The Complete Works of Xu Zhimo's Classical Prose

Chapter 15
Manshfield

This joy in the depths of the soul,

The grandeur of this emotional realm;

Nintendo falls, hell opens,
Can't destroy the treasures of my inner mansion!
"The Evening Photo of the River Kang"

The memory of beauty is the most precious property in life, and the instinct to know beauty is the secret key God gave us to enter heaven.

Some people's disposition, such as my own, is like weather as a metaphor. It is not only cloudy and sunny, but also often stormy, and also has the most beautiful and vigorous spring. Sometimes it is disillusioned, causing world-weary pessimism, and the weight of lead is on the heart. , such as the haze of winter, freezing everywhere, no one is a little bit angry; at that time, everything is doubted; the universe, life, and self are just illusions; human feelings, hopes, and ideals are also illusions.

Ah, human nature, how,

If utterly frail thou art and vile,

If dust thou art and ashes, is thy heart so great?

If thou art noble in part,

How are thy loftiest and impulses and thoughts
By so ignorable causes kindled and put out?

“Sopra un ritratto di una bella donna.”

These lines are the poetry of Leopardi, the most profound pessimist; a tombstone in a deserted tomb, bearing a beautiful portrait of his former life, arouses in him the fundamental question if life is justified. I am looking for why there are only contradictory phenomena everywhere, if beauty is illusion, why can it cause such profound spiritual reaction, if beauty is true, why can it also return to decay with ordinary things, Daniel Barty explores Although the intelligence like a sea lamp has stripped away the illusory appearances of all things in the world one by one, even religion has been stripped into a naked dream, but he has no power to deny beauty!The creation of beauty can only be regarded as miraculous by him, and he cannot deny Gao Jie's spiritual love, although he does not believe that women can also have the same state. In the purest moment of beauty and love, Libadi cannot but admit that it is the kingdom of bliss I have to admit that it is the most precious experience in my life, so every time I am bored to the extreme, in the bottom of my heart that is as tight as ice, there is a sudden surge of heat that melts everything, and instantly melts away the world-weariness. The crystallization melted the bitter cold of troubles.That hot flow is the purest moment of memory of beauty and love.

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a Heaven in a wild flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour...

Auguries of innocenceWilliam Blake
See the world from a grain of sand,
Heaven's message in a wild flower,
will exist infinitely in your palm,
In an instant, there are infinite boundaries...

This kind of mysterious feeling is of course not a common experience, nor is it a common experience. People who only talk about reality in everything, of course, ridicule mysticism, and of course cannot believe in the neurological effects that can be explained by science, and there will be mysterious things that cannot be explained by science. Feel.But there are many things in the world that "you can tell those who know but not talk to those who don't know"!
Once upon a time in the sixteenth century, an Italian pastor and scholar went to the countryside of England and saw a large piece of alfalfa in full bloom dancing with the gold in the lake. Thanks to the grace of God for making him see such a beauty, such a miraculous sight, his crazy behavior must have aroused the laughter of the people in the countryside. I am afraid that the experience I am going to talk about is also a bit like that pastor's ecstasy. The madness, but I also firmly believe that there are sympathizers among the readers, so I am not afraid of being laughed at by country people!

One night in mid-July last year, it was rainy and wet, and I was alone in the rain in Hampstead, London, asking directions and amazed passers-by, looking for a house at No. [-] Pender Street.That was the first, and unfortunately also the last, night when I met Manshfield for "the twenty minutes of immortality!"

I first met John Middleton Murry, chief editor of Athenaeum, poet, famous critic, and Manshfield's closest companion in the last ten years of his life.

He and her have been married since 15, but Mansfield has always used her "pen name" Katherine Mansfield after she came to England.She grew up in New Zealand (New Zealand), her original name was Kathleen Beanchamp, she is the daughter of Sir Harold Beanchamp, the manager of the New Zealand Bank. She left her hometown [-] years ago and went to the UK with her three little sisters to enter the Queen's University of London. College study, she was famous for her beauty since she was a child, but her body was also very timid since she was a child, she lived in Germany, when she wrote her first novel "In a German Pension" when she was in France during the war In recent years, she has often been in Switzerland, Italy and southern France.She often lives in a foreign country because she is too weak to endure the foggy and rainy weather in England. In order to be with her, Mai Lei had to give up part of his career (this is why Athenaeum was merged into the London Nation), and followed him Angel Like a loving wife, she seeks health. It is said that after the poor Manshfield got a lung disease certificate after the war, the doctor clearly stated that her life span was only three or two years, so the limited time that Mai Lei spent with her was really countable, and it was rare. After one sunset, after one sunrise, her ecstasy-like Yu Rong also wiped out such vitality, which reminds me of the famous saying of La Traviata when she vomited blood and indulged in wine:
"You know I have not long to live, therefore I will live fast!" You know I have not long to live, so I intentionally drink him to my heart's content!
I just don't know how intense the sadness of "I can't help" is so strong in the heart of the amorous Mai Lei, seeing this gorgeous and unparalleled sunset gradually disappearing!

But Manshfield's method of "live him a happy life" is not like La Traviata's drinking and revelry, but working hard in literature and art; Even when she sang the blood-drying hoarse, she did not forget her responsibility, which is to sacrifice her limited energy to add a little more beauty to the natural world, and to give a bit of artistic spiritual comfort to the depressed world.

The result of her hard work is two collections of novels, one is "Bliss" and the other is "Garden Party" published last year.With the [-] or [-] novels in these two books, she has occupied a very stable position in the British literary world. Ordinary novels are just novels, but her novels are pure literature, real art; The author only wants to be popular for a while and to win the welcome of the masses, but she only wants to leave a few small pieces of real crystals that cannot be covered up by "time dust", as long as they are appreciated by a few bosom friends.

But only for its pure literature, the brilliance of her works is deeply contained inside rather than exposed outside, and its taste can only be fully understood by readers who have to chew carefully. I accept the author's face-to-face permission to select and translate her fine works. After she passed away, I should cherish the privilege of performing my translation even more, although I doubt my own competence. My good friend Chen Tongbo probably knows more about European literature in Beijing than anyone else. He teaches short stories at Peking University. Manshfield, which pleases me very much.Now he has promised to select and translate a few articles, and I would like to thank him even more.Regarding the strengths of her short story art, I also hope that Tong Bo can have the opportunity to say a little bit.

Now let me tell you how I met Manshfield that night. A few days earlier, McRae and I were in a noisy ABC tea shop behind Charing Cross, discussing the state of the English and French literary world.I took the opportunity to talk about the trend of the Chinese Renaissance in recent years. I felt the deepest influence of Russian authors in the novels. He almost jumped up with joy, because their husband and wife admired several Russian masters the most. Based on the book "Dostoievsky: A Critical Study", Manshfield is also a close friend of Chekhov (Tchekhov), and they often lament that Russian literature has never received considerable attention from the British, because the quality and style of the novels are still unknown. Unable to get rid of the Philistinism of the Victorian period, I took the opportunity to ask about Manshfield's recent situation. He said that she was in good health for a while, so he dared to accompany her back to London for two weeks, and he gave me their address. Invite me to meet her and their friends on Thursday night.

So I met Manshfield, it was quite a coincidence, I went to HG Wells country home (Easten Glede) on Wednesday, and returned to London with his wife the next day, it was raining heavily, I remember getting all wet when I got back to my apartment.

It was not easy to find their apartment on Pender Street (London is always troublesome to find a place, I hate that London with back streets and alleys), and then I found it, a small house with one floor and one ground floor At that time, Mai Lei came out to open the door for me, and I walked in awkwardly, holding an umbrella and a few scrolls of Chinese calligraphy and paintings that a friend had returned to me.I took off my rain gear, and he let me into the first room on the right. Until then, I had only admired and expected a famous young female writer for Manshfield; Unexpectedly, I thought she was just in the same stream as Rose Macaulay, Virginia Woolf, Roma Wilson, and Vanessa Bell.Ordinary men's writers and artists are already eccentric enough, and modern women's writers seem to have deliberately cultivated eccentric habits. The most obvious common habit is that the decoration is plain, out of fashion, and "back to women": The hair was cropped and not well tidied up, and fell in a mess on the shoulders; the stockings were always roving; They are too long, and there may be a circle or two of "genius' yellow halo" between their eyebrows, or they may wear the most disgusting American-style big tortoise shell glasses, but their faces have never seen traces of makeup, and their hands are always decorated. No, at most it was just the scorched marks of burnt cigarettes, and nine and a half times out of ten, the voice of roaring and laughing overwhelmed the man sitting in the same seat; The back; most of the words that men dare not speak out; of course, the favorite to discuss is Freudian Complex Birth Control or the new books privately printed by George Moore and James Joyce, such as "A Story-Teller's Holiday" and "Ulysses".In short, their full personality is just a caricature of women's liberation (Amy Lowell heard that she smokes big cigars all day long!), and with this group of "wise" women who are determined to oppose God's original intention of creating man, of course there are Many interesting places.But sometimes I can't help but feel that their artificiality is too deep, which arouses a kind of sexual hatred.

Before I saw Manshfield, I certainly didn't think she was such a first-class futuristic, but I definitely didn't dream that she was an idealization of women.

So when I pushed through the door, I hoped that she, a kind woman who was almost middle-aged, would stand up from the sofa in front of the fireplace with a smile and shake hands with me to say hello.

But in the room opposite the long and narrow fireplace, there are only light yellow and quiet lights, colorful art furnishings and paintings on the mantelpiece on the wall, and several sofas with colorful painting covers in front of the fireplace. Half a figure.Mai Lei let me sit on a chair, and chatted with me, talking about the similarities between the Oriental Avalokitesvara and the Virgin Mary of Christianity, the Virgin Diana in Greece, Isis in Egypt, the Virgin in Persian Mithraism, etc. It seems that the Virgin Mary is an indispensable symbol in all religions... We were talking, only heard a peck on the door, and then a young girl came in and stood at the door with a smile, "Could it be that she is Manjufer?" Such a young man..." I was puzzled in my heart.She has curly brown hair covering a small round face, with lively eyes and a lively mouth. She wears a very bright dress and lacquered shoes, green silk stockings, a silver-red silk blouse, and a sauce-purple velvet skirt standing gracefully. Like a tulip facing the wind.

Mai Lei got up to introduce me, and I realized that she was not Manshfield, but the owner of the house. I don’t know if it was Misi Beir or Beek. I can’t remember. Mai Lei lived in her house temporarily; Paintings, most of which are her own, she sat on the chair opposite me, took a small dynamo-like thing from the mantel and held it in her hand, and she wore a telephone answering earphone on her head. The hoop, talking very close to me, I thought it was a radio toy at first, and then I realized that this beautiful girl has a hearing defect.

She was sitting up when the doorbell outside rang loudly. I suspect her doorbell was particularly loud. It was a very witty gentleman from Sydney Waterloo that I met at Mr. Roger Fry's house. Seven or eight pipes, big, small, long, short, of various colors, were taken out of the huge pocket, making us laugh.He came in and asked McRae how Katherine was doing today.I pricked up my ears to listen to his answer, Mai Lei said: "She won't go downstairs today, the weather is too bad, no one will be used..." Hua Delu asked him if he could go upstairs to see her, Mai said yes , Hua asked Misi B's permission to stand up, and he was about to walk out the door when Mai Lei rushed over and said softly, "Sydney, don't talk too much."

There was a faint sound of footsteps upstairs, and W was already in Kasselin's room.On the other hand, two more guests came, a short M who just came back from a trip to Greece, and an imposing and beautiful husband who was Sullivan who wrote weekly scientific articles in London Nation and Athenaeum and signed S. M will talk about his travels in Greece, all the historical sites and places of interest in ancient Greece, Parnassus is long, Mycenae, short stories can't stop. S also asked Mai Lei Jia Sailin how, Mai said not to go downstairs tonight, W is now upstairs.About half an hour later, W's clumsy footsteps came down, and S asked him if Jia Sailin was tired, and W said, "No, it's not like tired, but I can't tell, I'm afraid she's tired, so I came down." After waiting for a while, S also asked Mai Lei's permission to go upstairs, and Mai also reminded him not to let her get tired.Mai asked me about Chinese calligraphy and painting, and I took a piece of Zhao Zhiqian's "Cursive Calligraphy Painting Plum", a piece of Wang Juesi's cursive script, and a piece of Liang Shanzhou's running script that I brought with me that night. Calligraphy is careless, Miss B is happy to hear it, holding her listening tray in her hand, sitting next to me.

But I was quite disappointed at that time, because I wanted to come to the author of Biss for a while despite the rain, but she didn't come downstairs; at the same time, W, S, and McRae's clouds and moonlight increased my curiosity about her. , I think it's bad luck, Kathelin is upstairs, and old friends still have the privilege of entering the room to talk, and I must have no points for strangers from foreigners. It was half past ten o'clock and I had to get up to say goodbye. When I walked out of the room, Mai Lei came out to help me put on my raincoat. While I was dressing, I said that I was sorry that Mismatchfield couldn't come down tonight, otherwise I really wanted to meet her.But Mai Lei said sincerely, "If you don't mind, please go upstairs and see me." I was overjoyed to hear this and immediately took off my raincoat, and followed Mai Lei up the stairs step by step...

Climbed the stairs, knocked the door, entered the room, introduced, S said goodbye, left the room with M, closed the door, she invited me to sit, I sat down, and she sat down... such a series of complicated procedures, I just think it is It went through like an electric fire, in fact, I only inferred that there should be such a logical process, but I didn't feel it; I only felt a blur at the time, and every time I think about it afterwards, I only feel a blur every time. We usually start from the dark Walking into a brightly lit room in the street, or coming out of a dimly lit room and suddenly facing the strong sunlight, one often feels that the glare is too strong, making one feel dizzy, and one has to calm down to recognize the things in front of him. .In English, it means Senses overwhelmed by excessive light, not only light, but also strong colors, sometimes it also has the effect of "tideless" sensory perception.I think at that time, although I may not be overwhelmed by the blazing light of Manshfield's personality, the lighting in her room and the rich and brilliant colors of her own clothes were enough to make my unguarded nerves feel The momentary confusion is understandable.

(End of this chapter)