CCTV News:He is a storyteller and a very good storyteller. He is the first China-born writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and he has "local feelings" hovering between nostalgia and escape; He once said, "Earth is an important reason for me to go to the world". On October 11th, four years ago, Mo Yan won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, which was the first time for China to win an award in this world. Today, let’s review his literary speech at the Swedish Academy and listen to his understanding of literature and his memory of his mother … …
Storyteller
(Excerpt) Author/Mo Yan
What I tell when I stand on the earth is what I tell my mother.
Mother was born in 1922 and died in 1994. Her ashes are buried in the Taoyuan in the east of the village. Because a railway is going to cross there, we have to move her grave farther from the village. After digging the grave, we saw that the coffin had rotted and the mother’s bone had been mixed with the soil. From that moment on, I felt that my mother was a part of the earth, and what I said when I stood on the earth was what I said to my mother.
△ Data Map: Entering Gaomi Northeast Township
The most painful thing in my memory is to follow my mother to pick up wheat ears in the field. When the people who looked at the wheat fields came, the people who picked up the ears of wheat fled one after another. My mother couldn’t run fast with her little feet, so she was caught and slapped and fell to the ground. Many years later, the man who looked at the wheat field became a white-haired old man and met me at the market. I rushed up to get revenge on him. My mother took hold of me and said calmly, "The man who hit me was not alone with this old man."
△ Data Map: Mo Yan’s parents
One thing I regret most is that when I followed my mother to sell cabbage, I intentionally or unintentionally overcharged an old man who bought cabbage by ten cents. When I came home from school, I saw my mother, who seldom shed tears, was in tears. She gently said to me, "Son, you humiliated your mother."
Sometimes she does what she likes, makes up some plots and even changes the ending of the story.
Although my mother can’t read, she has great respect for those who can read. My family’s life is difficult, and I often eat every meal, but as long as I ask for books and stationery, she will always satisfy me and never criticize me for delaying my work because I read.
△ Data Map: Mo Yan’s 8-year-old photo (left)
For a time, I liked listening to books, and after listening to them, I would tell her stories vividly. But soon, I was not satisfied with retelling the story of the storyteller. I began to follow my mother’s wishes, making up some plots and even changing the ending of the story. After listening to it, my mother sometimes worries, like telling me or talking to herself: "Son, what will you be when you grow up?" Do you have to eat by playing loquacious? "
△ data map: Mo Yan’s former residence
I understand my mother’s concern, because in the village, a talkative child is boring. The child who was hated by the villagers because of his words in my novel Niu has the shadow of my childhood.
At that time, I thought that literature was about writing good deeds and heroic models.
"A leopard cannot change his spots, but a leopard cannot change his spots". I haven’t changed my nature of liking to talk, which makes my name "Mo Yan" like a satire on myself. Although I dropped out of school in my childhood and suffered from hunger, loneliness and no books to read, I started reading this big book of social life as early as possible. In February 1976, I was drafted into the army, and I walked out of the northeast township of Gaomi, which made me love and hate, and started an important period of my life.
△ data map: Mo Yan is in the army
In the military camp, I changed from a child who listened to stories with his ears and told stories with his mouth to a person who began to try to tell stories with a pen. At that time, I didn’t realize that rural life for more than 20 years was a rich mine of literature. I thought literature was about writing good deeds and heroes.
A literary tramp finally has a place to settle down.
In the autumn of 1984, I was admitted to the Literature Department of PLA Art College. Under the guidance of the famous writer Xu Huaizhong, he wrote a number of short stories such as Autumn Water, Dry River, Transparent Carrots and Red Sorghum. In Autumn Water, the word "Gaomi Northeast Township" appeared for the first time. Since then, just like a wandering farmer has a piece of land, a literary tramp like me finally has a place to settle down, and I also understand what I should do and how to do it.
△ data map
I began to tell my own story in my own way. My way is actually the way of storytellers in the market, that is, the way my grandparents and the old people in the village tell stories. My own story is my personal experience, such as the child who didn’t say a word from beginning to end in Transparent Carrots.
△ data map
I think Transparent Carrots is the most symbolic and meaningful of my works. The child, who is dark and has extraordinary ability to endure pain and feelings, is the soul of all my novels. It can be said that among the characters created by a writer, there is always a leader. This silent child is a leader. He doesn’t say a word, but he effectively leads all kinds of characters.
Novelists must stand on the standpoint of human beings and write about all people as human beings.
The writer’s creative process has its own characteristics, and the conception and inspiration trigger of each of my books are also different. Some originated from dreams, and some originated from reality — — Such as the song of garlic shoots in heaven.
△ Data Map: Mo Yan (left) and his wife and daughter
When writing a novel close to social reality, such as Song of Garlic in Heaven, my biggest problem is not whether I dare to criticize the dark phenomenon in society, but that this burning passion and anger will make politics overwhelm literature and turn this novel into a documentary report of social events.
△ The award certificate designed by Swedish painter John Stenborg for Mo Yan.
Novelists are people in society and naturally have their own positions and viewpoints. But when a novelist writes, he must stand on the standpoint of human beings and write as human beings.
I am a storyteller, and stories make me firmly believe that truth and justice exist.
My life is closely linked with my works. In my early works, as a modern storyteller, I hid behind the text, but from Sandalwood Punishment, I jumped to the foreground. If my early works are talking to myself and ignoring readers, then from the beginning of this book, I feel that I am standing in a square, facing many audiences and telling them vividly.
△ Sweden: Mo Yan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
I am a storyteller, because I won the Nobel Prize in Literature by telling stories. These stories make me firmly believe that truth and justice exist. I will continue to tell my story in the years to come.
On the morning of December 8, 2012, Beijing time,
Mo Yan’s Literary Speech at Swedish Academy
Story ● Life
Mo Yan, born in Gaomi, Shandong Province in 1955, was the first China-born writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1984, Transparent Carrots became famous, and the novel Frog won the Mao Dun Literature Prize. Red Sorghum, published in 1986, became his most famous masterpiece, and became the only Chinese novel selected as one of the 40 world-class literary masterpieces in the 75 years (1927-2001) by World Literature Today. His works have been translated into more than 20 foreign languages and more than 100 versions have been distributed in more than 40 countries and regions.
△ Data Map: Location of "Red Sorghum"
Mo Yan’s childhood coincided with the so-called "three-year difficult period" in China’s modern history. In the fifth grade of primary school, Mo Yan dropped out of school because of the Cultural Revolution and worked in the countryside for 10 years. When there were no books to read during the Cultural Revolution, he even read Xinhua Dictionary.
Mo Yan joined the army in 1976. During his tenure as a librarian in the army, he read a large number of literary books, and he read all the more than 1,000 literary books in the library.
In 1992, the first English translation of Mo Yan’s works, the collection of short stories "Explosion", was published in the United States. World Literature Today, an American heavyweight literary criticism magazine, commented: "Like Faulkner, Mo Yan led readers into a world with vivid imagination and complete self-sufficiency."
# Recommended reading #
Red Sorghum Family: A Tragic Dance Drama of the Heroes in the Northeast Township of Gaomi against the Japanese Invaders
The novel consists of five parts: Red Sorghum, Sorghum Liquor, Sorghum Funeral, Dog Way and Strange Death. Mo Yan created his literary kingdom "Gaomi Northeast Township" in this article, and described the vigorous, heroic and tragic dance dramas staged by my ancestors in Gaomi Northeast Township during War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. With Wang Yang’s wanton pen, the novel fully publicizes the vigorous vitality of the Chinese nation, which is an epoch-making epic in contemporary literature.
Big breasts and fat buttocks: eulogizing the meaning of life and great motherhood
The main body of the novel is to show the process of life, eulogize the ontological meaning of life and the greatness of mother. What the author focuses on with his pen is the subject of history: people. This work has considerable strength and thickness, which contains the writer’s deep thinking on life, mother and history, and his thinking and exploration on social history and times.
Sandalwood Punishment: Reproducing the Anti-colonial Struggle of Shandong Peninsula in the Late Qing Dynasty
The novel truly reproduces a civil anti-colonial struggle in Shandong Peninsula in the late Qing Dynasty. Focusing on the implementation of sandalwood punishment, the novel vividly shows the cruelty and inhumanity of the struggle between feudal kingship and power, and also highlights the historical mechanism of autocratic power acting on individuals, successfully reflecting the black soil and dark laws on which authoritarian power depends.
Frog: the ups and downs of rural fertility history in New China in recent 60 years
The novel is closer to the historical reality. By telling the life experiences of rural female doctors and aunts who have been engaged in obstetrics and gynecology for more than 50 years, it reflects the ups and downs of rural fertility history in New China in recent 60 years, and describes the arduous and complicated historical process that the country has gone through in order to control the dramatic population growth and implement the national policy of family planning.
Fatigue of Life and Death: Ode and elegy of farmers’ persistent life.
This is a great book that pays tribute to the great tradition of China’s classical novels and folk narration. In this sacred ceremony, The six great divisions in the wheel of karma, the oriental imagination, was hidden between the lines of the book, and the peasants’ persistent ode and elegy to life were written.
Wine Country: An Anti-corruption Novel Expressing Officialdom Wine Culture
The reason why the officials in the article are officials is not because they are superior to others, but because they are massive and have a strong appetite. This is not an anti-corruption novel in the usual sense, but a parody of almost all kinds of novels in China in the 20th century, from the diary of a madman to martial arts novels, to magic novels and avant-garde novels.
Text/Comprehensive Nobel Prize in Literature official website, Xinhuanet
Figures/Unless specially marked, the rest are from the Internet, and the copyright belongs to the original author.
