You can see autumn in me,
When all the yellow leaves fall off, or just in twos and threes.
Hanging on the withered branches, the cable is shaking?
Hundreds of birds once sang in the abandoned music scene.
You may have seen the light in me,
After sunset, it disappeared to the west;
Night, the incarnation of death, gradually drives it away,
Yan Jing's rest shut up all kinds of things.
You may see embers on me,
It is dying in the cold ashes of youth,
Sooner or later, you will lose your soul in a bleak mental bed.
Destroyed by the flame that nourished it.
Seeing this, your love will be strengthened.
Because he will leave you soon, but never to return.
Shakespeare's sonnets? Song 73 (translated by Liang)
The seventy-third of Shakespeare's sonnets is Shakespeare's works, which is the most included works in literature textbooks of universities and middle schools in English-speaking countries. This is not only an elegy of life, but also an ode to love. I don't know how many people are disappointed with the bleak desolation after prosperity described by the most popular phrase "the bare ruins choir, where sweet birds sing at night" in the original poem. China people have been particularly sensitive to this emptiness since ancient times, and Shang's Mai Xiu and Zhou's Mi Li both express their sentimental feelings after urbanization turned into a wasteland. Li He's "Song of the Golden Bronze Immortal in Han Dynasty" describes the sadness of people leaving the building and moss all over the floor in the Han Palace. And Cao Xueqin's "Like eating a bird and throwing it into the forest, the land is so clean" is almost the Chinese expression of Shakespeare's poems. Therefore, American woman writer Kate? The lyrical artistic conception conveyed by William through the topic "Where are the Sweet Birds Singing" should be familiar to readers in China.
Kate. William began to publish literary works in the 1960s, and his sci-fi creation won various awards for many times, including Urban Planner (1968 nebula award for best short story), Dusk of Birds (1977 Hugo award for best novel) and Girl Falling into the Sky (1986 nebula award for best short story). William's writing is unrestrained and changeable. In addition to science fiction, she also created a large number of mystery novels, fantasy novels, mystery novels, satires and literary novels. In addition, she also created stage plays and radio plays. In the field of fantasy novel, it is extremely rare for a woman writer to have such a broad vision and care about such complicated and rich things. What complements her broad vision is that her writing style is simple and natural, with a sharp and free atmosphere, without losing the unique delicate and gentle character of female writers. The Late Birds is a film that can fully reflect Kate? William's masterpiece has the above creative characteristics.
1977 The Twilight of Birds, which won Hugo's Best Novel Award, is a work with the theme of ecological destruction and the end of the earth. It should be said that as early as the ancient times in myths and legends, doomsday thoughts appeared in human consciousness, and what about the Bible? The prophecy of the apocalypse shows this. It is worth noting that this consciousness also contains a strong desire to "regenerate" at the end of the day. It is this awareness that urges people to imagine countless tragic futures in science fiction. Nuclear war, autocracy, dependence on machinery, overpopulation, resource exhaustion, genetic variation and environmental pollution, any one of which is out of control may lead to the end of the world. At that time, how should humans act? What role can the civilization established in the past play? Can mankind find a way to get rid of extinction and rebirth? Although these series of questions are serious and heavy, they are intriguing. Human beings' concern for their own destiny determines that the cautionary novels with doomsday theme will always be an enduring variety in the garden of science fiction literature.
The best works in this variety show generally make breakthroughs in the following aspects: First, the imagination is strange and surprising. Like John in England? The Trident Tree Age in Windham. Second, the inference of impending doom is well-founded, solid and rigorous. The most famous novel is The Sinking of Japan by Japan's Komatsu Satoshi. The novel is based on the theory of plate tectonics, and the scientific arguments in it are even evaluated as "comparable to master's thesis". Third, the review of modern human civilization is profound and enlightening. For example, British j? g？ Ballard's famous trilogy of destruction. Fourth, look at human nature with a unique eye and portray the spiritual and emotional state of human beings in the last days vividly. "Late bird" is Kate? William made great efforts to examine the exquisite works of human nature.
The book Late Bird Talk is divided into three parts, all of which are about the loss of human nature. Return? Regeneration. The first part, it is written that the end is coming. With the help of rich human resources and strong economic foundation, a big family prepares for disaster in advance, and in the predicament of all family members losing their fertility, they use cloning technology to reproduce their offspring and pass them on from generation to generation. This background setting has been criticized by many critics from a technical point of view, arguing that there are too many loopholes in science and technology to be convincing and cannot support the latter two stories. However, we should realize that the author has no intention of setting a strict technical background. What the author really sets with his heart is a social background that may cause the loss of human nature. The importance of David, the central figure in the first film, is that he is a witness to the loss of human nature, not that he is the initiator of cloning offspring. Therefore, it is somewhat boring to criticize this novel technically. Loss is the premise of regression and regeneration. From this perspective, we can understand that the structural significance of the first novel is indispensable.
Molly is the central figure in the second film and a crucial role in the work. Whether this connecting role can make readers feel real directly determines the success or failure of the work. Since the individual will has been lost, how can we return? Here, Kate? William seems to be careful in his writing. She started from the most natural starting point? Molly's occasional "loneliness" is slowly pressing, which makes this "loneliness" enter Molly's "state of mind" and makes her constantly experience the mysterious and incredible life under this fear "state of mind". Finally, for Molly, this "state of mind" of fear has become the most real and important content in her life. Compared with this "state of mind", the past and the future, the collective and the society are irrelevant. From fear of loneliness to pursuit of loneliness, and then to turning loneliness into a lasting passion and resilience impulse. When Molly observed the world in this "state of mind", she found that everything had changed and everything was full of poetry and beauty. What is commendable is Kate. In this part of writing, William did not condense Jasmine's "emotion" into abstract conceptualism, but activated it as a "preference" immersed in Jasmine's flesh and blood. It is not easy for a writer to capture the real and concrete state of mind in the process of creation. Many writers are mediocre because they can't do this.
One more question. Why did other clones who were at the starting point of "loneliness" with Molly finally give up their efforts to rebuild their individual will? We noticed that Molly's life is different from others in three aspects. One is the touch of beauty (the feeling in the process of painting), the other is the tenacity of character, and the third is the awakening of love (giving birth to a son's mark). We know Kate? The key point of William's investigation of human nature is that individual will can't be truly established without tough character and the catalysis of "beauty" and "love". Mark grew up with his mother's love (reading Shakespeare's poems and camping in the mountains) and beauty (clay sculpture). Compared with his mother, he has no ethical burden and historical confusion, and the pursuit of individual life will naturally becomes his goal of realizing the value of life.
Therefore, the third part can be said to follow the trend and come naturally. Now that the most difficult part of writing has been completed, this article can also make a happy ending only by narrative inertia. It is not difficult to see that the screenwriter is very relaxed when writing the growth story of Mark, the third central figure, and occasionally reveals a little banter. Of course, the dignity of the first part, the twists and turns of the second part and the vividness of the third part coincide with the structure of the novel: the loss of human nature? Return? Regeneration.
"Late Bird Theory" is quite distinctive in language processing. Kate. William uses declarative mood and subject-predicate sentences as much as possible, which effectively slows down the narrative speed and reduces the tension of lyricism, thus kneading the emotional factors evenly in the whole novel and creating a cold lyrical style of expository writing. Careful readers will find that the lyric points of the novel are almost all set in those fleeting details. For example, at the end of the first film, when David was exiled by clones, he wrote that David was sleeping under a tree and heard "a bird calling" in his dream. This is not only the lyrical tone of the whole novel, but also the plot hint of the latter two novels, which is both "dying" and "strengthening love"
Among science fiction writers, Kate? William's ability to deal with details is first-class. For example, the White Oak, from David's grandfather to Mark, has been communicating with it from generation to generation, vividly interpreting the harmonious interdependence between man and nature and playing an excellent role in setting off the atmosphere. There are also the names of clones, and the names of each brother and sister are distinguished by initials, such as Molly, Maureen Yam, Barnes and Barry. Similar examples are too numerous to mention. Attention to detail can't be completely attributed to the author's gender, which is one of the differences between excellent writers and ordinary writers.
Finally, let's go back to Shakespeare's 73rd sonnet. The front of the poem is desolation, death and despair, but the appearance of the sentence "strengthen love" makes us feel comforted and see the dawn. Yes, love is the warmth in desolation, the call in dead silence, and the power of human beings to resist despair. In this sense, Dusk of Birds is a new interpretation of Shakespeare's immortal poems in the form of science fiction.
I think what Shakespeare wants to say is:
You see the desolation of life,
Let's put aside our troubles and grievances.
The sun will definitely rise tomorrow,
In the sunshine of my heart,
Life,
This is a perfect symphony.