Three hearts.
In the history of literature, there is always a type of writer who, after their death, is quietly drowned in the torrent of history, and then suddenly at some magical juncture, unexpectedly (because most of the time we can't explain why this ** family suddenly blooms again, almost a miracle) and reasonably (because they are really good enough to deserve such glory) are salvaged ashore.
Compared with the brilliance and enduring brilliance of O'Connor, who was also an Irishman and a writer of short stories, Maeve Brennan, a literary star, seemed a little bleak and silent. Four years after her death in obscurity (no Irish newspaper published an obituary for her death), Christopher Cardiff of America published The Fountain of Emotions, which rekindled the long-extinguished candle. At the same time, the book was highly praised by many writers, especially Alice Munro. It is not difficult to understand Monroe's enthusiasm for this book, in addition to the profound and detailed description of the situation of women, in her experimental short story collection "Who Do You Think You Are", she adopts the structural model of "Fountain of Emotions": the same protagonist is used as a lead to connect the pearls of each short story, which are both related to each other and can be independent of each other, and finally condense into a kind of accommodation comparable to that of a long story**.
The real and the ridiculous are intertwined.
The Fountain of Emotions can be divided into three parts, the first of which is a few short stories featuring the little girl Maeve as the main character. Each one is like a quick gun, no more than ten pages long. It's not perfect, but it's amazing enough. Maeve Brennan, in this short story that seems to be Xi, shows a deep insight into the heart of human nature, even if it is just a little girl who is innocent in the traditional sense, she has vanity, jealousy and even the confusion that society brings to her. Even if it is a little girl, the thoughts and emotions in her heart are enough to be delicately captured and explored.
The second part of Fountain of Emotions is a six-story story about Ross and Hubert. Since then, ** has broken away from the youthful temperament and marched into the ranks of great works. When we read these six articles, it is as if we are on a bizarre time and space journey. The order of these six ** is not in the usual linear sequence, and the timeline of each ** is almost out of order, and memories and consciousness always suddenly pull out a thread at a certain moment, turning the course of the story around the memories of the past. The more crucial reason is that** every time it always seems to have a new beginning, and the relationship between the characters is always repeated over and over again at each beginning, as if each article is an independent island, as if Maeve Brennan is cutting their lives into several separate sections. In this deliberately created sense of alienation, certain sentences, opinions, and symbols are scattered throughout the different passages, creating a wonderful magnetic force.
For example, the first sentence in "The Drowned Man" is "after the death of his wife";And in the previous short story, the wife Rose thinks she can live longer than her husband Hubert;In The Walls of Home, Rose says "I never want to leave this house", and in the previous short story, home is where she wants to escape;In "A Young Girl May Spoil Her Chances", Ross laments, "I'm thinking, it's nice to get married", but in the rest of the chapter, marriage is a cage that traps her forever;And the symbolism of Rose's green eyes has also changed over time. The realism of these echoes stems from their sense of absurdity. When we look back on our own lives, we will find that what once seemed indestructible has long since turned in the opposite direction under the influence of reality and fate, and finally degenerated into ridiculous and cruel mistakes.
Eternal death, the loneliness of normality.
The absurdity of fate lies not only in its change, but also in its immutability. The second part of "Fountain of Emotions" begins and ends with death – death is eternal. In a sense, death is also the tone and atmosphere of the whole film. When Hubert proposed to Rose, her answer was "yes";And Rose's last answer to Hubert before his death was also "good". This phrase delicately connects the bond between death and marriage. Marriage in ** gives the reader the feeling of a pool of stagnant water, lifeless but unable to escape. People are slowly approaching death in life, and they are still alive in death. The emotional fluctuations, impulses, and collapses in ** are like struggles for this kind of death-like life, but daily life is like a giant beast, a whale, swallowing all struggles and escapes, just like death swallowing everything. This is why the flow of consciousness (the so-called concept of thinking into non-existence) and the fixation of everyday life create such a strong tension. In Hunger Attack, Ross sweeps up dust day in and day out — the dust is new, but it's the same as the old one. This is almost a symbol of the second part, each of which is a restart in some sense, but all share a similar theme, just as each day is a restart in some sense, but it is also like a copy of the previous day.
The barriers between people are a theme that runs through the second part. One of the benefits of using a third-person narrative is that the author can wield a relatively literary masterful description. For example, the sentence "The remnants of daylight can only touch the world before it exits forever." The elegance of this sentence lies in the "light touch", which gives the invisible sunlight an actual action;The adjective "light" adds texture to this action, turning this anthropomorphic reluctance into subtlety and restraint. For example, "glass is melted as if it were rainwater" has a novel poetic color, the word melt is both precise and beautiful, and the two different symbols of glass and rain are strangely fused together. But more importantly, by using the third person, the brushstrokes can freely wander between different perspectives.
The common technique in the second part is: the same thing, use the different internal perspectives of Ross and Hubert to ** and think, so as to detonate the effect of contrast. Not only the two protagonists, but everyone is alienated from each other, and no relationship - including family, love, marriage or even charity - can beg for a connection of understanding and communication. At the end of the second part, this feeling of emptiness reaches its climax, and its outward symbol is that Ross's empty house, "there is nothing in it", and isn't it the same with their lives?Hubert weeps - he doesn't grieve for Rose, but he grieves for not grieving for Rose;He reflects his own loneliness in the loneliness of Rose, which he himself helped create, but this loneliness caused by the inability to communicate is equally incommunicative. So when everything returns to normal, it's not worth telling anyone about it. Normality, the normalcy that is more and more terrifying because it can't afford to make waves.
A tragedy that constantly interweaves and reverberates.
The third part of Fountain of Emotions is about another couple, Delia and Martin. The length is very similar to the first part, there is no complicated plot, but these short stories pay more attention to consciousness, and sometimes the narrative is hidden, full of ** consciousness gas-like expansion. Similar to the second part, the third part is also about the main theme of marriage, and it also disrupts the timeline. Even the two families are very similar: on the outside they have the same tennis courts, gardens, gold chain trees, and even Ross and Delia are emphasized to have green eyes;Within the family, their wives have also become vassals and tamed, fearful of their husbands and ashamed of themselvesAnd their husbands are just as pretentious, just as hypocritical, and even believe in this hypocrisy in their own hearts.
The real heart of the third part, and what makes it truly unique, is the short story of the same name, "Fountain of Emotions". It moves away from the perspective of both husband and wife and introduces a third-party perspective to look at the marriage, namely Martin's sister Min. Min is both a person with whom they have a deep connection and a spectator of the marriage – so it's not a god-like perspective, but a biased and even extreme one.
It can be said that the other ** in the third part are all based on "Fountain of Emotion" as a frame of reference. The previous pages leave mottled bloodstains, which will be interpreted in some places and deviated from in others. For example, Martin's pretentiousness is rooted in the desire and affection of his family of origin for him, and the end result - through Min's relatively objective vision - is only reduced to mediocrity, and reality becomes a cruel irony of his surging self-comfort;For example, Martin's attitude towards pets, we used to think that Martin was naturally disgusted with them, but in "Fountain of Emotions" Martin once wanted to have a dog, but his mother resolutely refused. Because of the perspective, this matter seems to be lightly brushed aside. But this moment of glimpse is surging with a whirlpool of power, enough to provoke all kinds of interpretations.
At the end of **, Min sits in the room, surrounded by objects left behind by Delia, but fantasizes about the life of the original family without Delia's involvement. "Fountain of Emotions" is a symbol in **, where people project their organic feelings onto inorganic objects. And in the end, under the change of life, the once beautiful symbol becomes a weak irony, and the fountain of emotions continues to gush out and finally form the mire of life. Min despises this symbol, despises the sensual imagination triggered by the symbol, but in the end, she can't escape the cage of fantasy either.
Through the prism of **, the third part of the satisfied true face is a hideous tragedy, hideous because of peace. It is a house of tragedy, where tragedy is constantly intertwined and reverberate: the tragedy of men, the tragedy of women, the tragedy of marriage, the tragedy of singleness, the tragedy of life, the tragedy of death, ......Irretrievable, inevitable.