Prose Appreciation of Mei Fang's "Memories of Monte Fontaine"

After reading Mr. Zong Baihua’s translation of "Western Scenery", I got to know the works of many masters. The most pleasing ones include the marble sculpture "Danaai", which is as white as jade, and the bronze sculpture full of tension. Sculpture "The Burghers of Calais". The master Rodin perfectly presented the power of plastic arts, which conquers us not only our vision, but also our infinite reverence and reverie for the beauty of ancient Greek art. At the same time, I also like Picasso's "Girl with a Mandolin" and "Woman in an Armchair", because apart from the rich shapes, the tones of the pictures contain the bright yellow that I love. The shape is like blocks of color inadvertently "constructing meaning", like Severini's "Hieroglyphs of the Tabarin Ball", bright colors, orange, dark yellow, copper yellow, all fast and happy colors, come alive These polyphonic and polyrhythmic shapes and static paintings also come alive in front of the eyes.

There are endless artistic enjoyments like this; appreciating them can give people a thousand years of unconstrained thinking in just one second of visual sense. Among them, the one that impressed me the most and aroused my endless reverie was undoubtedly the oil painting "Memories of Montfontaine" created by Camille Corot in 1864.

The desert fog in the painting is filled with gray-green tones - the emptiness on the lake, the wind dancing on the branches, the wantonness of the spring sun, the true fun of outing... all the beauty is self-evident and intoxicating. In this pleasant spring scenery. Corot's Montefontaine also sparked memories of my childhood.

My love for painting stems from my childhood. At that time, we still lived in an old house, and the paintings on the walls at home changed designs every year. I have seen the portraits of the ten marshals who founded the People's Republic of China, and the graceful portraits of the "Twelve Hairpins of Jinling" in the Red Mansion. The most memorable one is the picture of Daiyu burying flowers. Later, when I went to junior high school and read "A Dream of Red Mansions", I imagined the characters in the book according to the paintings on the wall.

My grandfather and father worked at Wuqi Middle School in the town. During the New Year, they always distributed New Year pictures or wall calendars, ranging from traditional landscape paintings to colorful Western paintings. After taking them home, they were usually opened Stick it on the wall. Firstly, it creates a festive atmosphere for the Spring Festival. In addition, it has gradually become a long-lasting hobby of the family. If the school had issued landscape paintings that year, the four walls of the home would have been covered with black and white landscape paintings; if the school had issued Western paintings, the house would have been colorful all year round. My grandfather also had a special liking for cutting and pasting. Under the transparent glass on his desk, in addition to photos arranged in an orderly manner, there were also cutouts from various magazines and illustrations.

The first Western paintings I saw were Monet and Van Gogh. Compared to Van Gogh’s crooked sunflowers, I still like Monet’s impression paintings, and Corot’s. , looking at it quietly, all the beautiful memories floated out of the painting.

In addition to the scenery seen in paintings, there are also scenery in our lives. The scenery comes from the garden of the old house, which was built by my grandfather after he retired from middle school.

My grandfather spent his whole life running schools and teaching in various places. When he returned to the fields, he devoted all his leisure time to flowers and plants. The garden is built on the east side of the ancestral house. It is surrounded by an earthen dam of about two meters of bamboo forest, enclosing a garden of more than 30 square meters. The garden is well-proportioned, with altars built at high places. Flowers in the altar bloom in all four seasons, including roses in spring and chrysanthemums in autumn. More than thirty years have passed, and I still remember the excitement of those bees and butterflies flying around. In the open space under the altar, there are ditches along the eaves. During the rainy season, raindrops from the eaves pass through the seams of the stone tiles, and the sound of dripping and gurgling water is pleasant to the ears.

The most beautiful part of the garden is in March. The walls of the garden are covered with plum blossoms. The warm spring day is red and yellow, and the yellow and white honeysuckles are wrapped around the maple trees, and the fragrance of flowers is overflowing. On a sunny day after frost, my grandma would place a bamboo sieve on the fallen lotus vat in the garden to dry soybean paste. The fragrance of the paste contained the ever-blooming roses in the pond, which was so beautiful. Autumn and winter are not lonely either. My grandfather planted a large hibiscus in front of the old house. When the autumn air is crisp, the pink hibiscus blooms in large blooms.

The flowers are bright and fragrant not only in the garden, but also on the tables and cabinets at home. When my grandfather had nothing to do, he cut out a few flower branches that he liked and put them into beautiful vases.

There is no need to buy vases at home. There is a separate hut behind the main room where wine is kept. The wine is given by the younger generations during the holidays, and what is left after drinking is a beautiful bottle. The white honeysuckle *** is placed in a narrow-mouthed blue vase with a rounded belly, or the red azalea is paired with an antique sauce-colored porcelain vase... Every flower in the vase complements each other. The art of flower arranging was not popular at that time, but under the quiet influence of my grandfather, we gradually developed an art of life unique to Liu's style. What we saw in our childhood remained quietly in our memories.

Nowadays, there are no flowers readily available at home, but I still buy them from the flower shop and habitually place them in the living room and bedroom. Time flies, things come and go, and the tangible existence and intangible perceptions are quietly reincarnating and influencing us in the old days.

Every summer I go home for a short stay. At dusk and sunset, I like to sit quietly in the yard and look at "my flowers". It was a crape myrtle. When I first saw it, it was whirling on the field ridge, interspersed with weeds, and looked like a burning cloud from a distance. It was very beautiful. In this way, I silently remembered it in my heart. After the Spring Festival in 2004, the frozen soil began to thaw. After waiting for a whole autumn and winter, I couldn't wait to dig out a piece of its root from the field and bring it home. Now more than ten years have passed, facing the gate of the courtyard, the crape myrtle is fragrant from June to July until the cold dew falls. At that time, I couldn't call her by name, so I said "my flower". Later, I left home to study and work. Every time the flowers bloomed, my father would call me and happily say, "Your flowers are blooming." Our phone number also changed. Start with such joy and end with joy. It was not until the streets and alleys of Hefei began to introduce crape myrtle as street trees that "my flower" got its name.

"My Flowers" is located right in front of the ancestral home. Although the ancestral home no longer exists, I feel happy when I think of the scene of the garden in the past, because the beautiful crape myrtle was introduced. The yard at home seems to be the continuation of my grandfather’s garden beyond time and space. My grandfather has four sons. The third uncle and the younger uncle went to study and work in other places. The eldest uncle and his father stayed with him. The eldest uncle's house has a large foundation and the father's house has a small foundation. Later, when we built a house, my father discussed it with his brothers and returned to the ancestral house to build a building. Now we live in the location of the original old house. In this way, every time I go home, I quietly look at the crape myrtle flowers surrounded by bees and butterflies, and the memory returns to my childhood, and this year is no exception.

My grandfather retired early due to illness. After tending the small garden for a few years, he was hospitalized in various places. When he was transferred from the county seat to the town for hospitalization, my sister and I visited him. When we left, my grandfather bought some fruits. , sent us to the street corner, and the clear look is still vivid in my mind. My grandfather passed away in the summer of 1995. I was in the first grade of junior high school. On my way home from school, I met his old subordinate, Teacher Ding Shiqing from Wuqi Middle School. He told me many things about my grandfather. He said that my grandfather was an upright man. Enthusiastic, as a leader never criticizes or corrects in front of others, it is worth learning from the younger generation. After my grandfather passed away, the original flowers, plants and trees in the old house gradually faded away. Grandma said it was because the garden had lost the energy of my grandfather. Now the flower beds in the garden no longer exist, except for a heather tree that survives. When my father built the kitchen, he did not cut it down, saying that he wanted to keep it in mind. The scene he sees now is the evergreen heather trees passing through the red asbestos tiles, like a past event standing in front of him through time and space.

Among the memories my father left behind was a pair of reading glasses he picked up from the coffin when he was burying his grandfather. He also wore them when he got older, and his eyes looked like his grandfather's. In fact, my grandfather did not want to see my father. First of all, I am afraid that his father's temperament was not strong enough. Among the many sons of my grandfather, my father had the most obedient temperament. He was respectful to his grandfather's words and deeds. In addition, there are three unfilial piety factors, the most common of which is not having children. All the children born in the father's house are daughters. This may be the main reason why he is not popular. Because I was born as a daughter, I didn't feel much of my grandfather's dedicated love when I was a child, but his voice and appearance are extremely clear in my memory. This may be the wonder of life inheritance. When my grandfather was alive, he must have never thought that the little girl who was not noticed at that time would now inherit his mantle - and become a role model in the apricot world.

Sitting in the small courtyard again, sighing that time is fleeting and life is fleeting, I feel infinite sadness in my heart.