The fox comes at night

's Nachts komen de vossen

Seth Nottebohm, Europe's last intellectual writer, wrote a mysterious and melancholic "Book of Memory":
Use the psychic's extrasensory senses to recall loved ones and old friends, and record existence and disappearance, secrets and fears.
🦊How long can we cling to memories?
A female illustrator whose lover has since passed away. She and his partner once raised a tortoise. Hibiscus was her favorite flower, and the tortoise would eat fallen hibiscus petals.
To her, he had died three times: leaving, passing away, and being forgotten by her. Only when all memories faded did it mean true death.
(The Last Afternoon)
A man, living in a zen-like penthouse, sits in a single chair, yearning for the deceased Paula. He lives, but his heart is no longer here. Paula hears the call and responds to his memory. She knows the fox is always around him, haunting him like a nightmare. Everything is fleeting, just like this body. ((Paula I & Paula II))
Life is fleeting. An elderly man, once silent and silent, gazes upon an old photograph, reminiscing about Heinz, how the death of a mysterious woman slowly tormented him to death. When the object of love dies, the fervent love, like an uncontrolled force, turns upon the lover. Love can reveal fate's true face in an instant. Love and death are both life's ultimate secrets. ("Heinz")
🦊“Melancholy is the name of the game”
On the seashore, a woodcut artist and his lover witnessed an unexpected tragedy: a woman who loved photographing lightning had an argument with her boyfriend, who then walked toward the beach and was struck dead by lightning. On his way home, the artist sawed off the massive root of a tree that had been blown down by the strong wind and brought it home. Misfortune, with its accidental stroke, illuminates the truth, while also following lovers like a shadow. ("Thunderstorm")
This is the ultimate work of Nottebohm's creative skills, translated into Chinese for the first time. Writer Zhao Song's special analysis of this book has beautiful context, exquisite philosophical thoughts and metaphors, and it integrates multiple genres such as novels, essays, travel notes and art observations.
——————
At night, the fox comes, making soft sounds, whispering, and breathing slightly.
Foxes are always around us, haunting us like a nightmare.
So, we linger on the people and events of the past: Who will be remembered? In what way will they be cherished forever? When these fade from memory, does it mean true death?
These eight stories are thematically connected, a meditation on love and memory, life and death. The emotions evoked by old photographs, lost lovers, lost selves, hurt fools, fateful encounters, and failed romances allow us to collect and reconstruct the sad or lost memories in our lives.
Life is but a moment, and is inherently quiet and silent.
——————
One of the most outstanding novelists of modern times. He is a great European writer. He is great because he understood the appearance of history as we live it and because he created new fictional forms in which he could record it.
In this era of literary specialization, Nottebohm continues to wear the colorful guise of a scholar: poet, novelist, travel writer, and translator. His work itself is a symbol of art. Like Nabokov, his novels are laden with allusions, and philosophical reflections permeate even ordinary narratives.
—The New York Times Book Review

2021-09-01

译林出版社

192

9787544785655