Four

Chapter 9 of The Soul Hunter, entitled "The Repository of Souls," tells the story of William James's brother, Henry James, who published the novel "The Screws Are Tightening" in 1898, based on the "ghost night" at the house of Henry Sidjwick's cousin, Edward White Benson. The cousin, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury and had a penchant for ghost stories, showed that religion was already in the dark. At the Archbishop's Storytelling Session, the guests recounted the legends of the ghosts one by one. This pastime must have come from the people, but it was moved from the grandmother's stove to the study. Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, in the English country town, also has a "Tuesday Night Club", which is about the same number as the archbishop's "Ghost Night", the difference is only the mysterious story of the "club" members, and the ending is mostly in the form of a criminal case to give a realistic answer. It's hard to verify the direct relationship between "Screws Are Tightening" and "Ghost Night", but it's an indisputable fact that Henry James attended Benson's storytelling meeting, and the novel begins with people sitting around the fire telling ghost stories, which is a very much a parody of "Ghost Night". In the history of literature, "The Screw is Tightening" is classified as a Gothic novel in the Romantic faction, the name "Gothic novel" originated in 1764, and Horace Valpoel's novel "The Castle of Otranto", subtitled "A Gothic Story", is a plot composition that alludes to the oppressive horror through the medieval architectural style. But here, I'd rather think that "The Screws Are Tightening" comes from the influence of paranormal research. You think, Henry's brother William was engaged in this field, Henry himself was in London, Edmund Gaeney was his old acquaintance, the club of philosophers led by Gaeney called the "Eight Talks", I think he also went to sit in on it, and these researchers pondered over the question of "the place where the soul is deposited", as the title of this chapter says, inevitably bothered him as much - science could not prove whether there was or not, and if so, what situation? Fiction is free, fiction is not responsible for reality, it can legitimize parasicalism. What's more, the "soul" is the core of the novel's description. Assuming that the soul is still alive after the death of the body opens up the space of eternity, is not what the novel yearns for is the utopia of eternity? In this way, the realistic novel draws the possibility from the study of the supernatural not only in terms of philosophical significance, but also in terms of material supply. I think that's probably what makes ghost stories appealing to a certain type of novelist. Writers who write ghost stories, like writers who don't, never ignore the order of objective existence, such as Henry James, who did not indulge himself in constructing a more concrete place for the soul because of the immunity of fictional reality, and the ghosts in "Screws Are Tightened" are still subject to science, even if they are limited by supernatural science, they are vague, uncertain, and do not know where to go.

"The Screws Are Tightening" tells the story of a young governess who receives an appointment and comes to work in a big house in the remote countryside. The structure of the story is reminiscent of Jane Eyre, which was born 50 years earlier, and perhaps the women of the orthodox society of that era had to work as governesses to have a chance to have strange stories, so the routine was formed. Like Jane Eyre, the governess stumbles into a series of strange signs in the owner's mansion, which, unlike Jane Eyre, appear much calmer and therefore hint at more dangerous secrecy. There is no howling and laughter in the middle of the night, no strange shadows standing in front of the bed, no closed attics, no strange-looking maids, no self-lit candles...... On the contrary, everything is beautiful, the bright scenery, the spacious hall, the little master, that is, her student, is well-behaved and smooth, but under this pleasant surface there is an underlying uneasiness: the little boy who has been dropped out of boarding school, the former female teacher who has never returned, the male owner who never shows up...... The eerie and terrifying atmosphere brewed and accumulated in the tranquility, and finally became apparent. Peter Quint, the master's deceased valet, and then Miss Jessel, the dead former governess, also appears—where the story splits its ways with Jane Eyre, following the ghostly trajectory into the supernatural novel. As mentioned earlier, their movements were restricted, with Peter Quint always having only the upper body and the lower body either remotely behind the tower's arrows or out of the windowsill, and Miss Jessel on the opposite side of the pond. Occasionally, they will also enter the room, but they will always stay away from a distance, or across the glass. Obviously, they are not free to move and do everything just because they are ghosts, but can only get involved in this world to a certain extent. The ghosts of that time were much more well-behaved than the vampire zombies of the later era, and therefore much more elegant. It is also possible that the author Henry James witnessed the soul experiments carried out by his brother and friends, which were difficult to move on, and the supernatural phenomena were confusing and difficult to catch, which made the ghosts in his pen have a cautious attitude and dare not make too many mistakes. Or perhaps it was because Henry James was aware of the emotional motives of his brother's research: where were the people who had died, and could we really never get together again? The people and ghosts in his stories reveal an unspeakable sadness. The young governess gradually discovered the estrangement between her and the little master, which was manifested by the courtesy and upbringingness of the young master, and they were dealing with her! Persuasion and discipline are powerless, and they cannot stop the children from waiting for opportunities to associate with old people. The two children increasingly show a lonely face, and in thriller novels, all those who are attracted to dead souls have a lonely face, which is the most touching emotion in this type of novel. The end of the story seems a little disappointing to me, the little boy Miles - strange, why the boy is called "Miles", does it have anything to do with "Frederick Miles"? Of course, "Miles" is a fairly common name, and in the end, the little boy Miles is taken away by a ghost, leaving his lifeless body in the arms of the governess. For a ghost story, it is inevitably too concrete, but if it is not, what can we do? The story always has an ending, and where can the ethereal ghost end? The ending of a thriller novel is indeed very difficult, but it is a novelist's dereliction of duty, and once it is implemented, it loses its charm.

I once read a relatively recent American thriller novel "The Face in the Window", which is similar to this type of novel, nothing more than an exotic old inn, with unknown accidents and undead haunts. In this usual routine, there is a wave of extreme depression. The little ghost gripped the hearts of his guests more and more, and he gradually distanced himself from his family, and could no longer leave the room. The plot transitions to a modern claustrophobic story, but in the claustrophobia are the two worlds of yin and yang, unable to live, unable to go, and infinitely desperate. The guests lingered with the ghosts for many days, but in the end they did not show the vision of that realm, and they were forever hidden in the unknowable depths of meditation. Even supernatural novels seem to strictly abide by the conventions of empirical science, and do not exceed Lei Chi. To know is to know, and not to know is not to know. The American movie "The Sixth Sense", the plot is between the two worlds of yin and yang, and in the end, the entanglements in the world are finally clarified, and the ghosts and ghosts are walking hand in hand on the road to the other side, and the differences in age and class are all eliminated, which is very moving. However, in the end, the audience did not see the situation on that side.

As mentioned earlier, the flexibility of the Chinese, to a certain extent, alleviates the pain of life and death, which may be a little awkward, but there is no lack of artistic conception and a kind of lyricism. I admire Chinese civil society, which is both simple and quite open to the assumptions of that world. Here, people often use reincarnation to explain the intercourse of life and death, and reincarnation is not a single continuation of life, but from one thing to another. The most famous such as the "Liang Zhu" myth of "turning into a butterfly"; Peacocks fly southeast" Lian Li branches, mandarin duck birds, and "Strange Tales from Liao Zhai" abound, or anthills, or fox snakes...... Behind these legends may be Lao Zhuang's philosophy, things are connected, heaven and earth are implemented, starting from metaphysics and ending with metaphysics, far from science, but close to the essence of literature. I thought that the story of "Wang Liulang" in "Strange Tales from Liao Zhai" can be said to be a complete expression of the Chinese style of "soul storage". The story is that the fisherman cast his net at night, sat alone and drank, and the smell of wine attracted the beautiful boy Wang Liulang, and the fisherman invited him to sit down, and the two often drank by the river at night and became friends. Wang Liulang is actually a new ghost, who fell into the river and died because of greed and drunkenness. Soon, Wang Liulang was able to reincarnate after completing the time limit of being a ghost, and the two said goodbye happily. Unexpectedly, it was a woman who was a ghost in the water on his behalf, holding a baby waiting to be fed, Wang Liulang gave birth to compassion and gave up this opportunity to be reincarnated, the woman struggled out of the water, and Wang Liulang continued to drink with the fisherman at night. After some time, God praised him for his virtue, and Nawang Liulang became an immortal and became the land god of a town far away. Wang Liulang came to bid farewell to the fishermen and instructed him to visit the area under his jurisdiction, but the fishermen were suspicious: "God and man are separated by the road", how can they meet? Wang Liulang blindly demanded. After the separation, the fishermen became more and more anxious and decided to go. Once you enter the land boundary, you can see men, women and children flocking to the land, staying overnight, and asking for food, saying that the land god has a dream, and he will be hospitable in every way, and will return with a bumper harvest. On the way back to his hometown, the whirlwind rose flat, swirled under his feet, and traveled more than ten miles, that is, Wang Liulang was sending him off. "Dream of Red Mansions" is the highest level of this realm, the three-life stone side of the pearl grass, watered by the nectar of the attendants of the Red Flaw Palace, in order to repay the grace of the drop of water, decided to accompany the mortal to be a man, "but to return all the tears of my life to him, I can also repay him." So, the love of Bao Dai was deduced. In the last forty years of Gao E's reign, this realm has become a village custom again. After Daiyu's death, Baoyu waited for her to dream, slept alone all night without gain, sighed and chanted two sentences of Bai Juyi's "Song of Long Hatred": "Long life and death don't go through years, the soul has never dreamed", swept away the fairy spirit of the Mushi Qianmeng, and the rest is just male and female love. I often wonder if Cao Xueqin had finished writing "Dream of Red Mansions", would the Zhucao and Shenying attendants have reunited on the Sansheng Stone, experienced a story of Hongchen, whether the debts between them have been settled or not, and whether they were the same as before? Now everything is hidden in the netherworld, which is really a secret that cannot be revealed. In Chinese literature, the Sansheng Stone can be used as a "soul storage place", with this place, things become less mournful, there are antecedents, there are afterlives, and life can last for a long time. But in fact, it has nothing to do with matter, it is all on the spiritual level, it is the aesthetics of life, and it cannot be used to explain the objective world. For the Chinese mind, it is enough, we are used to accepting the unknown, more or less to avoid nihilism, so we take a detour. However, the Western worldview, which has been established on the basis of physics, is far from being satisfied with sitting and talking, and they just hold that what they hear is false, and what they see is believing.

Recently, I read a novel "Deep River" by the predecessor Japanese writer Shusaku Endo, and the author's introduction said that Endo Shusaku was "a pioneer of Japanese faith literature". The concept of "literature of faith" is very new to us, and we don't know what exactly the content is, or what it means by religion, because the introduction also says that the author was "born into a Catholic family in Tokyo, was baptized at the age of ten, and was deeply influenced by Catholic thought." Hypothetically, the process of confrontation and subsequent reconciliation between science and theology also affected the spread of Catholicism in modern Asia. The novel "Deep River" is a bizarre work that develops its plot from the standpoint of Western scientism but ends with Eastern mystical philosophy. If it is related to the author's background, I guess that Mr. Shusaku Endo is also interested in supernatural research.

The story begins with his wife being critically ill, and the husband Isobe is desperate to watch his wife gradually move away, at a loss. When the time of farewell came, Isobe found that his wife, who was usually not very affectionate, was extremely important to him, and he could not accept the pain of loss, and fell into pain and could not extricate himself. Before her death, the wife intermittently uttered a sentence: "I will definitely be reincarnated, somewhere in this world." Let's make an appointment, we must find me!" This dreamy love vow has been haunting Isobe's heart. By chance, he learned that the Department of Psychiatric Personality Research at the University of Virginia School of Medicine was conducting an investigation into the afterlife, and he wrote to that institution out of a sense of refuge. A few days later, the lab did write back, informing them that of the only cases they had collected about reincarnation was related to Japan. But it was many years ago, a girl born in the Burmese countryside, at the age of four, claimed that she was a Japanese in her previous life, a private in the war, and was bombed by an airplane, and was hit by a machine gun on board and died, and she often said that she wanted to go back to Japan, muttering something that no one could understand. It sounded outrageous, but Mr. Isobe earnestly asked to continue looking. After a period of collecting and checking, the University of Virginia laboratory obtained another case, which seemed to be relatively close to the conditions for Mrs. Isobe's reincarnation. It was a little girl in the village of Kamroji in North India, who claimed to be Japanese in her previous life, and other information is unknown, but because of Mr. Isobe's eagerness, he still provided this simple message. So, Isobe embarked on a trip to India. This is really a bold move, how will such a realistic plot deal with this false suspense? Although the theory of reincarnation has a long history and has been flourishing for a long time, it is mostly mythical and strange, and in the writing of novels, it is also a strange situation, such as Li Bihua's novel. I thought that Li Bihua was an alternative among novelists, she was born with a natural talent, she could pull people from outside the world into the world, and push the world into the world, but the premise was that the assumption that the two worlds exist and interact with each other, whether you write or read, you need to acknowledge this premise, build a sense of trust, and so it goes smoothly. In "Deep River", it makes people worry and doubt, because the whole is concrete, all made of realistic materials, tightly seamed, where to break the gap, so as to set off into the void? What kind of fate will this one have on the road? The narration is always carried out in a serious attitude, and I dare not call it absurd, which is simply a blasphemy against Mr. Isobe's feelings for his deceased wife.

The place Mr. Isobe went to was very exquisite, India. In "Soul Hunter", Richard Hodgson, an Australian-born Cambridge philosophy student, accepts the first assignment of the "British Society for the Study of Soul and Spirit", which is to go to Mumbai, India, to investigate supernatural events. Nora's assistant Alice received a strange letter claiming that "Miles" was in contact with Mrs. Frun, Cambridge, and that the letter was also sent to a Mrs. Fleming in India. India, in our limited understanding, is such an unfathomable place, and what happened in the cave in Love-G Foster's novel "A Trip to India" will almost become a mystery for the ages. Of course, most of these images of India are derived from the eyes of Westerners, and in India itself, perhaps everything is normal and natural. I've read a few novels by Indian writers, but nothing surprising has happened. However, Tagore's poems reveal a different worldview, which is very different from Western rationalism and Chinese Confucianism and Taoism. In Gitanjali, for example, "the traveler knocks at the door of every living person to knock on the door of his house", for example, "the one whom I imprisoned with my name", for example, "I don't know when you have been approaching to meet me", for example, "the joy of dancing in the vast world of life and death", for example, "when I think of the end of my time, the barrier of time breaks", ...... "me" and "you", "life" and "death", "end" and "barrier" , in the relative coexistence, nothing is absolute, or in the total amount, not in the individual unit, showing a diffuse state. Therefore, I think that Shusaku Endo had a motive in bringing Isobe's search to India.

The girl Mr. Isobe is looking for in the village of Camroj, near the Ganges River in Mumbai, where the author never gives up his realist brushwork, keeping everything true to life, full of trivial details: joining a tour, staying with each other during the trip, sleeping in the morning, making old acquaintances and thinking about the new...... As we got closer and closer to the village where the reincarnation was, it was hard to imagine the sight of the water, and the sight became more and more desirable. The narrative continues unhurriedly, not necessarily to the urgency of the destination, but also to avoid the outcome and fail to fulfill the promise made to the reader. After a gradual search, Mr. Isobe finally got into a taxi and went to the village where he had never lived with his wife. The barrenness in the heat was frightening, and Mr. Isobe was depressed, and the begging children were overwhelmed with hunger, and he rushed to reach out to his eyes, which one would be the reincarnation of his wife? If so, what would happen? Everything still did not seem absurd, but extremely serious—" Isobe tasted the kind of sadness that resembled failure on the path of life. "How can things continue? Mr. Shusaku Endo is really persistent, he does not let Isobe turn around, but accepts the taxi driver's recommendation to go to the fortune teller, and the fortune teller gives another clue. Following the instructions, Isobe walked into a car repair shop in a noisy street market, and the response was rather ambiguous: "An old man who had lost his teeth pointed to the depths of the road and said, 'Ra-z-ni'". "Razni" is the name of the little girl provided by the University of Virginia laboratory, but here it is like a spell, and it is like a prophecy, and I don't know what it implies. Desperate, the Isobian, in a drunken state of depression, walked to the Ganges and cried out, "Where have you been!" The Ganges is believed among Hindus to lead to a better afterlife, and if one believes in it, the wife should not be one of these unfortunate fates. Things have finally held the barrier of realism, but the story of Isobe is not complete after all, but a compromise. Fortunately, there are still dozens of pages after that, and perhaps, there is still a chance to turn around.

The trip takes place along the Ganges, pier after pier, full of bathing people, and crematoriums. Why the crematorium was built by the river, is it convenient for reincarnation? Judging from the novel, this crematorium seems to have become one of the tourist attractions. The scene was bizarre and brutal, and among the crowded tourists, the procession carrying the corpses meandered towards the crematorium. The stench of corpses filled the hot air, and the ashes poured directly into the river, along with the flowers of mourning, down the river. In the midst of the chaos, there is a strict precept that cannot be taken, that is, no photography. What does this mean? Does it mean that death has a secret covenant that cannot be set foot in, never, never peep. This precept was particularly emphasized in the conflicts that erupted later, and the abstract nature of philosophy was transformed into a concrete plot that balanced the overall situation of the story. Now, Mr. Isobe's search has been answered, and the whereabouts of the deceased have finally been settled, placed under solemn cover.

Five

Alice Munro, a famous Canadian female writer, has a novel called "Mana", which is written about a woman born with special abilities, Tessa, who can see the wallet in the other party's pocket through her clothes, and the contents of the wallet, and she can also report the traces of the missing person. In short, she is the kind of person who is called supersensible. What kind of fictional plot will this supernatural ability be used for in the novelist's pen? The man named Ollie, whom Tessa fell in love with, can hardly be said to be truly attracted to Tessa's personality. Tessa is mediocre in appearance, not even well-proportioned, dressed in old fashion, and lacks feminine charm when she is back, although she has a calm and calm demeanor, but this does not stimulate people's lust, so Ollie is more likely to be obsessed with Tessa's special functions. Ollie is a whimsical man and, ambitious, looking forward to something amazing, but not knowing where to start. I think that Ollie is engaged in the study of the soul, and that his knowledge of this science is only hearsay, and that Tessa is obviously a very rare specimen, so he has found it as a treasure. From then on, Tessa enters the laboratory of a psychic researcher, and the novel describes it as follows: "It's like an interrogation room, and Tessa seems to be squeezed dry every time she comes out." Tessa must have been so submissive out of love, and she was at Ollie's mercy, going east to west, into various "interrogation rooms," offering her patience and dignity, and putting herself to the test, trying to satisfy the researcher, so as to provide evidence to support Ollie's argument. However, just like the supersensible people depicted in "Soul Hunter", their abilities are difficult to stand up to investigation, and most of them are abandoned by science. Similarly, Tessa and Ollie take to the streets, Tessa performs, and Ollie preaches his point. They had to borrow the circus field, follow the dock, and live the life of Jianghu artists. Things are getting farther and farther away from Ollie's expectations, and Tessa's abilities are becoming more and more suspicious, whether they are overused and worn out, or if they don't exist in the first place, but are just exaggerated by the world. Anyway, it seems like it's time for this life to come to an end, what should I do? Ollie sends Tessa to a mental hospital. The most intriguing part of the story is that when Ollie hugs Tessa goodbye with the signed paperwork in his pocket, he wonders uneasily: Does Tessa have or does she have the mana? If she could see the documents in his jacket pocket and the contents of them, he would immediately destroy them as if nothing had happened. However, Tessa didn't say anything, didn't ask anything, and obediently let Ollie take her to the place where she could rest for a while, and then put her down and never returned. Maybe Tessa really lost her mana completely, or maybe her mana was stronger, and she was able to penetrate clothes, pockets, documents, and flesh, and see Ollie's heart, and see that her lover wanted to get rid of her and return to a free life. So she spent the rest of her life in captivity in that remote mental hospital. Tessa's special function here takes on the deepest rationality of love, becoming the supernatural in universal human nature. The novelist's hand has the real power of mana, which can turn decay into magic, and magic into normalcy.

If the novel is reduced to material, it is clear that Tessa is one of the many mediums in "The Soul Hunter", and they have all gone through a similar journey. First they were superb, they were miraculous, then they were decayed, and they had to be replaced by deception, then they were exposed, they were spurned, and they wandered, and finally they disappeared and did not know what to do. However, when they completely withdraw from view, occasionally, they will show their extraordinary talents. The Fox sisters, who were the first to attract attention, were able to communicate with ghosts in their childhood, and found the corpses of those who had been killed many years ago from the cellar of the old house. In 1893, one of the sisters had been dead for three years, and the other was dying, when he suddenly asked the neighbor woman who was guarding him for a pen and paper, and wrote more than 20 pages of text. The neighbor woman found that it was all about her life, and she had never talked about her life to this neighbor who met in the water, and what was even more surprising was that the text repeatedly mentioned a suicide note, which was left by the neighbor woman's mother, hidden in someone's desk drawer, and soon proved to be true. Perhaps, they, and those who are considered to be liars and magicians, really have supernatural abilities, but the thing seems to be that the more they have to prove it, the more loopholes they have, and they don't know what the truth is.

I can't help but think of a teenager in China who could read and write by ear around the 80s, and then there was a wave of curiosity about supernatural abilities that swept the country. At that time, information was not developed, and we had been blinded for many years, and we did not know how many disciplines there were in the world and how they were developing, so we could only search for materials and witness them within a limited range. At that time, the magazine "Children's Times", where I worked, set up a popular science knowledge column, and also paid attention to this incident. One day, we brought in a group of elementary school students, about six or seven, from an elementary school in the southern city, who were said to be able to recognize words or patterns with their bodies without their sight. It was a very dark winter afternoon, and the editor of the magazine, as well as the people who heard about it outside the company, surrounded the children. They folded up the notes on which they had written and drawn, tucked them under their padded jackets, and sat at the table, motionless, as time passed. There doesn't seem to be a significant miracle, most of the children claim to be tired, and one or two of them say it but not all of them are right, and this one can't be detected. However, everyone did not feel too disappointed, because they believed that such an epoch-making miracle was not as ordinary as my generation was fortunate enough to witness. In fact, such experiments have been repeated over and over the course of more than a hundred years, but they have not yet drawn the coordinates of the times. Those flickering wonders, in fact, have never been completely extinguished, and from time to time, they will pop up, here or there, one way or another.

Science continues to progress on the path of empirical evidence, with more and more substances being refined from the invisible into the tangible. In 1884, the Austrian psychiatrist and famous Sigmund Freud published a paper entitled "A Study of ***", in which hallucinogenic narcotics produced quite objective excitement, happiness, and even "immortal" flashes; the theory of the "subconscious" emerged from the experiment of idea transmission; psychotherapy established the legitimate position of orthodox science; the clinical application of hypnosis quietly expanded; in 1890, William James's "Principles of Psychology" came out, proposing that spiritual, The relationship between the mind and the body, and in 1896, Freud officially used the term "psychiatry" for the first time. In the twentieth century, materiality was embodied in a broader sense: the radio waves of transatlantic telephones, the audio of double-sided recordings, the imaging of cameras, quantum theory, Freud's re-creation of the tree and the publication of "The Interpretation of Dreams", the completion of the first test voyage of the Zeppelin spacecraft, the use of electricity, magnetic fields, and Electric current transmission and isolation, atmospheric chemistry, argon discovery won the Nobel Prize, in 1909, bacteriologists invented a drug to treat syphilis, wireless communications became more and more mature, a small plane flew over the English Channel, pictures of all activities appeared, and then "Hollywood" appeared...... Today, a hundred years later, these things that seem ordinary are all created from nothing, and the outline emerges from the void and dazedness, and the soul is still erratic, and when you stretch out your hand, it is empty.

When Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Furun establish a cross-communication in an attempt to connect with the deceased, AutoWriter works together with the media to sift out a few keywords: hope, stars, and browning. Then one of Myers' favorite Browning poems was found, which reads, "Only the Wandering Star is found, and it is locked." At the same time, among the documents left behind by the soul hunter Hodgson, people turned out a piece of paper with some words written on it, among which also had "stars", as well as "gaze" and "tears". There are always stars, and the light that is hundreds of millions of light years away, looking at people, trying to convey something?

The relevant bibliography of this article is as follows:

"Soul Hunter" (American), by Debra Bloom, translated by People's Literature Publishing House, 2008

The Screws Are Tightened (US), by Henry James, translated by Yuan Decheng, Sichuan People's Publishing House, 2001

The Ghost of Canterville, by Oscar Wilde, translated by Yuan Decheng, Sichuan People's Publishing House, 2001

"Deep River" (Japanese), written by Zhou Endo, translated by Lin Shuifu, Nanhai Publishing Company, 2009

Mana (Canada), translated by Alice Monroe and Li Wenjun, Beijing, October Literature and Art Publishing House, 2009

Gitanjali (India), translated by Rabindranath Tagore Bingxin, Hunan People's Publishing House, 1982

On the Mississippi River (USA), translated by Mark Twain and Zhang Yousong, Jiangxi People's Publishing House, 1984

Shanghai, August 12, 2011