“That morning, my father-in-law never dreamed that in seven days, he would die in my hands, better than an old dog loyal to his duty.”
“Many years later, when facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia must remember the distant afternoon when his father took him to see the ice.”
The above two paragraphs are from Mo Yan’s Sandalwood Punishment and Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Frankly speaking, from the perspective of the opening language style, the latter attracts me more. But with the deepening of reading, I gradually changed my original view.
I talked about the unbearable lightness of life by Miran Kundera. During the reading process, I heard the melody of piano music sometimes quiet and sometimes roaring. When I came to “Sandalwood Punishment”, I heard the Maoqiang singing method of positive tone, negative tone, male and female with different tunes. It also seems that I heard the long and exquisite of the artist Lajing Erhu in black and white, and when the drama reached its climax, it slowly turned into the accelerated rhythm of playing leather gongs.
In front of me, human flesh was cut off in thin slices. There was not much blood at the place where the knife fell, only a little red, like sweat oozing from the skin. I also smelled the faint fishy smell in the air. The closer I was to the table where the meat slices were placed, the stronger the smell was. Mo Yan held me firmly from the perspective of vision, hearing and smell. I call it “the aesthetics of violence” for the aesthetics of writing that can make me feel both shameless and creepy.
Mo Yan is undoubtedly violent. His aesthetics of violence is very interesting. Unlike other writers, Mo Yan is better at taking ugliness as beauty and turning beauty into ugliness. He did not embellish the stories and characters, did not cover up the vulgar forms of life, and groaned about the traditional culture, almost vulgar and not vulgar, almost indulgent and not indulgent, almost grand and not grand. This did not suppress my emotions, but stimulated my enthusiasm for reading. Still holding the narrative style of half covering the face of the pipa, I was scratched somewhere in my body and couldn’t reach it. Only Mo Yan has a good prescription, and only by continuing to turn it over can my heart be relieved.
“Sandalwood Punishment” is the first work of Mo Yan that I read. The creation background is that after Germany forced the Qing government to sign the “Jiaoao Concession Treaty” in 1897, it occupied roads and built railways, and plundered mineral resources. The local water flooded the fields, and the people were living in poverty. Later, Sun Wen took the lead in revolt, but was killed by Qing soldiers. Mo Yan skillfully took the criminal law of “sandalwood punishment”, that is, the ancient criminal law of “execution late”, as the main line, and wrote a story that was not very attractive.
The relationship between the characters in the article is not complicated, and the story is simple and lively. But the content is extremely huge. From the perspective of language form, he showed the tragic fate of the nation in the late Qing Dynasty in the form of madness and arrogance on the paper. The native-born life form of the characters in the novel and the extremely wild form of expression make each character have its own characteristics. This is also the concept of “polyphony” mentioned in my previous book review “Crime and Punishment”.
Some people compare Mo Yan with Marquez. The point of comparison is “magic realism”. What’s more, the shadow of “Hundred Years of Solitude” in “Sandalwood Punishment” is there. I don’t know where the conclusion comes from. I only saw Mo Yan, as a farmer, with a pure native language composed of solid Chinese characters. I only saw the native culture of China that seems to be lower than the mainstream western literature, but can compete with the western literature, even beyond the consciousness of magic realism.
Sandalwood Punishment is a very strange work. I want to say a lot to you, but I don’t know what to say here. This book has too much to learn in terms of language, writing, and the deep mapping behind it. Perhaps this book does not have the high philosophical significance of “unbearable lightness of life”, but it is precisely between the lines of this grounding that will trigger your seemingly non-existent and deja vu philosophical thinking.
I am curious that Lu Xun’s evaluation of “Crime and Punishment” said that Chinese literature is incomparable. If he saw Mo Yan’s Sandalwood Punishment, would he change his previous view.
Write at the end:
Each of my book reviews is unwilling to retell the story in the book. Compared with storytelling, I prefer to share my reading experience with readers. I am not willing to evaluate the quality of works. Compared with evaluation, I prefer to share my thoughts and thoughts in reading with readers.
Best wishes.
