Reading at night ｜ A good metaphor will really make people remember it for a long time!

　　Recently, many netizens have discussed the rhetoric of "metaphor". Today, Night Reading wants to talk about the "long metaphor" in metaphor. Regarding the long metaphor, writer Yu Hua said:

　　Long metaphors are unforgettable. For example, Zweig has a great long metaphor in "Twenty-four Hours in a Woman's Life", which says that the old lady looked back and she was relieved. Zweig wrote this: The stone that weighed on her heart has rolled down. This metaphor is very general, and anyone can write it, but Zweig added a sentence after it, "After falling, it will be heavily pressed on the past, so that it will not be resurrected." This metaphor is very powerful. After rolling, she still has to press it, or "heavily". After that, she has to say "make it not resurrect". She wants to say goodbye to this past completely. This long figurative sentence is unforgettable, which brings out a picture and a plot.

　　Night Reading also shares some impressive "long metaphors". After reading it, I just want to say: Man can't live without literature!

　　20 Impressive "Long Metaphors"

　　(Welcome to collect)

　　01

　　Describe the arrival of love:

　　My emotional dullness is like a house with closed doors and windows. Although I heard the footsteps of love walking past and coming in front of the house, I think it is a passing footsteps, that is the footsteps towards others. Until one day, this step stays here. Then the doorbell rang. (Yu Hua "The Seventh Day")

　　02

　　Describe the joyful mood:

　　She felt that she had got a wrapped gift and asked her to collect it, but she couldn't peep at it-however, when they were walking back and forth, she secretly looked at it. It was a diamond, a priceless treasure, wrapped in a cover, perhaps the light of the gem was transmitted, which was a revelation from the gods! (Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, translator/Sun Liang Sumei)

　　03

　　Describe the hidden worries that are inhuman:

　　If there are some things I haven't said, don't think that I have forgotten. I haven't forgotten anything, but some things are only suitable for collection. Can't say, can't think, but can't forget. They can't become languages, they can't become languages, and once they become languages, they are no longer them. They are a hazy warmth and loneliness, a mature hope and despair, and their territory has only two places: the heart and the grave. For example, some stamps are used to send letters, and some are just for collection. (Shi Tiesheng's "I and Ditan")

　　04

　　Describe the boring words:

　　Every few days, she will read this set of words, just like the train going back and forth on the through line, every stop, every intersection, every swamp, and she knows best at which node she will draw a conclusion, just like the train solemnly entering the terminal. (Flannery OConnor, "Everything that rises will surely converge", translator/hence)

　　05

　　Describe the tense atmosphere:

　　He felt as if he had caught the tip of a vine and swung out like a swing, flying over a deep stream. Just as he swung to the highest point, the center of the earth seemed to lose its gravity in an instant, so he hung there in the air all the time and could not feel the passage of time. (william faulkner's Burning Horse Barn, translator/Cai Hui)

　　06

　　Describe deep fatigue:

　　Sometimes you are tired and sleepy, your heart is at rest, and your life crawls like a sleepy dog. When something comes, you wake up and the morning flashes in the daytime. Often, it is also a matter of passing, and behind the freshness is stagnation, like a wisp of wind. (Wang Zengqi, "Encounter")

　　07

　　Describe the faint joy:

　　A faint joy, like a small bubble in an ancient well, floated in Li Shande's heart. Eighteen years later, he finally got a place in Chang 'an, and his family can rest easy. (Ma Boyong's Litchi in Chang 'an)

　　08

　　Describe a lifelong unrequited love:

　　My heart is always nervous and trembling for you; But you don't feel anything about it, just like you have a pocket watch in your pocket and you don't feel anything about its tight clockwork. This clockwork patiently counts your hours in the dark, calculates your time, accompanies you everywhere with its inaudible heartbeat, and you only glanced at it once during its millions of seconds of non-stop ticking. (A Letter from an Unknown Woman by Zweig, Translator/Zhang Yushu)

　　09

　　Describe the weather at the turn of winter and spring:

　　The wind is hesitant, like an old man who is worried that his body will stink, and he can't help becoming soft and rotten, and he can't help smelling of spring. Half a month away from beginning of spring, the city seems to have caught a cold, and a faint low-grade fever appeared in order to cope with the change of seasons. (Jin loves rotten "How was your summer? ",translator/Xue Zhou)

　　Ten

　　Describe the end of life:

　　At the end of life, just like reading and reading at dusk, people don't notice that the light is getting dim. Until he stops to have a rest, he suddenly finds that the day has passed, it is already dark, and then he can't see anything clearly, and the pages are no longer meaningful. (Mao Mu's Writer's Notes, translator/Chen Dezhi Chen Xing)

　　Eleven

　　Describe the scattered memory:

　　I feel that my memory is like scales scraped by a knife. Some of them are still on my body, and some of them have fallen into the water. When the water is stirred, some of them will still churn and flicker. However, blood is mixed in the middle, and even I am afraid that it will pollute the eyes of the connoisseur. (Lu Xun's "Recalling Wei Suyuan Jun")

　　Twelve

　　Describe the wandering mood:

　　I'm still stirring the cup. Maybe I've been drifting for a long time, just like the sea leaving the shore. I won't turn it up unless I encounter a strong wind. (Xiao Hong's Early Winter)

　　Thirteen

　　Describe the tortured mood:

　　Her shadow is tormenting some part of his body. It was a physical feeling, almost an obstacle when he walked, just like a pebble in his shoe. (Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, translator/Fan Ye)

　　Fourteen

　　Describe the conversation that cannot be joined:

　　After a complete pause, the conversation interrupted by him will continue without him. He tried to join other conversations again, but it was like shaking hands with a glove, and the hand in the glove had been taken away. (Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, Translator/Zhou Jianing)

　　Fifteen

　　Describe gradually blurred forgetting:

　　I have a strange feeling when I watch this family's house gradually disappear from my sight. I seem to have written a poem, which is very good, but I lost it again and will never remember what I wrote again. (Raymond Chandler's High Window, Translator/Fu Weici)

　　Sixteen

　　Describe the words that won't listen:

　　Hung-chien (that is, Fang Hung-chien, the hero of Fortress Besieged) was numb physically and mentally, only knowing that Miss Tang was talking about herself, and she was not in the mood to understand the meaning of her words. It was like a layer of oily paper covering her mind, and her words could not penetrate like raindrops, but the oily paper shook the weight of the rain. (Qian Zhongshu's Fortress Besieged)

　　Seventeen

　　Describe the pain of losing your family:

　　Tears in my chest rushed up to my throat. I tried to swallow, but I tried so hard that I burst my chest with tears. There was only a click, and a pile of bloody things fell from the underground stone. The oncoming cold wind only poured into the hole in my chest. (Yang Jiang, "The Three of us")

　　Eighteen

　　Describe yourself as awkward:

　　He knew that he was like a fern. He only used shallow roots to stick to the hard surface, hid the latest buds in the innermost place, and then pushed himself and twisted into a big old ball. He is uncomfortable, there is something wrong with him, however, he can't feel sorry for it. Because he also knows that for a fern like him, what comes out from his pores in the silent night will not be as simple as tears. (Tong Weige's "No Injury Times")

　　Nineteen

　　Describe a smart mind:

　　I imagined Anabel downstairs, locked in her house, quietly listening to voices that I could hear. Only a thin floor separates us, but she knows how to shorten or widen the distance between us according to her own mood and convenience, and her brain works like a tide, just like the moon catches the sea and makes it rise and fall. (Elena ferrante, My Genius Girlfriend, Translator/Chen Ying)

　　Twenty

　　Describe mother's love:

　　For my mother, the whole world is like a quilt that has not been sewn, and the cotton wool will always leak out. And her worry is like a needle, to sew up those terrible cracks one by one. (Robert Maccammon, Strange Years, Translator/Chen Zongchen)

　　Source: CCTV News