One winter night, the train is about to start. A country girl with a third-class ticket broke into the second-class carriage where "I" was. Her vulgar face, sloppy dress and second-class stupidity all make me unhappy. The girl insisted on opening the window after the train entered the tunnel. "I" looked on coldly, hoping that the window would not be opened. After the window was opened, the dirty air blown into the carriage made me more dissatisfied with the girl. Shortly after the train left the tunnel, she suddenly leaned out of the window and threw five or six oranges at the three boys standing at the turnout. "I" suddenly realized that everything the girl did was to repay her younger brothers who came to see me off. This warm picture touched me and made me feel happy from the bottom of my heart.
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On a gloomy winter night, I sat in the corner of an ascending second-class car from Yokosuga, waiting for the flute to sound. The light in the car is already on. It is rare that there are no other passengers in the car except me. Looking out the window, today is different from usual. No one saw me off on the dim platform. Just a little dog in a cage, barking from time to time. This kind of scenery fits my strange mood at that time. There is unspeakable fatigue and burnout in my mind, as gloomy as this snowy sky. I put my hands in my coat pockets and couldn't get up enough to read the evening paper.
Soon, the starting whistle sounded. I felt a little short of money, so I leaned my head against the back window frame and waited for the station in front to slowly retreat. But the car hasn't moved yet, but I heard the click of low-toothed clogs from the ticket gate; In an instant, with the abuse of the conductor, the door of the second-class car I was sitting in clicked open and a 13-year-old girl came in in a panic. At the same time, the train bumped violently and started slowly. The pillars of the platform passed by one by one, and the waterwheel seemed to be forgotten there. The porter in the red hat is thanking the man who tipped him in the carriage-all this falls back reluctantly in the soot blowing out of the window. I finally breathed a sigh of relief, lit a cigarette, then listlessly raised my eyelids and glanced at the face of the girl sitting opposite me.
That is a real country girl. Her dim hair was tied in a ginkgo bun, and her rough red cheeks were chapped. A dirty light green wool scarf dragged a big bag down to the knee, and a red third-class ticket was carefully held in the frostbitten hand holding the bag. I don't like that girl's tacky face. That sloppy dress makes me unhappy. What makes me even more angry is that she is so stupid that she can't tell the difference between a second-class car and a third-class car. So, after I lit a cigarette, I forgot the girl on purpose, so I spread the evening paper in my coat pocket on my knee. At this time, the light from the window to the evening paper was suddenly replaced by electric lights, and the type with poor printing quality in several columns was particularly obvious. Needless to say, the train has now entered the first of many tunnels on the Yokosuga Line.
In the light, I glanced at the evening paper, which was full of common things in the world, such as making peace, getting married, dereliction of duty, obituary and so on. All these can't solve boredom-the moment I entered the tunnel, I had an illusion, as if the train was running backwards, and at the same time, I was almost mechanically browsing boring news. However, during this period, I have to realize that the girl is sitting in front of me, and the expression on her face is like the personification of this vulgar reality. The train through the tunnel, this country girl, and this evening paper full of ordinary news-this is not a symbol? Not a symbol of this incredible, mediocre and boring life, what is it? I felt disheartened about everything, so I put aside the unfinished evening paper, leaned my head against the window frame, closed my eyes like a dead man and dozed off.
After a few minutes, I felt harassed and couldn't help looking around. I don't know when that girl moved to me from the opposite seat and tried to open the window. But the heavy glass window doesn't seem to open well. Her chapped cheeks turned redder, and the sound of sniffling, with a slight gasp, reached my ears. This is certainly enough to arouse my sympathy. In the twilight, only the hay on the ridges on both sides can be clearly distinguished. At this time, it is almost to the window, indicating that the train is about to drive to the tunnel entrance. I don't understand why the girl deliberately opened the locked window. No, I can only think it's just a whim. So, I'm still in a bad mood. I hope she never opens it. I watched coldly as the girl tried to open the window with frostbitten hands. Soon, the train rushed into the tunnel with a harsh voice; At the same time, the window that the girl wanted to open finally slammed shut. A thick black gas, like melting soot, suddenly turned into suffocating soot and rolled into the carriage from the square window. I hardly have time to cover my face with a handkerchief. I'm already making noise. At this time, I sprayed a face of smoke and coughed out of breath. That girl doesn't mind me at all. She stuck her head out of the window and stared at the direction of the train. A gust of wind blowing in the dark shook her hair like a ginkgo bun. Her figure appeared in soot and lights. At this time, my eyes lit up outside the window, and the smell of soil, hay and water drifted in coldly, so I easily stopped coughing. Otherwise, I would have scolded that girl mindlessly and told her to close the window as usual.
By this time, however, the train had safely drilled out of the tunnel and was passing through the fork in the poor suburb sandwiched between the mountains covered with hay. Near the turnout, the dilapidated thatched roof and tile roof are lined up. Probably the switchman is signaling, and a dim white flag is swaying lazily in the dusk alone. As soon as the train left the tunnel, I saw three red-faced boys standing side by side behind the lonely turnout fence. They are all short, as if they were weighed down by the gloomy sky. Put on clothes, the color is as miserable as the scenery in the suburbs of town. They looked up at the passing train, raised their hands together, pulled up their throats and screamed desperately, unable to understand what this meant. At this time, the girl who leaned out of the window reached out her frostbitten hand and swayed from side to side. Five or six golden oranges, reflected by the warm sunshine, suddenly flew from the window to the children who sent the train. I couldn't help holding my breath and suddenly realized. The girl probably went to be a maid and threw some oranges out of the window to entertain her younger brothers who came to see me off.
Boundless twilight enveloped the turnouts on the outskirts of the town, three children screamed like birds, and bright oranges hit their heads-all of which passed by the window in an instant. But this scene is deeply engraved in my heart, which makes me almost breathless. I realized that I had an inexplicable joy from the bottom of my heart. I looked up at the girl as if I were looking at another person. I don't know when, that girl has returned to the seat opposite me, with a light green wool scarf still wrapped around her chapped cheek, clutching a third-class ticket in her hand and carrying a big bag.
Only by chatting can we forget the unspeakable fatigue and burnout, and forget the incredible, mediocre and boring life.
(translated by Wen Jieruo)
Precautions:
The sun and the next load, clogs worn on sunny days.
Ginkgo bun was originally the name of Japanese girls' hairstyle in Edo period, and it was also popular among adult women from the end of Edo period.
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Akutagawa Ryunosuke's novels can be roughly divided into two categories according to their themes-historical themes and realistic themes. Rashomon and In the Bamboo Forest are his representative works on historical themes, but the Orange that readers are seeing now is his representative works on realistic themes.
The greatest artistic feature of the work "Orange" is "Love in the Scenery".
The emotional change of the protagonist "I" has gone through two stages. Before the girl threw oranges at her brother, I was very tired and depressed. In order to express this negative emotion, Ryunosuke Akutagawa did not choose a long psychological description, but used borrowing scenery to express his feelings. This technology is embodied in two strategies. One is the use of dark tones. The story happened in "one night in winter", at a railway station. There were no other passengers except me, and no one saw me off. The few strokes at the beginning of the novel not only clearly explain the time and place of the story, but also instantly create a lonely and cold atmosphere, laying the foundation for the first four-fifths of the novel to be dark. The clothes mentioned later, such as "the hair is dull", "the white flag is dim" and "the color is as miserable as the scenery in the suburbs", all echo this tone and jointly build a shadowy object world, which is not the projection of my disheartened inner world. The second is the use of a large number of negative words. For example, the dog is whining, "I" is listlessly looking at the surrounding environment, the girl's scarf is dirty, her face is tacky, her clothes are sloppy, the news in the newspaper is dull, the sound of the train is harsh, and the suburbs are poor. The author deliberately uses these words that are easy to arouse people's disgust in the senses, which will naturally make readers dislike these scenes. With the help of this description, we can quickly integrate into the emotional world of "I", observe the unhappiness of "I" and have a * * * sound with "I" emotionally.
However, when I saw the girl's younger brothers seeing her off and throwing oranges out of the window, my mood changed greatly-"I felt an inexplicable joy from the bottom of my heart". Correspondingly, the color of the scene has naturally changed, from the original dim to bright. Here, the author focuses on the description of orange. It is "lovely golden yellow reflected by warm sunshine", which is in sharp contrast with the gloomy colors mentioned in the previous novels. The bright orange color is not only a symbol of the girl's beautiful heart, but also the externalization of my warm and happy feelings. At the same time, Akutagawa began to replace negative words with positive words. We can compare the description of the girl near the end of the novel with my first observation of the girl. We found that the way "I" looked at the girl changed, from "glancing disdainfully" to "watching intently". For the girl's appearance, the author used a series of modifiers such as "chapped", "dirty", "frostbite" and "sloppy", but now all adjectives are gone except "chapped cheeks". This is obviously because my attitude towards that girl has changed, from the initial arrogance to the final heartfelt appreciation.
Generally speaking, the description of personnel in the novel has always maintained an isomorphic relationship with the change of "I"' s state of mind, realizing the coordination and unity between the external physical environment and the internal state of mind. Because the author's use of this lyric technique is obvious, and he occasionally uses straightforward lyric as a hint (for example, "this scenery is consistent with my strange mood at that time." I have unspeakable fatigue and burnout in my heart, as gloomy as this snowy sky. ""The train through the tunnel, this country girl, and this evening paper full of ordinary news-isn't this a symbol? Not a symbol of this incredible, mediocre and boring life, what is it? "So, it should be easy for readers to understand the mood of the protagonist" I ".
Relatively speaking, what is more obscure is the author's hidden ideological tendency. The "I" in the novel is the emotional sustenance of the author. At first, "I" was tired of my mediocre life and boring world, and later I was deeply moved by the affection between the girl and her brother. And this girl's identity happens to be an authentic country girl who intends to help her make a living-a typical representative of the lower class. Therefore, according to our usual thinking, it is easy to summarize the theme of the work as exposing the empty and depressed spiritual world of intellectuals, praising the simple feelings and beautiful qualities of working people and so on. This understanding and conclusion is of course reasonable. However, as an idealist rather than a realistic writer, Ryunosuke Akutagawa wants to accomplish more through this work, probably by dissecting his inner self.
"Oranges" was written in April of 19 19. Akutagawa was twenty-seven years old. During these twenty-seven years, he had many traumatic experiences. When he was eight months old, his mother went crazy. At that time, it was generally believed that mental illness was related to heredity, so Akutagawa was often in fear of becoming a madman himself. After his mother died, he officially became a naturalized uncle and became the adopted son of Akutagawa's family. 19 15 Akutagawa broke up with his first girlfriend because of the opposition of his adoptive parents. It hit him hard. 19 18, that is, the year before he wrote Oranges, Akutagawa showed signs of neurasthenia. This year, his biological father and adoptive father failed in business at the same time, and the decline of family fortune increased Akutagawa's economic burden. In March of the following year, that is, one month before writing "Orange", his biological father died of illness ... It can be seen that Akutagawa was under double pressure of spirit and economy at that time, and his mood was depressed. The "I" in "Orange" became a good outlet for his feelings. The bad mood of "I" in the work is more or less a portrayal of Akutagawa's own mood at that time, but after reading the whole article, we know that the work does not end with negative emotions-because "I" was moved by the girl's actions and my heart was full of joy. Does such a warm ending imply that Akutagawa's outlook on life has a pessimistic side, but also a healthy and positive side? While he hates the secular world, he will also be happy for the beautiful things and true feelings in the world. He especially values and cherishes this short-lived touch and happiness. Therefore, although Akutagawa had too much sorrow in his life, although he ended his life by suicide, we can't conclude that he is a pure world-weary. He is by no means. Oranges are a good example.
This dual outlook on life determines that Akutagawa's literary tendency will also move towards two sides. On the one hand, he exposed the ugliness of human nature with sharp eyes; On the other hand, he is also persistently looking for the beauty of human nature. Orange is his attempt to pursue the latter literature. The girl in the work is not so much the epitome of working people as the embodiment of beauty. Her "beauty" was fixed at the moment when she threw an orange. Although time is short, it is the inner beauty born of the heart, so in my opinion, it can also be said to be eternal beauty. Therefore, Akutagawa's main intention in writing oranges is not to praise the lower class, but to praise the pure beauty.
The full text of "Orange" is only more than 2,000 words, without ups and downs or showing off artistic techniques. It can become Akutagawa Ryunosuke's masterpiece, better than conveying the purest and most beautiful feelings in human nature, and will not change or fade with the passage of time. More than 80 years ago, it touched the "I" in the novel and Ryunosuke Akutagawa himself, just like the light from oranges in the sun. After more than 80 years, we can still feel this warm affection after reading this novel.
(Xu Xiaojie)