The Surging News reporter Luo Xin
Last August, the International Booker Prize announced its 2020 laureates. Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, a Dutch "post-90s" novelist, won the honor for his novel De avond is Ongemak and became the youngest winner in the history of the International Booker Prize.
The story of Restless Nights takes place in a devout Dutch religious family living on a dairy farm, and the narrator "I" is a ten-year-old girl named Yas. Because Yas's eldest brother Matisse was killed in a skating accident, her family fell into a breakdown, and she was embroiled in increasingly dangerous fantasies.
Recently, "Restless Night" was officially launched by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House in Chinese translation. On September 25, the translator and writer of "Restless Night", the poet and translator Hu Sang, visited the Shanghai Happiness Collection and launched a dialogue on "Restless Night" called "Novels For the Future".
Recently, "Restless Night" was officially launched by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House in Chinese translation.
Husan said that "Restless Nights" maintains a very charming tone from beginning to end, which is deeply involved in Reinerfield's life feelings, including her feelings about family relationships, feelings about death, feelings about nature, feelings about her body and desires. These feelings are not like being educated by Western humanism, she seems to have been born as a unique angel, writing with a message that ordinary people do not have.
Therefore, "Restless Night" is actually a work that is difficult to classify, whether it is her farm, animals, human desires... If you want to explain, it seems necessary to invent a new set of vocabulary. "This novel cannot be interpreted in the way that Europe and the United States are politically correct, because that political correctness comes from centuries-old humanistic and moral standards, either positive or negative, but this novel is oriented to life itself, and this life has a possibility. The best contribution of this novel is that it contributes a new way of using language, it contributes new possibilities for us to see life. ”
On September 25, the translator and writer of "Restless Night" then (right), the poet and translator Hu Sang (center), visited the Shanghai Happiness Collection and launched a dialogue on "Restless Night" called "Novels For the Future". Zuo is the editor of the book, Cao Qing. The Surging News reporter Luo Xin figure
An authentically sad story
In this way, Night of Restlessness contained the purest sadness she had ever read. The novel is divided into three parts, the first part is about the death of the eldest brother Matisse, the second part is about the daily life of the Yas family on the farm after losing a member, and the third part is an unexpected ending.
"I was in a constant state of grief when translating, and this sadness was pure, authentic. Many of the novels we see about grief now have been treated as adults, and many of the metaphors are deliberate, even intellectual, or generally acceptable to the public. But for the purposes of this book, the metaphor of every event on the farm is beyond imagination. Therefore, it is believed that "authenticity" is the biggest feature of this novel, and that "authenticity" stems from Reinerfeld's sad projection system and the projection system of young people or urban people that we have known in the past, "Her sadness comes from life itself, and this life is Dutch farm life." ”
Readers will see that in the descriptions of farm work full of smells and colors, such as shoveling cow droppings, feeding cows, brushing cows, milking cows, delivering calves, hay, etc., Reinerfield especially portrays the way a family grows up and communicates in farm life. For example, children's understanding of life and death is derived from farm animals, and when they find that their mother's weight is decreasing, they naturally think of "death"; for example, their exploration and attempt at sex is often out of natural imitation of animals; after losing the firstborn, the mother seems to have a life stoppage, and she is not very concerned about the other three children, but she will say to a sick little cow: "Poor little thing." ”
Reinerfeld said in an interview that the early death of a child can have two consequences for families: family members are either closer or they fall apart. Their families didn't fall apart," but all the emotional relationships were changed. Thus, the focus of Night of Restlessness is precisely on "the relationship between people, not on the event itself."
In a way, the novel is also semi-autobiographical in nature, and Reinerfield also experienced tragedies such as the "death of his brother" as a child. "This experience is not the prototype of the accident written in 'Restless Nights', but it is the starting point of this sad story." It is mentioned that until now, Reinerfield's family has not read the book, although the whole village, including the barbershop and the post office, knows that she wrote the book, "Her father and mother, her other brother and sister, have not yet read this book." Everyone seems to want to keep a certain distance from the origin of the sadness in their hearts. ”
Dutch "post-90s" novelist Mariek Lucas Reinerfeld received a translation of "Restless Nights".
We can live in this world differently
Both Reinerfield and Yas were born into a Converted family. The novel writes that the TV in Yas's home does not receive commercial channels, only The Netherlands 1, 2, 3, because these stations do not have any nudity. Mom would have a very short "detached" moment every week: on Monday, she would watch the quiz show "The Race of Jargon" while ironing her clothes. Whenever a word is announced, the iron makes a hissing sound, and those words are usually words that are not found in the Bible, and are called "blushing words" by my mother.
Husan believes that "Restless Night" is more about a young life trying to break through the shell that binds her. Jaas's birthday was April 20, which was also Hitler's birthday. So as soon as she was born, she felt like she was in a very repressive historical situation, imagining all day long that the basement of their house was a place where Jews were hidden. She wants to break through the repression of life feelings and feel the natural things around her, especially the toad. She hopes that through all this, she can live in this world differently. ”
In Husan's impression, Reinerfeld is a very special "post-90s": she likes to wear suits and is accustomed to replacing "me" with "them" when calling herself. When discussed with him about "female writing", Husan said that he did not think that "Restless Night" had a fierce discussion of feminism.
"I think her suit is not to rebel against the woman who is stared at, but that this existence is her true way, the original state of her life." The novel also writes about women's physical feelings, such as Yas kissing her sister and having physical contact, trying to grasp her body. At this time, her experience is not 'what is my gender', but 'I can't grasp who I really am'. Her writing is derived from life itself. ”
But Hussan also stressed that this does not mean that Reinerfeld just sketched out his personal experience like a diary, "She famously said: Writing is a way of playing with each other with the self you exist." She was playing, talking, negotiating, and even confronting herself. In the process, there are many new possibilities for writing. ”
Dutch version of Restless Nights
Her novels are poetry, and her poems are novels
Some people are also curious, how did Reinerfield start writing?
So I said that Reinerfield did not have much entertainment since childhood. When she was in elementary school, she saw Harry Potter in the school library, and she was immediately intoxicated, but she did not dare to take Harry Potter home — she would be scolded by her parents, so she copied the full text of Harry Potter on her computer, so she opened up her literary hobby.
Before writing Night of Restlessness, Reinerfeld had already appeared in the literary world with his poetry collection "Cowhide". But she also wrote poetry unlike others, she went to see counseling and found a collection of poems by the Dutch poet Jan Volckers, and came into contact with poetry on that occasion. "She felt sorry for Jan Volckers because both lived on farms and were neither poet from an intellectual background, and she saw the poems and went on the path of writing."
Husan, who is also a poet, feels that there is no clear line between Reinerfield's poetry and fiction, in a sense, her novel is poetry, her poetry is fiction, and many of the sentences in her novels are poetry-like existence. "'Restless Night' is full of rich sensibility from beginning to end, and even every word, every thing has a rich and unique sensibility."
Therefore, I also have a deep feeling for the poetry of "Restless Night". She was very impressed by two details, one was that Yas's table mate drew a full stop after writing a sentence, and Yas saw it and thought, "I want to be that period." There is also a writing that Yas found a pushpin that had fallen from a cork board, remembering that the teacher had inserted a pin on the world map on the back wall of the classroom to imagine where he wanted to go in the future, so he pulled up his shirt, stuck the pushpin into his soft belly button, and said calmly: "Sooner or later, one day, I will go to myself." ”
Poetry like this is very much in Reinerfield's creation. She was born with a talent to be able to provide a fresh definition and a fresh way of articulating that definition. For example, 'How to go to herself', she used a self-harming pushpin, and for 'where the future goes', she used a period. She said she had also read a poem by Reinerfeld on a Dutch poetry website and was attracted by a title called" called "The Frightened Rabbit Is the Heaviest."
Because of Jan Volckers' poetry collection, Reinerfeld came into contact with poetry.
Writing that leads to the future
Inevitably, people will compare Reinerfeld with Another high-profile European "post-90s" female writer, Sally Rooney. In this way, Sally Rooney is a very sophisticated and sophisticated young man with a very clear ideological tendency in the direction of writing. Readers can often see traces of modern life in Sally Rooney's books, such as "Chat History" writing about the emerging medium communication.
But looking at Reinerfield's Night of Restlessness in reverse, there aren't many modern and contemporary objects, such as the Internet, or what 21st-century teenagers usually have. "This makes Reinerfield very different from Sally Looney, one of whom lives in a modern city full of intellectual debates; one who stays on a 20th-century farm and whose father teaches his children the Bible instead of science books," he said. ”
"So even in the 'post-90s' generation of writers, Reinerfeld is really special." Husan said that Reinerfeld received a lot of attention from the European and American literary circles as soon as she debuted, and many people talked about her, but also found that they could not digest her with the existing literary standards. Her uniqueness seems to be innate, or perhaps because her life trajectory is not the common "study - leave - life in the metropolis" common to modern young people, making her way of feeling, language and writing are very unique.
So he also speculated that works such as "Restless Nights" might not be found in Reinerfield's literary genealogy, "and then she will definitely take a new path, and there will be a constant creation." ”
"It's not easy for young writers to start a path of writing. Writing that leads to the future is certainly writing that can be true to one's unique feelings and language use ability. In the past two years, Hu Sang has paid attention to young people's writing, and also concerned about "whether the knowledge needed for writing can be updated" and "former writers should obtain knowledge from literary history or literary classics." In the past two years, due to the rise of the Internet, young people have no longer acquired writing knowledge just through literary traditions. Sometimes you can brush the circle of friends, watch short videos or play games. The knowledge needed for future writing may not be acquired through reading traditional classics, but through new stimuli in life. ”
In this way, the book "Restless Night" will also be a new stimulus for readers, "After reading this novel, everyone may be eager to see something different in the future." ”
The English version of Restless Nights
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai
Proofreader: Luan Meng