June 2005
De Quincy's autobiography However, sometimes, we come across such prose works, which seem to be inspired by other purposes. It doesn't want to argue, change other people's beliefs, or even tell stories. We can learn all the fun from those languages themselves, without guessing what the implication between the lines is, or taking a voyage of spiritual exploration for the author, thus adding some fun. De Quincy is naturally such a rare writer. When we think of him, the first thing that comes to mind is always a beautiful and mature text like the following:
"Life is over!" -this is a secret worry in my heart; Because personal happiness is fatally hurt, a young mind will be as sensitive as the most experienced philosopher. "Life is over! It's over! " This is a hint hidden in my sigh, and I hardly realize it myself; Just like the bells heard in the summer evening, sometimes it seems that words with distinct syllables are coming out, warning messages are coming out, and they are constantly hitting and echoing in all directions; Similarly, for me, it seems that there is a faint, underground voice singing a mysterious sentence over and over again-this sentence can only be heard in my heart, that is: "flower of life, which was once brilliant and open, has now withered!" Quoted from De Quincy: Self-portrait: The Distress of Childhood, Chapter 1.
Fragments like this naturally appear in his self-reported close-ups; They are not composed of plots and dramatic scenes, but of visions and dreams. When we read them, we don't think of De Quincy himself. If we try to analyze our feelings, we will find that we seem to be inspired by music-it is our senses that are shaken, not our minds. The cadence of the sentence itself immediately comforted us and sent us into a state of spiritual isolation, and the surrounding branches were diluted and eclipsed. As a result, our spirit has been opened, we have gained extensive understanding, our hearts have been opened, and we have accepted a series of leisurely and solemn concepts that De Quincy wants us to accept-the golden harvest on the earth; All kinds of beautiful scenery in the sky; His "summer day, with his back to the dead body and his face to the open window" is quoted from the first chapter of De Quincy's Self-portrait: The Distress of Childhood. Flowers blooming on the ground. This theme has been confirmed, expanded and changed. And the feeling of panicking when holding on to things that pass by in a hurry strengthens the impression of silence and eternity. The bells heard in the summer evening, the palm trees swaying with branches and leaves, and the whistling wind keep our mood unchanged despite constant fluctuations. Emotion will not be stable; It is always implied by the continuous influx of various images, and appears calmly in front of us. Until the end, it remains in our impression with all its complexity.
In prose, this writing method is rarely tried, and it is not suitable for prose because of its ending characteristics. Not pointing to any clear goal. Except for the feeling of midsummer, death and immortality, we don't know who is listening, watching and feeling. De Quincy covered everything up, leaving only such a picture: "A lonely child, his lonely painful struggle-a huge darkness, a silent sadness" is quoted from the preface of De Quincy's self-portrait. -Let's explore this single emotional abyss. This is a general state, not an individual state. Therefore, de Quincy has the opposite purpose and morality to the prose writer. What his readers want to accept is such a complex thought mainly composed of radical feelings. He should not only fully realize that there is a child standing by the bed, but also realize the existence of silence, sunshine, flowers, the passage of time and death. All this can never be expressed in general words arranged in logical order-clarity and simplicity can only make such an idea look funny and ugly. De Quincy is naturally fully aware of the gap between himself and his contemporaries as a writer who aims to express this idea. He turned to Milton, Jeremy Tyler and Sir John Milton of thomas brown, a famous English poet, for reference to his prose work On Freedom of the Press. JeremyTaylor and SirThomasBrowne are both English prose writers in the17th century. ; He learned from them to use long sentences with ups and downs, and let it bend around, layer by layer, until the climax. Not only that, but his keen hearing also requires another kind of accomplishment extremely strictly-that is, the balance of language rhythm, the consideration of sentence pause, the role of repetition, homophonic and semi-homophonic, and so on. All these are part of the duties of an essayist if he wants to express such a complicated idea to readers completely and comprehensively.
Therefore, if we analyze why an article fragment of De Quincy can leave such a deep impression on readers, we will find that the reason for this impression is1AlfredTennyson, a famous British poet in the 9th century. The works of poets like that are all very similar. This is because: the consideration of sound effect is the same as the arrangement of rhythm change; Similarly, the length of sentences varies, and the center of gravity in sentences also shifts flexibly. However, compared with poetry, the intensity of these artistic means has been weakened here, and their influence has been spread to a much larger space; In this way, the transition from the lowest field to the highest field takes a gradual way of gradually rising along shallow steps, and will not suddenly reach the top. Therefore, it is hard to say which line alone has any special benefits, just like in poetry; It is meaningless to separate a paragraph from the context, because its function can only be produced by the implied associations in the previous pages. In addition, de Quincy is not like the master he studied, and the magnificent brushwork of genius is not his specialty; His strength lies in the twists and turns to write those big dreams locked in cages, the scenery that can't see the details, the faces that can't tell the nose from the eyes, the silence at midnight or in summer, the riots and panic of people fleeing, and the great pain that keeps falling and rising-it reaches out its arms to the sky in despair.
However, De Quincy was not just a famous writer who wrote a series of fragmented and beautiful prose fragments-in that case, his achievements would be much smaller than now. He is also a narrative prose writer and an autobiographer. If we consider that he wrote his autobiography in 1833, he is also a person with unique views on autobiographical art. First of all, he knows the great value of honesty.
Section 56: De Quincy's autobiography (2)
June 2005
Hazy smog often covers his hidden behavioral motives and inner secrets. As long as he can really pierce this layer of fog, all life activities under the control of rational impulses can arouse deep, solemn and sometimes even trembling interest only by the power of absolute repentance. ② ③ Quoted from De Quincy: Preface to Self-Description.
He believes that autobiography should not only record the superficial life history, but also record the deeper and hidden emotional experience. He knows the difficulty of writing such a self-report. "... Although many people get rid of self-restraint intellectually, it is still difficult for them to confide in others-it is beyond their power to give up the habit of silence. "Invisible chains and invisible spells bind and freeze the spirit of free communication. "It is precisely because human beings can't see and measure these mysterious forces that paralyze themselves that they can't cope effectively." Strangely, despite such understanding and willingness, De Quincy failed to become an autobiographer in China. Of course, this is not because he is tongue-tied and doesn't know what to say, nor because he is overwhelmed by spells. The root of his inability to complete the task of self-description is definitely not his lack of expressive ability. I'm afraid one of the reasons is that his expressive ability is excessive and he can't rest. /kloc-Many writers in the 0/9th century like rambling and rambling in their articles-he is more obsessed with this defect. However, Ruskin and john ruskin were famous British critics and essayists in the19th century. Thomas Carlyle was a famous British historian and critic in the19th century. Although Wang Yang's works are also written arbitrarily in form-they all find a place for anything different-but the reason is obvious. It's just that de Quincy can't use them as ammunition. The prophet's heavy responsibility did not fall on his shoulders. Besides, he is an artist who deliberately looks for a job. No one can arrange the tone of the sentence so carefully and beautifully and adjust the rhythm of the language so well like him. Strangely, although his clever sensitivity immediately warned him when he encountered the phenomenon of irregular voice and loose rhythm, when he encountered the overall structural problems, his feelings were completely exhausted. By this time, he can tolerate the imbalance and waste of language. As a result, although every sentence is well-balanced and fluent, the whole book is like edema disease. If De Quincy's brother uses the word creation to describe his childhood temper of "being unconventional and unconventional", then he is really a "spun story". He can not only "find out the unintentional flaws in everyone's words, so as to make ambiguous explanations." The above quotation is from De Quincy: Chapter 2 of Self-Portrait, Entering the World of Struggle. Moreover, even if he tells a very simple story, he has to add a lot of modifications and circumstantial evidence, and he has to provide a lot of supplementary information. As a result, in the end, what he wanted to make clear had already disappeared in the distant fog.
Besides this fatal wordiness and structural weakness, as an autobiographer, De Quincy also suffered from his brooding temper. "My problem," he said, "is that I meditate too much and observe too little." He made everything he saw in his dream into a strange pattern, which blurred it. He sprinkled his dreams and the soft light of meditation on everything. Even for those two annoying red-eyed idiots, he looked at them carefully like a gentleman who had strayed into a slum. Similarly, he also easily slipped across the social class gap-on an equal footing with Eton College, referring to Eton College for aristocratic children in Britain. The young aristocrat had a heart-to-heart talk with the workers' families who chose meat for Sunday dinner. De Quincy prides himself on being able to move from one field to another effortlessly. "... he wrote:" Since I was a teenager, like Socrates, I have been able to keep close contact with everyone I meet by chance, including men, women and children, and I have always been proud of it. " Quoted from the self-report of an opium addict in Britain. However, if we look at his descriptions of these men, women and children, we will understand that he can talk to all these people because they are almost the same in his eyes. It is appropriate to treat them all with the same attitude. Even in the communication with close friends, whether to his old classmate Lord Artamon or to the prostitute Anne, that is, the prostitute who helped De Quincy when he was wandering in the streets of London. He cherished her all his life. He is equally polite. All the portraits in his works have the smooth outline of the hero and heroine in Scott's works, the solemn posture of the statue and almost the same facial features. Even his own face always has an unfathomable look. Once asked to tell his true feelings, he shied away like a decent English gentleman. As Rousseau showed in Confessions, the frankness that strongly attracts us-the determination to dare to expose all the absurd, despicable and dirty things about ourselves-is incompatible with De Quincy. He wrote: "Nothing makes the British feel more emotionally disgusted than a person forcing us to see his moral ulcers and scars." Quoted from the self-report of an opium addict in Britain.
Therefore, as an autobiographer, De Quincy has great defects. He writes very verbose; He is lonely, obsessed with fantasy, and stuck to his laurels. But at the same time, he is often shocked by some mysterious and solemn feelings and realizes that sometimes a moment is worth more than fifty years. In order to analyze these feelings, he used the skills that even psychoanalysts used at that time (Scott, Austin, Byron, etc. ) no more. We found that some fragments he wrote were almost unparalleled in the literature of19th century in terms of self-awareness:
Looking back on this incident, I realize that many of our deepest thoughts and feelings are often generated in our hearts through the complex combination of various specific things, and are often transmitted to our hearts as a tangled body of various experiences (if I can invent such a term), rather than directly touching us through their respective abstract forms ... People are undoubtedly a whole composed of some subtle relationship, which continues from the birth of babies to the old age. However, considering all kinds of feelings and desires born by human nature in different stages of life, people are not a whole, but an intermittent existence that keeps dying and being reborn; From this perspective, the unity of human beings can only be as long as a specific stage to which a passion belongs. Some emotions, such as sex, are partly derived from the divinity in heaven and partly from the carnal desire on the earth. They naturally cannot exist beyond a specific period. Only the completely sacred love between two children can be freely reproduced in the silent and desolate old age. ..... quoted from "A British opium addict's self-report".