(Spoiler) The Hong Kong translation of the play's title is about attachment, but in fact it's a breakup. Interestingly, the two are one with each other. People are attached to what they have lost, but when people lose even this sustenance, they will have nothing to love. <
The protagonist Ali is a wandering Iranian violinist. After becoming famous, he returned to his hometown, married a wife and started a family by his mother's order, but he never forgot his irreversible first love. The violin was his favorite, and even his wife was jealous and broke the violin in a fit of rage. Ali tried to search for other famous qin to replace it, but all of a sudden he lost his mind and decided to seek death. He was paralyzed in bed on a hunger strike for eight days until he died. Why, even if his wife concocted his favorite plum chicken and apologized to him in tears; even if he saw the lovely faces of the two children by the bed; even if he bought the legendary violin used by Mozart... Can't ignite his will to survive?
The structure of the story is counted from the first day of the hunger strike to the eighth day. This step-by-step approach is not intended to show the increasing pain, but to spread out the memories of the protagonist. Ali has thought about different suicide methods: lying on rails, jumping off cliffs, shooting... He finally chose to go on a hunger strike because other suicide methods are too painful and scary---why? Isn't the hunger strike more painful than the suicidal methods of begging for it? But in those eight days, he recalled the important relatives, lover, teacher, violin... those things he was attached to in his life; in those eight days, he seemed to live all over again. He reaffirmed the meaning of his life, and at the same time confirmed that those meanings were long gone: his first love, and the violin, turned out to be the same thing.
When Ali was young, his violin playing skills had reached the pinnacle, but he was criticized by his teacher as worthless, because he only had skills and no soul, and he sang "the sigh of life" on the sound of the violin. Until one day, Ali proposed to the lover's father, but was severely rejected, and a pair of people who truly loved each other were forced to separate. At this time, Ali's teacher heard the sound of his violin, and passed on the violin inherited from his master to him: "The lost love is the sigh of your life. I have nothing to teach you." But no one understands that its artistic achievement comes from lost love.
On the seventh day of Ali's hunger strike, the god of death came to his bed, but instead of taking his life immediately (because the time had not yet come), he told a story: the god of death was originally scheduled to take the life of a businessman at the Taj Mahal one day. , but met this man the day before in Jerusalem. Both were surprised. The businessman was so frightened that he went to King Solomon and begged the king to use his magic to send him to the faraway Taj Mahal to escape the god of death -- the result was obvious. Philosopher Žižek in his book <
It can be said that the most important thing in Ali's life is his love with his first love, Yilan. The cruel heart of Yilan's father killed him, but he was lost because of the violin and continued his life (meaning). He (and his mother) mistakenly thought that if he could start a family like a normal man, the pain would go away, and that detour led him to the bed of death. In fact, he never loved his wife, and his wife also felt the inner sadness of Ali's piano sound, which is a love that no longer exists. When she broke the violin, it represented Ali's symbolic "second death". Moreover, because the piano was broken, he would find another piano and meet Yilan again, but she was already a grandmother, so she could only say that she did not recognize him. In fact, how do you recognize it? Just to reconfirm the end of that relationship.
The first death made his artistic life, and that should not be limited by a certain violin--if it is only a tool--but the violin is not a tool, but the music business is the tool of the violin, and his true love is lost. The external incarnation, the fetish presentation of the sigh of life---become Ali's "idol". The destruction of the violin reminded Ali that "there is no going back". The thing to which he was attached is attached precisely because it is long gone. For anyone else, love career (violin) and marriage and childbirth (starting a new relationship) are signs of the trauma of a broken love, but Ali is an outstanding artist, turning lost love into sublime music, burning with life, only delaying rather than ending That first love -- and it will come back. He met it out of escaping the lethal wound: if he had been determined to live alone, he might not have killed himself.
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