1978 Synthetic Writers - Chapter 491: Variations without a Theme
1978 Synthetic Writers
Chapter 491: Variations without a ThemeChapter 491: Variations without a Theme
"No variations on a theme?"
"How do you come up with such a strange name?"
Wang Xiaobo murmured.
The name "Variations without a Theme" is so strange!
The word "variation" was originally from Latin and originally meant change.
In music, "variation" refers to the changes and embellishments of musical elements such as mode, tonality, texture, and rhythm around a musical theme.
Composers can create new themes or borrow existing tunes, keeping the basic framework of the theme and giving it free rein.
In other words, to put it simply, variations must have a theme.
No subject?How can there be variations without a theme?The only person Wang Xiaobo could think of was Debussy.
Debussy was a French composer and the originator of "Impressionist" music.
At that time, an entire generation of French composers was facing a huge dilemma.
Just like the composition students that Jiang Xian wrote about in "You Have No Choice".
These French composers were intoxicated and conquered by German music, Wagner's music.
A whole generation of French composers poured their passion into the music of Wagner, and allowed their genius to perish in unoriginal imitation.
At this time, Debussy emerged and rescued French music from the huge shadow of Wagner, and created music that was completely unique to France: French style, French taste, and French spirit.
From then on, French music became unique in modern Western music.
Debussy is most famous for his "Impressionist" music.
This kind of music is far from classical music.
This kind of music lacks the rigorous structure, profound thought and logic of classical music.
There is also no trace of the rich emotions of romantic music.
Instead, there are strange fantasy elements, hazy feelings and mysterious colors.
So when it comes to no theme and also involving music, the first person Wang Xiaobo thinks of is Debussy.
This is the pioneer of modern music.
"Is this novel related to Debussy?"
With deep curiosity, Wang Xiaobo held the volume of "Flower City" and read Jiang Xian's "Variations without a Theme".
The full text is preceded by a poem:
"Fortunately, I still have a sweet heart"
"A seed, a bitter kernel"
"Fortunately, I will start climbing tomorrow."
“I’m going to hide it in”
"The most secret mountain stream, waiting for the next year of its life"
"Flowers are fragrant and fruits are sweet"
"A tree passed by"
"Deep in the mountains where there is no bird singing"
Wang Xiaobo savored the poem gently.
The artistic conception of this poem reveals a beauty different from that of any other contemporary Chinese poet.
"That's great." A faint smile appeared on his ugly face.
Wang Xiaobo knew that Jiang Xian's novels were famous.
However, compared to Jiang Xian's novels, what he admired most was Jiang Xian's poetic talent.
Especially "To the Oak Tree", which was first published in "Today", then in "Poetry Magazine", and finally caused a sensation across the country, attracting countless people to copy and recite.
Wang Xiaobo once fantasized that if he could meet Jiang Xian, he would tell him: The best thing you wrote is not the novel, but the poem you wrote.
This poem is so good!
Wang Xiaobo once wrote so many love letters to his wife Li Yinhe, but in his opinion, all those love letters added together were not worth the goodness of this poem "To the Oak Tree".
He emphasized to Li Yinhe more than once that "this is the best poem I have ever read, I love it very much."
Therefore, in Wang Xiaobo's view, Jiang Xian's talent in poetry is actually far greater than his ability in writing novels.
This is a good poet who was delayed by writing novels!He then looked down to the main text of the article:
"Maybe I really have no future, maybe."
"I don't know what I should want besides what I have now."
"What am I? What's more terrible is that I'm not waiting for anything."
“Perhaps everyone is waiting, waiting inexplicably, always believing that something will happen to change their entire life now, but you just can’t explain what you are waiting for.”
"Really, I'm not waiting for anything."
"I'm not saying this to tell you I'm different. In fact, in another sense, I know exactly what I want. I need to eat and work."
"Anything modern other than that has nothing to do with me."
"If I died suddenly, how much would it affect me? It would probably be like the death of an ant. Maybe Old Q would feel pain for a few days, but it would pass quickly. She would get married, pursue her so-called career while also having fun, and give the same charming and charming things she had shown me before to another man."
"If the people I love the most are like this, then who else can I mean anything to?"
Hiss.
Just a few words made Wang Xiaobo feel something "extraordinary" and a "feeling of having nothing to wait for".
Wang Xiaobo has read a lot of literary works, so he knows that this feeling of having nothing to wait for is not something that has been discovered for the first time in literature.
This feeling was written about in Beckett's famous play "Waiting for Godot".
"Waiting for Godot" is a play performed in the 50s.
There is no story or drama in this work.
There is no plot, and therefore no climax.
Beckett only wanted to express the protagonist's series of feelings, a series of scattered emotions.
These feelings and emotions are expressed in the works as a kind of humor, a smile, and a cynical and mocking demeanor.
However, a kind of distress is still found in the protagonist's deep consciousness, although he seems to have escaped from it.
You can still see a kind of pursuit, even though he claims that he has nothing to pursue.
"Waiting for Godot" was performed just after the end of World War II.
World War II destroyed the myth of the ideal Western society. What Westerners faced after the war was a desolate, dilapidated and chaotic stage like the one in the play.
On this stage, people can't see a way out in life, do nothing all day long, are extremely miserable and extremely bored, desire change but are unable to extricate themselves.
Therefore, almost all the little people living in Western society can find the shadow of their own lives in "Waiting for Godot".
At this moment, after reading a passage from Jiang Xian's "Variations without a Theme", Wang Xiaobo was surprised to find that he actually read a hint of the same flavor from this novel.
This gave him a huge surprise.
No one has ever written a novel like this!At least in China, he has never read any work created in this way so far.
This is so cool.
He continued to read on, and Jiang Xian also quickly mentioned "Debussy" and "no theme":".I don't like the difficult music of Old Q. It is said that Debussy often has no theme or something. Although sometimes I am also obsessed with Tchaikovsky and so on, I don't like the monotonous sound of an instrument, except for the trumpet. "The trumpet is also monotonous, but it is always lively, and that feeling is a bit great, coming in and out."
"It's a pity that Old Q had to make a small trumpet. I really overlooked this point when we were passionately in love."
"Even though she was playing a famous Italian violin, and even though it had hundreds of years of history, I still couldn't tolerate all those fingering exercises, tuning tests, and string tunings."
"It's too fucking themeless. It's fine without a theme, but it has no content and no coherence. Apart from the mere form, it really is a bit like the novels I wrote. This often makes me uneasy."
"I wondered why she couldn't just pick up the instrument and play something nice for me, but there was a long period of preparation woven with noise, which turned my appetite away all of a sudden, just like biting into an apple but biting off a big, thick, fat worm."
"She said I didn't understand, and perhaps I really didn't understand much, and then she left, probably to tune those four precious strings somewhere again."
"But she will come back, and I believe she will continue to love me."
"Some days ago, we were walking in the moonlight, and she whispered to me that if we broke up, the mountain behind her would suddenly disappear, and when she turned around, she would only see a desolate and misty wilderness, and she would be like a lonely shadow."
"I was so moved that I couldn't bear it. A surge of warmth surged up in me, and I turned around and went into a nearby tavern."
"Maybe it's useless, maybe."
"I walked down the street casually, and there were cars and horses flowing like water, and there were countless people in the world."
"But I'm too lonely and sad to drink or get drunk or anything."
"I went to see a movie, but instead of feeling relieved, I ended up with more bad luck."
"Those underground workers, wearing cheongsams that showed off their curves and half of their thighs, ran desperately in front, and a few bad guys chased them desperately from behind, but they couldn't catch up, even with motorcycles."
"I saw a fucking ghost."
"What bad guys? It's always men chasing women anyway."
"So of course we can't let them catch up. The director even has to arrange for them to strip off their clothes or something. It's too immoral."
"To be honest, I still don't believe that those men and women with slicked-back hair and powdered faces were the underground party members back then."
"If that were true, saving people from danger would be too easy."
"."
call.
After reading just the first chapter, Wang Xiaobo was so shocked that he was speechless.
In the first chapter of the article, Jiang Xian seemed to talk about a lot of things, but in fact, there was nothing.
The protagonist of the novel is "I". "I" have a girlfriend named "Lao Q", who seems to be a musician.
Other than that, nothing happens in the novel.
It was like listening to a drunk young man complaining non-stop.
But it was this feeling that made Wang Xiaobo unable to stop reading.
Rather than telling a story, this "Variations without a Theme" is more about a feeling of confusion and loss.
The protagonist of this novel has some isomorphic characteristics with the protagonist of Jiang Xian's previous work "You Have No Choice" in terms of feelings and emotions, but they are not exactly the same.
"You Have No Choice" is about "a group of young art explorers".
In Wang Xiaobo's opinion, the character in "Variations without a Theme" should be a very special person.
"Superfluous people".
"Redundant people" is a foreign word, and some people translate this word as "outsider".
Like many concepts in philosophy and aesthetics, the "superfluous man" is a concept that is not easy to define precisely.
This word seems to summarize such an attitude towards life: indifference, contempt and even optimism, not being involved in it, and taking a cynical, contemptuous, humorous and playful attitude towards everything in the world.
In short, a "redundant person" is someone who feels like he or she has no place in life.
This is a new word in the country, but in foreign literature, "superfluous man" is no longer unfamiliar.
Rameau's nephew, Julien Sorel, Rudin, Onegin, Oblomov, and Karamazov all have some characteristics of "superfluous" in their personalities.
To sum it up in Diderot's words:
"I try to make the most of my free talk."
"I have never in my life thought twice before, during, or after I spoke."
Isn’t the protagonist “I” of this “Variations without a Theme” just such a person?
I am young, but I feel very tired of life:"One day of rest a week is heavier for me than work."
“After get off work, I trudged to my old haunt.”
"I'm not tired, I'm just dazed."
"All kinds of colorful thoughts appear in my mind alternately."
"Seeing but not seeing, hearing but not hearing, it feels as if I am in a dream."
"It seems that no one else is as stupid as me, looking around with a blank mind and a grin."
The worst thing is that this mental state is not caused by the stimulation of a specific event.
There was neither such event nor such excitement.
It's just a feeling of boredom, weariness, and absurdity that has penetrated deep into the soul.
Because of this feeling, he responded to everything around him with a sense of meaninglessness, as if it were close yet distant, present yet not present, and free to come and go.
Love doesn't matter.
Career doesn't matter.
Hobbies don’t matter.
Art doesn’t matter.
Philosophy doesn't matter.
Success doesn't matter.
Failure is okay.
Praise doesn't matter.
Being scolded doesn't matter.
This person is full of energy, but is already full of weariness.
This man is young, but he looks old.
This person has a bright future, but he doesn't want to go anywhere.
Finally, say:"Maybe I'm really useless, maybe."
This is the protagonist's mental state throughout the day.
To use a passage from Pascal's Meditations to describe it:"I know not who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor who I am. I am in a terrible ignorance of all things in the world. I know not where I came from, nor where I am going. I only know that when I leave this world I will fall forever, either into nothingness or into the hands of an angry God, but I do not know which will be my eternal destiny.
This is my condition, full of weakness and insecurity.
All I could conclude from all this was that I was going to spend the rest of my life without any effort, and to laze myself toward death without asking any questions about my eternal destiny.
Wang Xiaobo held "Huacheng" in his hands and felt more and more excited the more he read.
“It’s so well written!”
This novel touched his heart!This novel is simply written about him!
(End of this chapter)