Chapter 2 Interesting Preface to "A Clockwork Orange"

Anthony Burgess (Anthony Burgess, 1917-1993), a famous contemporary British writer, was born on February 25, 1917 and lost his mother since childhood.He was born in a Catholic family, and his parents were both engaged in music and dancing, but he betrayed Catholicism, which is not the dominant religion in Britain, with peace of mind.For this reason, he frequently displayed the opposition between the views of "free will" and "destined to be saved by God" in his novels; in addition, there are "The Missing Seed" (1962) and "Earthly Power" (a 1980), all show that his beliefs swim in the remaining Pelagianism (the Christian heresy that appeared in the British mainland in the fifth century, believing that human beings are inherently good and enjoy free will. In modern times, it evolved into a humanitarian religion ) and Augustine's teachings (the orthodox Christianity that came from the Roman Empire in the sixth century, with the teaching of original sin).This is why the subject matter of this book is philosophical.

He had hoped to become a composer, but instead enrolled in the English department of the university.In the first half of his life, he traveled around with the army's duties, teaching and composing music; in the 1950s, he served as an official in Malaya and Brunei, responsible for education, and accumulated a large number of creative works.He is the author of the Malaya Trilogy (1964).In 1959, he was diagnosed with an incurable disease. The doctor said he could live for a year at most, so he returned to China and became a professional writer, hoping to leave some security for his wife.He survived, and after the 1960s, he published more than 30 novels and other works one after another. In addition to describing exotic customs, he also satirized the strange customs of his own country.But what no one expected appeared.The content and style of the book were rated as "barbaric" by critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, who wrote an afterword to the first American edition of the book.Even the author himself expressed surprise at the success of the work in the introduction to the new American edition "Suck A Clockwork Orange Again".

Stories and Postmodern Society The story takes place in what seems to be a not-too-distant future of British society.At that time, human science and technology were quite developed, and settlements had been established on the "Moon Palace", and the global TV broadcast on the earth had also formed a TV culture; but outside, in winter nights, there were nightmares.As the author puts forward, "a clockwork orange" looks like an ordinary orange, but inside it is a mechanical device, not a natural product. The reason why the author chooses the symbol of a clockwork orange instead of "a clockwork apple", "a clockwork Grapes" because the English "sweet orange" is called orange, and the Malay word "person" is called orange.It turned out to be a rampage under mechanical control!Specifically implemented in the protagonist of this book, we see all kinds of anti-social behaviors.

We say that this book belongs to the category of "fantasy novels" in science fiction novels, both in terms of content and the pessimistic tone that scientific development leads to human depravity.Chinese readers probably still remember that in American sci-fi movies, either aliens attack the earth, or robots invented by humans attempt to enslave humans, or dinosaurs recreated by bioengineering go out of control and hurt people, and the real developed civilization order is destroyed. It does not directly describe scientific inventions, but presents us a social scene in which human beings immigrated to the moon and "no longer care about the legal order on the earth".Great Britain has become a scene of nocturnal horrors for hooligans.Aliens and robots will damage our material civilization, but this book is concerned with the future of spiritual civilization, that is, the individual freedom that the author emphasizes in the book.He believes that "moral choice" is more important than good deeds, so he gives some extreme examples: "nachachi" (teenagers) commit excessive violence.Due to a problem with the means of punishing the crime, the protagonist, despite all the hardships, was able to return to society and continue to do evil until he married a wife and had children before saying goodbye to his evil deeds.He did not kill for life, as the traditional social order required.This seems puzzling.What we take for granted becomes a question—is the protagonist responsible for his own evil deeds?

In fact, we should first realize that this is science fiction, and the era in which the story takes place belongs to postmodern society.If Chinese readers are not familiar with the background of postmodern society, it will affect the reading of novels.According to the viewpoint of western sociologists, the attribute of this postmodern society is "consumer capitalism", and its characteristics are due to the role of reflexivity (critical reflection function within society), the subject of political economy (labor force).The circulation of objects (currency, productive capital, commodities; A Clockwork Orange looks like a subject, but is actually an object) is accelerated.We found that the nachachi hooligans committed multiple crimes in a row in one night, not only because of the drama of the plot.As the turnover time continues to accelerate, objects, including cultural products, become disposable commodities, and their meaning is quickly exhausted.So the whole development process is like this: some objects, such as TV sets and stereos, themselves will produce a large number of cultural products or symbols ("signifiers"), which are dizzying and overwhelming; people are bombarded by excess signifiers, Gradually, it is impossible to give it its "referent" (meaning), and people begin to be in the blessing and not know the blessing.Alex drank milk tainted with drugs and listened to Beethoven while he raped.People are reading less newspapers, books are being torn out, and the modern (not postmodern) method of rehabilitating criminals with drugs and psychological stimulation has proven unworkable.In traditional society, the circulation of objects is not smooth. Although the meaning corresponding to the signifier is powerful, its function cannot be fully utilized, and it is "hidden in the deep mountains and no one knows it".However, in the post-modern society, the signifier is extremely rich, but the signifier is exhausted.To effectively eradicate crime, the only way to deal with hooligans is by recruiting hooligans.

In short, due to the increasing abundance and accelerated circulation of cultural products.Postmodernism does not criticize or radically negate modernism, but exaggerates it extremely, showing that it is more modern than modernism.Due to a series of formal negations of negation, many norms of modern society are no longer valid; originally, crimes should be punished by law, but in post-modern society, the person who was originally the subject has become the object, and he treats himself How can you be responsible for your actions?Also, the chorus of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, beloved by the protagonist, has been altered to become an anthem of noise, massacres, and fights.Are the programs broadcast on the TV and the music on the stereo considered as the behavior records of the subject?No wonder Western intellectuals hate "Music Video" so much, and dismiss the TV addicts who watch the TV all day.One thing we are deeply touched by is that teenagers in the United States often shoot indiscriminately at the crowd with guns. They regard life as a child's play. Do they think that the people who are killed can turn around and stand up as shown on TV, as if nothing happened? walk away?In traditional society, people are full of fear of ghosts and gods and death, and mentioning the name of hell is enough to frighten cowards.One way of educating the prisoners is to advertise the horrors of hell. Will it work?

How is the clockwork program designed and run?Let's take a look at sociologists' thesis on cultural goods.The marketing method of record manufacturers is to make music a part of the lifestyle of teenagers, they must listen to it, and they can't stop it.In other words, cultural commodities are no longer transcendent appearances, but are packaged as an internal solid object permeating the structure of information and communication, and are the reality of daily life. "Popular music" became "popular culture".In premodern tribal societies with little differentiation, culture had only a symbolic function; only after culturality was modernized and libertarianized (that is, differentiated) did it become primarily representational.In postmodern society, we have seen that appearances take over the functional position of objects, which differ from other objects in daily life only in that they have immaterial forms and aesthetic properties. The star Madonna is not just an image, a Appearance, she is a cultural object, culture in an anthropological sense.Her image is a cultural artifact, appearing on the T-shirts of young people, and they copy what she wears.This cultural artifact structures the way young people categorize things and tells them who they are.

As social structures decline in signification and are partially replaced by information and communication structures, the censorship of everyday life is possible.It turns out that the depletion of meaning is to make room for the so-called "brand", which is produced by cultural companies through the violence of symbols—commercial hype.As a result, the use value and exchange value of cultural products give way to symbolic value, and the symbolic value of material objects increases.Aestheticization occurs in the process of material production, circulation, and consumption, and the final result is a new ruling class that replaces the existing authority.Theorist Bakhtin came up with the concept of carnival.It is not just an unstructured space-time, but an area where libertines put on masks, they can freely choose from a collection of masks, that is, change identities at will, "I dance disco, Peter wears Elvis Presley Sley, George King Henry VIII, poor Dim wearing a poet's mask called Shelley." It can be seen from the tone of the narration that apart from the fact that Shelley was a poet told by the mask shop clerk, Nothing is known about the identity of the mask the buddy is wearing.Originally, masks of various varieties were launched in series and could be purchased at will, which could provide a budding communication structure in this sociologically non-structural area.Within the framework of today's highly developed information and communication structures, the carnival mask has become a ubiquitous and constantly circulating aesthetic body of mass culture.There is a paradox here. In Bakhtin’s carnival, people try on masks; and in the circulation information and communication network of contemporary mass culture, masks are likely to try on people.Therefore, the condition for mass art to attract a large number of audiences is that the social structure is relatively weakened, opening up space for reflexivity.For example, in the middle, the hooligans deliberately give some small favors to the old ladies who rely on social charity, asking them to provide proof that they are not at the scene of the crime. In an era of extremely abundant commodities, there is no guarantee that they will satisfy their basic desire to drink.Therefore, society's restraint on them is also very limited.These frail old ladies, the usual targets, turned out to be accomplices.critical forces in society.The phenomenon of reflexive alienation comes from all directions, and it is impossible to guard against it.And the hooligans are so thoughtful, did the TV show remind them?

Reflexiveness is bound to be accompanied by judgment, and judgment needs to have general items including special items.In cognitive and moral judgments, this common term is highly abstract and has many levels of intermediaries, while in aesthetic judgment, common terms are relatively unmediated and relatively concrete.That is to say, at the moment when the meaning is exhausted, the author is eager to try, trying to take advantage of his own values ​​and become a new social ruler.As a professional writer, his writing can at least support his family, accumulate economic and social benefits, and win a little voice in society. However, if he manipulates the process of aestheticization, he often gets twice the result with half the effort and instills his own worldview into readers , why not do it?After reading this book, we can easily conclude that the author is not sure about the future development, is very worried, and prefers to maintain the status quo of modern society.This can also be interpreted as his love of real life.On the other hand, the author has a lot of complaints about American booksellers and film directors making a lot of money, while his own situation is not so good.Based on this, some people in domestic theoretical circles believe that postmodernists have gained both fame and fortune because they have been reduced to the production machines of the capitalist cultural industry without reflection.This is not in line with the actual situation. It is a blind man's reasoning caused by ignorance of Western society. It is precisely because they have brand awareness that they replace the original ordinary signifier with a certain brand and make themselves the owner of the intellectual property. , to become the leader of fashion.They have a strong sense of power, which is a guarantee of success.They are the ruling class in the era of knowledge economy. We cannot think that they have lost their creativity, avant-garde, and critical spirit. Otherwise, postmodernist literature and art will not be accepted by the public, included in university must-read programs, and included in museums.

Why hasn't the author tried this?He is very successful, and the protagonist of the novel appears as "I", a fifteen-year-old hooligan whose atonement is ambiguous.The society is in the weak Soviet-style "socialist" stage imagined by Westerners. People don't like to read and study, although the streets are still named after writers such as Amis and Priestley; Russian popular singer Zhivago is popular all over the world, and Most of the lingua franca nachachi vocabulary has Russian roots; "everyone has to go to work except children, pregnant women, sick people"; criminals have to undergo rapid reform as all prisons have to be vacated for political prisoners; opposition parties still exist, And elections are held, but those in power are always re-elected.Coercion threatens free will. The "buddies" come out day and night together, intimidating the public with "super violence" and engaging in "pumping" activities.Even the spoken language should be unique, in order to break the language hegemony of the ruling structure, and restore the language as a "symbol that has lost its quality" to become a language "as a carrier of meaning" (borrowed by semioticians Horkhaimer and Adorno statement).Facts have proved that classic works are often out of stock in bookstores, and Burgess' Korowa Milk Bar has been opened on the Internet. People can go to the Korowa Milk Bar to express their opinions at any time by clicking the mouse.Husband and wife have also developed Nachachi translation software for fans to download and use.There are also a lot of visitors.

There are also a large number of surreal descriptions of Christmas in Burgess' works, and they have reached their peak in the novel.When the little hooligan was driving as an "uninvited guest", he ran over a big guy with a big howling mouth full of teeth, and fell down with a smack, and ran over the "screaming monster" all the way back to the city.Alex is not interested in women, only as the target of violence and adultery, in her vocabulary, sexual behavior is very characteristic, mechanical "pumping and pumping business".Explanations of the female body were limited to breast size, and the punks drank drugged milk, enough to attract the attention of a psychoanalyst.His only "aesthetic" taste was the symphony.Lying naked in bed, surrounded by the stereo, listening to Mozart or Bach, he dreamed of stomping boots on people's faces, or raping drunken girls screaming violently.When the music reached its climax, so did his lust. In view of this, although it only has more than a hundred pages, it has become a classic today.The story is divided into three parts and 21 chapters, and the writing is mainly based on outlines, which are full of symbols.The first part of the novel describes the protagonist's criminal facts in detail: beating the elderly, fighting in groups, and holding a long-handled razor.Rape, drink milk mixed with drugs, and finally attack the old lady to death.The buddies betrayed him and sent him to sue.The second part narrates his experience in prison, mainly talking about the government's treatment process for him. The method is very peculiar: drugs plus horrible visual stimulation to change his mind.He ended up feeling nauseous at the thought of pornography, violence, and even music.Caught in a situation where his own humanity is being questioned, Burgess explores fundamental questions of moral choice and free will, asking: "Can a man who cannot choose to do evil be bound to do good?" In the end, the protagonist became a victim and was unable to fight back against the many opponents he had established before. Everyone beat him, but he was powerless and had to jump off the building.The US and film versions originally omitted the last chapter, which is actually the most interesting text.Here he meets the only buddy who is loyal to him, who has already married and established a business. Therefore, the protagonist regains his free will and finally realizes that he has got a chance for a new life.He immediately realizes that he also wants to marry and have children, and at the same time is confused: Will his children go down the same path of self-destruction? The novel runs through the preaching about free will, some from the teacher and some from the author himself, which fully shows that the main theme of this book is Christian.Burgess seems to be saying that after Alex was deprived of the ability to make moral choices by science, he was reduced to a clockwork orange.With free will, even if you choose to sin, your soul can be saved.Such an analysis, however, fixes the writer's cynicism and linguistic ambiguity within mere orthodoxy.Alex is a clockwork orange from beginning to end, a tool for engaging in mechanical violence far below the level of choice, and the desolate "socialist" Britain he lives in is even more of a gigantic clockwork orange. Since Descartes put forward "I think, therefore I am" in the seventeenth century, the Western philosophical system presupposes that subjectivity is separated from objective reality and is necessarily higher than the latter.While this opens up space for the rapid development of modern science and the in-depth exploration of objective truth, it also makes people worry about maintaining the noble status of subjectivity (the lonely soul). In the twentieth century, phenomenological theory attempted to reconcile the subject-object dichotomy, revising Cartesian views.German philosopher Brentano.Frege pointed out that when people think about the moon, they not only think about the concept of the moon, but also think about the moon itself.The moon and the concept of the moon are two different things, and the existential object cannot be reduced to the concept (its psychic counterpart).The content is the objectification of the subject of spiritual behavior, and it is not necessarily a container such as a table and chairs.The intentional container is directly grasped by the subject, as opposed to the external object.For example, people's disposition to the moon is the moon that the conscious mind holds directly (inwardly) through the act of "envisioning" a preconscious object.The moon that exists as the content of an intentional act is not necessarily the moon itself.The moon can only be considered as an inner spiritual object in mind, but this does not refer to the celestial body that revolves around the earth.Actual objects such as the moon, stars, forests, and people are not magically shrunk into the mind; nor can they be reduced to some artificial appearance that can be intended to be distant from, or different from, the intended object itself.The problem is that the intentional container is not necessarily the same as the object outside the mental behavior, and there is often a distance.For example, in Western mythology, the Moon Palace is the palace of Diana (Goddess of the Moon) and is also related to the god Luna (Moon), which is associated with insanity (Lunatic), because Westerners believe that the mind is affected by the moon; In Chinese culture, the moon is the eaves palace, the residence of Chang'e, and Wu Gang is cutting osmanthus trees inside.In any case, before the Apollo spacecraft landed on the moon, no one thought that the Moon Palace was a desolate world.By the time the moon palace immigration is successful (the era background of the novel), people's thinking should have been adjusted and focused on the real moon itself, rather than the wonderful associations made based on naked eye observations. When Westerners come to terms with the new world reality of the Moon, there is a great imbalance within.According to the analysis of the above-mentioned Germans, people managed to grasp the inner spiritual object of the moon, and ruled out the superstition that the mind is controlled by it, thus maintaining the solipsism of the subject.But now, mortals have moved to the Moon Palace, and even the hooligans are asking: Not sure what's in there, what can happen to something like this? ... probably as alive as here, someone gets knifed, someone gets stabbed. ... This is something beyond the control of the subject's will, and the author is anxious to maintain the freedom of moral choice, even if there is a crime.However, in the post-modernist society, the identities of subject and object undergo dizzying changes, causing people's value system to be hit unprecedentedly. In this transformation process, it seems logical to appear.The more people call for free will, the less they can get it, because the traditional subject has changed.Without skin, there will be no hair attached. The most interesting part of this book is the language innovation, the protagonist speaks.Thinking in the language of the future nachachi.There are some instructions in the book: "A few bits and pieces of rhyming slang," replied Dr. Branon... "and a little Gypsy. But mostly Slavic roots. Red propaganda. Subliminal infiltration." Since it belongs to the Indo-European language family, it is not difficult for English speakers to guess the Nachaqi vocabulary; after all, it is not the linear script of ancient Greece, which makes it difficult to get started, and the protagonist also explained some of it in the narrative.These words were copied in the film of the same name, which did not hinder the understanding of Anglo-Americans.The Americans also compiled a glossary for readers' reference and posted it on the Internet.We can even download the Nachachi translation software, because the film of the same name shot by the famous director Kubrick has become a household name and was once considered a milestone for British films to enter the world of film art.Many people go to novels only after seeing the movies.Perhaps film language lifts the barrier of obscure text. Some critics believe that the author's use of nachachi vocabulary is not only to express a surreal atmosphere, but also to avoid explicit pornographic descriptions.It was many years after the publication of this book that Britain allowed the hot English equivalents of these terms to appear in fiction.According to the results of an online survey, the reaction of the young women to the film was "disgusting, but very good." Burgess is recognized as a master of language innovation. The first comment on the jacket of the Collins English Dictionary is an excerpt from his comment in the Observer, celebrating the new way of compiling the dictionary.But for Chinese readers, the more than 200 nachachi words in the book are difficult to appreciate.Therefore, it is not easy to express the style of the original work faithfully and expressively when translating it into Chinese.The Chinese use oriental languages, and retaining the transliteration of Slavic roots will greatly affect reading, so a lot of discarding has to be done during translation.There are three specific methods: (1) Free translation, the pronunciation of Chinese dialects is different, but it is not reflected in the text, so the translator uses free translation when dealing with the following situations: 1.Some Slavic words have the same root as English, and because of the difference in pronunciation, the spelling is also different, but English readers can recognize them at a glance.For example, bandaband (gang), danladame (women), gruppagroup (group), minootaminute (minute), prodproduce (take out), takar-sugar (sugar), vayasy WC (toilet). 2.Some Slavic words belong to the other words of English, for example, chai (tea, English should be tea, but it is also called cha in colloquialism), gazetta (newspaper. English should be newspaper, but registration is also gazette), tasscup (dialect words, cup) 3.Certain words are altered English words.For example, appy polly loggyapology (sorry), baddiwadbad (bad), eggiwegweg (egg), guttiwutsguts (courage), jammiwam-jam (jam), sarkysarcastic (sarcasm), cinemacinma (cinema), skolliwollschllo, sodsodomy (sodomy, swearing, Translated as "the adulterer"). 4.Ready-made English slang, for example, charles, charlichaplain (teacher), dung (verb, pee), snuffit (sniffing death, braids), warblle (singing). (2) Try to keep the image of the original text. The writer has many figurative creations, which should be preserved as much as possible in translation. For example, cancer (carcinogens, refers to cigarettes), solly (auxiliary city name, Gori, sounds like the kopecks of the former Soviet Union), inout inout (translated as "pumping", refers to sexual intercourse), hoacious glory (bright glory, refers to hair , which is a rhyming slang term, which is the vowel of upper story [upstairs]), panhandle (pot handle, referring to the penis, translated as "meat stick"), pee and em (abbreviation of popand mom "parents", translated as "P and M") , pelyclef (universal key, borrowed from the Greek root poly and added Latin words with deformation after entering English, English clef means the clef in music, its Latin root means key, and key in English means key), prettypolly ( Spending tickets, referring to money), O my brothers (Gypsy, brothers). (3) Basically give up and make appropriate compensation. Nearly 200 words are Slavic words that English speakers do not know, as well as Gypsy words (cutter, referring to money), etc. Although they only account for a small part of Nachachi’s vocabulary, they appear frequently. Keeping it in the Chinese version will definitely keep people away from thousands of miles away.In this case, the loanword form is generally discarded and direct free translation is adopted. However, due to the requirements of the context, a few words must retain their original form, which not only proves an aspect of the original style, but also ensures the logical coherence of the storyline. .For example, the Nachachi word gulliver "head" comes from the Russian pronunciation, but the English Gulliver is the protagonist of Swift's Gulliver's Travels.The Chinese version translated as "Gulliver" may trigger some similar associations."Milk" in the novel is also a special prop, transliterated as "Moloco"; clothes are transliterated as "Blatti". Other vocabulary is difficult to express in Chinese. For example, the author borrowed Russian words and did not copy them mechanically. Khorosho (good) was Englishized as horrorshow (horror + performance), translated as refreshing; indi (person) became lewdics (lust + suffix) , neezhary (low) becomes meezhaing (means shorts). Lexical innovations are more colorful, and authors break pronouns.Interrogative pronouns, the difference between the nominative case and the accusative case, and the modal particle like can be seen everywhere in the sentence.The word order is sometimes very incompatible with modern grammar, and Middle English endings often appear. Although on the surface Burgess reveals to us a terrible future with brutal imagery, deep down, he shows love: love for mankind, love A human invention - the art of language. It is a novel of great philosophical significance. In terms of plot structure, there are many artificially arranged factors, and the symmetry of the story is quite influenced by the Oriental thought of fruit retribution, which of course strengthens the dramatic color of this novella.However, the author's intention is to explain that what the hooligans do—evil, is not good, but it is not necessarily the worst; the reason is that "good" contains most of the hypocrisy, and the hypocrisy part The earth comes from the development of society, "Humans will not care about the earth society when they go to the moon palace"; the overreaction of society in order to punish evil and promote good, such as police violence; these are what the book strongly opposes.The author does not appreciate evil, but he also opposes prejudice against evil, so he uses a lot of nachachi to exclude common words rich in "cultural" meanings.The protagonist opposes the existing society, takes extreme forms of action, and finally opposes everything old, even language. It is worth mentioning that there are not many introductions to this book in China.For example, the tome "British Novel of the Twentieth Century" didn't mention it at all. In addition, some people said that the Nachachi language was a manifestation of the protagonist's lack of culture; in fact, which protagonist would expose what he thought was wrong? How about telling your “brothers” what you have experienced to gain sympathy?He understands music, wears high-end clothes, and can speak a gentleman's language, but he is against mass TV. This echoes the views of the British and American middle class and academic circles, and may not be all ruffian thinking. The novel insists on treating evil with an "objective" attitude.While satirizing "goodness", he also flogged evil, giving readers a detached and harmonious atmosphere. This is an element of the humanistic spirit in the work, which can prompt us to read on without feeling disgusted and hiding in the middle. roll.This is also an important factor that distinguishes excellent works from mediocre works.