Full text of Xiao Hong's "Night of Insomnia"|Appreciation|Reviews
Xiao Hong
Why do you have to suffer from insomnia like this! Irritability, nausea, heartbeat, timidity, And want to cry.
I think about it, maybe it’s just my thoughts about my hometown.
The sky outside the window is higher and farther away, the clouds as soft as white cotton are getting closer, and the wind blowing seems to have a smell of grassland, which means it is already autumn.
Over there in my hometown, autumn is the cutest.
The blue sky is so blue that it is a bit black, and the white clouds look like they are made of silver. They are like big white flowers dotted in the sky, as if they are so heavy that they are about to leave the sky and fall down. , and the sky seems to be getting higher, so high that nothing is so high.
Yesterday, I went to my friends’ place for a walk, and I heard a lot of wishes--those many wishes combined into one wish--if I really get back to my heart this time, Some people said, "Let's cook a pot of sorghum rice porridge to drink." Some said, "How big are the beans in our place?" They compared them with their hands and said, "It's so big, it's as big as a bowl, and it's pearl rice. The old one boils as soon as it's cooked." Some said: Sorghum rice porridge, salted beans; others said, if we really fight back to Manchuria, we will not eat for three days and three nights, and go home with a big flag. run. Naturally, it is inevitable to eat sorghum rice porridge or salted beans when you get home.
For example, I usually don’t want to eat sorghum rice. It’s very hard and a bit astringent (maybe because I have stomach problems). But after what they said, I felt that I had to eat it. .
But when should I eat it? Then I don’t know. Moreover, I am not very enthusiastic after all, so in this regard, I am not very friendly after all.
But I miss the tall grass in front of our door, the purple little eggplant flowers blooming in our back garden, and the cucumbers climbing up the trellis. And that early morning, the rising sun came with dewdrops!
As soon as I mentioned tall grass or cucumbers, Sanlang waved to me and shook his head: "No, there are two willow trees in front of our house. The shades of the trees intersect to form a door shape, and in front is the vegetable garden. Beyond the vegetable garden is the mountain. The pyramid-shaped peak is facing the door of our house, and its two sides stretch out to the east and west of the village like bat wings. Go and garden: Cucumbers and eggplants are also planted. The most beautiful thing is that morning glories are crawling all over the cracks of the stone wall. In the morning, the morning glories bloom with dew..."
" Our family is not like this, there are no mountains or willow trees... only..." I often interrupted him like this.
Sometimes, he doesn’t wait for me to finish speaking, and he continues. The stories we tell each other are easier to tell to ourselves, rather than for each other.
Only one day: I bought a "Picture of Wealth in the Northeast" and hung it on the wall. There were ponies, lambs, and camels standing on the yellow plain, and there were also camels leading them. There are little people on the sea; there are small fish, big fish, yellow fish, red fish with big bellies like small bottles, and big black whales; while the Xing'an Mountains and Liaoning area are painted with many green fish that are like sea waves. mountains.
His home is in the mountains not far from the Bohai Sea. His fingernails were crawling on the mountains: "This is the Daling River... this is the Xiaoling River... hum... no, this map is incomplete, just a sketch..."
"Okay Wow! I talk about Linghe every day, but where is Linghe!" I don't know why, when I mention my hometown, I am often willing to let him down a little bit.
"You don't believe it! I'll show you." He went to look through his bookcase: "Isn't this it! Daling River... Xiaoling River... I caught it on the banks of the Ling River when I was a child. Take the small fish to the mountain, roast it on the fire and eat it on the stones... This is Shenjiatai, two miles away from our home..." Because he was spreading the map on the floor to read it, as he spoke, he used His hand swept through the ends of his hair that had fallen down on his forehead.
"Picture of the Rich Sources of the Northeast" hung on the bedside, so the next morning, when I opened my eyes, he grabbed my hand:
"I want to When I go home in the future, I will buy two donkeys first, one for you to ride and one for me to ride... first to my aunt's house, then to my sister's house... and maybe visit my uncle by the way... my sister She loves me very much... After she got married, she would cry every time she came back before leaving. My sister also cried, and so did I... I haven't seen her for seven or eight years! She is getting old now."
The small fish on the map, both red and black, could all be seen clearly. I watched and listened. This time I did not interrupt him or distract him.
"Buy a black donkey, hang a bell on it, and walk... Gang Lang Lang, Gang Lang Lang..." He described the sound as if he had a bell in his mouth. ring.
"I'll take you to Shenjiatai to go to the market. It's a lively market day! There are soju bottles hanging on the donkeys... Mutton is very cheap over there... Mutton stew powder... It's really delicious! Oh! Yeah! How many years have I not eaten that mutton?" There were many wrinkles on his eyebrows and forehead.
I saw him in the big mirror. His hand was taken away from mine, placed on his own chest, and then put behind his back under the pillow, but soon Pulled out again. He just straightened the ends of his hair and put it on the pillow.
And what about me? I thought:
"Does your family treat the so-called 'daughter-in-law' from outside the same way?" I said this after thinking about it.
This insomnia may not be because of this. But those who buy donkeys buy donkeys; those who eat salted beans eat salted beans; and what about me? Sitting on the donkey, I still go to a strange place; what I stay in is still someone else’s hometown.
The concept of hometown is not very familiar to me, but when others talk about it, I get flustered! Although before that land became Japanese, "home" was the same to me. there is none left.
This insomnia continued until dawn. Before dawn, amidst the sound of anti-aircraft guns, I also heard the same chicken crow that shook the fields in my hometown.
August 22
Appreciation This is a work full of deep patriotic enthusiasm. After the fall of Northeast China, the author fled to the pass, but he missed that country all the time. By expressing his longing for his hometown, the author expresses his worry about the destruction of his country and his family. The work expresses the longing for the hometown very deeply: the wish of the "friends" is that if they can go back to their hometown, they must first eat the sorghum rice or salted beans from their hometown; although "I" usually don't like to eat it Sorghum rice, but now because it is something that is associated with my hometown, “I feel like I have to eat it.” Hometown is not an abstract concept, it is always connected with specific things. The author expresses his deep affection for his hometown through his longing for the sorghum rice and salted beans of his hometown. In the work, the dispute between "I" and Sanlang is written endlessly, and the "Picture of the Richness of the Northeast" is written. Through the mouths of "I" and Sanlang, the rich land, beautiful mountains and rivers, customs and customs of the Northeast are expressed. The author's love for his hometown. Although, in fact, the specific "home" did not exist for "me" long before the Japanese invasion (because the author ran away from home when he was still in middle school because he rebelled against his family's arranged marriage), but " "I" still get "flustered" when others mention my hometown, and still suffer from insomnia due to homesickness. This shows that the hometown that "I" miss is no longer a hometown in a personal sense, but the hometown that binds the dreams of hundreds of millions of compatriots. The lost "home" of the soul. The whole text expresses the longing for hometown, and at the end of the work, it is specially pointed out that "'home' means I don't have it." This contains the author's good intentions: she hopes to work with readers to express her feelings about her hometown. The feeling of longing has been sublimated into a national patriotic emotion.
In addition to the author Xiao Hong's consistent delicate and sensitive artistic feelings, this novel is also unique in style. This is a relatively typical lyrical novel: the work is not good at narrative, but mainly expresses the author's subjective emotions; the structure of the work is not based on the development of the storyline, but on the flow of the author's subjective emotions; in the work It also clearly incorporates elements of poetry and prose, making the works often present artistic conception and strong lyrical color. The work explains "my" insomnia at the beginning, and then points out that the cause of insomnia is thinking about my hometown. Subsequently, the work describes the small things in the past that "I" recalled because I could not sleep. These memories seemed aimless, but each one was closely related to the longing for my hometown. The whole work actually revolves around "my" longing for my hometown. There seems to be no obvious external connection between the small things. They are like fragments and do not have the "integrity of the plot", but they are tied together by the subjective emotions of "my", thus achieving the inner "lyricism" integrity". The entire work has an obvious tendency of prose in terms of writing style; it downplays the plot, casually narrates, expresses random emotions, and blends lyricism into the narrative. In some parts of the work, he even uses the technique of writing poetry to write a novel. For example, in the beginning, the author associates the scenery outside the window with the autumn in his hometown, and vividly writes about the beauty of the autumn colors in his hometown. This paragraph of text contains poetic artistic conception, poetic taste, and poetic language. It seems that it is not an exaggeration to regard it as several paragraphs of lyrical scenery poems. All this gives the work a unique artistic style. The exquisite writing, lyrical colors, poetic artistic conception, etc. make this novel completely readable as a "beautiful article".