A journey to Britain is a solitary one. Only by traversing British history, like reading the life story of an individual, can one understand all its joys and sorrows, partings and reunions, and grasp the trajectory of fate and the temperature of emotions. Immigrate to the UK and deeply savor the cities filled with British charm.
Turning north from Bath in Wales, I headed toward Scotland. By chance, I stopped in Lancaster.
The old town of Lancaster left me in a complete trance. It felt as if I had fallen into a historical chronicle of the past; the dislocation of time could not be shaken off. Was this an accidental pause, or a necessary journey through time to reach the depths of Britain?
The 5:00 PM sunlight was still bright, casting long shadows from buildings and trees. An ancient castle stood ahead as I looked up, and the cobblestone streets revealed the erosion of time. All around me were weathered houses, and with few pedestrians on the street, the pendulum of time seemed to have stopped. A very old, lingering atmosphere allowed me to breathe in the past.
I didn't remember the English name of that hotel. It was said to be a very old building, over a hundred years old, with blackened stone walls, door frames, stairs, and floors polished by age. A clunky, heavy elevator was stuck in the middle of the building, then came down with a clatter—a scene straight out of a black-and-white film. The elevator door required a forceful push and pull to open, and the crude buttons were disobedient; the old-fashioned elevator would insist on going down even when I pressed to go up. After much back-and-forth, I was still on the first floor, so I had to carry my heavy luggage up the stairs step by step. By the time I reached the fourth floor, panting, the wobbly elevator had followed me up, opening its mouth like a mischievous child to wait for me. I could only smile at the wide-open elevator door and head off to find my small room at the end of the maze-like corridor.
Next to the hotel, a cobblestone path sloped upward, leading to the ancient castle bathed in the sunset glow. Once, all my impressions of Britain were condensed into such memories. Yes, the castle—a life revolving around the castle, about gloom and elegance, evil and humanity. It was the stage where British literature from the Middle Ages to the modern era ran wild.
Back then, I was so fanatically fond of Western literature. In my undergraduate studies, I scored full marks in foreign literature, and I had read almost every book I could get my hands on. Ancient Britain, the old Hawthorne, Hardy, Dickens, Austen, the Brontë sisters, all the way to the desperate Eliot in the wasteland—in Britain, even love is heavy, and even hope is damp. None of the stories were light; I didn't know where the struggle came from or where the liberation led, but everything was paid for with life, fighting for happiness and peace. Was this consistent with the British national character, or with their island life? Perhaps, at that time, faith and perfection had not yet fulfilled them, allowing them to be calm and composed, where elegance and rigor are not without ease, and where being carefree is actually about being orderly, unhurried, and neither humble nor pushy, regardless of the dimension one faces.
But that summoning of the past—Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Catherine in Wuthering Heights, and especially the scarlet letter that woman carried, the clash with religious and secular norms, the gentle, resilient, and desperate affection, the unrepentant struggle—even if it meant breaking with the world, she would not compromise or settle for less than her heart's desire. I often read the coldness and helplessness behind the paper; I could hear the trembling sounds passing through the vast British countryside—it was a cry that risked a lifetime, another kind of persistence, another kind of faith that sustains life.
I did not expect that, many years later, artistic perception would still lead me to understand this country. Can art exist independently of time? Perhaps art has already clearly visualized history, simply using more concrete images to replace those monotonous or uninteresting chronological successions.