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Readers familiar with the recent works of the Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe may notice an interesting phenomenon: in his later works, there are four novels ("The Stolen Child", "The Sorrowful Boy", "Water Death", "Late Years Style Collection") and one long essay ("Kenzaburo Oe's Oral Autobiography") that mentions Maurice Sentak and his picture book "In That Distant Place"). Especially in "The Stolen Child", Oe not only quotes Sendak's "In That Far Place" in the final chapter, but even chooses the plot of Goblin stealing babies in the picture book to name his novel.
Maurice Sendak
Compared to the poets, writers, thinkers, and philosophers that Oe has always liked to quote, the American illustrator Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) is extremely different. He is the first children's illustrator in the United States to win the Hans Christian Andersen Illustration Award, known as "Picasso in the world of children's painting", "the greatest creator since the founding of picture books", has won the "Caldecott Prize" eight times, and has also won the "Astrid Lindgren" Memorial Award known as the "Little Nobel Prize", and his most famous picture book "Beast Country" has been adapted into a movie and put on the screen, and Oe's favorite and intertextual picture book "In That Distant Place" is the silver medal work of the "Caldecott Award" in 1982. His prestige in the field of children's literature is evident from this.
Sentak, whom Oe has called "the genius of fairy tale comic strips," is a geek whose works are always focused on children's emotions of anger, uneasiness, anxiety, and use strange fantasies to help children heal their inner wounds. Take his most famous "Sendak Trilogy", for example, the first "Beast Country" has many beasts, the second "Midnight Kitchen" depicts a naked little boy, and the last "In That Distant Place" is recognized as the most difficult to decipher and enigmatic work of all Sendak's works.
As these works continued to sell well, even adults slowly became fond of them, as Sendak himself put it: "It has always been adults who need security themselves, but they have been projected onto children." Children are much smarter and braver than we think. "Sendak refreshed the public's understanding of the nature of childhood, showing the depth that picture books can reach, and influencing the development direction of children's books."
"In That Far Away Place"
Although "In That Distant Place" is only a short 350 words, the text finalization took a full 18 months, and the revision was as many as a hundred times, and the whole book took Sendak a full five years of energy, even Sendak himself once said that "the last part of the trilogy will be the most wonderful.".
In fact, the story of "In That Distant Place" is not complicated - the father goes to sea to make a living, the mother is depressed and has no intention of taking care of the children, and the sister Aida takes on the responsibility of taking care of her infant sister. While Ida is concentrating on playing the horn, the monster Goblin climbs in through the window and steals his sister, leaving behind a fake baby made of ice cubes. Ada was furious when she found out, put on her mother's yellow raincoat, and took a horn to rescue her sister. She climbed out of the window and flew to the monsters' caves to find the Goblins taking on a wedding in the form of babies. Ada blew a magic horn, and the Goblins descended into the rushing stream. In the end, Ada hugged her sister back to her mother, and her father also wrote a letter, in which she instructed Ada to take good care of her mother and sister, and said that her father would always love her.
In dealing with this story, Sendak, who is well versed in children's psychology, integrates the painful memories of his childhood and the process of finding an outlet for these painful memories, carefully constructing a strange fantasy world and creating an immortal work of art.
Born in New York to a poor Polish Jewish immigrant family, Sendak grew up in an atmosphere of fear and sadness with uneducated parents and many Jewish relatives who lost their lives due to Nazi persecution. His parents, who are busy making a living all day, have no time to take care of Sendak, who has been bedridden for a long time since he was a child, and it is his sister Natalie who is tirelessly accompanying and guarding him, and she has become a glimmer of Sundak's dark life. About half a century later, the guardian goddess naturally transformed into the prototype of her sister Ada in the picture book "In That Distant Place".
The plot of stealing a baby in this story is related to a sensational kidnapping in Sendak's childhood memories. On the evening of March 1, 1932, The 20-month-old baby of Lindbergh, the first famous American pilot to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, was stolen from a window through a ladder. When Sendak, 4, heard about the case on the radio, he realized that there was also a possibility that parents might not be able to protect their children, regardless of whether their families were prominent or poor. Due to his young age, weak and helpless, and also threatened with death, Sendak developed a strong empathy, lamenting that his situation was similar to that of the stolen baby. Sentak, who is terrified of death, pins his hopes on the baby. But 71 days later, the unfortunate baby was thrown into the wilderness, a tragedy that caused Unhealable psychogenic wounds to Sendak in his early childhood, and the fear of death remained at the bottom of Sendak's spirit. He naturally substituted his emotions into it, unwilling to let Lindbergh's baby die tragically, and finally, nearly half a century later, he let Ada find his sister in a picture book, trying to heal his heart trauma that had been difficult to heal for 49 years, as he said in his book "Sendak's Picture Book Theory": "This work liberated me from the Lindbergh incident." In the book I was Lindbergh's baby, and my sister saved me. In fact, this passage from childhood memories can also be regarded as a pathological self-statement in the psychological sense, showing that the narrator has finally achieved self-redemption, and it provides a positive way out for many people who have also encountered the same.
Of course, many of the other plots and compositions in the work are also derived from Sendak's childhood memories, such as the plot of Aida wearing a yellow raincoat from tu su's "Book of the Girl in the Huge Yellow Raincoat" that he had seen; the five butterflies he met on the way home were because of the birth of the world's first successful quintuplet in Canada in 1934. It can be seen that Sendak has cleverly woven into this story many memories of childhood that made him afraid, curious, and longed for. Sendak once said, "I want Mozart to guard these characters", which is why in the picture book, Aida came home with her sister and saw Mozart playing the piano on the other side of the river, and Sendak loved Mozart's music.
Kenzaburo Oe's encounter with Sendak's picture book
The creation of the novel "The Stolen Child" was inspired by the suicide of the famous director Itami Juzo in 1997 to protest against the unscrupulous media. The shock of this incident to Oe was no less than the impact of his son Oi Hikari when he was born with a sarcoma on his head. For Oe, Itami Thirteen is not only a brother-in-law, but also a close friend who has known, understood and trusted each other since he was a teenager, but was swallowed up by the Japanese black riot forces and unscrupulous media at the peak of his artistic career. His sudden death brought inexplicable pain and confusion to Oe and his family, just as Sendak always wanted to save the weak baby, and Oe also wanted his brother-in-law and old friend Itami Thirteen to be saved and immortalized. If there is any difference between the two, it is that Sendak uses the art form of painting to express more than 40 years of thinking: "Save the child!", and Oe borrows the picture book "In That Distant Place" and writes with the artistic technique of novel writing that he is good at, "Forget the dead people, along with the living people." Open only your hearts to the unborn children!"
So, in order to save his soul from addiction, Ōe's doppelganger Yangtze Guyi in "The Stolen Child" began a 100-day quarantine in Berlin, during which he encountered this picture book of Sendak. In fact, it is true that during his stay at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999, He stumbled upon a pamphlet entitled "In That FarAway Place," a conversation between Sendak and professor Stephen Greenblatt, a world-renowned Shakespearean researcher. After reading the contents, Oe was inexplicably excited, and immediately went to the bookstore to buy many of Sendak's works, including "In That Distant Place". Later, at the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin, Oe happened to hear a sentence from Professor Stephen Greenblatt, who had spoken to Sendak: "Maybe he himself is the 'stolen child.'" Perhaps it was this sentence that made Oi suddenly realize that Itami Thirteen, who had been swallowed up by the black riot forces and unscrupulous media, was also a "stolen child", and the countless Itami thirteen who had been swallowed by all kinds of dark forces, or were being devoured, or would be swallowed, were of course "stolen children"! He wrote the last five novels in the "Strange Duo" six-part series.
After putting "The Stolen Child" into his book, Dajiang visited China in September 2000 and gave a lecture at tsinghua university library titled "To the Young People of Beijing", in which he mentioned his encounter with "In That Distant Place": "During my stay at the University of California, Berkeley, I accidentally read Sendak's daily conversation records and the picture book "In That Distant Place", which gave me the method of writing my own novels. ”
Mo Yan, a famous writer on the mainland, once had a profound evaluation of "The Child Who Was Stolen": "Mr. Oe believes that he himself, his son Ōe Hikari and his brother-in-law Itami Thirteen are all children who have been stolen by goblins. It is an artistic conception with a wide range of symbolic meanings, with great tension. In fact, it is not only Mr. Oe, Hikaru Oe, and Itami Thirteen who have been stolen and replaced, which of us has not been stolen and replaced? Which of us still maintains an unpolluted heart? So who was the Goblin who stole us? We can see today's society, of all kinds of evil forces, as symbols of Goblin, but isn't society made up of many children who have been stolen and exchanged? Haven't those who have secretly replaced us already been secretly replaced by others? So who secretly replaced them? Thinking like this, we are bound to follow Mr. Oe in self-criticism, and each of us is both a child who has been stolen and a Goblin who has been stolen from someone else. ”
"Save the kids"
This passage of Mo Yan's words is not only a deep interpretation of "In That Distant Place" and "The Stolen Child", but also a ruthless warning to human society and all sentient beings: we are both the children who were stolen by Goblin and the Goblin who stole other children! This reminds us of the words that Mr. Lu Xun shouted out in 1918 a century ago- "Save the children!"
Kenzaburo Oe himself once said to his Chinese friends in 2010: "At present, I only have two big problems in my mind, one is Lu Xun and the other is a child." I am a desperate person, very desperate for the current situation... Every night, after tucking the blanket for the light, I took those desperate people to bed. After getting up in the morning, he still has to find hope for the light and the children of the world, and find hope in those despairs by writing novels..." Undoubtedly, the unremitting search for hope for children is the work of Oe in his later years, and it is the theme of Oe's late works, which can be seen in the titles of his six-part works in his later years, especially "The Child Who Was Stolen", "The Sad Boy" (2002), and "Two Hundred Years of Children" (2003).
Similarly, in the collection of essays in the "Definition Collection", Oe mentions more than once that "if possible, write a big book for children." In fact, Dajiang did indeed do this. In December 2010, Oe briefed a friend on the outline of a new novel he was working on: a brief discussion of children and newcomers through a letter between an elderly female protagonist and her brother, who had won an International Literary Prize. At that time, Oe also said that due to his advanced age, he could not continue to write large novels, and estimated that this was the last work he wrote for children.
Unfortunately, as the novel was about to be completed, the 3.11 earthquake, the great tsunami, and the Fukushima nuclear power plant leak that shocked the world occurred in Japan. During that desperate time, Oe felt that this novel that was about to be completed could no longer express his despair at this time, and even more could not help the children find hope in this sea of black despair, so he stored it in the library and began to write the "Collection of Styles of Old Age".
At the beginning of the Collection of Styles of Later Years, there is a passage that says: "I stopped at the small platform used for turning in the middle of the stairs, and as I wrote in Lu Xun's short stories remembered by the translation as a child, 'I cried with a whimpering sound'." The short story mentioned here is "White Light" in Lu Xun's collection "Scream", and the "terrible sad voice with great hope" in the novel is Dajiang's world view and creative direction, encouraging him to unremittingly fight against the Japanese right-wing forces and guiding him to launch the "Nine-Article Society" to support the peaceful constitution... Faced with a desperate social apocalypse and a conservative political status quo, Oe "whimpered and cried", describing a terrifying and desperate prospect in the text: "... If all the nuclear power plants in the country explode as a result of the earthquake, then the future gates of the city, the country, will also be closed. The knowledge of all of us will be reduced to a dead thing, but should it be said that it is a national? Or should we say citizens? No matter whose mind is to be filled with darkness, it will lead to destruction..."
Nuclear energy has a huge power beyond human cognition, and how to recognize and use this huge power is a major issue that human society must face. In the face of those Japanese politicians who use civilian nuclear power plants as a pretext to maintain a "potential nuclear deterrent" and even try to arm themselves with nuclear weapons, Oe ruthlessly exposes their lies, accuses the earthquake-induced nuclear power plant accident of being a complete man-made disaster, advocates cultivating the imagination of nuclear energy that will end the world, and telling the truth to children is not to frighten children, but to truly comfort children.
Don't underestimate your child's insight
In line with Oe's claims, Sendak also believes that adults think that only letting children read bright and beautiful stories is protecting children, but they are only protecting themselves. Children know far more about the light and darkness of this world than adults think. Therefore, Sendak's childhood is mostly dark, and the protagonists will face terrible and dangerous situations, but in the end they will always return home safely. When children read his picture books, it is as if they are experiencing a journey, and when they turn to the last page, the initial fear, nervousness, timidity and curiosity will be released, and the inner resonance will eventually allow them to achieve peace and growth.
Similarly, in Oe's collection of essays for children, "Under Your Own Tree", we can also witness his encouragement and expectations for children:
"The adults in today's society have turned the books you read into waste, and all of you must fight against such adults." "As long as you understand what is the thing that has an evil effect on human beings, you can fight it, and someone will bravely fight it."
"Even if you grow up, you will continue to have everything in your heart!" Through future study and accumulation of experience, all this will be further developed. The present you are connected to the grown-up you are. Connect with the people behind you who are no longer alive, and with the people in your future as adults. ”
This is Dajiang's ideal of "new people", full of humanitarian spirit and humanistic feelings that worry about the fate of the entire human race. Whether it is Kenzaburo Oe or Sendak, although there is darkness, fear and absurdity in their works, what they want to convey to us is truth and hope, with the deepest love for children. (Author: Ye Gaonan, Lecturer, Zhejiang Yuexiu Foreign Chinese College)