Very absurd: A dance approaching the truth

Author: Cui Wei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-07-01
Features: A Dance Towards the Truth—Peek into the absurd reality of life in the novel, experience the swaying human instincts amidst indifference and the flickering shadows of fiction: "The Castle," a sacred land just beyond reach yet forever inaccessible; "The Catch-22," a renowned paradox focusing on the alternative aspects, discussing both within and beyond the book, with detailed explanations and distinct styles! The same timeless classics, different interpretive perspectives, different reading stances, yet equally brilliant discussions! What I call the absurd experience holds no mystery—it is a fundamental and common element in literary sensibility. Because among ordinary people, especially those busy and striving for both personal freedom and material pleasures in modern times, the emotions and feelings of absurdity are ubiquitous. If you are somewhat sensitive, you will find the absurdity surrounding you, either frustrating you with nameless irritation or leading you from confusion to downfall. The absurd experience is like our own shadows. Everyone must have their own shadow, an indispensable part of their existence, though some often see it while others are blind to it. Think about it—how do normal eyes perceive the world, and how do normal minds feel it? In such a state, everything around is normal, beautiful, and natural, and all questions and mysteries are resolved in a logical manner. Even when looking at oneself, one will, like a healthy person in a bright morning, see a clear and vivid reflection of their strengths and characteristics, and even their flaws will be understood with kindness. But beyond the normal scenery and the self in the mirror, there are still other irrational things, and there is still a self with a gloomy face and eccentric behavior. This scene also belongs to us because it is an inherent shadow.
If there is one world, there must be another. When the familiar scenery gradually unfolds, all the shadows also dance restlessly in the dark. This is a silent, dim world that seems lifeless, and those who have important matters to attend to might not need to pay attention to it. But it is absolutely not a simple world—it presents itself in bizarre ways, expressing in complex forms an indescribable essence. The shadow world is unpredictable, stumbling, like trembling ghosts and foul dreams. Shadows change rapidly and irrationally in different environments, always deformed and twisted. Shadows are often strange and ugly to the point of repulsiveness, even terrifying, standing in stark contrast to normal scenes. If normal thinking is objective, rational, and traceable, then shadows are irrational, non-real, chaotic nightmares; if normal things are vivid and tangible, then shadows are cold, abstract, and awkward symbols. Shadows are not silent—they burst with melancholic passion, are always active, and constantly call out to us with sharp cries. Shadows are sentient things, shadows are dancing spirits.
Perhaps we dislike our own shadows and refuse to acknowledge that they are another self, but shadows are not illusions or dreams—they are indeed very real and natural existences. More importantly, shadows show us the truth of things. What seems unbearable in normal perception holds no strangeness in the shadow world. When we are in a hurry, busy, or lost in self-indulgence, we often fail to see the truth; but once we become alert to the slightest disturbances and change our conventional vision and perception, we see the truth we had never witnessed. Shadows do not deceive us—they only guide us closer to the truth. We will never be able to escape the entanglement of shadows, no matter where we go, they will always follow. Shadows use their strange dance to confess to us, making us momentarily panic. This is an unavoidable fate. If we ask for the reason, it is because of the inherent contradiction between the needs of the soul and the external world, a trick that God has played on all of humanity, one that no one can change. The soul is soft and fragile, it needs nourishment and freedom, but it is surrounded by hard, cold stones. Whenever a sensitive soul clashes with these hard, desolate stones and its inner harmony is suddenly shattered, we experience that irrational absurdity. It is precisely because of the anxiety caused by the distortion and deformation, and the loneliness of being surrounded by deserts, that rebellious and trembling Western modernist literature has achieved its brilliance. Those awe-inspiring modernist masters were also unparalleled masters of absurdity. They first saw their own shadows, felt the dance and cries of the shadows, and then created the absurdity in art.
Perhaps, by understanding the immortal works of Kafka, Camus, Sartre, Zweig, Beckett, and others, we can truly touch the heartbeat of their suffering alongside the shadows, thus finding the roots of absurdity and its thrilling development. The naturally melancholic Kafka discovered human despair—he wrote of characters who passionately pursue sacred goals, yearn to communicate with others, or willingly live in humility, even at the cost of cruel self-abuse. Their only hope was to prove some belief, but they were trapped in darkness, pushed to a no-man’s-land. If Kafka is despair in passion and sorrow, then Camus discovered despair in extreme indifference. Monsieur Mersault in Camus’s work could have approached the sacred, but he resolutely refused any action, for he sorrowfully saw the loss of the value of action. He looked at himself and the world with profound clarity, feeling himself to be nothingness in the darkness, and ultimately chose to bury himself in darkness. Whether it is Kafka’s K, unable to prove his identity, or the artist performing hunger art in a cage, or Camus’s Mersault, who kills without any motive, they are all, in a way, pure saints and elites of reality, yet they can also be seen as unimaginable madmen. This is absurd, yet it is real.
What we can do first is to face and acknowledge our own shadows. We dislike the surprise, fear, disgust, anxiety, and despair brought by shadows, but it is precisely these absurd emotions that help us understand the truth of ourselves and the world. To dare to face shadows is the manifestation of a healthy mentality and courage. How can someone who dares not recognize the truth explore the value of existence? Borges has a famous novel titled "The Circular Ruins," in which he describes a silent seeker who, after enduring countless hardships, crosses marshlands to reach a circular site—a temple that was destroyed in ancient times and still preserves stone tigers or stone horses as symbols of deities, though no one has come to worship them for a long time. This willful person comes here to have a dream on the circular ruins, a dream in which the person he wants to dream of has already been determined by heaven. After great efforts in the chaotic dream, he finally dreams of the person he wanted to dream of. First, he creates the heart of that person in the dream, then gradually forms other organs and complete limbs. The creation in the dream resembles him, or perhaps his son, a perfect life bestowed upon him by the gods. The statues of the stone tigers or stone horses also awaken and tell him that only fire can determine whether the child he created is real or fake. He teaches his son his knowledge and skills, hoping he can adapt to the environment and survive independently. The clever son succeeds in doing so, then he finds a way to make his son forget his identity and the process of learning, sending him to a distant place so that he will never know he is someone else’s dream. He believes that as long as he is not burned by fire, his son will never know this. At this moment, the circular ruins where he is suddenly catch fire. He wanted to escape to the water to survive, but he also wanted to break free from the chaotic and exhausting dream, so he bravely walks toward the flames. Unexpectedly, the flames do not burn him—he feels no pain. At this moment, he realizes that he himself is someone else’s dream, that he himself is a false product. Everything he has experienced, including the marshlands and the circular ruins, are all dreams. Who is he? (Or whose dream is he?) Do deities and their creations exist? Who is real and who is fake between him and his son? Who is who’s shadow? Was the living life born first, or the beautiful dream? It turns out that everything is a mystery. Borges, through his unparalleled fantasy and absurdity, guides us to deeply question the existence of life and helps us gradually approach the essence of things. Only by stepping into absurdity can we overcome destruction and nihilism; only by boldly and thoroughly interpreting the self on the verge of collapse can we find a new self and rebuild a rich inner world.