I am walking in the desert. I cried, "Oh, God, lead me out of this place!" A voice said, "This is not a desert." I cried, "But—this sand, this heat, this empty horizon." A voice Say, "This is not a desert."
She said it was written by Crane, who had never been to the desert. He's been in the desert, Maddox said.
- Ondaatje, "The English Patient"
1. Cave
The Catherine in the novel is not the same person as the Catherine in the movie. The same person again, but only in this sense: all women are the same person.
The place where Catherine died, the Swimmer Cave, is a metaphor for many things. Such as desire: Catherine's desire for a patient. Such as customs: The real reason for Katherine to leave the patient is not exactly as she said before, worried about hurting Jeffrey, but as she said before her death, she understands that she cannot change the patient, and cannot live with the patient in the name of marriage. In the custom, in the eyes of others. And the country. The cave is a metaphor for a country that is bound by borders. The patient was unable to borrow a jeep from the Allies and rushed back to save Catherine because he "had the wrong name," a foreign name.
The cave is also a metaphor for the loneliness that seems to be necessary. "You would stand there motionless, not speaking, as if showing an inch of your character would be the greatest betrayal of yourself." No matter how fascinated the patient had been with her, the patient was still reluctant to reveal himself to her—even though he always Going to her naked, even three years later when he walked into the icy swimmer's cave and approached her corpse that had "turned into an acacia tree".
The cave is also a metaphor for the body, the dwelling or cell of this soul. What proportion of their desire for each other is sexual pleasure? This question is completely wrong. In primordial passion, life is one and the same, unable to distinguish between spirit and flesh, self and other. It was a fire, and lovers would be burned to death, or refined into gold and stone in the flames. So, Catherine said, when we part, we either lose our soul or we find it.
not only these. It is clear that the cave is a metaphor for a woman, a metaphor for a purely feminine gender: a character, an incomplete being. Catherine died in the cave, in all the metaphors of the cave.
After the separation they lost their souls. Katherine roams the social arena as always, but everything in her has been destroyed by the sick. She looked calm because she had no life, no hustle and bustle of life. Suspected and resented in pain, patients retreated to their past habits, retreated to deserts and bars, and wrote a fragment of Katherine's memory in the third person and pasted it into "History" - "Death is to put yourself in the third person."
Catherine in the novel is a woman. There are many phrases to describe her: well-bred, well-educated, young and energetic, not exactly conformist, beautiful? Maybe. She is made up of these adjectives and a class concept. Putting many common properties together, there is a woman like her. But Catherine in the movie cannot be exhausted with descriptions and class concepts. She is Catherine.
"Honey, I'm waiting for you. How long is a day in the dark? Or has a week passed? The fire's out, I'm too cold. I should have dragged myself out of the cave. But there's a hot sun there. I think I wasted light on frescoes, on writing these words. We die. We die richly, with lovers and tribes, with the taste we swallow, with the river-like bodies we enter and swim in The fear we hide in it is like this dark cave. I want it all branded on me. We are the real country. Not borders drawn on a map, not those in power. I know you Will come, carry me into the palace of the wind. That's all I want, with you, with friends, in such a place. A land without a map. The lights are out. I write in the dark down these."
When writing this suicide note, Katherine found her soul word by word. Yes, the soul, not only her soul, nor another person's, but the soul itself, the kind of fire that transcends roles, nations, eras, and human civilization and reaches the heart of existence - a bonfire in a cave When it goes out, when she is about to leave the body. Is this a coincidence?
Catherine transcends the cave with a suicide note, transcending all the metaphors in which she died.
I couldn't find this suicide note in the novel until I read this passage: "Nomads of faith, they walked in the monotony of the desert and saw the light, faith, and color. A stone or a found The metal box or the bone is loved and in one prayer the way of eternity. She became a part of the magnificence of the country she came to now. We die richly: lovers and tribes, the taste we swallow, we enter the body and Cruising in it - like in the river of wisdom, we climb into those characters, like climbing a tree, we hide in fear as in a cave. I hope that when I die, all these are marked on me. I believe so Cartography of: being marked by nature, not labeling yourself on a map Like those rich men and women writing their names on house numbers. We are public history, public books. We are not owned, nor Not to live monogamously in taste and experience. All I desire is to walk on a land like this without a map. I take Katherine into the desert, where there is a book of public, a book of moonlight. We Among the rumors about Jingyuan. Walking in the palace of the wind."
The person who turned the novel into a movie, I think, must be a soulful person. He used the movie to rescue the desperate Catherine in the novel, who hated the sick Catherine to the death--love and hatred intertwined, and let them who used to burn for each other really love each other and really be able to love each other. It's too cold in the cave. The patient made a bonfire for her, using the branches and leaves of the acacia tree. Their love is a golden acacia tree, and those under it feel so whole.
2. The enemy
The patient was desperate to save a loved one, but couldn't borrow a jeep from the Allies—because he had a foreign name. They didn't care that a woman was seriously injured, a woman was dying. They just want to find out if you are an enemy or an ally, they just want to unplug the spies hiding in the desert like a mine detector unplugs the index of a mine. Three years later, this man, later known as the "British Patient", burned German gasoline and drove a British plane, and flew out of the desert with his lover who had turned into an acacia tree. Which tribe of desert natives rescued him from - "When he was with the people who rescued him, he couldn't remember where he came from. He could have been the enemy he fought in the air."
"This desert, raped by war, was bombarded as if it were just sand. Barbarians against barbarians. Armies on both sides passed through the desert with no idea what the desert was."
I am reminded of the passage in Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians": You have committed treason, he said. We are at peace here, I say, we have no enemies. Either we are wrong or we are the enemy.
We are the enemy. Humans who are accustomed to possessing, plundering, and using violence are enemies. When there is a great disparity of force, colonization occurs; when the force is equal, war occurs. Colonists broke into other people's homes to establish the Cape of Good Hope, the establishment of resource banks, and the establishment of military aircraft offices. They consider the people who have lived there for generations to be "savages". What a savage righteousness! Force is the most effective universal currency. You can use it to buy everything, including your own demise.
Before Socrates constructed the ideal state in his words, he constructed a "healthy city-state" based on division of labor and cooperation-because this city-state only met people's basic needs, it was ridiculed by others as "a city-state of pigs". Later, in the "Utopia" widely praised by later generations, there were sofas and snacks, luxury, and carnivals, so extra resources were needed, and they needed to be plundered. So we need guards, we need armies. War is an inevitable prerequisite for luxury, the foundation and walls of a luxury city-state. "The city of fever," Socrates described it. Socrates described the city-state that was later called the "Utopia".
When the possession of luxury goods becomes a sign that distinguishes people from pigs, people have a fever. Colonization and war are nightmares for those with a fever who cannot tell the difference between reality and reality.
3. Metaphors
There are dense metaphors in the novel, like a battlefield with landmines everywhere. The movie is about a love story, and everything else is the background of the story. And the novel is huge, about desert and lost history, about civilization and order, about war, fate, life and death, and human nature. The love between the patient and Katherine is just one episode and one clue. The various themes of the novel are intertwined through metaphors and symbols, which may not be the author's intention, but the mysterious guidance and radiance between the language and the world.
such as colonialism and gender issues. The colonizer to the colony, I think, is a metaphor for the relationship between men and women that has settled down to the present: not only occupy and obey, take and give. There is also aesthetic vision, mystery, and so on. Women should think about their own historical situation through colonial phenomena. But it must not follow the line of feminism. The equality that feminists demand is rather a "substantial equality." They want to smooth out the differences, but they don't understand that Qi Ben is an escape and distortion of gender, and an inferiority and self-humiliation of women's gender. The so-called "substantial equality" is just erasing the true foundation for equality to be possible.
Order and civilization are inventions of men, including ownership. Far from the well-ordered civilization of civilization, the patient's expedition "stopped in desert oases like Europeans gathered in cafes and bars". The desert is their home and exile, and the vast terrain is the initial image of time. The desert is their woman. They are women, the first life breeders. The patient met Catherine in the desert, and created their world with Catherine outside of order, outside of ownership. A most intimate world, a most public world.
"What do you hate most?" "Lies." "What about you?" "Ownership. After you leave me, forget me."
Detective Cope set up a candle all the way, waiting for Hannah to find him along the candlelight. He looked for mines laid by the enemy during the day, and at night he only hoped to be found. Found by Hannah. On the day the war ended, the Allies celebrated victory in the square of that Italian town. Sergeant Hardy climbed up to the sculpture in the center of the square, trying to plant the British flag in that symbolic place. Into the last mine buried in the town.
Hardy is dead. Died of occupation. death symbol. Died of the arrogant ownership his empire had always embodied from colonization to war.
Another person who died of occupation was Jeffrey. He is a big boy who has not been weaned. When he finds that he cannot possess what he wants, he can destroy this thing, even if this thing is a person's life, he will destroy it, with himself life together. Once a person takes possession in the name of "love", this "love" will inevitably have a name for nothing. Just like plundering under the banner of "justice", there must be no justice in plundering.
The difference between people and other things, as far as people are concerned, is that other things can be possessed by people. And one cannot and should not be possessed by another. In fact, from a metaphysical point of view, people cannot possess other things either. Only by convention. Convention is a contract between people and does not establish an internal connection between people and things. And when there is an internal connection between people and things, this connection must be two-way, rather than one-way possession and possession. "Possession" itself is a hoax. Possessive behavior leads to either tragedy or imprisonment. Imprisonment itself is the most intuitive tragedy.
"That little piece of skin next to your collarbone is mine." "I thought we were against ownership."
A woman's skin and the earth are metaphors for each other. A map is a symbol of possession. It is the most concise and clear tool and symbol of ownership. A land without a map, a patient and lover whose nationality and name have been erased. A public realm, like the guard class in the "Utopia", has no personal property, no monogamy, and no private space. But they guard a city-state and guard the private ownership of other citizens in that city-state. They have no property because they have golden souls. They were born with the best things. They don't need anything else.
In the movie, there is such a love between the patient and Katherine: they no longer need anything other than love. Ownership is not required. Because they already have the best.
4. Language
The murals in the swimming man cave, the little red swimming people, are so vivid, as if the cave is full of water, and they swim in the water - "What do you like best?" "Water. Fish swimming in the water. "And the cave has long since dried up, just like the person who painted the murals has long since become a legend, like Catherine, who died in the loneliness where the bonfire finally went out. I think of Plato's cave, the shadows on the walls that change with the flames - Plato is a ghost, he wanders in your reading, in your thinking, in the humanity you are discovering or creating every day, isn't he?
A man who walks out of Plato's cave will see more real things and experience more noble happiness - says "Republic". The Swimmer Caves are in Africa, the place on Earth where humans originated. According to the theory of evolution, the earliest humans originated in Africa, and slowly spread throughout the major plates of the earth long before the history of civilization. The evolutionary history of human beings is the history of human beings "walking out of Africa", out of the swimming cave that has been forgotten by civilization.
Not just humans. Everyone's individual life is also born from the cave.
survival and reproduction. The primordial power of all species. The people who first walked out of Africa were people who were forced to go to other places to find a chance to survive because their physical conditions were not strong enough. So far, Africans have the strongest physique. And people with less than strong physique will gradually understand cooperation and thinking, understand the collective and the country. The smartest races are physically weak. They build the most sophisticated civilization to protect and satisfy themselves; they invent the most refined language to train and sustain themselves.
What a funny species humans are, Hume quipped: their desires are simply out of proportion to the physical abilities of their individual members. I think, fortunately, they have language. They have a world that is a metaphor for eternity outside of passing and changing, and their life from birth to death has become a migration, migrating to that metaphor about eternity. The naturalistic world at hand cannot accommodate such a grand paradox. But language can overdraw meaning for them, and they can squander their imagination without borders in meaning.
This is where Catherine in the movie found the secret of her soul. She walked out of the cave with a suicide note. After the patient finished telling his story, he asked Hannah to inject him with a lethal dose of morphine and read Catherine's suicide note to him. He puts the story into language, leaving the story intact in the world in which it takes place. He can go too. Go to another world and live on, with Katherine--
"I will be the last image she sees. Will be the leopard who leads her in the cave, protect her and never deceive her. Over a hundred gods are attached to animals, I tell her. Some of them are attached to On the leopard, these creatures who guide you to the afterlife are my earlier ghosts, who accompanied you in the years before we met again."
2011
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