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毕飞宇丨《青衣》

推荐理由

《青衣》的灵感来自《扬子晚报》。1998年12月《扬子晚报》刊登了一则报道，报道说一位身染沉疴的艺术家在北京演出时，救护车就停在人民大会堂西门外。毕飞宇从这则报道里看到了“别的”：“一个女人的内心······要丰富得多、开阔得多。”在这篇报道的刺激下，他匆忙结束手里的一个短篇，开始了《青衣》的写作。

月宫中凌云而舞的嫦娥、舞台上光彩照人的青衣和大地上平凡琐碎生活的筱燕秋，三者成为一种女性形象的隐喻，包容了世间所有女子的命运，是千百年来女性生存的缩影，展示了以筱燕秋为代表的现代女性进退失据、无所适从的生存困境和她们困兽犹斗、寻求自赎之路的心灵历程。

嫦娥在月宫的那种与世隔绝的寂寞，同筱燕秋因执著于角色而形成的与世俗格格不入的寂寞联系起来，由此，《奔月》这个在小说中贯穿始终的意象就成了一个巨大的隐喻。

毕飞宇说，“我们的身上一直有一个鬼，这个鬼就叫做‘人在人上’。对我们来说，不把‘人在人上这个鬼打死’，一切都是轮回，一切都是命运”。剧中之剧《奔月》，是故事之所以发生和展开的核心。

2002年《青衣》的同名电视剧出品，2008年《青衣》的英译本入选英国独立报外国小说奖的复评名单。2013年由小说《青衣》改编的赣剧《青衣》获中国戏剧节大奖。

Reviews

The inspiration for The Moon Opera can be traced back to the Yangtse Evening Post. In December of 1998, the paper published a news report telling the story of a performer inflicted with a chronic disease. In Beijing, an ambulance awaited the performer outside the west entrance to the Great Hall of the People. From this report, Bi Feiyu read something else: “A woman’s inner heart ... should be abundant and vast.” At the stimulation and inspiration derived from this report, he hastily finished the novella he was working on and began The Moon Opera.

The Lady in the Moon dancing through clouds at the Palace in the Moon, the lustrous image of a Qing Yi on the stage, and Xiao Yanqiu, whose life is filled with ordinary trifles, provide three metaphors of the feminine form. These metaphors contain the fates of all women on Earth over thousands of years. Xiao Yanqiu’s life represents the hopeless predicament in which modern women find themselves – a state where they do not know which course to follow, where they must fight like a cornered animal and seek out a path for spiritual redemption.

The loneliness and feeling of being cut off from the world that Chang’e feels at the Palace of the Moon gives shape to the type of loneliness that Xiao Yanqiu experiences upon feeling out of touch with the secular world. Thus, the recurrent use of imagery from the play Flying to the Moon throughout the novel creates an immense metaphor.

Bi Feiyu once said, “Our body has always contained a ghost. This ghost is called ‘the person on top of other persons.’ We should ‘beat to death this ghost, otherwise everything is reincarnated, everything is derived from fate.”The play Flying to the Moon provides the core of the story’s plot and actions.

In 2002, a television show bearing the same name was released, and, in 2008, critics for the British-based publication The Independent selected the English translation of The Moon Opera for Foreign Fiction Prize. In 2013, the Jiangxi Opera adaptation of the short story The Moon Opera received the China Theatre Award. 

作家简介

Author Profile

毕飞宇，作家，南京大学特聘教授，江苏省作家协会副主席。1964年生于江苏兴化，1987年毕业于扬州大学文学院（原扬州师范学院中文系），获文学学士学位。1980年代中期开始小说创作，2013年推出首部非虚构文学作品《苏北少年“堂吉诃德”》，2013年12月他的《大雨如注》获得人民文学奖短篇小说奖。《杨澜访谈录》将毕飞宇誉为“文字推拿师”，推拿时代的疼痛。

代表作品有《推拿》《哺乳期的女人》《青衣》《平原》《玉米》等，作品曾被译成多种文字在国外出版。

Bi Feiyu, writer and Professor of creative writing at Nanjing University, is currently serving as vice chairperson of the Jiangsu Writers Association. He was born in Xinghua County in 1964 and graduated from the Chinese Department of Yangzhou Normal College (which is now developed into and renamed as College of Literature, Yangzhou University) in 1987, where he obtained his BA degree. Since the mid-1980s he has been writing diligently and publishing in large amount. His first non-fictional work A Quixotic Youngster from Northern Jiangsu came out in 2013. The same year in December he published his short story The Downpour, which later came to win The Short Story Award conferred by the journal People’s Literature. In A Documentary of Yang Lan’s Interviews, Yang Lan being a nationally renowned anchorwoman, Bei Feiyu is lauded as “Masseur of Literature” who precisely pins down, and greatly alleviates, the pain of his era.

His representative works include Massage, The Woman in Lactation, The Moon Opera, The Plain, and Three Sisters(Yumi), etc. Quite a few of his works have been translated into foreign languages and published widely abroad.  

中文概要

Synopsis

《青衣》讲述了一个戏剧演员台上台下的生活故事。

主人公筱燕秋是天生的青衣好料子。老团长让她当了A档嫦娥。筱燕秋演活《奔月》，《奔月》照亮筱燕秋的生活。伴随着成功的是名利。年轻气盛的筱燕秋开始自大起来。以为嫦娥完美地体现了“青衣”应该具有的风骨与神韵，代表一种不食人间烟火、超凡脱俗的生存境界。筱燕秋迷恋于舞台上和嫦娥一起飞升、如梦似幻的感觉。她的老师李雪芬却将嫦娥塑造成巾帼豪杰般铁骨铮铮，玷污了筱燕秋心目中真正的嫦娥。为了捍卫自己的艺术信仰，她把开水浇在李雪芬脸上，惹了众怒。迫使她离开舞台，被调到学校去教书。

20年后遇见她的学生春来，重燃艺术激情，并视春来为女儿。而烟厂老板出资复排《奔月》，学生春来最终取代了筱燕秋的位置。

筱燕秋减肥堕胎献身，想要把握最后的机会。几经挣扎还是在一个风雪交加的夜晚退出戏台，由自己潜心培养的春来顶替她站上戏台。

剧场外，筱燕秋舞着长长的水袖唱了起来，唱得那样美，舞得那么动人。此时的十字街头上没有其他行人，只有筱燕秋一个演员和乔炳璋一个观众。

The Moon Opera tells the life story of a drama actress, both on and off stage.

The protagonist Xiao Yanqiu was clearly born to be a Qing Yi. The troupe leader consequently casts her as his first choice for the role of Chang’e, the Lady in the Moon in Chinese legend and the protagonist of the play Flying to the Moon. She performs brilliantly in the act.

This play lights up her life, bringing her success, fame, and profit. Full of youthful vigor, Xiao Yanqiu slowly becomes arrogant. She believes that the Lady in the Moon perfectly embodies the strength of character and charm that a Qing Yi should possess. To her, a Qing Yi is one who does not eat the food of common mortals; an extraordinary being that exists in a refined realm. Xiao Yanqiu becomes obsessed with the Chang’e she played on stage and gets carried away in the dreamlike feeling the role has fostered. Her teacher, Li Xuefen, insists on playing the role of Chang’e as a resolute and strong heroine in a headdress, but this spoils the genuine image of Chang’e that Xiao Yanqiu has in her heart. Thus, in order to protect her artistic beliefs, she throws boiling water on Li Xuefen’s face. This brings the wrath of the public upon her, and she is subsequently forced to leave the stage and take up teaching at a school.

Twenty years later, she encounters a former student, Chunlai, who reignites her passion for art. She regards Chunlai as her daughter. The owner of a cigarette factory invests in a new production of Flying to the Moon. In this production, Chunlai takes the role previously played by Xiao Yanqiu.

Xiao Yanqiu has lost weight and induced an abortion in an attempt to grasp this last opportunity at taking the stage. After much work and struggle, she eventually gives up on her goal to retake the stage on a night of wind and snow. Instead, she fully channels her efforts toward grooming Chunlai to take her place.

Outside the theatre, Xiao Yanqiu dances. Her sleeves flow as if made of water, and she begins to sing. She sings with beauty, as she once had in her youth, and dances with the power to move people. In that moment on the crossroad, there are no other pedestrians present to watch. There is only the actress Xiao Yanqiu and Qiao Bingzhang – her audience.