Mo Yan's inspirational speech

Distinguished academicians of the Swedish Academy, ladies and gentlemen:

Through TV or the Internet, I think everyone here has more or less understanding of the distant high-density northeast township. You may have seen my 90-year-old father and saw my brother and sister, my wife and daughter, and my grandson who was one year and four months old. But there is a person I miss most at the moment, my mother, you can never see it. After I won the award, many people shared my glory, but my mother could not share it.

My mother was born in 1922 and died in 1994. Her ashes were buried in the Taoyuan on the east side of the village. Last year, a railway had to pass there, and we had to move her grave to a farther distance from the village. After digging the grave, we saw that the coffin had decayed and the mother's bones had been mixed with the earth. We had to symbolically dig up some dirt and move to a new grave. That is, from that moment on, I feel that my mother is part of the earth, and my statement on the ground is a statement to my mother.

I am the youngest child of my mother.

One of the earliest things I remember was carrying the only kettle in my house to the public canteen to open the water. Because of hunger and powerlessness, I lost my hand and shattered the thermos. I was so scared that I got into the haystack and didn’t dare to come out one day. In the evening, I heard my mother calling my name. I got out of the haystack and thought I would be beaten, but my mother didn't beat me or lick me. I just touched my head and made a long sigh in my mouth.

One of the most painful things in my memory is to follow the mother's collective geography to pick wheat ears. The people who guard the wheat fields are coming. The people who pick the wheat ears are running away. My mother is a little foot, I can't run fast, I am caught, that figure. The tall watchman smacked her in the face, and she swayed and fell to the ground. The guards confiscated the wheat we picked and whistled and screamed. My mother's mouth is bleeding, sitting on the ground, the kind of desperate look on my face, I will never forget. Many years later, when the man who guarded the wheat field became a white-haired old man and met me at the market, I rushed to find him to avenge, the mother took me, and said calmly to me: "Son, that fight My people, and this old man, are not alone."

The most profound thing I remember was the noon of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Our family had a rare dumpling and only one bowl per person. Just as we were eating dumplings, a begging old man came to our door. I picked up half a bowl of sweet potato and sent him. He said with indignation: "I am an old man. You eat dumplings, but let me eat sweet potato." How long is your heart?" I said with anger: "We can't eat dumplings a few times a year. One person and one small bowl can't even eat half a full meal! It's good to give you sweet potato. You have to, Don't just roll!” The mother reprimanded me, then picked up her half bowl of dumplings and poured them into the old man's bowl.

The last thing I regretted was to follow the mother to sell cabbage, and intentionally or unintentionally counted a man who bought cabbage for a dime. After I finished the money, I went to school. When I came home from school, I saw tears of my mother crying. My mother didn't yell at me, just said softly: "Son, you let your mother lose face."

When I was a teenager, my mother suffered from severe lung disease, hunger, sickness, and fatigue, which made our family in trouble and could not see the light and hope. I have a strong ominous sign that my mother will always look for short-sightedness at any time. Whenever I came back from work, I shouted at the mother when I entered the door. When I heard her response, I felt a stone fell to my heart. If I couldn't hear her response, I was frightened and went to the kitchen and the mill to find it. Once I found all the rooms and I didn't see my mother, I sat in the yard and cried. At this time, the mother came in from the outside with a bundle of firewood. She was very dissatisfied with my cry, but I could not tell her about my concerns. When my mother saw my thoughts, she said, "Children are assured that although I am not a little happy to live, I will not go as long as the prince does not call me."

I was born with an ugly appearance. Many people in the village laughed at me in person. There were several students in the school who even beat me. I went to cry and my mother said to me, "Son, you are not ugly. You don't have a nose, no eyes, no limbs, no ugliness. And as long as you are kind, do good things, even ugly can become beautiful. Later, I entered the city. Some people with great culture still taunted my face in the back and even mocked me. When I remembered my mother's words, I apologized to them calmly.

My mother is illiterate, but she is very respectful of literate people. Our family has a difficult life and often eats up and down. But as long as I ask her for a book to buy stationery, she will always satisfy me. She is a hardworking person who hates lazy children, but as long as I have lost my work because of reading, she has never criticized me.

For a while, the market came up with a storyteller. I sneaked to the book and forgot the work she had assigned to me. To this end, the mother criticized me. When she was working on a cotton coat for her family with a small oil lamp at night, I couldn’t help but repeat the story that I heard from the storyteller during the day. At first she was impatient because she was In her mind, the book-speakers are all slick, and they are not doing business, and they can't make good words from their mouths. However, the story I retelled gradually attracted her. In the future, she will no longer give me a living, and acquiesce me to go to the collection. In order to repay the mother's kindness and to show off my memory to her, I will tell the story I heard during the day.

Soon, I am not satisfied with repeating the story told by the storyteller. I am constantly adding vinegar in the process of retelling. I will vote for my mother, make up some plots, and sometimes even change the ending of the story. My audience is not just my mother, even my sister, my sister, my grandmother has become my audience. After listening to my story, my mother sometimes feels worried, as if to say to me, and like to talk to herself: "Children, who will you become when you grow up? Do you have to rely on poor mouth to eat? ?"

I understand my mother's concerns, because in the village, a poor child is boring, sometimes causing trouble for myself and the family. The child I wrote in the novel "The Cow" because of the words that were disgusted by the village has the shadow of my childhood. My mother often reminds me to talk less. She hopes that I can be a quiet, stable child. But in me, it shows a strong ability to speak and a great desire to speak. This is undoubtedly a great danger, but the ability of the story I told has brought her pleasure, which has caused him to fall into deep contradiction. in.

As the saying goes, "Jiangshan is easy to change, nature is difficult to move." Although I have the guidance of my parents, I have not changed the nature of my favorite words, which makes my name "Mo Yan", much like the irony of myself.

When China graduated from a small school, she dropped out of school. Because she was young and weak, she could not do heavy work. She had to go to the grassland to graze cattle and sheep. When I took the cow and sheep from the front of the school and saw the old classmates playing on the campus, my heart was full of sadness, deeply understanding the pain of a person, even a child, leaving the group.

On the barren beach, I let go of the cattle and sheep and let them graze. The blue sky is like the sea, the grass is endless, there is no figure around, no one's voice, only the birds are screaming in the sky. I feel very lonely, very lonely, my heart is empty. Sometimes, I lay on the grass and looked at the white clouds floating in the sky, and there were many inexplicable illusions in my mind. There are many stories of foxes turning into beautiful women in our place. I imagine that there can be a fox turned into a beautiful woman and I will be a companion, but she never appears. But once, when a fiery red fox jumped out of the grass in front of me, I was scared to kneel on the ground. The fox ran away, and I was still shaking there. Sometimes I will kneel beside the cow, looking at the blue bull's eye and my reflection in the bull's eye. Sometimes I will imitate the sound of a bird trying to talk to the birds in the sky. Sometimes I will tell a tree about my heart. But the birds ignored me and the tree ignored me. Many years later, when I became a novelist, many of my fantasies were written into the novel by me. Many people praise me for their imagination. There are some literary enthusiasts who hope that I can tell them the secret of cultivating imagination. I can only report it with a smile.

Just like the Chinese sages said: "The blessings of the blessings, the blessings of the blessings and the blessings of the blessings", I fell out of school in childhood, suffering from hunger, loneliness, and no book to read, but I am also like our predecessors. The writer Shen Congwen started reading the big book of social life early. As mentioned above, going to the market to hear a few people telling a book is just a page in this big book.

After dropping out of school, I was in the midst of adulthood and began a long career of “reading with my ears”. More than two hundred years ago, my hometown had a great genius who told stories. Pu Songling, many people in our village, including me, are his descendants. I am in the field of collective labor, in the production team's cowshed, on the hot head of my grandparents, and even in the rickshaws of the cattle car club, listening to many ghost stories, historical legends, Anecdote, these stories are closely related to the local natural environment and family history, which gives me a strong sense of reality.

I never dreamed that these things would become my writing materials one day. I was just a child who was obsessed with stories and listened to people's stories with intoxication. At that time, I was an absolute theist. I believe that all things have spirituality. I will see a big tree and will be awe-inspiring. I saw a bird that felt it would change adult at any time. I met a stranger and I suspected that he was an animal. Whenever I came home from the production team's work room, the boundless fear surrounded me. In order to be courageous, I sang and sang loudly. At that time, I was in a period of changing voices, my voice was hoarse, my tone was ugly, and my singing was a torture for my folks.

I lived in my hometown for 21 years. The farthest away from home was the trip to Qingdao by train. I was almost lost between the huge timber of the lumber mill, so that when my mother asked me what scenery I saw in Qingdao, I told her in dismay: I didn't see anything, only saw a pile of wood. But this trip to Qingdao made me have a strong desire to leave my hometown and go outside to see the world.

In February 1976, I enlisted in the army, carrying four copies of the "Chinese General History Compilation" purchased by my mother to sell the jewelry at the wedding, and went out of the high-density northeast town, which made me love and let me hate, started. An important period in my life. I must admit that without the tremendous development and progress of Chinese society for more than 30 years, if there is no reform and opening up, there will be no such writer.

In the boring life of the military camp, I ushered in the ideological liberation and literary craze of the 1980s. I started to try to tell the story with a pen from a child who listened to the story with his ears and told the story with his mouth. At first, the road was not smooth. I didn't realize that my 20 years of rural life experience was a rich mine of literature. At that time, I thought that literature is a good thing to write people, that is, to write a hero model, so even though it was published a few times. Works, but the literary value is very low.

In the autumn of 1984, I was admitted to the Literature Department of the PLA Art Academy. Under the guidance of my famous teacher Xu Huaizhong, I wrote a series of short stories such as "Autumn Water", "The Dead River", "Transparent Carrot" and "Red Sorghum". In the novel "Qiu Shui", for the first time, the word "high-density northeast township" appeared. From then on, just like a peasant wandering around with a piece of land, my literary wanderer finally has a life to settle down. Place. I must admit that in the process of creating my literary territory "Gaomi Northeast Township", William Faulkner of the United States and Garcia Marquez of Colombia gave me important inspiration. I didn't take them seriously, but their heroic spirit inspired me to understand that a writer must have a place of his own. A person should be humble and concede in his daily life, but in literary creation, he must be arrogant and arbitrarily. I followed these two masters for two years, realizing that they must escape from them as soon as possible. I wrote in an article: They are two hot stoves, and I am ice, if they are too close to them, Will be evaporated by them. According to my experience, the reason why a writer is influenced by a writer is simply because of the similarities between the influencer and the soul of the affected person. The so-called "the heart has a little bit of a pass." So, although I didn't read their books very well, but after reading a few pages, I understood what they did and understood how they did it. Then I understood what I should do and What should I do?

The thing I should do is actually very simple, that is, telling my own story in my own way. My way, the way I know the market storytellers, is the way my grandparents and the old people in the village tell stories. Frankly speaking, when I told you, I didn't think of who would be my audience. Maybe my audience was like my mother. Maybe my audience is myself. My own story is my personal experience at first. For example, the child who was beaten in "The Dead River", such as "Transparent Carrot", the child who did not say a word from beginning to end. I did have been beaten by my father because I had done a wrong thing. I did indeed pull the bellows for the blacksmith master on the bridge site. Of course, no matter how peculiar the personal experience is, it is impossible to write the novel intact. The novel must be fictional and must be imagined. Many friends say that "Transparent Carrot" is my best novel. I don't refute it or agree with it, but I think "Transparent Carrot" is the most symbolic and meaningful one in my work. unit. The child who is dark, superhuman with the ability to endure pain and the ability of Superman is the soul of all my novels, although in later novels, I wrote a lot of characters, but no one is closer to me than him. soul. Or it can be said that there is always a leader among a number of characters created by a writer. This silent child is a leader. He does not say a word, but powerfully leads all kinds of characters in the stage of Gaomi Northeast. Perform and enjoy yourself.

Your own story is always limited. After you have finished your story, you must tell the story of others. So, the stories of my loved ones, the stories of my villagers, and the stories of the ancestors I heard from the old people, like the soldiers who heard the assembly, rushed out of my memory. They looked at me with a look of hope and waited for me to write about them. My grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, wife, daughter, have appeared in my works, and many of our folks in the high-end northeast township are also exposed in my novels. Pass over. Of course, I have dealt with them literarily, making them transcend themselves and become characters in literature.

In my latest novel "Frog", the image of my aunt appeared. Because I won the Nobel Prize, many reporters went to her house for an interview. At first she patiently answered the questions, but soon she was so annoyed that she went to the county town and her son's family hid. My aunt is indeed a model when I wrote "Frog", but the aunt in the novel is very different from the aunt in real life. The aunt in the novel is arrogant, sometimes like a son-in-law, and the aunt in reality is kind and cheerful, and is a standard wife and mother. In reality, my aunt's life is happy and happy. The aunt in the novel came to her later years but suffered from insomnia because of the great pain of her heart. She wore a black robe and wandered like a ghost in the dark night. I am grateful to my aunt for her tolerance. She didn't get angry because I wrote her in the novel. I also admire my aunt's wisdom. She correctly understood the complex relationship between the characters in the novel and the characters in reality.

After the death of my mother, I was deeply saddened and decided to write a book for her. This is the "Blood Breasts and Buttocks". Because of the well-being of the chest, it took only 83 days for the emotions to fill. I wrote the first draft of the 500,000-word novel.

In the book "Blood Breasts and Buttocks", I use the material related to my mother's personal experience unscrupulously, but the mother's emotional experience in the book is fictional or based on the experiences of many mothers in the high-end northeast township. In the volume preface of this book, I wrote the words "Dedicated to the Mother in Heaven", but this book is actually dedicated to the mother of the world. This is my arrogant ambition, just like I hope to make a small " The high-density northeast township is written in the same episode of China and the world.

The author's creative process has its own characteristics, and the ideas and brainstorming of each book are different. Some novels originate from dreams, such as "Transparent Carrots", and some novels originate in the events that happen in real life - such as "The Song of Paradise Garlic". But whether it originated from a dream or originated in reality, it must be combined with personal experience to become a distinctive personality. It uses a lot of vivid details to create a typical character, rich in language and unique in structure. Literary works. It is necessary to mention in particular that in The Song of Paradise Garlic, I made a real storyteller debut and played a very important role in the book. I am very sorry to use the real name of this storyteller. Of course, all his actions in the book are fictitious. In my writing, there have been many such phenomena. At the beginning of writing, I used their real names, hoping to get a sense of intimacy, but after the work is finished, I want to change the name for them but feel it is impossible. So, therefore

There have also been cases where the names of the characters in my novel have found my father's venting dissatisfaction. My father apologized to them for me, but at the same time enlightened them not to take it seriously. My father said: "In his "Red Sorghum", the first sentence says "My father is a bandit species". I don't care what you still care about?"

When I wrote the novel "The Song of the Garlic of Heaven", which faced the social reality, the biggest problem I faced was not that I dared to criticize the dark phenomenon in society, but that this burning passion and anger would make Politics overwhelm literature, making this novel a documentary report of social events. The novelist is a person in society. He naturally has his own position and viewpoint. However, when writing, the novelist must stand on the human stand and write all the people as human beings. Only in this way can literature launch events but transcend events, care about politics but greater than politics.

It may be because I have experienced a long and difficult life, which gives me a deeper understanding of human nature. I know what true bravery is and understand what true compassion is. I know that everyone has a difficult area in their hearts that is difficult to use, and this area is the vast world where writers display their talents. As long as it accurately and vividly describes this work of contradiction, it will inevitably transcend politics and possess the quality of excellent literature.

It’s boring to talk about my work endlessly, but my life is closely related to my work. If I don’t talk about the work, I feel that I can’t help, so I have to ask for forgiveness.

In my early works, as a modern storyteller, I was hidden behind the text, but from the novel "Sandalwood Penalty", I finally jumped from the background to the front desk. If my early works are self-speaking and have no readers, from this book, I feel that I am standing in a square, facing many listeners, and telling them vividly. This is the tradition of world novels and the tradition of Chinese novels. I have also actively studied Western modernist novels, and I have played with various narrative patterns, but I finally returned to tradition. Of course, this kind of return is not a constant return. The "Sandalwood Penalty" and later novels are a mixed text that inherits the tradition of Chinese classical novels and draws on Western novel techniques. The so-called innovation in the field of fiction is basically the product of this mixture. It's not just a mix of national literary traditions and foreign fiction skills, but also a mix of fiction and other art categories, just like "The Sandalwood Penalty" is a mix of folk operas, just like some of my early novels from art, music, and even acrobatics. Take the same nutrition.

Finally, let me talk about my life and death fatigue. The title of this book comes from Buddhist classics. As far as I know, translators from all over the world have a headache for translating this title. I have not studied the Buddhist classics in depth. The understanding of Buddhism is naturally superficial. The reason why I use this as a topic is because I think that many of the basic ideas of Buddhism are true cosmic consciousness, many disputes in the world, in the eyes of Buddhism. There is no point in it. Such a world of high vision is very sad. Of course, I did not write this book as a sermon. I wrote about the fate and human emotions of human beings, the limitations of human beings and the tolerance of human beings, as well as the efforts and sacrifices made by people to pursue happiness and persist in their beliefs. The blue face in the novel that confronts the trend of the times with one's own body is a real hero in my mind. The prototype of this character is a peasant in our neighboring village. When I was a child, I often saw him pushing a squeaky wooden wheeler through the road in front of my house. The one who pulled him the car was a donkey's donkey, and he was the wife of his little feet. This strange combination of labor, in the collectivized society of the time, seemed so weird and out of place. In the eyes of our children, they were also regarded as clowns moving against the historical trend, so that when they passed by the street At the time, we will throw stones at them with indignation. For many years, when I picked up the pen to write, this character, this picture, came to my mind. I know, I will write a book for him one day. I will tell his story to the people of the world sooner or later, but it was only in 2005, when I saw the "six reincarnations" murals in a temple. Understand the correct way to tell this story.

After I won the Nobel Prize in Literature, it caused some controversy. At first, I thought that the object of controversy was me. Gradually, I felt that this controversial object was a person who had nothing to do with me. I am like a watching man, watching the performances of everyone. I saw that the winner was covered with flowers, and he was thrown with stones and poured into sewage. I was afraid that he would be beaten, but he smiled and drilled out from the flowers and stones, wiped the dirty water from his body, stood on one side and said to the crowd:

For a writer, the best way to speak is to write. What I should say is written into my work. Words spoken with your mouth are scattered with the wind, and words written with a pen will never be erased. I hope that you can read my book patiently. Of course, I am not qualified to force you to read my book. Even if you read my book, I don't expect you to change your mind about me. There isn't a writer in the world that makes all readers like him. This is especially true in today’s times.

Although I don't want to say anything, I have to speak on such a situation today, so I will simply say a few more words.

I am a storyteller, I still want to tell you stories.

In the 1960s, when I was in the third year of the National Year, the school organized us to visit a miserable exhibition. We burst into tears under the guidance of the teacher. In order to let the teacher see my performance, I can't bear to wipe the tears from my face. I saw a few classmates quietly smearing the sputum on their faces and posing as tears. I also saw that between a classmate who was crying and crying, there was a classmate who had no tears on his face, no sound in his mouth, and no cover with his hands. He stared at us with a big eye, and his eyes were surprised or confused. Afterwards, I reported the behavior of this classmate to the teacher. To this end, the school gave the classmate a warning.

Years later, when I repented to the teacher for my confession, the teacher said that there were more than a dozen classmates who came to see him that day. This classmate died more than a decade ago. Whenever I think of him, I am deeply sorry. This incident made me realize that when people cry, they should be allowed to not cry. When crying becomes a performance, you should allow some people not to cry.

Let me tell you another story: I worked in the army more than 30 years ago. One night, I was reading in the office. An old man pushed in the door and looked at the position opposite me. He said to himself: "Hey, no one?" I stood up and said, "Do you want me?" Isn't it human?" The old chief was blushing and screaming. For this matter, I have been proud of it for a long time, thinking that I am a heroic fighter, but after many years, I feel deeply guilty.

Please allow me to tell the last story. This is what my grandfather told me many years ago: There are eight masons who go out to work, to avoid a storm and hid in a broken temple. The thunder outside was like a burst of fireballs, rolling out of the temple door, and there seemed to be a screaming dragon in the air. Everyone was frightened and terrified. One person said: "One of the eight of us must have done a bad thing that hurts the world. If anyone has done bad things, he will go out of the temple and accept punishment, lest the good people be implicated." Naturally no one is willing to go out. Someone suggested: "Since everyone does not want to go out, let us throw our straw hat out. Whose straw hat is scraped out of the temple door, indicating who did something bad, then ask him to go out and accept punishment."

So everyone threw their straw hats out of the temple door, and the straw hats of seven people were scraped back into the temple. Only one person's straw hat was rolled out. Everyone urged this person to go out and be punished. He naturally refused to go out, and everyone lifted him up and threw the temple door. The ending of the story I guess everyone guessed - the man had just been thrown out of the temple door, and the broken temple collapsed.

I am a storyteller.

Because of the story, I won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

After the award, many wonderful stories have taken place. These stories make me firmly believe that truth and justice exist.

In the years to come, I will continue to tell my story.