Many readers know and like the Italian literary master Calvino because of his "Invisible Cities". The cities in Calvino's works are dazzling. A collection of wonderful stories built out of imagination, they are romantic poems flying over the reinforced concrete city.
"The New York Times Book Review" wrote this review: "Invisible Cities" is like a memory, while "Marcovaldo" conveys the sensory and touchable nature of life. texture.
City life may be filled with all kinds of little troubles and frustrations, but there are also little blessings and little joys. Season after season, year after year, Calvino’s four seasons continue to reincarnate. As keywords, we use the day-to-day urban life as the background, and the wonderful and interesting imagination as the carrier to describe a person who squeezes the tram to go to work every day, a family of six squeezed into a small and cold basement, and only dares to pick up the goods when going to the supermarket. The urban worker who became addicted and then returned to work has become an urban poet who loves endlessly but is at a loss at the same time.
Such a Marcovaldo is just like the last sentence Calvino wrote in "Invisible Cities": "Look for people and things in hell that are not hell, and learn to identify them. , make them exist and give them space."
The structure of the book "Marcovaldo" is very novel, and the whole book is divided into 20 independent short stories. These 20 stories are unfolded in the chronological order of the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter for five years. Each story tells a daily life of Marcovaldo, a low-level worker from the countryside who went to the city. Although these daily fragments are independent of each other, they are combined. It connects the life stages of an ordinary person, and at the same time, these fragments of life contain the fate of people, animals, plants and the temperament of the city. The five-year cycle of seasons is enough to give a glimpse of Marcovaldo's life, and it is also enough to make people feel the existence and struggle of all things.
In this work, Calvino more three-dimensionally and comprehensively demonstrates the mutual influence and living state of human nature, society, and survival (represented by characters, cities, animals and plants respectively). Every element can become a variable. This variable is like the butterfly flapping its wings in the tropical rainforest of the Amazon River Basin in South America. Although it seems insignificant, it can have an impact that can change the fate of all things.
Marvaldo’s self-exploration:
The main character in the work "Marcovaldo" is undoubtedly the male protagonist Marco Valdo. In Calvino's portrayal, Marcovaldo seems to be a common low-level worker in the city, running around with his wife and children for a living, compromising on system rules just to have a full stomach. His life is basically the same as that of other living beings. But beneath the surface, Marcovaldo's behavior and thinking are always in opposition to the daily life of popular values. Sometimes it is Marcovaldo's personal victory, and sometimes it is the crushing crushing of individuals by universal values.
Under the influence of the social environment, individuals with nowhere to hide have only two options to choose from. Either they must conform to society and become ants who move bricks, or they can insist on themselves and live in struggle forever, allowing themselves to Life is unique because of its ups and downs. Calvino let Marcovaldo choose the latter, which also illustrates Calvino's infinite support and bias for personal exploration of life. He encourages people to find their personal position, thereby hoping that people's destiny can be more in their own hands. instead of being passively affected by the environment. Marcovaldo spent five years collecting poisonous mushrooms to eat, catching poisonous rabbits in the laboratory, making money with bee sting therapy, and finally fighting for a fish with a group of cats. Every spring, when everything revives, he wants to make a difference and change. Animals and plants become his tools to fight against society and fate.
The calmness of plants and animals: Why is this work so surprising as a hidden gem in the ocean? Because even the animals and plants that are used as tools, the author gives them the initiative to survive and fight. The author uses a lot of words to write about animals and plants in this novel named after characters. The living conditions of animals and plants may reflect the embarrassment of the characters, or promote the development of the characters and the environment.
At the beginning, Marcovaldo first regarded the poisonous mushroom as a secret and later shared it out of jealousy; towards the end, he flew with him in the city and finally lost all the yellow leaves of the green plants. Like Marcovaldo's rebel society, these plants, nurtured by the sun and running water, are also rebelling against the characters. They use their aggressive or self-destructive characteristics to sting the characters' physical and psychological levels again and again. level. From the perspective of plants that represent survival, the survival of plants seems to have nothing to do with the influence of characters and society, but whether they can survive has always been determined by characters and the environment. Calvino added many animals to this short story, including the lab-poisoned rabbit carried away by Marcovaldo, the cows passing by the city, and the cats in the small garden. These animals either have the open-mindedness to accept their fate, or they have the attitude of letting nature take its course. Without exception, they all have a destination. Compared with Marcovaldo's nowhere to hide, the animals' calmness shows their sense of self-identity and unconditional acceptance of life.
The panic and hunger of the city:
The characters, animals and plants are all alive, which can fully reflect the theme of self-exploration that Calvino wants to highlight; then a city without life , and how does it accomplish its mission of revealing reality in the author's writing? The appearance of the city is not always in Calvino's writings, but often hidden in the eyes of the hero Marco Valdo. "At a turning point, you can see the entire city below, spread out endlessly on the gray network woven by the roads." "He felt that it was like a leaden gray wasteland, stagnant and dirty, surrounded by rows of rooftops and blankets. The wisps of smoke that wrap around tree branches and chimneys are just some of the countless cityscapes seen by Marcovaldo.
Although the city, as a symbol of the social environment, has always oppressed Marcovaldo, in the eyes of the characters, the city is already in danger, swaying on the gray network woven by the roads, and appearing because of the rows of rooftops. It was messy and entangled in smoke, making it look like a lifeless wasteland. In Marcovaldo's eyes, I only felt the hunger and panic of the city. In the end, Calvino placed almost all the real environment under the cognition of personal consciousness, once again demonstrating his admiration for the characters' free consciousness and the subjective initiative of personal exploration.
The pursuit and adjustment of personal will:
1. Reflection of the importance of personal consciousness From the overall perspective of the work "Marcovaldo", Calvino is Personal exploration is placed at a higher level. But in today's society, can personal will still be higher than the influence of the real environment? I'm negative. Judging from the creative background of this work, "Marcovaldo" was written by Calvino in the early 1950s. At that time, the economy of Western Europe was developing rapidly. With the development of industry and the rise of economy, the entire society showed a It is a chaotic but upward state. The reality of disorder and chaos but good results made Calvino doubt and despair about reality and politics. Under the guidance of such negative emotions, it becomes natural that the individual consciousness that is pushed forward is more valuable and better.
2. The best thing between individuals, society and the environment is that after years of development, the social reality of steady economic growth has existed for many years under a mature and constantly improving framework and system. These frameworks and systems are like the bottles that hold the city. It is difficult for all the characters, animals, plants, and cities inside to escape or break through. Therefore, in this case, the character's will can actually be like the existence of animals and plants in "Marcovaldo", pursuing survival itself, finding a good destination with a normal heart, and then growing slowly and strongly, like the growth of a small garden. The group of cats finally succeeded in repelling the invasion of bulldozers and excavators with their unchanged strength. When an individual has a clear self-positioning and finds out a suitable way of existence, the individual will not be like a headless fly without a goal, turning all efforts into tossing; making limited and flexible use of reality and environment, and relying on rules and regulations. Within the limitations of the institutional framework, there will be no sense of oppression.
The human soul is always free. Some people see cities in bottles, some people see wild animals and plants, and some people see themselves. Calvino used an adult fairy tale to express his free will. In fairy tales for adults, there are many gestures of all things. We should find what we can and love to see, and realize our own life from the beauty and joy.