It is said that the original inspiration for this book came from his parents, who disagreed with their family when they were young, and then the telegram teaser finally came to fruition. The author was in his fifties when he finished this book, which is exactly the age when he has experienced all kinds of life. He mixes his own knowledge and thoughts about love and marriage into the two roles of hero and heroine, which makes us feel that his role is dramatic and real at the same time. Here are a few points that impressed me deeply:
1. Online dating a hundred years ago
The protagonist lives in the late 19th century, when the telegraph became popular. The male and female protagonists also flirted with telegrams at the beginning, but they rarely meet in reality. Some readers have doubts why the heroine didn't love the hero later. In fact, the answer has been said many times in the heroine's mouth. He is just an illusion. She fell in love with the young man who was playing the violin downstairs and waiting for her reply at an ignorant age. What she had loved was only an imaginary person, so she later met the male protagonist who was a bit sloppy and restrained in reality at the market, and she suddenly woke up from her dream. Fifty years later, when two old people were talking in the backyard of the mansion, the male lead said that I still love you the same way after all these years, but the female lead shook her head, thinking that she didn't feel the same as him back then. This is like the current online dating story, sometimes in the text, what you like is a certain person in your imagination. This persona will disappear with the advent of online dating, and if new meaningful connections are not established in reality, the relationship will end with it.
2. Innocent or prodigal?
There is still some controversy about the male lead. Some readers think that the male protagonist has more than 600 women in his life, and when he finally sees the female protagonist again, he says that I have been saving your virginity all my life. Isn't this nonsense. I personally find this character to be very interesting, bringing out some contradictory and dramatic features through a person's life experience. First of all, normal people will not suffer from lovesickness all their lives. Some people can't get out of love for months and half a year, but in the end time will dilute everything, and people will come out of pain and start a new life, so I prefer to believe that the portrayal of the male protagonist is a variety of expressions in lovelorn (A few months for the average person) stretched to the length of a lifetime, and then unfolded in all sorts of dramatic romances. So what is the starting point of the affair? It was the male protagonist who fell out of love and got on a cruise ship, ready to go to the countryside to start a new life. But he was attacked at night by an unknown woman. Afterwards, the male protagonist fell into pain when he watched the other party's distant back. If the previous pain was dumped, the pain now is that he lost his virginity, and that person is not the female protagonist he still misses in his heart. Later, the male protagonist ended his journey and returned to his original home, and was then raped by a widow again. Of course, this matter was arranged by his mother, hoping that he could get out of his disappointment and start a new life, just like the friend who persuaded him to relax in a brothel before. But they don't know that what really makes the male protagonist suffer is not about sex, but about spiritual emptiness, that is, the lack of spiritual love. What he needs is the girl who listens to his love poems and expresses his love to each other. Therefore, the great emptiness of the spirit makes him seek the pleasure of the body to fill the emptiness of the moment. Of course, if it weren't for the experience of those two sexual encounters, he probably wouldn't have started this way of life, but more likely adopted a kind of Puritan way of life, and then developed some hobbies in poetry to resolve his emptiness. Of course, if it is really written like that, it is estimated that there will not be so many readers, because Xiao Huangwen can always attract more attention, and some people even compare this book with Jin Ping Mei, because they are all popular with the public. The form shows the various forms of life (laughs).
This reminds me of another story about a roommate who goes out to a bar every now and then and jumps up and down. Generally speaking, men who frequently go to places where they are feasting and feasting have to do something. He has a little guy, a prodigal son like the male protagonist, who has made good friends with many girls through one-night stands. He told me that this little guy became like this because he had been similarly stimulated in the first place. That little guy had a girlfriend he liked at a relatively ignorant age. Once when they were making a video (the girl was in the hotel), another man appeared on the screen. He asked what happened to the female vote, and the female vote said that the man wanted to follow her and she had no choice. He continued to ask what he would do if the man wanted to do something to you, and the woman said that if that's the case, I can't do anything about it. When I heard such a dramatic story, I was devastated.
So is it credible for the male protagonist to say that he has always maintained his virginity for the sake of the female protagonist? Certainly not credible judging by what he has done for decades. But considering that this character is a mixed portrait of a variety of life situations, it seems plausible. Maybe what I want to express here is that the person he is spiritually attached to is still the girl who exchanged love letters with him for the first time. He has lived in fantasy all his life, and fantasy is lovesickness, the cholera of love.
3. Marriage and Love
The female protagonist chose to marry a doctor after abandoning the male protagonist. Doctors are, in every sense, marriageable, well-educated, decently employed, responsible, and emotionally intelligent. The heroine refused at first because she couldn't find a reason to be with him. At the same time, in the end, he couldn't find a reason to reject him. In addition, because he was too old, the heroine chose to marry a doctor. The opportunity in the middle is also very interesting. The female protagonist's cousin showed her intentions to the doctor. If it drags on like this, the doctor will be taken away (laughs). After marriage, of course, they also had various small quarrels. Sometimes they even quarreled with the priest because of the arrangement of daily necessities. Of course, there were happy moments. They were on their honeymoon and they jointly ran the family. Years later, when the doctor passed away, the heroine recalled the past and wondered whether she was suffering more than happiness or happiness more than pain all these years. Or, is it the marriage that causes the pain, or is the pain itself a part of life? Sometimes she would look out the window and see a young man with a violin sitting on a bench downstairs, wanting to read a love poem to him and play a piece of music for him. But the heroine knew that it was just an illusion of youth, which was the biggest difference between her and the hero. Some readers doubt whether there is love between the heroine and the doctor... It should have been, the difference is the issue of shelf life. Because love comes with sex, but sexual attraction doesn't stay the same. This is not to say that people get older and less attractive. Rather, it means that the lack of freshness will lead to the gradual retreat of the original strong sexual attraction and eventually become family affection. Then the difference may be that some people can manage the love time longer, and some people don't know how to manage love because of their personality. So what is a good marriage compared to love? Of course, due to the limitations of personal experience, I don't have an answer myself. Perhaps a good marriage is to tolerate each other while there are differences in life, and to live a good life. At the same time, I also think that quarrel is a more important indicator, because it reflects the skills of both parties to deal with conflicts, and the ability to quarrel naturally shows that there is some kind of tacit understanding.
In short, reading this book made me feel the author's observation and various thoughts on life. There are some details that I can't perceive now. Maybe I will have a different perception when I am older.
View more about Love in the Time of Cholera reviews
