Slower than slow

Author: Sun Ganlu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Saturn, distant and slow, is at the far end of its elliptical orbit, with a period of rotation that is so long and slow. Slow, of course, is no excuse. I remember the elegant and bewildering lines of the poet Bai Hu: "Ah, the future, reading, turning around / Everything is slow." Everything! There are no objects of comparison here, and this self-abandoning attitude has always been both enchanting and perplexing. Slowness also pertains to breath and sound, to move with composure, moderation, in a low voice, sincerely, trying to remove all impurities and noise, because "writing is a talent that requires countless contortions before it can be mastered." Slowness also extends to comparisons of many things—places, moving from one place to another, from the Czech Republic to France, from experts to insects, from the individual to the public. The comedy of forgetting, Chekhovsky. Because of memory, people always forget the true purpose of their journey. Writing, a centrifugal movement, takes us further and further away from our original intentions—south to north, east to west, from novels to films, from Chinese to translations, from the periphery to the center. In short, writing transforms the individual into its image.