[Reprint] Lionel Messi and his field mouse Alfred

Thanks to Huang Jian­ping for this great arti­cle! It seems like any inter­pre­ta­tion of Lionel Messi­na, the fab­u­list in the pic­ture book, is just right.

Every­one can have their own inter­pre­ta­tion. Although I’m for­tu­nate to have trans­lat­ed “Afu the Field Mouse,” I feel I can nev­er com­pare to Afu as a poet. How­ev­er, I still firm­ly believe that one does­n’t have to be a poet like Afu; any mediocre per­son like me has the right to be lost in thought, col­lect­ing sun­light, col­ors, and words.Orig­i­nal address:Lionel Mes­si and his field mouse Alfredauthor:Red Mud Study Group1959In 1959, at the peak of his career, Lionel Leo Lionel planned to retire at 50 to pur­sue a more cre­ative life and move from New York to Italy. It was at this time that a chance encounter led him to his life’s work. Now a grand­fa­ther, Lionel was tak­ing his two young grand­chil­dren home by train. To pass the time on the long jour­ney, he casu­al­ly tore off some col­or­ful scraps of paper from a mag­a­zine and cre­at­ed a sto­ry for the children—Little Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low. This marked the pub­li­ca­tion of his first chil­dren’s book.

Over the next 35 years, Lionel Leo wrote/illustrated more than 40 chil­dren’s books, four of which won the Calde­cott Medal.
Inch/One Inch Worm (1961 Calde­cott)
Hon­or book), Swim­my (1964)
Calde­cott Hon­or book),
Fred­er­ick (1968)
Calde­cott Hon­or Book), Alexan­der and Wind-up Mouse
(1970 Calde­cott Hon­or
(book).
Lionel Leo is a mas­ter sto­ry­teller. His books tell chil­dren about many seri­ous top­ics such as shar­ing, coop­er­a­tion, main­tain­ing indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, peace, human rights, etc., but there is no moral preach­ing in his books, because he always uses cute ani­mal images to impress chil­dren all over the world, mak­ing them feel that his books are first of all fun and inter­est­ing. As for the pro­found truths con­tained in the books, I believe that chil­dren will slow­ly expe­ri­ence them through­out their lives.
Lionel Leo Lion­ni’s books cov­er a wide range of sub­jects. Hav­ing wit­nessed and per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced the rise of fas­cism in Europe, and as a mem­ber of an inter­na­tion­al anti-fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion (main­ly com­posed of intel­lec­tu­als and artists), his strong advo­ca­cy for peace and human rights is often reflect­ed in his sto­ries. For exam­ple, *The Alpha­bet Tree* was writ­ten dur­ing the Viet­nam War; *Tillie and the Wall* was pub­lished eight months before the fall of the Berlin Wall; and *Nico­las, Where Have You Been?*
It talks about over­com­ing prej­u­dice. It’s fair to say that every one of Lion­i’s books deserves dis­cus­sion, but due to time and space con­straints, I’d like to focus on the first Lioni book I read, and my favorite, about the lit­tle field mouse, Alfon­so. Before dis­cussing Alfon­so, I can’t help but praise Aji­a’s trans­la­tion. Alfon­so is tru­ly spot-on, cap­tur­ing the play­ful­ness of the field mouse while also high­light­ing the Bud­dha-like state Alfon­so has attained. The orig­i­nal name is Fred­er­ick. Could you share how you came up with the trans­la­tion?
In a pre­vi­ous email, I men­tioned the impact Fred­er­ick the field mouse had on me, and I’ll repeat it here to avoid leav­ing read­ers con­fused. I remem­ber when I first heard the sto­ry’s beginning—everyone was busy work­ing, but Fred­er­ick was laz­ing in the sun—it imme­di­ate­ly remind­ed me of a child­hood les­son, “The Cold-Weath­er Bird.” Like Fred­er­ick, the cold-weath­er bird in the sto­ry leisure­ly enjoyed the sum­mer sun while every­one else worked, only to die of cold and hunger because it had­n’t stored enough food for win­ter. At the time, I thought that for­eign writ­ers, like our Chi­nese teach­ers, should edu­cate chil­dren to study hard from a young age to avoid freez­ing or starv­ing to death (that’s how my teacher sum­ma­rized the cen­tral idea for us). How­ev­er, the sto­ry’s end­ing was com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed, fill­ing me with envy and resent­ment: enjoy­ing sun­shine and beau­ti­ful scenery in Chi­na could lead to star­va­tion, but in Amer­i­ca, it could make you an artist! From then on, the new con­cept of stor­ing sun­shine and col­or was deeply etched into my mind, pro­found­ly influ­enc­ing my life ever since.
By com­par­ing Fred­er­ick the Siber­ian bird to Fred­er­ick, I’m not say­ing that all Chi­nese peo­ple have a Siber­ian bird-like mind­set, or that all Amer­i­cans or West­ern­ers have an Fred­er­ick mind­set. Nor am I say­ing that most peo­ple in the sub­sis­tence stage are like the Siber­ian bird, or that most peo­ple in the afflu­ent stage are like Fred­er­ick. In fact, every coun­try and every social class has both types of peo­ple. Dur­ing a gath­er­ing at the Nation­al Day hol­i­day, I talked to my Ger­man friend about Fred­er­ick, and she said it was also her favorite. I then told her the sto­ry of the Siber­ian bird, and she imme­di­ate­ly declared her­self a Siber­ian bird-like per­son. She said that the food stored in her refrig­er­a­tor is always enough for her whole fam­i­ly for a week; she can­not tol­er­ate hav­ing enough food for only one or two days. She always makes ample prepa­ra­tions in advance. There­fore, dif­fer­ent coun­tries and dif­fer­ent social class­es have both the Siber­ian bird and Fred­er­ick, rep­re­sent­ing two dif­fer­ent ways of life—what Fromm called “pos­ses­sive” and “sur­vival-ori­ent­ed” lifestyles. Those who live by pos­ses­sion want to pos­sess everything—to have every­thing they can think of in advance, to have every­thing under their con­trol, the so-called “Pre­pare the…”
future (what Tiger Mom always says); those who val­ue sur­vival take things as they come. They pay more atten­tion to the present and try to enjoy the present as much as pos­si­ble, instead of turn­ing every moment into a prepa­ra­tion for the future and los­ing its own mean­ing.
I must admit that I’ve always been raised and thought like the cuck­oo: As a child, I dili­gent­ly exer­cised self-denial, for­go­ing sun­light and vibrant col­ors to avoid freez­ing and starv­ing in win­ter. After grad­u­at­ing from col­lege and enter­ing the work­force, I worked even hard­er to secure a bright future. As a moth­er, I pre­pared my chil­dren for their own futures to avoid a cuck­oo-like fate. It was­n’t until I turned 40 that I sud­den­ly real­ized that both the dread­ed win­ter and the bright future lie in a tomor­row I can nev­er reach. This cuck­oo-like sense of urgency led me to neglect the present, turn­ing every moment into a prepa­ra­tion for the future, com­plete­ly ignor­ing the very exis­tence of the present because I only focused on future goals. With­out today, how can there be tomor­row? If we live our entire lives for tomor­row, then we’ve nev­er tru­ly lived. We might as well learn from the lit­tle field mouse, Afu, and live as much as pos­si­ble in the present moment. If stor­ing grain and nuts seems fun, then join the effort and save them. If such labor is bor­ing and you’d rather sit qui­et­ly and admire the sun­shine and col­ors, then ful­ly enjoy the moment, with­out dwelling on whether you’ll starve in the win­ter. Afu impart­ed to me a non-cling­ing mind­set: ful­ly savor the sun­shine when you can, and embrace the cold win­ter when it arrives, com­pos­ing poet­ry for every­one. This is not the usu­al cling­ing or entan­gled mind­set: enjoy­ing the sun­shine while wor­ry­ing about star­va­tion in the win­ter, then regret­ting not work­ing hard­er to store more food and instead focus­ing sole­ly on enjoy­ing the sun­shine. In this sense, Afu was a high­ly accom­plished Zen prac­ti­tion­er. No won­der many regard this book as a yog­ic prac­tice. In fact, it’s not just for yogis, but also for Bud­dhists and all prac­ti­tion­ers of all tra­di­tions who desire to live in the present moment.
To all those who love Alfred the Field Mouse, while you’re busy “stor­ing win­ter food,” don’t for­get to take a break and enjoy the sun­shine and beau­ti­ful scenery before you. Don’t always make stor­ing sun­shine and col­or a beau­ti­ful goal, wait­ing until this job is fin­ished, until your annu­al salary reach­es a cer­tain lev­el, until the chil­dren grow up… No one knows what will hap­pen when that time comes. We always think that the good life has not yet begun, but in fact it is already fad­ing. The only thing we can grasp is the present moment.

Huang Jian­ping