No matter how strong the wind is, it bypasses my soul

I like when you are silent, because you seem to be absent.

—— Neruda "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair"

When writing "Behind the wind is the wind, above the sky is the sky, in front of the road is still the road" When I was writing an article, I had this narrative:

"Life" and "death" are the same thing, and the brain's thoughts are the continuation of the "past". If the brain is thinking about "the past" and "the past" every day, "Future" can never accept new things.

If death means the end of thinking, then we can die now, die every minute, die every second; let the thoughts in the brain die, because they are just "the past" continuation; let the thoughts of the "future" die, because they are not yet here, let them die.

We are never afraid of the unknown, we are just always afraid of losing the known and losing everything we have now; and death is unknown to us. Since unknown things cannot be understood, why should we To be afraid?

At that time, I did not continue the narrative because of the structure of the article. After some time to settle, I feel that I still need to describe this point completely. This also serves as an introduction to the topic we are going to discuss today.

When you truly "die" every second and let all thoughts in your brain die immediately, then you can truly "live in the moment." If you tell yourself to "live in the moment" but fail to "die," then "living in the moment" becomes a means of escape. You just don't think about it now, but they're still there. Memory is a box sealed in time. It will open suddenly when you are unprepared, catching you off guard.

"Love" and "love" are two concepts, but the boundaries between them are actually very blurry. "New Testament 1 Corinthians" Chapter 13 says:

Love is patient, love is kind; love does not envy, love does not boast, is not arrogant, does not do anything rude , does not seek its own, is not easily angered, takes no account of wrongdoing, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things; love never fails.

"Love" is a peaceful and fulfilling state. The other state above this state is a state that words cannot express; but "love" can be outlined by words. Although it cannot be described clearly, it can be discussed. So now, let's get back to the topic.

01

"The essence of love is that the object of love is not a physical object, it only exists in the lover's imagination." Proust wrote in "In Search of Lost Time" The following sentence can be regarded as a footnote to Flaubert's "Madame Bovary". When Emma was thirteen years old, she entered a boarding school for girls attached to the convent, where she received an aristocratic education. She was fascinated by church flowers, religious music, and grew up under the influence of romantic novels.

Children who grow up in this environment will have particularly rich imaginations. Indulging in illusory fantasies is an important part of Emma's childhood life. And when we look back, the time background of the novel is the 1840s, which is the period when the capitalist system was established in Western Europe. At this time, the French bourgeoisie also gained dominance after the "July Revolution". With the gradual advancement of the Industrial Revolution, French capitalism developed greatly, and industry and agriculture made great progress during this period. Big progress.

(Photographic work "The Highest Product of Capitalism (Life of John Hatfield)" by Joe Spence, a work of the postmodern art genre.)

Economic Rapid development has brought new ways of life, but it has also had an indelible impact on the human spirit. Emma dreamed of living in a small bamboo house, imagining a kind-hearted little brother who would be affectionate and climb up a tree taller than the bell tower to pick red fruits, or run barefoot on the beach and bring her to her. A bird's nest; she indulged in romantic fantasies. She is a typical passive romantic who longs for a "legendary" love.

Before marrying Charlie, love was an unattainable fantasy for her that only existed in poetry. When she got married, she realized that this was not the love she wanted. But she didn't see what the problem was, so she blamed all the mistakes on her husband. Because his "conversation is as flat as the sidewalk, his opinions are vulgar, he is dressed as ordinary as a pedestrian, and he cannot inspire emotions, laughter or dreams."

(The painting "Long Live Love", by Nikki ·Saint Phalle, works of the Surrealist genre)

Loving people in your imagination is very easy, but when they come to you, loving them becomes a difficult task. Difficult things.

Also pursuing "imagined love", in Gide's "The Narrow Gate", Jerome placed Alyssa in a very high position. He always regarded himself as a pursuer, someone who wanted to go up. A chaser who climbed to the same level as Alyssa. Jerome lifted Alyssa to a very high position just by relying on his imagination. This kind of imagination is concrete.

But Emma is different. She pursues a formal life. In this kind of "life", she only needs to have the poignancy of love and the "romance" that is whitewashed with money. It doesn't matter to her who the specific target is. So when she glimpses the life of "upper class" that she doesn't understand, the life before her eyes dries up, because Charlie does not fit the image of Emma's imagination at all.

In Emma's mind, her husband should be a knight, proficient in equestrian skills, able to create romance, and be able to recite beautiful poetry anytime and anywhere. But that's not the case with Dr. Charlie. Charlie and Emma are completely opposite people. He has been married twice, but he has "no status at all" in both marriages, and this marriage is no exception. Charlie was diligent in his work and tried his best to be satisfied with his wife; due to Emma's health problems, they moved the family to another strange city to start over; in terms of money, Charlie never had the slightest concern about Emma's extravagant consumption. He was dissatisfied and opposed, but instead tried his best to satisfy her. However, on a spiritual level, Charlie knows nothing about his wife's inner world, let alone satisfy his wife's needs for romantic love. Therefore, it can be said that Emma's derailment and depression are inevitable.

(Painting "Knights", author Giorgio de Chirico, neo-Baroque style work)

The characteristic of naturalistic literature is that the writer does not add his or her own feelings to the narrative story As a subjective comment, the writer is only the narrator of the story, and otherwise disappears. As a representative figure of the naturalistic literary school, Flaubert made full use of this point. He completely disappears behind the narrative, becoming a cold anatomist. If Cervantes' "Don Quixote" is a liquidation of chivalric novels, then Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" is a liquidation of the negative romanticism as a literary school.

02

However, it is worth mentioning that in the spectrum of literary history, the image of Emma is very similar to Don Quixote. They are all people who have read so many books that they are beguiled and trapped in them; Sontag called this psychological syndrome bibliophilia. For them, the barren real life cannot carry their imagination of life, so that they would rather believe that the life in the book is a more "real" life, and the "ordinary" real life in front of them is not worth it at all. carry.

(The painting "Island of the Dead", author Arnold Bocklin, a work of the Symbolist school.)

Don Quixote was addicted to chivalric novels, so he tried to tell the story of the knight's deeds. Practice in reality; Emma, ??on the other hand, was bewitched by romantic novels and began to pursue romantic love regardless of reality. Unwilling to accept the truth, she hid herself behind her imagination and locked herself in a cage of her own making. Man is an animal keen on "comparison". There is no objective standard for people. When a person is in a state of "comparison", he cannot be "satisfied" at all.

Diderot proposed the "Classification of Beauty" in "A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin and Essence of Beauty":

"Beauty" is divided into two types, one is objective things , the "beauty" of this objective thing is affected by many factors, so it is not very important.

What is really important is the "beauty" of subjective things, which is subdivided into two types. One is "real beauty", that is, the thing itself. Or in other words, it is something that everyone will find beautiful when they see it. The other is "beauty seen". This kind of "beauty" is the beauty produced through comparison. It is the beauty produced by comparing it with another thing.

(Philosopher Denis Diderot)

We know that in real life, there are very few situations where "everyone finds beauty". In most cases, They are all "beauty seen", by devaluing one thing and elevating the "beauty" of another.

Therefore, based on this, Diderot later proposed the concept of "beauty lies in relationship". It just depends on what kind of situation the "beautiful" thing is in, and who it is aimed at. Only in a specific relationship can "beauty" be highlighted.

What Emma pursues is a romantic and tragic love. She wants to have a beautiful love like Romeo and Juliet. However, there is a lack of spiritual communication between Dr. Bovary (also known as Charlie) and Emma. One of them is realistic and the other is fantasy. Emma cannot feel the passion in Charlie, and Charlie cannot satisfy Emma's beautiful fantasy, so she cannot accept his mediocrity, and instead continues to look for the "specific object" in her heart.

(The painting "Pyramus and Thisbe in the Storm", author Nicolas Poussin, works of the classicism school.)

One thing to be clear is, Although Emma longed for the life of the upper class, her longing was not out of envy for the life of another class, but because after seeing the balls of the upper class, she found that these fragments were exactly what she described in the book. Some scenes I saw. With the help of these expensive jewelry and gorgeous clothes, her passion and imagination for life were suddenly released. She believed that only there could she find the "real" and "meaningful" life in her mind.

Let us continue following Diderot’s point of view.

The object of Emma's "love" is not Charlie. But she wasn't aware of it from the beginning. When she first got married, Emma tried to create this ideal beauty in her husband, but failed. When her heart cannot be filled, she can only turn to external life, hoping to find a man who can provide her with these fragmentary imaginations and become her sustenance. The other person may be a scoundrel or a hypocrite; but for Emma, ??as long as the other person provides words and scenes that fit her imagined love for a moment, she will imagine the other person as perfect. She is always waiting for a fragment that matches her imagination. Once her imagination is satisfied, she will sacrifice herself without hesitation.

This kind of passion can add color to ordinary life, but it can also destroy it.

Emma is dead. But our lives go on.

03

Still Diderot. In economics, there is a famous "Diderot effect":

In the 18th century, there was a French philosopher named Denis Diderot. One day, a friend gave him a nightgown of fine quality and exquisite workmanship. Diderot liked it very much. But when he walked around the study in his luxurious nightgown, he always felt that the furniture was either shabby or in the wrong style, and the stitching on the carpet was shockingly thick. Therefore, in order to match the nightgown, the old things were updated one after another, and the study finally caught up with the grade of the nightgown, but he felt very uncomfortable because "he was actually being coerced by a nightgown", so he just felt that I wrote an article called "The Troubles After Parting with My Old Nightgown".

Two hundred years later, Harvard University economist Juliet Schroer proposed a new concept in the book "The Overconsumption of Americans" - the "Diderot Effect", which specifically refers to the After people own a new item, they continue to configure items that match it in order to achieve psychological balance.

From today's perspective, the "Diderot" effect is what we call today the "trap of consumerism." In simple terms, in this case, you don't define the thing, the thing defines you. And this is how people are objectified.

Man is also an "amphibian". While he lives in the "real world", he also lives in the "symbolic world". The real world is the world of the senses, the world before your eyes. The symbolic world is a world composed of psychological activities and thinking. There is no greater or greater between the two. It is equally undesirable for a person to be so numb that he cannot think and to be intoxicated in nothingness.

But for Emma, ??the symbolic world has covered the real world, and the former is far more meaningful to her than the latter. The symbolic world is easily constructed by the outside world, and this is the case for Emma. This is no longer her defining "love", but "love" defining her. She is deeply influenced by negative romantic literature, and those concepts about love have penetrated into her heart and become obsessions. When she could not pursue her "imagined love", she looked for a sustenance from the external world, hoping to fill her empty heart with this moment of joy.

(The painting "The Lighthouse", author Charles Lapic, Fauvist work.)

Emma's tragedy is that she regarded occasional as regular and accidental inevitable. There are poignant love stories in the book, in which the male protagonist and the female protagonist fall in love with each other and end up running away or committing suicide, etc.; the reason why these stories are classic and widely praised is precisely because the probability of these things happening is extremely low. Therefore, the story of Romeo and Juliet will be widely circulated; so the unswerving love of "hanging oneself on the southeast branch" is still praised by people.

Emma didn't understand, so from the beginning, what she pursued was "imaginary love."

What she wants is not "her own love" but "other people's love". Her view of love was designed by others. She is not defining love, it is love that is defining her. Her "self" is not what she is looking for, but what is constructed by the outside world.

What about you? Did you find your own self, or was it constructed for you by the outside world?

Is your love life your own, or are you trying to find ways to live a love life that is the same as "other people's love"?

Are you defining the world, or is the world defining you?