In Dumas' famous novel The Count of Monte Cristo, Noirtier de Villefort, the father of Villefort, the great villain, suffers from a strange disease. His body is like a zombie, leaving only hearing and vision to keep in touch with the outside world. It is said in the book that only these two organs add a little life to him, "like two lonely flames in a furnace of ashes." He communicates with people by eyes, "expressing all the feelings in a corpse's mind with a pair of living eyes".
This rare disease is simply creepy. It is atresia syndrome. Because of this novel, this disease is sometimes called Monte Cristo syndrome. Unfortunately, Jean-Dominique Bauby, the author of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, accidentally suffered from atresia syndrome.
This book was written by Bobby through eye rolling and external communication after his illness. This book records his daily life after his strange illness with a humorous style, which makes readers feel infinite regret and respect.
Jean-Dominique Jean-Dominique Bauby (April 23, 1952-March 9, 1997), a French magazine editor and writer, worked as an editor in ELLE, a well-known fashion magazine in Paris in 1991. He had a decent job and rich income, and two lovely children, but his seemingly bright and happy life collapsed in an instant. He had a stroke on December 8, 1995. In the next two years, he relied on his left eye to communicate with the recorder and wrote The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le papillon) by listening and reading.
As a result of an accident, Bobby was paralyzed and conscious. He felt as if his body was tightly covered by a diving bell, but his mind was flying around like a butterfly. He soared in space and time with the help of his conscious mind. This is the origin of the title "Diving Bell and Butterfly".
This book records the daily life of a patient with a rare disease: receiving treatment in the hospital, subtle interaction with doctors and patients, daily life such as praying and bathing, going to the beach with family, and keeping in touch with friends. He can't communicate with people normally, so he can only talk to the outside world by blinking his left eyelid. When he heard a needed letter, he blinked, wrote a letter, a word, a sentence, and finally wrote the book. It takes an average of two minutes to write down each word, and the book is completed by about 2, blinks. It can be said that this book is Bobby's book of life, which bears witness to the greatness of human spirit.
Despite this disaster, Bobby didn't feel sorry for himself in the book. The book he wrote with his life is soft in tone and full of black humor. He is light-hearted about his own suffering and has a thought-provoking understanding of life and life. The most touching thing about Bobby is that he knows how to have fun in suffering, and let the butterflies of his heart fly freely through imagination and past memories.
Patients with locked-in syndrome can't move, and life is boring and lifeless, while Bobby knows how to adjust his mind and have fun in difficult and painful days.
He gave various nicknames to the nursing doctors, from which he got secret happiness.
He called the sand dunes not far from the hospital a "beach club" to have fun with his family on Father's Day.
He deliberately let the person pushing his wheelchair go the wrong way, just to explore hidden corners, see new faces and smell the smell of the kitchen.
He took the initiative to write to his friends, and then received letters from them. He cherished their letters and turned reading them into a solemn and silent ceremony. In the book, he said,
"I received many letters. Opening letters, spreading stationery, and presenting letters one by one in front of my eyes have gradually formed a ceremony with the passage of time, making the arrival of letters a solemn and silent ceremony. I read every letter carefully by myself. ..... These letters are like treasures to me. One day I will connect them one by one, string them into a string, stretch for several kilometers, and float in the wind, like a small flag showing friendship. "
He was paralyzed and his body was as heavy as a diving bell. He got rid of the bondage through imagination.
On a very boring Sunday, relying on his imagination, he followed his family to the summer camp, watched the children rowing and sketching, watched the injured cat hide in the corner, and the housewives began to cook lunch. -these are undoubtedly the mappings of his previous life.
Even though he is paralyzed, Bobby is still ambitious. He wants to rewrite Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo, write a play and be a director. He even conceived a drama in his mind: taking his own life as the material, life was smooth before he got sick, his career was successful, his family was harmonious, and after the disaster, his life took a turn for the worse, and Mr. L had to start learning to face setbacks. The last scene of this drama was that Mr. L found that what happened to him was just a dream!
After accidentally discovering the Sinai terrace near the hospital, it became his secret garden. He let his imagination roam freely and turned into the greatest director. He re-filmed the close-up shot of orson welles's film "Evil Contact", trying to create a storm for Fritz Lang's "Murry Town", and wanted to be pierrot le fou, with a long string of explosives on his head, ready to die at any time.
From the text, we can feel the infinite passion of Bobby's creation and his attachment to life, which makes people feel infinite regret.
In addition to imagination, Bobby also uses memory to make conscious butterflies soar. He draws nutrition from his past memories to enrich his present life.
He looks back on the past when he started his business with his colleagues, and appreciates the philosophy of life in ruminating on the past. Because of the work of writing a horse racing column, he and his colleagues knew in advance that the mount named "Mitra, the sun god" would win, but as a result, they spent too long in the restaurant, missed the time to bet and missed the chance to earn 2 to 1.
Bobby thinks this is a metaphor, which contains double pains: nostalgia for the past and guilt for not grasping the opportunity, just like a woman who doesn't know how to love, doesn't grasp the opportunity, and is happy to let it slip away.
He recalled every detail of his trip with his wife. Even though he had traveled a long distance and quarreled constantly, he seemed happy when he was ill in bed at that time.
from the letters of interaction with friends, he recalled all kinds of contacts with friends and was moved by all kinds of trivial things in his friends' letters.
He used to love food without restraint, so he couldn't eat after illness. He could only use the sensory memory bank to awaken the memory of taste and smell. Beef with transparent frozen sauce, apricot, peach and egg tart with proper acidity, sausage melted on the tip of the tongue, and so on. These memories of delicious food are all soothing.
There are many such wonderful contents in the book. From a few clues, we can piece together his past life-he once had a happy life with clothes and horses, wine and beauty, he once indulged himself in flashy fame and fortune circles, and he was a little cynical. This contrast makes people sigh endlessly.
Even if the unique and difficult writing style is put aside, Diving Bell and Butterfly is worth reading. Bobby's writing is exquisite and vivid, and the analogy is strange.
The metaphor of diving bell and butterfly is very vivid.
he lingers on his sickbed like a hermit crab on a rock.
He said that his illusory dreams were like fragments extracted from a novel.
people who gossip are compared to pigeons who gossip.
He maintains a certain proportion of anger, just like a pressure cooker, and it will not explode with the adjustment of a safety valve.
There are many metaphors that make people cry out.
At the same time, Bobby's writing is full of self-mockery and ridicule, with strong black humor.
The therapist told him to hold her hand tightly, but he was paralyzed and wanted to crush the therapist's phalanx.
When his former friends talked about him becoming a vegetable, he decided to open letters to everyone to prove that his intelligence was higher than that of vegetables.
He teased about his own experience, saying that fate had transformed him into a scarecrow to scare sparrows.
When the patients in the rehabilitation center looked at the ceiling away from his eyes, Bobby laughed at himself. Probably all these people were afraid of fire and were checking the smoke detectors fixed on the ceiling.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is called a legendary masterpiece that breaks through the limits of life and deserves it. Bobby had a sudden atresia syndrome on December 8, 1995, and woke up 2 days later to finish writing this book. On March 9, 1997, two days after the French version of this book was published, Bobby died, and the light butterfly flew out of the diving bell and completed a gorgeous transformation.