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Set a star bar friends otherwise you will not receive the wonderful push of Wenjing
Jagota Christopher, born in 1935 in Csikvánd, Hungary, took refuge with her husband in Switzerland in 1956 due to a riot in Hungary.
The exile that endured the pain of war and homesickness gave birth to the cold, realistic and thought-provoking qualities of Yagota's works. In 1986, his first novel, The Diary of a Bad Boy, was published in France, which immediately shocked the literary world. The sequels "Evidence of two" and "The Third Lie" were published in 1988 and 1991, becoming the famous "Evil Boy Trilogy". The "Bad Boy Trilogy" has been translated into 35 languages and won numerous awards.
In 2011, Jagota Christov received the Kossut Prize, the highest honor in the field of Hungarian literature and art. Today is the tenth anniversary of her death, and we will meet her again.
In last year's fire web drama "The Hidden Corner", the "bad boy" Zhu Chaoyang escaped by relying on a diary. In the world literary world, hungarian female writer Jagota Christopher's "Diary of a Bad Boy" can be described as a classic in "bad boy" literature, in which the twin brothers also have a diary, but they do not write a diary to cover up, but to record their cruel and cold life in the most straightforward and simple language. As the book says, "There are a lot of sad stories here, but nothing is as sad as life." ”
Stills from The Hidden Corner
More than once, Yagota has said that what is written in the "Bad Boy Trilogy" is what she really experienced when she was a child, and childhood memories have always been the most inseparable but untouchable part of her heart.
Stills from the film adaptation of Diary of a Bad Boy
In 1956, Jagota's husband had to flee prison because of his political activities against the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The young couple sneaked across the border late at night with their four-month-old child to Switzerland. In the days of foreign wandering, the language-deaf Yagota worked in a textile factory and a watch factory, and after five years finally got rid of the "illiteracy" state and learned to read and write in French. This experience was also included in her autobiographical novel The Illiterate Man. Spiritual desolation and non-native writing shaped The Simple, Cold Language Style of Thea Gagota and made it a model for this type of writing.
Jagota Christopher in his youth
In March 2011, Îīgatta received the Kosut Prize, Hungary's highest cultural honour, which was her last return to Hungary. On 27 July 2011, Yageta died at her home in Switzerland.
Although often Asgarta is seen as a representative of the exiled writers of Eastern Europe during the Cold War, neither her nor her work seems to have anything to do with politics, and what she writes about is a kind of internal rupture in people in turbulent times. Memories, dreams, lies, and reality are intertwined into a cold passion, and what she wants us to see is bloody wounds, desolate loneliness, unforgivable abandonment, useless expectations, silence and unbearable emptiness. Her stories are always so empty, but full. Perhaps as the New York Times commented on her: "There is always a certain sense of oppression in the concise story, like a bullet passing through an empty corridor at night." ”
Middle-aged Jagitta Christopher
The following is an excerpt from
The Illiterate Man, a collection of Jaggata's novels:
"Yesterday"
Of all my lies, this is the most interesting one:
That's whenever I tell you how much I want to see my hometown again.
You blink, look moved, clear your throat, say some comforting words, and don't dare to smile all night, and it is still worth telling you this story.
When I get home, I light all the lights in the house and stand in front of the mirror and look at myself in the mirror until the picture becomes blurry and illegible.
For a long time I was walking around the room, my books lying lifeless on the table and the bookshelf, and the bed was cold, very cold, too cold to sleep.
Dawn was approaching, and the windows of the opposite house were still pitch black.
I checked several times if the door had been closed. I tried to remember what you looked like so that I could be a little sleepy, but you were just a gray picture, as elusive as my other memories.
Like the black mountains I've crossed on a winter night, like the roomStreets I've been in when I wake up in the morning, like the modern factories I've been working for for ten years, like landscapes I've seen countless times and don't want to see again.
Stills from the movie "Burning Rose" based on "Yesterday"
Soon, I had nothing to think about, only a few things I didn't want to recall. I wanted to shed some tears, but I couldn't, because I had no reason to do so.
The doctor asked me, "Why did you choose the name 'Lina' as the name of the woman you were waiting for?" ”
I said to him, "Because my mother's name is Lina, I love my mother very much." I was ten years old when she died. ”
He said, "Tell me about your childhood. ”
I was about to say this, my childhood! Everyone was interested in my childhood.
I've become so accustomed to these stupid questions that I've prepared a childhood story that can answer anyone, and the lies are flawless. I've used this lie several times.
I was a war orphan, my parents died during the bombing, and I was the only one in the family who survived, with no other siblings. Like most children back then, I grew up in an orphanage. At the age of twelve, I escaped from the orphanage and crossed the border. That's all.
"That's all?"
"Yes, that's all."
I wouldn't confess my true childhood to him!
"The Illiterate" is a real picture
I was born in an unnamed village, in an insignificant country.
My mother, Esther, was a village beggar who would sleep with men in exchange for some flour, corn and milk, or pick up fields and fruits and vegetables from the park, and sometimes steal a chicken or duckling from the farm yard.
My mother's body was full of holes, just like the house we lived in, the clothes and shoes we wore. I covered the hole in my shoe with mud.
I live in the yard.
When I'm hungry, sleepy, or cold, I go back to the house, where there are things to eat, like dry apples, ripe corn, coagulated milk, and sometimes bread. I slept on a straw mat next to the kitchen.
Most of the time, the door is open so that the heating in the kitchen can be slightly transmitted to the room, and I watch and listen to everything that happens there.
Mom would go to the kitchen bucket to take a shower, scrub herself with a rag, and come back to sleep. She barely spoke to me and never kissed me.
Sometimes, a man would come out of the room and walk toward the kitchen, and he would look at me for a long time, touch my hair, kiss my forehead, and put my hands on his cheeks.
I don't like that. I was afraid of him, some trembling, but I didn't have the courage to push him away.
He came here a lot, and he wasn't a farmer.
This man, this man who stroked my hair, I saw again at school.
There is only one school in this village, and the principal teaches all the courses until the sixth grade.
On my first day at school, my mother freshened me up, dressed me, and cut my hair. She dressed herself as much as she could. She accompanied me to school, she was only twenty-three years old, very beautiful, the most beautiful woman in the village, but I was embarrassed by her.
She said to me, "Don't be afraid. The headmaster is very kind and you know him too. ”
Principal Sandor came in, and I recognized him. He sent out a list of books to buy.
The children all went home, but I stayed in the class. The headmaster asked me, "Have a problem, Tobias?" ”
"Yes, my mom can't read, and we don't have any money."
"I know, don't worry, you'll have what you need tomorrow morning, go back, I'll see you tonight."
He came, closed the door and stayed in the room with my mother. He was the only one to close the door while making out with my mom.
At the age of twelve, I completed compulsory education and got excellent grades. Sandor said to my mother, "Tobias is going to keep learning, he's better than the average person." ”
My mother replied, "But you know I don't have the money to pay his tuition." ”
"I can find a free boarding school where my eldest son is, eating and living, and there's nothing else to pay," Sandor said. As for some pocket money, I'll provide it, and he can become a lawyer, or a doctor. ”
My mother said, "If Tobias is gone, I'll be the only one left." I thought that once he was an adult, he would be able to work for the family to earn money and work for the farmers. ”
Sandor said: "I don't want my son to become a farmer, worse to become a farmer, or like you, a beggar." ”
My mother said, "I kept this child because I was obsessed with the past, and now that I'm old, you're going to take him away from me." ”
"I thought you left him because you loved me and loved this child."
"Yes, I love you, I still love you, but I need Tobias, I can't live without him, and now, I love him."
Sandor said, "If you really love him, you disappear." With a mother like you, he won't get any good results. You will only be a burden and a shame for his life. Go into town and I'll pay you for the fare. You're still young, you can continue to dream for more than twenty years, you'll make more than a dozen times more money than you would with the farmers here, and I'll take care of Tobias. ”
My mother asked, "You don't love me anymore?" ”
The man replied, "I have never loved you, and your face, eyes, mouth, and body fascinated me and entangled me." But Tobias, I love him, he belongs to me. I'll take care of him, provided you have to leave, between you and me, and it's over. I love my wife and children, including the child you gave me, and I love him. And you, I can't stand you anymore. You were just one mistake I made when I was younger, one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made in my life. ”
As usual, I was alone in the kitchen. I heard the same disgusted voices in the room, and even so, they continued to have sex.
I listened to their voices, shivering with the quilt draped over the straw mat, and the whole kitchen trembled with me. I tried to warm my arms, thighs, and stomach with my hands, but to no avail. My body trembled with uncontrollable sobs, and on the grass mat, under the quilt, I suddenly understood that Sandor was my father, and that he wanted to get rid of his mother and me.
I felt the hatred for this man in me. He pretended to be my father, and now he wanted me to abandon my mother, and he was ready to abandon her himself. I was dazed and fed up with all this, and I didn't want to go on to school or work in the peasant houses that came to tease my mother every day.
I had only one thought: to leave, to go away, to die. It's all the same for me, I want to go far away, never come back, and then disappear completely into the forest, in the clouds, remember nothing, forget, forget.
I took the largest knife in the drawer, a knife used to cut meat, and went into the room. They fell asleep, and he slept on her, the moonlight shining on them. It's a full moon, a huge moon.
I inserted the knife into the man's back, and I pressed the weight of my whole body against the hilt of the knife so that it penetrated his body and also into my mother's body.
After all this, I was gone. I walked in the fields where corn and wheat were grown, walking in the forest. I'm going to where the sun is going, and I know there are other countries in the west, completely different from ours.
I came to a big city in another country. To survive, I continued to beg or steal and slept on the street.
One day, the police caught me. They took me to a "youth house" for boys, where there were juvenile delinquents, orphans and vagrants like me.
My name is not Tobias. I made another name after my father and mother, and now my name is Sandor Lester, an orphan left behind by the war.
Yesterday, at the hospital, people were told that I could go home and continue working tomorrow. So, when I got home, I threw the medicines that had been prescribed to me, the powdery, white, and blue pills, into the toilet. As soon as I got home, I drank a lot of beer and started writing.
The Illiterate
By Jagota Christopher
Translated by Zhang Sunjing
The secret echoes of Jagota's memory of exile
28 fictional stories × 1 autobiographical novel
Cold and streamlined language texture
The memories of the road are full of memories and real life pains
Diary of a Bad Boy
Translated by Jane Yiling
Complete collection of the "Bad Boy Trilogy"
Yageta's first chinese media interview
Translator Jane Yiling wrote the preface for the first time in 20 years
A black masterpiece that has shocked tens of millions of readers around the world is an out-of-print classic worth reading repeatedly