The work is called narrative form by the first person. I'm Captain Charles Ryder. He didn't serve long, but he was very tired of military life. He lived numbly according to military regulations, carrying out boring orders such as cleaning barracks and disinfecting train carriages. On this day, the troops arrived at the new camp. Ryder learned the name of this radio station from the strengths of the agency, and immediately, "... as my injured feeling regained consciousness, my ears gradually filled with many sweet, naive and long-forgotten voices: because he said a place name that I am so familiar with ..." This place is called "Bride River". The troops will be stationed here in Brezhead Manor, which is inextricably linked with Ryder's friendship and love when he was young. 20 years ago, 1923, Ryder was under 20 years old and was studying history at Oxford University. After being drunk once, he met Sebastian. The father of the alumnus is the Marquis of Machimaine, a famous British family. Soon, Sebastian YoRyder visited the old manor by the bride's river. Sebastian doesn't call this manor home, but "the place where my family lives", which makes Ryder feel uneasy. Sebastian took Ryder to see his nanny when he was a child, and then he left in no hurry. Even his sisters at home don't introduce him. Ryder doesn't understand this. Ryder's cousin, who also goes to Oxford, comes to persuade Ryder every semester, but Ryder doesn't listen to his advice. Ryder also met some friends of Sebastian. Blanche was smart, sensitive and cynical, which moved Ryder. Mulcaster himself has nothing outstanding except eating, drinking and having fun, but his sister later married Ryder, which brought him marital misfortune. Blanche said Sebastian was "born in a very evil family" and told Ryder that Marquis Macmaine was a libertine and now lives in Venice with his mistress. Mrs. Marchmaine is a great beauty and deeply Catholic, so she refuses to divorce her unfaithful husband. Sebastian also has a brother and two sisters, and the older sister Julia is also a beauty. My brother is eccentric. He studied at Oxford, but he dropped out of school to teach, but failed. In a word, this is a complicated family. Ryder's own family life is not happy. His mother died in World War I, and his father lived a lonely life without remarriage. Ryder went home to accompany his father during the school holiday, but his father was heartless and played tricks on his son like a prank, which made Ryder sad and disappointed. It happened that Sebastian broke his ankle and was trapped at home. He asked Ryder to accompany him. Ryder slipped away from his father like he was saved. During the break, Sebastian showed Ryder the feeling that "being a Catholic is not easy", which surprised Ryder who was not religious. Sebastian also talked about his father, saying that he was a good man. After the injury, Sebastian and Jorid went to Venice to visit his father. Ryder chatted with Carla, the female companion of Marquis of Marchionne, and heard her comment: Marchionne family members are "full of hatred-hate themselves". It's autumn, Oxford University starts school, and Ryder and Sebastian both go back to school. Ryder began to paint copy paintings, which later developed into his career. Sebastian's condition is not good He began to get drunk often to escape from reality. Sebastian's mother tried to buy Ryder to watch Plug for her, but Ryder didn't want to betray his friends. Later, the school expelled Sebastian for misconduct, and his mother sent someone to look after him and arranged for him to travel to European countries, hoping to cure his drinking problem. Ryder saw Sebastian again at Christmas. He went to the manor for his holiday at the invitation of Mrs. Marchmaine. Sebastian, pale and thin, didn't give up his addiction to alcohol. He became more alert to people. Ryder couldn't ask Sebastian's life story, so he told him about his experience of studying architectural painting in an art school after dropping out of Oxford. At this time, Julia had a boyfriend named Rex, a upstart in Canada. Rex not only wants to get rich from Julia's dowry, but also wants to get some light from her aristocratic status. He has no moral sense. Although he was divorced, he kept it a secret. Julia's married life was very unfortunate, which led to an affair with the equally unfortunate Ryder after 10 years. Ryder went to Paris to improve his painting skills and studied for 15 months. 1926 returned to China. No sooner had he arrived in London than he received a phone call from Julia asking him to visit her mother as soon as possible. The old lady is very ill and wants to meet Sebastian before she dies. To this end, Ryder went abroad again and found Sebastian who was ill and hospitalized in Fez, Morocco. He has a cold and pneumonia, so he can't travel. A few days later, the news of Mrs. March Main's death came. Ryder was also commissioned by Brice Hurd, the eldest son of the Machimaine family, to paint the manor. Time flies. 10 years later, Ryder has become a well-known architectural painter, mainly for those "portraits of houses that are about to be abandoned and decayed". Ryder held an art exhibition and published a solo album. Later, he found out that his wife was having an affair with someone else, and suddenly ran away from home and went to other places to paint for two years. Ryder and Julia met in a cabin on their way home. Memories of the past and immediate misfortunes brought them together. But their relationship is full of disasters, and both parties have to divorce their spouses before they can remarry. As the war approaches, this marriage lawsuit is particularly troublesome. In March, the marquis suddenly announced his return to China. It turns out that he is terminally ill and intends to "return to the roots." When the Marquis of Marchionne was dying, his family invited the priest to hold a religious ceremony for him: repentance. Machimaine finally completed the ceremony and met the spiritual needs of her family, but Julia changed her view on remarriage and decided not to get married again. Ryder, who has finished the divorce procedure, has to respect her wishes. Ryder's memory ends here. In the "epilogue" part, Ryder's troops set up the brigade headquarters in the manor, and the soldiers were cleaning. Ryder went upstairs to see the old nanny alone and learned from him that Julia and her sister had become paramedics. Ryder went to the chapel again and found "no sign of disrepair". He emotionally quoted the words in the Old Testament to express his feelings: "There is nothing, and everything is empty."
There are three aspects to appreciate the works of revisiting the old place: 1. Autobiographical color, 2. Religious content, and 3. Irony. In fact, these three aspects are interrelated. Many of Walter's own experiences are similar to Ryder, the protagonist in the book. Walter went to Oxford in his early years and then studied painting in an art college. His first marriage was also unfortunate. When he was studying in Oxford, he also lived a dissolute life, even homosexuality and alcoholism, which were popular at that time, were not spared by him. When revisiting the old place was first published, it was criticized by critics because of its romantic mood, which was one of the reasons why Walter later revised and deleted the book. However, according to textual research, the description of Oxford University in the 1920s in Revisiting the Hometown is "extremely accurate". The religious content of the work is an important controversial aspect, because the main plots in the book are all related to religion: Sebastian was expelled from school because he could not face up to the severe discipline of his religious mother and the mental confusion caused by his parents' unfortunate marriage; Julia can't find real happiness in her marriage, because she is always wandering inside and outside the religious gate, and she can't get a lasting balance in her mind. Ryder, who is not religious, is entangled with these people who are troubled by religion. Not only is he unable to help them, but he is often in trouble. He and Julia failed to become friends, mainly because Julia suddenly repented and converted to Catholicism again. Therefore, the author's attitude towards religion has become the focus of debate. Critics found many examples in the book to support their views. However, for critics who hold the view of "praise", I am afraid there are relatively few examples, which are insufficient. Especially considering the satirical features of the works, this undoubtedly contradicts the promotion of religion. Walter is a famous satirist. As far as personality is concerned, Walter is an eccentric who combines all kinds of contradictions, prejudices and impermanence. He drinks too much, is unfriendly to people, and has a good and bad temper, even his friends find it difficult to get along. But people who are familiar with him are deeply attracted by his wit, eloquence and absurd humor. Blanche's revisiting the old place reflects Walter's wit and extreme. Ryder's father is an example of eccentricity. Walter's cynicism profoundly reveals the complicated interpersonal relationship and tense spiritual world of the machimura family. Some critics believe that Blanche and Machimaine are indelible images in Walter's People's Gallery, which can stand the test of time. Although revisiting the old place has caused some criticisms because of its emotional and heavy religious theme, its appearance has brought more affirmation. Edmund wilson, a famous American critic, once commented that Walter was "the only first-class comic genius in Britain since Bernard Shaw". Anthony Burgess, a famous contemporary British writer and literary critic, believes that revisiting the old place is "a fascinating work", which is "brilliant", "stirring people's hearts" and the description of characters is "wonderful and vivid". From this perspective, strong emotional color is not necessarily a bad thing. Like Burgess, "always fascinated by it, deeply moved, and even shed tears" is probably a good reading experience. The narrative way of revisiting the old place is also worth mentioning. This book consists of three parts, plus a preface and a conclusion. In the three-part text, the narrator introduces the events he experienced and the people he saw in the first person. In order to keep readers at a certain distance from the works, the narrator will always get involved. Whenever the story enters a fascinating key point, the narrator will stand up and remind the reader, which is his indirect description. He "wants to sum up a long speech into a few sentences" or "she told me this in the storm of the Atlantic Ocean after 10", which shows that this kind of activity is his "patent", and readers can't really get in touch with it, only through narration. The narrator is stingy to save precious memories, but generously expresses rich feelings. In his beautiful writing, he tried his best to show the transience of beautiful things: joy "is like a kingfisher suddenly passing over the water", beauty "is like sunlight passing through a gap in the forest, like candlelight in ytterbium", and youth is perfect, but it "passes away so quickly and irretrievably". All this is highlighted in a pertinent sentence: "I want to bury a precious thing in every place where I have been blessed." When I get old, ugly and unlucky, I can go back and dig it up and recall the past. "
Of course, it is unfair to say that all western media are NATO yes-men. French pay TV station satirized the news conference hosted by Shea with its highly rated "puppet show". British writer evelyn waugh wrote a passage in his famous novel The Exclusive (1938): Lord Cooper of The Beast Daily said, What is the policy of The Beast Daily on war? British public opinion needs news from beginning to end. The British are not interested in a long and futile war. They need some brilliant victories, the heroic feats of their compatriots, and the scene of finally returning home in triumph. At the end of the 20th century, most western media reports on the Kosovo war seem to follow the policy of Beast Daily. Graham greene, a Catholic novelist, described the existence of human evil, and wrote a series of thrillers which he called "recreation" after the abstruse book The Heart of the Problem (1948). Evelyn waugh, another Catholic novelist, was good at satire, but in the later period of the war, he wrote a novel "Revisiting the Past" (1945). George Orwell expressed his fear of a highly centralized society in the form of fables. Angus Wilso described the life of intellectuals in London with Dickens' brush strokes. William golding wrote a new fable to expose the ugliness of human nature in Lord of the Flies (1955). Two novelists began to write a long series of novels. They are Anthony Powell and Chapel Si Nuo. The former borrows the structure of music to write a bourgeois family, full of nostalgia for the good old days; The latter dissected the power struggle between the upper classes in modern England with the objective eyes of scientists.
Evelyn waugh's "pro"
In fact, it is not an exaggeration to read this novel as a horror novel. This is really a horror novel. First, the location. The hero Dennis works in Happy Hunting Ground, a pet graveyard, and the heroine Amy works in Whispering in the Jungle. This name looks romantic, but it is also the name of the cemetery, and it is a very high-end cemetery. She is a plastic surgeon. Most of the scenes in the story also took place in the cemetery. Dennis and Amy met while whispering in the Woods. At that time, Dennis's companion Sir Francis hanged himself. They had been dating in whispers in the Woods, but their relationship broke up when they met by chance in a happy hunting ground. Amy turned to Mr. Joey Boyd, a senior plastic surgeon, but Dennis asked Amy to commit suicide before marriage and was buried in the cemetery. however
I was surprised to choose the cemetery as the main scene of the novel to show the love and friendship in modern capitalist society. But Walter is obviously successful. In Walter's hands, this is an easy theme to unfold.
The first is the operation of the cemetery. Whispering in the jungle is a graveyard for people, but not everyone can be buried after death. People with different identities must be buried in different areas. They gave these areas lofty names such as "Poet's Corner" and decorated them with antique buildings. They arranged the best plastic surgeons for the dead, repaired every broken body and made them smile strangely. So all this is to make people noble after death. However, the cemetery staff's indifference to the dead bodies and the cemetery operators' pursuit of the number of the dead make all this a wonderful lie. In fact, profit is still the dominant factor. Plastic surgery for the dead is just an "art", not out of sympathy for the dead.
Back to the relationship between people, the irony is even stronger. Dennis was once the "hope of English poetry" in Britain. After living in America, he worked in Hollywood for a while and only found a job in a pet cemetery. But even so, he succeeded in seducing the naive American girl Amy with his "European wit and sophistication" (madly copying the love poems of famous predecessors and giving them to Amy). But Aimee unfortunately discovered his true colors and wanted to break up with him, so he used Aimee's natural weakness to force her to commit suicide. After her death, Dennis took advantage of Joey Boyd's weakness to cremate Amy as an animal and defrauded him of a lot of money. This must be the most shameless person I can think of, but his compatriots are not much better. These so-called "overseas Britons" plan to raise money to send XXX back to China every day. In fact, it's not that XXX really can't get along, but because they have engaged in some jobs that are not suitable for British gentlemen and lost face to the British. Therefore, they can vilify their dead compatriots at the funeral, or they can talk with relish about the inhuman transformation they have made to their actresses, such as cutting off half their noses when playing Spanish and pulling out all their teeth when playing Irish. Therefore, people, like things, are just tools to make money here, and they don't need to invest their feelings.
Therefore, compared with Dennis and others, Aimee is really naive. The girl was able to give up plastic surgery for the living because of an accident that helped the dead look good. She was moved by Dennis's plagiarized poems and became his girlfriend. When she encountered problems, she sincerely wrote to the column of "Celebrity Mentor" in the newspaper for help, and finally committed suicide at the suggestion of the so-called mentor. She has romantic fantasies about everything, and there is no standard of right or wrong and judgment. If the simple American young people described by Henry James at least have their own ideals and pursuits, but they are not as sophisticated as Europeans, then Amy is really ignorant.
Therefore, although her fate is so tragic, it can't arouse my sympathy, which only makes me feel why Walter has to write the novel so gloomy.
Because of the relationship between the two protagonists, this novel is inevitably reminiscent of Henry James and his international theme. This is not an American version of James' novel, because the roles of the hero and heroine are still the same, Europeans are still sophisticated, and Americans are still naive. However, after the local site moved to the United States, it no longer reflected Americans' yearning for elegant European life and painted wonderful pictures of European life, but accused modern people of indifference and selfishness against the whole society. Amy and Dennis are no longer typical contemporary people, but two abstract symbols. Walter plays these two symbols with ease, but I feel creepy when I read the novel.
We are not familiar with the author evelyn waugh, but he is indeed the best satirical novelist in Britain in the first half of the 20th century. Unfortunately, he converted to Catholicism in the 1930s, so everyone thought he was strange. In Mao Mu's Blade, there are a few words that satirize him and another writer at that time, Christopher Ischwood. Those who are interested can be found in the notes.