiful dark blue rain clouds.The color of this rain cloud is his grandfather's favorite color, and the rain cloud is getting thicker and thicker in the east.The ball went straight in a line under the sky, the starlight and the dust, and there was a sudden pause.The rabbit thought it was over, but he was wrong.Who knows that the ball uses this pause as a springboard for its final leap: it leaps forward, and with a visible whimper, it lands exactly on the hole. "That's it!" he cried, and turning to Ikelis, said with an exaggerated smile, "That's it!"

John Updike, Rabbit, Run (1960) Epiphany literally means to manifest.In Christianity, it represents the appearance of the newborn Jesus to the magi.In the eyes of James Joyce, who betrayed Catholicism and believed that writers were secular priests, this word refers to the way a writer turns a mediocre thing, an ordinary idea into an eternal beautiful thing through creative means. process.In the words of his novel's "self," Stephen Dedalus, "the soul of the most ordinary things shines." Now the term can be used to refer to any piece of descriptive text in which the external Reality takes on a transcendent meaning in the eyes of the observer.The function of epiphany in modern novels is often embodied by an important behavior in traditional narratives.It brings the story to a climax, or brings it to a close.Joyce himself exemplified this. Many of the stories in "Dubliners" seem to end abruptly, as failures, disappointments or trivialities.However, the author's language makes this sudden ending produce instant reality in the eyes of the protagonist, the reader, or both.In the novel "Portrait of a Young Artist", the scene of a young woman lifting her skirt and walking in the sea is enhanced by the reproduction of rhythm and style.This dreamlike beauty in the world makes the hero decide to dedicate himself to the career of art and give up the idea of ​​being a priest:

Her blue-gray dress was pleated at the waist in a natural way.Her breasts are as gentle and tender as a bird, as soft and tender as a black dove.But the full head of hair is full of girly breath; full of girly breath, glowing with jade-like charm, and that face. The quotation at the beginning of this section is from the first of John Updike's "Rabbit" series of novels, and describes a scene from a race.The result of the game is not important, but the tense moment, because we don't know whether the protagonist will win the game or not.Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is a young man with a dead-end job in a small town in America.At the same time, he also fell into a marriage crisis.After the birth of their first child, the couple hit a dead end in their emotional lives.He tried to wriggle out of the suffocating situation, but to no avail.In the end, he fell into the arms of another woman.The local pastor Iklitz invites him out for a round of golf as an excuse to persuade him to return to his wife.Lianzi worked as a caddy when he was young, so he knows a little about golf—two.However, due to the pressure at the time, his first shot "turned to one side, the ball - uncharacteristically topspin, and finally fell to the ground like a ball of mud".Moreover, Iklitz was chattering on the sidelines, and his level could not be fully displayed. "Why did you leave her?" "I told you. Something's missing." "What? Have you seen it? Are you sure it's there? . . . Is it hard or soft? Harry, yes Is it red or blue? Does it have polka dots on it?" There was a hint of teasing in Ikelis' series of empirical questions. "Rabbit" was cornered, and he finally answered Ikelis with a beautiful blow.

Among such descriptions as epiphany, the prose novel is closest to the language of lyric poetry in wording.Most modern lyric poems adopt the creative technique of "epiphany".Therefore, epiphany descriptions are rich in various rhetorical devices and musical effects.Updike is unique in his use of figurative language: in this paragraph, before he formally cuts into the subject, he effortlessly presents a fruit tree to the reader, "clusters of buds, colors Faint." This not only hints at the "opposite mood" at that time, but also hints at the thawing of such sentiments afterwards.However, the description of the first shot intentionally adopts the line drawing method, "He put his hands over his shoulders and swung the bat to hit it", which seems to be a professional golfer's description of the natural action of hitting the ball. "He heard a hollow sound, a unique sound that he had never heard before;" the author turned the words "hollow" and "unique" into abstract nouns, which produced a mysterious resonance ("empty" in the original text) "Hollowness and "unique" singleness are both nouns derived from adjectives. Due to the differences in writing habits between English and Chinese, the translation is still reduced to adjectives, so the original features cannot be reflected.——Translator's Note).Then, the author uses image language, "The ball has left its original position and is hanging in the air. Against the background of the beautiful dark blue rain clouds, the ball looks even paler." This natural image was later extended to "the sky, Stars, dust." The boldest metaphor is at the end—part.Just when the rabbit thought the ball was going to be over, "who knows that the ball used this pause as a springboard for its final leap: it leaped forward, with a visible whimper, and fell right into the hole." Synaesthesia in the text " Visible sobbing" If it weren't for the climax of this description, it would seem a bit delicate and gorgeous when applied to golf balls, and the taste is too strong.Rabbit turned to Iklisz and shouted triumphantly, "This is it".In effect, he was answering the pastor's question about what was missing in marriage.The description of golf (such as "the springboard of the last leap" may come from modern existential theology) has a bit of religious transcendentalism, which implies that Iklitz himself lacks belief in religion.Perhaps, from the cry of the rabbit "this is it", we can also hear the satisfaction of the author himself.This satisfaction makes sense.That is, through language, he succeeded in describing the astonishingly shining soul.