Mo Yan established his position in contemporary Chinese literature as China's first Nobel Prize winner in literature, and he is considered a symbol of Chinese literature going global, and some people even call Mo Yan's literature a symbol of Chinese cultural self-confidence.
Can Mo Yan's literature really make Chinese feel confident? Maybe some people feel it, but a large number of other Chinese feel humiliation, not confidence at all. How can a Chinese feel confident when he reads the Nobel Prize Committee for Literature's award speech to Mo Yan: "He sketched a long scroll of nearly 100 years of Chinese history, in which there is neither the auspicious scene of a unicorn nor the joyful happiness of a young girl, but the pigsty-like life there is a personal experience"?
Why does Mo Yan's literature bring such feelings to Western masters? This should be answered from Mo Yan's concept of literary creation.
Since the beginning of the 20 th century, the literary creation that accompanied the surging process of the independence and liberation of the Chinese nation has been a revolutionary new literature, which has finally formed a revolutionary concept of literature and art based on the chairman's speech at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art, and established a literary and artistic line that literature and art serve the workers, peasants and soldiers. Mo Yan believes that this line has constrained his creation, and he said that the "Speech" has huge limitations, overemphasizing the relationship between literature and politics, overemphasizing the class nature of literature, and ignoring the human nature of literature.
If we break away from the main line of serving the workers, peasants and soldiers, we will be separated from the broadest group of workers, peasants and soldiers, and this broadest group is precisely the embodiment of national character. In this way, Mo Yan's literature bid farewell to the public, and his literature no longer has any national superiority to be proud of, but is full of darkness, evil, shamelessness, and cunning. This kind of evaluation is very much in line with the characteristics of Mo Yan's literature.
Mo Yan's literature doesn't understand what a human being is, and almost all of his writings are alienations of people, humanoid monsters. It is no wonder that Western masters think that "the sound of donkeys and pigs drowns out the human voice" and "life in the pigsty", can those Westerners be blamed? It is Mo Yan's literature that gives them this curiosity and feeling.
During the colonial period, colonialists used to treat black people in Africa as ornamental animals, and established "human zoos", where black people were kept in cages for people to watch, and the spectators would throw them bananas, fruits, candy, etc., and let them perform various performances.
Can black people who are treated as ornamental animals feel confident?
Can Mo Yan's literature give the impression of "life in a pigsty" formed in the West, and can you feel self-confidence?
If it is said that the black Africans were regarded as ornamental animals by the colonizers during the colonial period, then Mo Yan's literature created the impression of "life in a pigsty" in the West, which completely belonged to throwing themselves into their arms, contemplating themselves, and relying on being their own countrymen, "forming a friendship with the country", and asking for a little reward from Westerners.
Does Mo Yan's literature make Chinese feel confident? If this can also be called self-confidence, it is really sad.