Chapter 2 Chapter two
The story also begins in Tokyo.Located in the student street in Yamate, Tokyo, there is an old apartment called Youaikan. It looks like an ordinary dormitory, which is incompatible with the style of the whole street. In one of the most incompatible rooms, there is a famous The man who asked people to meet Hirosuke.I don't know if this person is a scholar or a young man unemployed. It is hard for others to imagine that he is already in his thirties.Five or six years before the start of the large-scale project in Okinoshima, he had just graduated from a private university. He had never been employed since then, and he had no fixed source of income. I was stranded in the Friendship Museum, and lived here until one year before the start of the big project.
He claims to have graduated from the philosophy department, but has never taken a philosophy course.Sometimes he is obsessed with novel-hunting literature books, and sometimes he can be found in the classrooms of the Department of Architecture, which is thousands of miles away from his major. Don’t think that he is interested in architecture just because he listens with gusto. Because in a blink of an eye he plunged headlong into sociology and economics.After a period of time, I can see him buying oil painting props and learning to paint. In short, he is extremely different and enthusiastic for three minutes.According to his situation, he should have never really learned any subjects or mastered any skills from the beginning to the end, but it is unbelievable that he was able to graduate smoothly.If he has indeed achieved success in learning, it is by no means the right way of learning, but a crooked way.Therefore, even after five or six years of graduation, he still couldn't find a job and was idle all day long.
However, Kosuke Hitomi did not have the duty to find a serious job and live an ordinary life.To be precise, he was tired of this world before he experienced this society.Perhaps this should be attributed to his inherently weak and sickly constitution, or it may be due to the neurasthenia in adolescence, which is still tormenting him until now, making him unwilling to do any serious things.It is enough to imagine all kinds of life in the brain, and everything is "no big deal".Based on this principle of living and working, he only sleeps in a corner of the dirty apartment all day long, constantly dreaming dreams that belong to him and have never been experienced by any doer.To put it bluntly, he is an extreme visionary.
So, ignoring all reality in the world, what kind of dream is he dreaming of?He is carefully designing his own Utopia, Utopia.When he was still in school, he indulged in dozens of Utopia stories and Utopia stories written by Plato and other authors.The authors of these books pinned their impossible dreams in words, made them public, and talked about them for comfort, while Hirosuke Hitomi deeply understood their feelings, resonated with them, and obtained some comfort from them.In these works, he has no interest in political and economic utopias. The only thing that fascinates him is the paradise rooted in the earth, the ideal world of the land of beauty and the land of dreams.Therefore, he admired Morris's "News from Nowhere" more than Cabet's "Icarian Communism", and compared to Morris, he appreciated Edgar Allan Poe's "The Domain of Arnheim" (The Domain of Arnheim). ) is even more irresistible.
Musicians create art through musical instruments, painters through canvas and paint, and poets through words. His only dream is to make the mountains, rivers and plants of nature—the creatures that grow every second, such as every stone, tree, flower and grass , birds and beasts and even reptiles - as materials, create thrilling art.He is not satisfied with the nature created by the gods, but wants to freely transform and beautify the existing nature according to his own personality, so as to express his unique grand artistic ideal.In other words, he himself became a god, transforming nature.
In his view, art is the resistance of human beings who stick to their own opinions against nature, and it is the expression of human desire to imprint personal likes and dislikes on nature without being satisfied with the status quo.For example, musicians are not satisfied with the sounds of wind, waves, and birds and animals in nature, so they strive to create their own timbres; Moreover, they are not purely fact reporters or recorders.But why are these so-called artists so devious? After all, musical instruments, paints, and words are just indirect means, meaningless. Will this satisfy them?Why not focus on nature itself?Why not just treat nature as musical instruments, brushes, and words?This is not impossible at all. Doesn’t the gardening and building technology mastered by humans focus on nature, take its materials, change its form, and then beautify nature?Can't we use more artistic vision and means to practice renovation projects on a larger scale?Hitomi Hirosuke couldn't help being suspicious.
Therefore, compared with the utopian stories and fictional word games listed above, to some extent, the great achievements of those ancient emperors—mainly tyrants—who realized his ideals fascinated him even more.For example, the pyramids and sphinxes in Egypt, the city walls or religious metropolises in Greece and Rome, the Great Wall and Afang Palace in China, and the large Buddhist buildings since the Asuka era in Japan, such as the Golden Pavilion Temple and the Silver Pavilion Temple.From these buildings to the utopian state of mind of the heroes who created these great achievements, Hitomi Kosuke's heart is always surging.
"If I am lucky enough to obtain ten thousand crowns of wealth."
This is the title of a utopian author's work, and Hirosuke Hitomi often sighs like this.
"If only I had a fortune to spend! First, I would buy a large piece of land. Where would I choose the location? Then I would hire thousands of laborers and create the world I dream of all the time. Paradise, the land of beauty, the land of dreams."
To build a Utopia, the first thing to do is this—Once Hitomi Hirosuke’s thoughts start to run wild, he can’t get back, and he always has to conceive a perfect Utopia in his mind before giving up.
Just looking back, it was just a daydream and a castle in the air. In reality, he was just a poor scholar, a poor guy who didn't even have enough food for the day.With his little ability alone, even if he exhausted all his strength and worked until his death, he might not even be able to save tens of thousands of dollars.
After all, he can only "idiot talking in sleep".All his life, he was intoxicated in the dream that made him happy, but once the sunshine of the real world shone, his miserable situation was clearly seen.All he can do is sleep in a four and a half tatami room in a dirty apartment and pass the boring days.
Most of these people are addicted to art and live and work in art.However, his greatest misfortune is that he has no artistic talent. His artistic hobbies are limited to the daydream mentioned above, and the real art may not arouse his interest at all.
If his dream can come true, it must be a unparalleled artistic endeavor in the world.Therefore, for him who once wandered in this kind of dream, any career, entertainment or even art in the world is worthless and insignificant to him, so it is not difficult to understand.
However, even if you lose interest in all mundane things, you still have to do some things that ordinary people must do to make a living.After graduating from school, he took on some cheap translation work, or created some children's stories, and occasionally wrote a few adult novels, which were submitted to various magazines, in exchange for some manuscript fees to barely make ends meet.At the beginning, he was more or less interested in literature, and he was quite relieved to see the creative achievements published in the magazine—filling the fragments of his dreams with the well-known Utopia framework in the history of literature.He was very enthusiastic about this kind of work at one time, but unfortunately, apart from translations, his original works were not favored by magazines.Those creations describe the Utopia in his mind from different angles and meticulously. At first glance, they seem different, but after reading it, they always feel familiar. It's no surprise that it's not good.
It is not once or twice that his best works have been sidelined by magazine editors. In addition, he is greedy in literature and cannot get self-satisfaction in word games, so that his novel creation has not improved.Having said that, once he abandons his pen, he will lose his food for the day. Under such a reality, even though he is unwilling, he can only continue this hopeless life of selling literature and porridge.
One of his manuscripts can only be sold for 50 yuan. In his spare time, he often draws sketches of Taoyuan Township, or designs the blueprint of a certain building in it. With envy, I thought in my heart that one day I would be able to fulfill my wish and realize the achievements of the ancient emperor in my dream.