Siegfried Lenz's masterpiece of novels, "The Youth and the Sea of Silence", which is known as one of the "three great masters of German literature after the war", was translated and published for the first time in mainland China, and was published by Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House. KEY- can be culturally launched.
In a melancholy tone of remembrance, the book tells the story of a sensitive and melancholy teenager struggling to get out of his trauma, and interprets The Introverted Affection of Lenz to the extreme. As former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said of Lenz: "It is a microcosm of the nation of our time." Anyone who wants to know about Germany should read his book. And whoever wants to know About Lenz can start with This Book of Youth and the Sea of Silence. The book is accompanied by a valuable interview with Lenz and a detailed chronology.
Mo Yan once said: "Grasse and Lentz, their attraction to me is even greater than the attraction of Germany to me, if I can meet them, I think it will become my grand festival." Yu Hua also told an interesting story about "stealing books": he borrowed a copy of Lenz's "German Lesson" from the library, because he did not want to lose it after reading it, he lied that the book was lost, and paid a fine of three times the price of the book, so that he could always take it with him. After the film of the same name of "German Lessons" aired, Lenz was known to more Chinese readers, but this knowledge was far from enough about the legendary writer who was more loved by the German people than Heinrich Burr and Günter Glass, two Nobel laureates.
Siegfried Lenz
Lenz was born on 17 March 1926 in Luc City (present-day Ełk, Poland) in the Masurian region of East Prussia, to a family of customs officials. In 1943 he was drafted into the German Navy and served on the armored ship General Scheer. After the ship was bombed by the RAF, he was stationed in Denmark with his troops. On the eve of Germany's surrender in World War II, Lenz fled his troops and was captured by the British, becoming an interpreter for the Prisoner of War Repatriation Committee. In 1945 he was repatriated to Germany to study philosophy, English language and literature and literature at the University of Hamburg. In 1951, the young Lenz published his first novel, "There are Goshawks in the Air", which caused a sensation in the German literary scene, and the book won the René Schiller Prize in 1952 and the Lessing Prize in Hamburg in 1953 as "a unique symbol of the persecuted people of our time", and Lenz became a professional writer ever since. In 1955, After Lenz's first collection of short stories, My Little Village Is So Sentimental: The Story of Masuria, was published, 1.6 million copies were sold that year. Germany's "Pope of Literature" Marcol Lech-Lanski commented that he was "both a natural sprinter and a proven long-distance runner".
Lenz has achieved astonishing success in a variety of literary genres, with his works translated into 22 languages, sold more than 25 million copies, and adapted several works into films. He has also won more than thirty major literary awards, including the Goethe Medal of Gold, the Thomas Mann Prize for Literature, and the Lessing Prize. (He jokingly calls his most important medal "Honorary Administrator of the Ulster Locks Administrators Association.") "The Boy and the Sea of Silence" is a must-read for German high school students, and the 2013 film of the same name won three international awards, including the Günter Straker Television Award.
Professor Luo Wei of Peking University summed up Lenz's creative journey in life: "The basic themes that run through All of Lenz's works are: experiencing unfreedom, being involved in guilt and persecution, experiencing loneliness and incompetence. His early works focused on confronting Hitler's dictatorship and its aftermath, while his later works focused on human survival and morality. "The Boy and the Sea of Silence is a masterpiece of Lenz's mature period, and in this book he touches on issues with a strong universality, which can cross the times and borders and reach the reader's heart.
The Boy and the Sea of Silence is a novel by Lenz written in 1999, the original German translation should be "Ana's Relic", and the translated title Chinese highlights the characteristics of marine novels. The novel tells the story of a 12-year-old boy Ana in calm, restrained and sentimental words, showing the inner struggle and pain of a sensitive and delicate boy.
The novel is told in the first person that "I" am Hans, the eldest son of Ana's foster family, and although he and Ana have only been together for two short years, they have developed a deep friendship between brothers and friends. The story jumps between memory and reality, opening a month after Ana's death, and Hans is caught in memories while sorting out his belongings. As the memories unfolded, Hans became more and more into Ana's inner world.
"Ana, tonight I really can't pack up what you left behind, so I quietly remove them and banish them to the endless dark attic, for an indefinite period of time. There are so many memories here, and everything is a testimony, telling bits and pieces, telling the old days. ”
Ana arrives at Hans' house on a dark, cloudy harbor in winter, a shipbreaking yard where children grow up, where most of the events in the novel take place. Ana came here because his family had died and he was the only survivor. As for the reason for his death, it is a great suspense in the novel, which is a secret buried deep in Arna's heart, and it is also the source of his trauma, which is also forbidden to be discussed in Hans's house. Later in the article the author succinctly and implicitly hints at what really happened. Ana's father was a captain, a skilled sailor who was not afraid of the rough seas, but because of his debts, he was poisoned at a peaceful family dinner, and he, his wife, and two daughters all died, and only Ana was saved.
Shy and sentimental in nature, Ana, who holds secrets, is very gifted in language and has a special love for seafaring. Ana tries to integrate into her new family and school, but is often in a trance due to unhealed wounds. In her own way, Ana conveys kindness to other children in any way, regardless of the rewards, but is repeatedly rejected by her peers. Hans also had a younger brother, Russ, and a younger sister, Vicker, and Ana soon developed a youthful admiration for the 14-year-old Vicker. However, Ras and Vicker refuse to accept Ana, treating him as an outlier, and sometimes even publicly bullying him, which makes Anna even more miserable.
When Vicker and the others unexpectedly take Ina one day, Ana doesn't know that she's just being used by them. He inadvertently joined the theft of his adoptive father's shipbreaking yard and even hurt his loyal janitor friends. The day after the crime, Ana confessed everything to his adoptive father, who forgave him for his repentance, but Ana still walked alone on the barge in the torrential rain and disappeared into the Elbe.
Lenz said in the interview: "Narrative is as important to me as learning how to live. To give yourself a clear understanding of this strange and strange life, narrative is a kind of self-liberation. Narration is a better way to understand! Storytelling provides me with an opportunity to have a clearer understanding of certain troubles, certain experiences. My purpose is not to liquidate, but to be able to see through. "Many people and things are lost in time, while others shine because of the distance of time. This is the light of silence, the unspoken words no longer need to be said, all misunderstandings have disappeared, and finally what remains is the unconcealed sincerity of the bland narrative, and the long dull pain hidden in the heart. This is both the worldly heart of Lentz's pen and the imprint he left on the history of literature.
This year, KEY-Can Culture will also launch Lenz's most important tome, "Hometown Museum", translated by the famous German translator Zhu Liuhua.
Nandu reporter Zhu Rongting