Last year, when the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the African-American writer Abdul-Razak Gürna, many people were full of question marks: "Who is Gürna?" "What did he write?" Some readers who try to understand him will not even be able to find a Chinese translation in China.
In the world literary world, African literature is indeed not mainstream literature, whether it is the creative community, the research community or ordinary readers, there is little understanding of African literature.
But in the history of literature, there is an african writer who is an exception, and when we talk about African literature and even world literature, we can't avoid his name.
He is J.M Coucher, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Nobel Prize in Literature's words to Coetzee went like this: "Coucher's work raises a question, and in the most uncompromising way, that is, what is human nature?" What is acknowledging the humanity of others? ”
In Coetzee's work, we can see not only his soberness and determination to the almost cruel truth of life, but also his adherence to basic human principles and hatred of barbarism.
"Provincial Life Trilogy"
Coetzee has always had a keen interest in autobiographical writing, and he has composed the "Autobiographical Trilogy" ("Provincial Life Trilogy") – "Boys", "Youth" and "Summer".
Coetzee's life is like a stage play that constantly changes scenes: born in Cape Town, South Africa, left after twenty years in the era when apartheid policies were gradually taking shape and prevailed in South Africa, and went to London; from 1965 onwards, his life underwent several major turns, first abandoning the transfer of literature, going to the United States to study for a doctorate in literature, and then returning to South Africa because of setbacks in the Application for Permanent Residency in the United States...
In Coetzee's autobiographical novels, we can clearly see these different stages of his life, and these novels are not boring, and each one can make people shine.
"Boys"
As the beginning of the trilogy, Boy is written differently in that it does not use the first-person narrative commonly found in autobiographical works, and the protagonist is a boy named John, but Coetzee always refers to him as "him".
The novel follows "he" in his childhood in South Africa between the ages of 10 and 13. "His" childhood was not carefree, but full of gloomy colors—"imagining erasing himself from everything in the world: from school, from his family, from his mother." ”
The mother-child relationship is the focus of the novel's portrayal: John loves his mother, but his mother's overwhelming, devouring, and self-sacrificing love for him makes him unable to feel at ease, and sometimes even wants to escape.
In this book, in addition to showing the boy's childhood life, Coetzee has a grander narrative intention – through a small boy, an ordinary middle-class family, to witness the bane sown by the cultural imperialism of the colonizers on South African society.
"Youth"
The protagonist of "Youth" is still John, and Coetzee writes about "his" life experience between the ages of 19 and 24: a South African college student who ran to London to become a junior computer programmer, a nine-to-five company employee, and the job bowl is not worried, but he is still depressed.
Young people of this age are either full of spirit or restless, but they can't play a vigorous hall of fame, and because of their lack of enthusiasm, they can't do big things or cause chaos. He also needs the feeling of being caressed, but sex never brings him the brilliance of life, just eats up time and energy...
This kind of introverted personality, such a bland state of existence, what kind of article can be made? However, Coetzee has such a skill, and a life without a trace of spring dreams has made him write very beautifully. He contemplated his youthful self as the other, and once again examined the wandering path of youth.
"Summer"
Summer is the final chapter of the trilogy, and Coetzee takes the subtle and confusing style of memoirs between reality and reality one step further: the famous writer Coucher is dead, and someone wants to collect materials to write a biography of him.
The biographer, who lived with Coucher, found clues in Coucher's notes and began a series of interviews, from Canada to South Africa, searching for Couche's ghostly middle-aged life like a detective.
It is a peculiar work, an "autobiography" from the perspective of others. Is it a fiction novel, or a memoir? Perhaps, we can only say that this is a very "cunning" novel with superb writing skills.
From fame to peak
Most people should be familiar with the apartheid system that once existed in Africa. As a white man living in South Africa, Coetzee's work inevitably involves apartheid.
Unlike the South African writers of the time who advocated the use of literature to directly reflect practical problems, Coetzee drew a clear dividing line between historical facts and literary creation. He even pointed out the deformity of South African literature: "South African literature is a kind of literature that is bound. It is not a fully developed human literature. It's the kind of literature you would expect someone in prison to write. ”
In Coetzee's view, fiction is a higher level of truth than history. Thus, in his depiction of apartheid, he never particularly emphasized the issue of race and colour, and he was not concerned with the cruelty of racial oppression itself, but with the plight of this oppression on the human spirit and the harm and blasphemy it inflicted on human nature itself.
In the following three works that made Coetzee internationally famous, we can see how a great writer saw history, human nature, barbarism and shame...
Waiting for the Barbarians
Waiting for the Barbarian is Coetzee's most famous work, and it is also his most sharp work and brushstrokes.
The story goes like this: For decades, the sheriff has been a loyal servant of the Empire, managing the affairs of a small border fortress, blind to the coming war with the barbarians, and preoccupied with studying fragments of ancient writing buried on the border. However, when the Empire's interrogation experts arrived, he witnessed the cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war and developed an affair with a savage girl. Sympathy for the victims led him to commit a strange act of rebellion: the girl was sent back to the tribe when the interrogation experts left, and this made him an enemy of the state ...
In this book, Coetzee does not want to limit his theme to the history of racism in South Africa, but he wants to talk about a painful history of mankind, examining how "civilization" harms civilization from the eyes of "civilized people".
"Michael J. K's Life and Times
"Michael J. K's Life and Time is a work that has truly earned Coetzee an international reputation, winning the Booker Prize, Britain's highest literary award, and Booker Prize jury Fay Weldon said: "This is a concise and powerful novel, with extraordinary innovation and a well-controlled imagination. ”
In the novel, Coetzee adopts a combination of multiple narrative perspectives to describe the helplessness of a simple-minded individual who only wants to live freely in a complex and conflicting society: Michael Coche, a black South African. During the Civil War in South Africa, K took her mother back to her hometown in her memory, but her mother fell ill and died halfway through, leaving K alone to escape in this chaotic world. On the way to escape, K was repeatedly included in a certain group, and repeatedly broke free.....
K's absolute refusal to be pitied, relieved, and liberated makes the whole novel more like an escaped fable, which also constitutes the most controversial part of the novel. Some have rebuked Coucher for being "so pessimistic about the possibility of redemption, so skeptical of human progress and the ability to act morally," and for Kuche's proponents, this attitude and "icy beauty" are Couche's greatest charms.
Shame
In the history of the Booker Prize, no author has ever won a prize twice, until the appearance of Shame, and Cooche became the first person.
Fifty-two-year-old Professor David Lurie is divorced, full of desire but lacking passion. After an affair with a student left him unemployed, he was shunned by friends and ridiculed by his ex-wife, and had to retire to his daughter Lucy's small estate. A short visit turned into a long stay—he tried to find meaning in this last remaining relationship with others. However, an unimaginable violence forced the father and daughter to confront the contradictions between them and the complex racial situation in the new South African society.
All the characters and animals in this novel are in shame. In Coetzee's view, "shame" is a constant, perpetual state. The truth of life, the truth of life, is shame, the state of shame is a normal state, you have nowhere to escape.
Jesus Trilogy
What is the elderly Coucher writing?
The Jesus Trilogy ("The Childhood of Jesus", "The Student Days of Jesus", "The Death of Jesus") are three ambitious works written by Kuche after he came to the edge of life, showing the words that Coucher most wanted to leave to the reader when he looked back on life, and explained that even at this age, the writer still wanted to ask questions about the world and life.
The novel uses the child David as the central character, using the perspective of the third person - "Simon", to record David's short life from childhood to the age of 10 when he died of a strange disease. Simon's main task was to take care of David, a boy with no parents, no idea where he came from, and who was not related to him.
The Childhood of Jesus
The story begins with a mysterious migration. The boy David and Simon Sr. meet on a ship to a new world, and they are both erased from their former memories and identities to start a new life. Simon intuitively identified the woman Ines as David's mother, and thus formed a family.
The boy refuses to go to school, claiming that he already knows the real language and numbers, not the school set. The only book he was willing to read was a children's edition of Don Quixote.
Everything the elderly Simon knew was constantly subjected to the boy's tricky questions and challenges. After all, in the new world, nothing is taken for granted.
The Student Days of Jesus
The boy David and his parents Simon and Ines come to a new city to escape the education system in Novella, where they must live in anonymity as "fugitives".
David needed to attend a new school, so he entered the dance school in the new city, where the teaching method was quite strange - the principal's wife, the dance teacher, instructed the students to summon numbers from the stars by dancing.
Just when the conflict between the old and new learning concepts has not yet been resolved, a murder incident falls on the headmaster's wife, and the story behind the murder is even more intriguing...
The Death of Jesus
David is ten years old and plays football with his friends every week, and they don't have the equipment or the rules. The director of the nearby orphanage invited them to form an official team and play against the boarding school's team. In order to play in the team that can win, David chooses to leave his home and live in an orphanage.
Soon, however, he became a victim of a mysterious disease. There are many opinions about David's illness: doctors, teachers, friends, and parents treat and explain David's situation in different ways. After David's death, everyone began to commemorate himself in different ways, and some people even said that David left himself a secret message about the world...
In the "Jesus Trilogy", Coetzee abandoned the pursuit of form, but wrote the most special novel, the subtleties of which are worth playing and pondering repeatedly. After reading it, you may also sigh like many people: "Only Coetzee writes novels like this." ”
*The pictures in this article are all from the Internet
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