Notes on Excerpts from Fortress Besieged

Preface

A few weeks ago I wrote a brief review of Fortress Besieged. In order to keep the language as concise as possible, I did not include the selected notes. This time I am putting together a summary of the passages I selected before. Perhaps I will add new passages later.

Excerpt

He thought that now, considering the possibility of meeting Tang Xiaofu again, he felt numb and unmoved; if they really met, it would surely be the same. The reason was that the self who had loved her a year ago had long since died. The selves that loved her, that feared Su Wenwan, that were tempted by Miss Bao—all these many selves had died one after another. Some of the dead selves were buried in memory, with tombstones raised over them, to be mourned now and then, like his feelings for Tang Xiaofu; some selves seemed to have died by the roadside, left uncollected, left to rot and dissolve, to be eaten by birds and beasts—yet they could never be completely wiped out, such as the self who had bought a diploma from an Irishman.

This is Fang Hongjian's inner thoughts after a quarrel with Sun Roujia. Ah, isn't our life just like this? Along the way, so many of our selves have long since vanished. "Stay true to your original aspiration" is merely a faint recollection of the blurry outline of some former "self." All we can do is become different selves, constantly disappearing and appearing along this road.

Excerpt

She ordinarily had a hobby of watching spoken drama, especially tragedies. The local theater here did not stage spoken drama, so she bought as many famous plays by modern Chinese dramatists as she could and read them carefully. Lines of dialogue such as: "We must be brave! Brave! Brave!" "Live with gusto, die cleanly!" "The night is already so deep—can the light still be far away?" She marked them all with heavy red-pencil underlines beside them, reciting them silently or aloud, as if the riddle of life had found an answer. Only in unhappy moments—for instance when a fine moon stirred thoughts of her own lot in life, or when she was carrying out her duties as "adviser to the women students" and the girls would not take her guidance, muttering instead, "She's just a college graduate at best—what gives her the right to come guide us? She's only fit to manage the maids and hand out toilet paper!"—only at such times did she discover that these philosophical epigrams were of no help. Living was indeed not a pleasure, but dying was not easy either; the night seemed deep enough, yet the light was still nowhere to be seen.

This is Sun Roujia's roommate—Miss Fan. She seemed to have an inexplicable sense of superiority toward other women, looking down on others for no reason. She once regarded Sun Roujia as a rival in love, but in the end she was not, because she could not compete.

"The night seemed deep enough, yet the light was still nowhere to be seen." People in despair, or on the verge of despair, all have this feeling. The real world is just like this. "Sunshine always comes after the storm," but you don't know how long the storm will last. "The moon waxes and wanes; people have their joys and sorrows, meetings and partings." Yet in a month of thirty days, the moon is full for only two nights. And people? They gather little and part much. The real world is an imperfect composite. The structure of social wealth and the admittedly unfair social environment have created all our imperfections, so it is very real. As the saying goes, "Though the body is in darkness, the heart turns toward the light." No matter how terrible everything is, nothing can stop people's longing for what is beautiful.

Excerpt

Hongjian went back to his room in low spirits. A rare moment of cheer had been swept away by seeking out a friend. Heaven made men to be lonely; each should keep to himself, never dealing with others till death. What the body cannot contain is either digested or excreted—that is a personal matter. Why must the feelings the heart cannot contain be shared with a companion? Gather together, and at the slightest thing you offend others, or others offend you, like so many hedgehogs, able only to keep their distance from one another. Want intimacy and unity, and either you prick my flesh or I scrape your skin. Hongjian really wanted to talk over these reflections with someone who could understand him. Miss Sun seemed to understand him better than Zhao Xinmei; at least she listened to him with great interest—but he had just said that people should avoid contact with one another, so why was he seeking out a woman? Perhaps men together are like a pack of hedgehogs, and a man and a woman together are like—Hongjian could not think of a comparison, and opened his notes to prepare tomorrow's lessons.

This passage is from when Fang Hongjian was at National Sanlü University. One day, frustrated at work and thwarted at every turn, he went to confide in his good friend Zhao Xinmei, who was also in low spirits, so he suddenly felt very hurt, and this inner activity followed.

This sentence—"Why must the feelings the heart cannot contain be shared with a companion?" is very moving. Yes, I've always felt that treating friends as an emotional dumpster is a very selfish act, but listening to a companion's worries is also a duty of friendship. So then, let us share these with each other.

Excerpt

Worldly affairs are too busy to allow us to concentrate wholly, without interruption, on missing someone. All the longing we have in a lifetime for those dearest to us, added together, probably amounts to less than an hour; the rest is merely the mind glancing over them, thinking of them and that is all.

That's right. As independent individuals, we can only snatch a spare moment to think of family and friends, and then we still have to go to work tomorrow. Such is life.