A Season in Hell
Rimbaud could never remember that on the first day of 2000, he was in the university reading room and saw those shocking stories in magazines and newspapers. He was disappointed with the century looking back and looking forward. He was still an energetic freshman at that time, and now, he is about to graduate. His memory of that day, about the sentence that impressed him most in 2000, was what he saw in a collection of dialogues. That was when a reporter interviewed the French postmodern thinker Baudrillard in 1996. Where would he be on New Year's Eve in 2000? , he borrowed Baudelaire's words: "Anywhere is fine, as long as it is not in this world." The words of this French postmodernist did not sound very understandable to Rimbaud at the time. But on New Year's Day in 2000, he remembered that he had a day off that day and there was still more than a month before the final exam. He was in a slightly nervous atmosphere. He got up early in the morning and went to the cafeteria to have some breakfast. In his memory, he was the only one in the cafeteria that morning, maybe there was another person. He is a young teacher, I can’t tell how young he is. Anyway, she is very beautiful and elegant, but she is wearing a light green sweater and a milky white coat with fine fluff. Taciturn. His gait is quite elegant when he walks. In short, he is a very elegant person.
Then, after he had breakfast (how does it feel to eat a bowl of hot chaos on a cold winter morning, hazy heat), he went to the reading room. He was the first one to enter the reading room. Yes, I sat down by the window on the side facing the sun and brought out a few magazines and newspapers. Under the warm sunshine, let’s see what exciting and exciting changes there are on the first day of this new century. Today, however, Rimbaud can no longer remember what the articles he saw that day were about. Maybe that day was not the first day of 2000, but the first day of 2002. So which year did he go to college? What remains of the four years of college are some fragmented memory fragments. There are still some melancholy and pain, the falling leaves flying one by one, the white snowflakes all over the ground, the bright plum blossoms beside the campus paths, what else? A smile, a sip of tea, and a test paper. Rimbaud thought about his graduation thesis. He wanted to write about Said's "Orientalism". At that time, New Historicism and Postcolonialism were very popular, but by the time he wrote his thesis, few people knew who Said was. Even the teacher he knew felt that his topic selection was too biased. Because the theories appearing in college textbooks are all from the early 1980s (and some from the 1960s). In the 1980s, and then back to the 1960s, that is, looking back from today, it was an exciting era. College students all over the world were rebelling, and portraits of Mao Zedong, Sartre, and Che Guevara were all hanging on the walls. the whole world. Today there are people walking on the street wearing T-shirts with Che Guevara's face on them, and many of them, perhaps each one of them, think they are the only one who wears such a T-shirt. But in fact, there are many, many many (Che Guevara is not the only culturally significant symbol of this era, there are also huge posters for upcoming movie blockbusters, and overwhelming Supergirl advertisements) Rimbaud is thinking He is still far away from graduation as he is working on a graduation thesis that he has not yet conceived. Regarding the morning of New Year's Day in 2000, his memory may be fictional. That morning, I just met that elegant and beautiful female teacher. She is more vivid than all other memories and more real than all other memories. He can still see her on campus. How far is the distance between memory and reality? Maybe it’s hard for anyone to tell clearly, maybe memory is reality. A fictional reality.
Let’s go back to Said. He proposed "Orientalism". He pointed out that in the eyes of Westerners, the East is a mysterious and ancient country full of exotic customs. Anyone who has read "The Travels of Marco Polo" knows that China is described in the book as a place where gold is almost everywhere. Did this description arouse the desire of Westerners to take long-planned actions hundreds of years after Genghis Khan's death?
As a modern Chinese college student, Rimbaud was a modern person, a Chinese, and a college student. A question before him is, what is the difference between modernization and Westernization? Did the Easterners forget their own cultural identity when they were learning from the West, or did this identity become a concept and a symbol?
We can think back on the first day of the new century. Have we ever thought that we have entered a new era? Or we treat this day as usual, just as one of thousands of ordinary days. Perhaps we no longer have any impression of this. But Rimbaud, the protagonist of my novel, went to the reading room to find something in newspapers and magazines that would make him feel that a new century and era had arrived. Did he find it? I'm afraid only he himself knows this.
He had this idea because he was a college student with a lot of free time, and he was also a very sensitive (sentimental?), thoughtful (a schizophrenic?) person at that age One of the confusions that young people should have. He feels confused about life and our world, but is this just his personal situation?
The term "disease of the century" is always like a ghost, wandering among the cracks of the times at the end of each century.
Rimbaud is such a young man suffering from the disease of the century. He should have been in the bright sunshine of vibrant youth, but he always felt inexplicably lonely and empty, and hoped that something would appear in his life to add some bright colors to his boring life. There was a settlement of the Chimerians, whose cities were shrouded in mist and clouds. Helios, the shining sun, never penetrated its darkness to illuminate their region, which was always dark, whether in the morning when it rose up to the starry sky or in the evening when it slipped from the sky to the earth. The dark night looms over the unfortunate mortals. In order to obtain the prophet's prophecy, Odysseus came to the sacred grove of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, and offered a prepared sacrifice at the entrance to hell. He and his companions only stayed at the entrance to hell for a short period of time. But in Rimbaud's "A Season in Hell", he called his spiritual journey a season in hell. Decades later, when existentialism swept the world, Sartre's famous saying, "Hell is other people." Then it spread throughout the world. It can be seen that the word hell has existed in religious and mythological legends and has become a symbol of modern people’s spiritual and realistic conditions. Let us first put Homer's "The Odyssey" and Rimbaud's "A Season in Hell" on the bookshelf and think about the situation of our protagonists.
On the last Valentine's Day at the end of the century, Rimbaud was surfing the Internet alone in an Internet cafe. One of his friends sent him a Flash, which was given to single people celebrating Valentine's Day. He read the Flash Several times, I feel even more isolated and lonely. He went offline and walked out of the Internet cafe. The street outside was brightly lit, and pairs of lovers passed by him. He walked alone in loneliness. Thinking of the Flash just now, he felt desolate. The end of the century Sadness floated in the air. He raised his head and saw the cold crescent moon in the sky. "Classmate, are you from the first grade of high school?" He looked up and saw a tall but cute girl standing opposite. He felt a little familiar, but he couldn't remember who she was.
"I am from your lower realm. Alas, a celebrity like you in school will not notice ordinary people like us." Rimbaud didn't know what to say for a moment. Before he could speak, the girl spoke again, "I'm from Class 3, Grade 2, and my name is Sun Xiaojia."
"I remembered, I've seen you in school before, but I didn't know who you were. Name, but now I know it." Rimbaud said.
The girl smiled slightly, with a cunning light in her eyes: "Then buy a bouquet of roses and give them to your hungry girlfriend."
"I, I don't have a girl. Friend," Rimbaud said. In fact, if you go out alone on Valentine's Day, others will usually guess it.
"So, you don't want to buy it?" the girl said reluctantly. She wanted to sell him a bouquet of roses anyway. No matter if he has someone to send it to him or not.
"Then you really don't want to buy it?" The girl was holding a rose in one hand and dangled it in front of him. This was because Rimbaud didn't know why, he felt a painful feeling welling up in his heart. Coming up, he felt inexplicably sad. "Okay, I'll buy a bunch." He said with a smile, so bitter. "
He bought a bouquet of roses, "Why are you selling roses on Valentine's Day? "He asked.
Sun Xiaojia thought for a while and said leisurely: "I feel very sad to be alone. Only when I am selling flowers can I forget that no one will send flowers today. "
Rambo gently picked one from a bouquet of flowers and sent the rest to the girl: "For you. ”
“Thank you. The girl took the rose and said, "I wish you find the lover of your dreams soon." The girl smiled and said, "It's time for me to go. Thank you!" "
The girl's figure disappeared. Rimbaud took off the rose petals in his hand and threw them into the sky. "Mingyue, you are the only one who makes me feel less lonely. I give them to you, my lover." ”
When he walked on campus at night, he found that there were couples everywhere, whispering under trees or on chairs on the roadside. It was a bunch of boring and hypocritical things. The pile of nonsense. He felt a little disgusted and walked quickly towards the boys' apartment building.
After returning to the dormitory, he lay down. On the bed, fatigue gathered in every pore of his body, making his consciousness feel heavy. He wanted to save himself, closed his eyes and thought of nothing, but his thoughts began to roam freely. The fatigue dissipated bit by bit, and Rimbaud fell asleep.
When Rimbaud woke up, the other students in the room had already fallen asleep. He came to the window. The old day was not over yet, when would the new one begin?
He suddenly remembered that he was busy studying in high school. He got up to read at night. He never read in the corridor, but read with a flashlight under the covers. He was so motivated to study at that time. He was thinking about relaxing freely after the college entrance examination and waiting for the admission notice. It was so long. During this boring and anxious time, he unknowingly cultivated the seeds of emptiness. He was a little uncomfortable with doing nothing all day long. Sometimes his former classmates would get together and go out together. Drinking. Reminiscing about the past and looking forward to the future. After a few glasses of wine, tears flowed down, and they told each other about the sorrow and pain in their hearts.
Reveling in the slightly sad farewell. When everyone is apart, they always sing a song together. Waiting for the song to end and everyone to leave. Every time at this time, a sense of desolation comes from all directions, as if the drunkenness and tears just now were like a dream. After receiving the admission notice, all of this was washed away like flowing clouds, and the past could only be left in memory. However, memory is so fragile. In the face of time, no one can grasp it completely. They can only pick up some fragments from time to time, or it may be like nothing.
6
When Lan Bo woke up on Sunday, it was almost nine o'clock, and there were only three people left in the dormitory. Chu Yi was sitting at the computer desk, nervous. Staring at the characters in the game, immersed in the virtual world, he seemed to have forgotten everything. Next to the computer was a bowl of leftover instant noodles. Lan Bo remembered that it was the leftovers from Chu Yi's meal yesterday afternoon. , the plastic skin that was lifted up trembled slightly in the game war that filled the entire room. Lan Bo knew that Chu Yi could sit in front of the computer for a whole day. He didn't need food, just a little pitiful mineral water. To this end, he bought a box of pure water during his busy schedule and placed it under his bed. This forms a source of life that will not be exhausted. Lan Bo once asked Chu Yi why he was so addicted to online games.
“You don’t understand. I don’t mean that you are ignorant, but you cannot understand. This is a kind of life, a new way of existence. Maybe you think I live in a virtual space, But in this virtual world, there are things that are not available in reality. Do you think I have closed myself in a small space? Not at all. There is a wider world here. "Chu Yi has his own opinion. Rimbaud couldn't understand him at all, and he didn't really want to understand him. He was just curious. But think about it, although I go to class every day, is it really more meaningful than Chu Yi's life? At least for himself, he lived a happy life, but he was forced to listen to those boring, armchair theories.
What if our world is absurd, a game of the Creator? Lan Bo looked at Chu Yi's bright eyes under his thick eyelashes. He felt an indescribable feeling of disgust, not for Chu Yi, but for his concentration. At this time, Chu Yi suddenly raised his head and smiled at him. "After lunch, bring me something to eat, anything." After a moment, he completely forgot about everything around him. In that world, a thrilling contest is going on.
Rambo felt that he could not stay in the dormitory for any longer. Time was endlessly involved in a transparent but directionless vortex. He quickly got up from the bed and went to the bathroom. Wash up. He put on a black and blue suit and hurried out. The moment he walked out of the door, he glanced at Chu Yi. The young man, who was almost exhausted but had no intention of looking back and had exhausted his energy and will, was nervously waving his fingers quickly on the keyboard in the sunshine through the curtains that half covered the window. It gave Rimbaud an indescribable feeling in his heart.
7
In the winter, the grass under his feet crawled on the ground withered. Rimbaud rested under a tree with withered leaves and mottled trunks, a scene of decay. The winter scenery reflected in his eyes, the sky was clear and spotless. He put on a sweater early when winter came, but he still felt slightly cold. Two girls walked in front of him. One was wearing a lavender sweater and a ponytail. The other has ear-length hair, small glasses, and is holding a kite in his hand. He imagined that the girl's kite had its string broken and floated to the distant horizon, which was the brown cloud he saw. The kite with its string broken was tumbling in the clouds. Because there was no string, it floated randomly with the airflow. The clouds may be mixed with tiny lightning bolts and roaring thunder, and the kite is like a small boat, billowing in the stormy waves. The kite did not break. After flying in the sky for a while, it was pulled back by the two girls. The swaying kite slowly fell downwards. The two girls jumped to catch it, but neither of them caught it, and the kite fell to the ground. The girl with glasses bent down to pick up the kite. Her back was facing Rimbaud, and the kite was quickly picked up. The two girls walked away, and Rimbaud stood up. He felt very comfortable. The girl gave him a wonderful feeling when she picked up the kite. A stream of clear spring flowed through his heart, resisting the rapid changes. The power of nothingness in the world
8
Rimbaud crossed the path in the dusk and mist. He could see the black shadow of the tall buildings in the distance in the faint light of the setting sun. Yinghe heard the cry of small insects in the grass on the roadside. When the path ended, he turned right, and this time he stepped on the floor tiles of the community covered with mosaic patterns. More than fifty meters ahead was a road. He walked along this road until he reached a nearby bus stop. At this time, the orange street lights turned on, and countless moving lights and shadows flashed on the road. He looked up at the sky. There is no starlight above the shadows of the layers of clouds. It is an unfathomable desert.
A bus stopped in front of him. He got on the bus faster than the others and sat down on a seat by the window. The bus shook and drove forward. He almost At this time every day, he goes to the "city". In his opinion, the university he is currently in is completely located in the suburbs and can be called a "village". When he applied for a volunteer program in high school, he was confused by the university's impressive name.
At the beginning of the school year, when he was anxiously waiting for the school gate to appear in front of him on the school bus, all he saw was a narrow and dilapidated school gate that could only pass one bus. The area around the school is actually not deserted. He always feels isolated from the world. In addition to a noisy market near the school, there are always many vendors hawking on the streets. There is a relatively large shopping mall just one kilometer away. There is a park near the school. Although there is no charge, except for a pool of stagnant water, there are only some lawns, trees and wooden chairs, and there are no general fitness facilities. When he came to this school, the image of the university he had in mind suddenly collapsed. He silently accepted the unhygienic two rows of small restaurants with local flavors in front of the school. When he first arrived, he felt very unfamiliar with this new environment and had not yet become familiar with his classmates. He always had a desolate feeling of being alone in a foreign land. However, as time passed, the desolate feeling gradually subsided like the ebbing tide of the sea. .
He feels that everything is nothing now. The only thing that bores him is class. In fact, he does not dislike the teacher or the course itself. He just does not want to stay in the classroom. As long as he is in the classroom, he feels depressed. , I feel so tight that I can’t breathe. Anyway, I can stay anywhere, just don’t stay in the classroom. In the dull air of the classroom, there is the dry sound of lectures, which is unbearable for the vivid consciousness of life that longs for the bright sunshine, bright flowers and the crisp laughter of girls outside.
He failed the class last semester. Although this was expected, it made him feel quite unhappy. As soon as he had dinner, he felt that he had nothing to do. Tick-tock, tick-tock, the sound of emptiness was repeated in his mind. He originally wanted to take a few books to study in the evening. But when you get to the classroom, you can always see some people who are not at ease studying, either on the phone, eating snacks, or coming in and out, and there are also a few stupid guys who are always discussing problems (they think their voices and Nian low, in fact everyone else is disturbed by them). These are all bearable for him, but facing books alone is truly intolerable to him.
When he applied for a volunteer, he was confused, and his performance in the college entrance examination was a mess, and he entered the school gate in a daze amidst the bumps of the school bus. He was at a loss in confusion. He didn't know whether there was something wrong with him, something was wrong with the university, or something was wrong with the world itself. Anyway, it was the college entrance examination that pushed him into this situation, and he didn't want to think about failing the exam anymore. He just had to pay the make-up examination fee, which made him feel useless.
The teacher's arrogance and the school's greed made him fail the class. All this can be seen as a modern oppression. The student union has long since become the school's handyman from the spokesperson of students' interests. Sometimes he wants to run to the playground and shout loudly at the stars in the sky. But there are always countless couples in the playground, and his roaring will frighten them, or he will be attacked by others. The scene in front of him stopped while he was speeding, and he hurriedly got out of the car. In front of him were wide roads, tall modern buildings, gorgeous billboards and people walking on the street. There are still no stars in the sky, but the ground is as bright as day. He is now in the "city", but he is still a stranger.
9
He walked into a tall modern building with more than thirty floors and followed the stairs to the second floor. Bright lights surrounded him, and he looked at the online game posters on the white-lit walls around the hall, the gorgeous pictures, the deserted swords, and the deep wonderland. He found a seat and sat down. Not many people were online today. There are many people, but they are all the same. The same few songs are always played repeatedly in the Internet cafe, but he is used to it. Why did he go to such a far place to surf the Internet? It was because he didn't want to see acquaintances or the vulgar faces in school. He was always escaping. Reality was incomprehensible. He wanted to escape into a fictional world.
At about nine o'clock, he came out of the Internet cafe. There are fewer people on the street. He doesn't want to go back to school yet. He walks along the road alone. The streets that are noisy during the day seem quite quiet on both sides. The light of the street lights is not very bright. Standing on the overpass, you can see the tall buildings in the same place. The dim light from the large billboard on the top of the building, and the cars passing by below. When he came to this city two years ago, this is what he saw. He still remembered that there would be beggars on the overpass during the day, constantly begging to people walking on the overpass. Their blank and empty eyes reflected something poorer than the poverty they could see. When he first came to this city, he gave money to these beggars. As soon as he saw them, his kind heart was touched. Later, he found that these people were always in the same place, all year round. Even if the weather changed, they would be there regardless of the weather.
Later one of his classmates told him that they were all professional beggars. After hearing this, he felt very angry. Sometimes he thought, if he saw them showing their hypocrisy and need for mercy in front of him again, The look in his eyes made him kick over his dirty money jar. But he didn't do that after all. He was not a hard-hearted person. Even though he knew that they were pretending to be pitiful, he still couldn't help but give alms to them. Perhaps it was the poverty of their souls that he saw that deeply touched his heart. "You are really a saint." He had heard such taunts before. It would be great if you were a saint, he thought.
He walked off the overpass and suddenly felt that he had stayed outside for too long. He checked the time and hurriedly ran to the nearest station. When he reached the stop sign, he felt a little relieved. , there was probably another bus back to school. He waited for about half an hour, but no bus he wanted to take showed up. He yelled at the road (of course it was his imagination) and tried to hail a taxi, but after another ten minutes, he didn't see a car. He looked at the time dejectedly. It was almost time for the school dormitories to close. "Oh, forget it, forget it," he thought. He started walking along the street again, when several taxis passed by on the road, and he smiled bitterly. There were almost no other pedestrians on the road, and it seemed that all the street lights were turned on for him. He thought about the time he failed the class, and the teacher who taught him last year. He was usually very sharp in his speech. Unexpectedly, because he had once After pointing out her mistakes in class, she refused to let him pass the exam with a score of 59. This was too obvious. A truly vicious woman, a female scholar is extraordinary. Confucius said: Only villains and women are difficult to raise. She truly is both.
10
He unknowingly came to the Internet cafe again, staying up all night and going back to school tomorrow morning. The weather was slightly cold in the morning, and he boarded the first bus back to school at a deserted station. He almost fell asleep in the car. If the conductor hadn't reminded him, he might have passed the station. When he got out of the car, he was still dizzy and almost fell down. The people around him looked at him with indifferent eyes, and he also looked at them, these expressionless people. Lots, lots, everywhere. When he walked through the path in front of the school, he vaguely felt the fragrance of morning dew. He knew that this was his illusion. In the eastern sky, the sun was shining with golden light, surrounded by crimson clouds. The sky was so blue that it made people feel sad. I want to jump into that blue sacred abyss.
He walked to the cafeteria and simply asked for something to eat. The sleepiness hit him again and again. As he was eating, he felt gradually becoming dull, and he only felt the sunshine outside. The year is blazing, could this be the morning light? The morning light is a sea of ??sparkling lights. If only I could be like a fish, playing freely in this sea of ??light, how pleasant it would be.
When he returned to the dormitory, no one else in the dormitory had gotten up yet. He fell on the bed and forgot all he had learned in class. He felt like he had turned into a bird. Flying above the white clouds, there were two people flying towards him. He quickly got out of the way. The two people had wings, but they were glued together. Seeing them flapping, he found it funny. They flew to high places. , he was gradually left behind by them, the clouds passed by him, and he felt like a gentle veil.
The two winged people flew towards the bright sun, "Why are you back?"
"The teacher has just finished calling the names, and there are only a dozen people in class this time. Personally."
"Then how dare you skip class?"
"If you click once, you won't click a second time, but those who don't go will be in trouble. ."
"The worst thing is to take a make-up exam."
Rambo vaguely heard the conversation between his classmates in the dormitory, and felt that he was about to fail the exam again, and his sleepiness quickly returned to him. came, drowning his consciousness in the ocean of subconsciousness. He spread his wings and flew again, this time flying very easily. The two people flying towards the sun in front of him were an old man and a young man. The clouds are constantly gathering, but in the gaps between the clouds, you can still see the blue sea below. There are huge white ships sailing on the sea. Suddenly, the young man fluttered his wings and flew higher. The old man followed closely, but he could not keep up with the speed of the young man. The old man and the young man got closer and closer to the blue sky, "Icarus", he heard the old man shout.