"Bookside Notes" talks about immigrant literature, starting with the new Nobel Laureates | Lin Yi

Source: Jiaxing Daily - Jiaxing Online

This year's Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Abdelazak Gerner

Why was the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Abdulazark Gerner, an unpopular writer?

The award speech said: "in recognition of his uncompromising and compassionate insight into the impact of colonialism and the fate of refugees in the cultural and continental divide". The choice of him reflects the Nobel Prize's focus on immigrant literature.

Gerner began writing in 1987 and has published eight novels, mainly on the suffering and identity crisis caused by colonialism and diaspora. At present, only the "Anthology of African Short Stories" published by Yilin Publishing House has selected Gurna's short stories "The Cage" and "Bossy".

Gerner is currently a writer living in the UK writing in English and a professor at the University of Kent, in other words, Gerner is an immigrant writer. V.S. Naipaul, who won the 2001 award, and Kazuo Ishiguro, who won the 2017 award, are both immigrant writers.

The essay written by the critic Zhang Feng is called "Wandering Between the Center and the Edge: The Diaspora of Abdulrazak Gerner." The title of the article actually points out the common features of immigrant writers. That wandering, restless sense of dispersion.

If you go back in time, joseph Brodsky, the winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature, felt this particularly vividly.

Brodsky has a famous essay called "The State we call 'exile', or floating acorns." Brodsky says shifting and misalignment is a common phenomenon of this century. Brodsky describes the situation of the exiled writer he represents, whose country he arrives provides him with personal security but renders him socially insignificant. The reality of exile involves the relentless struggle and planning of an exiled writer to restore his meaning, his leadership role, and his authority.

The situation of exile itself places intellectuals in a relationship of cultural contradictions. Sayyid once expressed the contradiction of the view of exile, intellectuals and culture: the best example of the model of intellectuals as outsiders is the situation of exile, that is, the state of never being fully adapted, always feeling alienated, chatty, familiar with the world...

This state of affairs places immigrant writers there, making it impossible for them to return to some previous, perhaps more stable, situation at home. In order to obtain this situation at home, we know that Nabokov almost completely eliminated traces of the Russians of his early years and became a rather American writer. Other writers, such as Milan Kundera, settled in France and insisted on writing in the Czech language while refusing to return to their countries.

The situation of these older immigrant writers is described as "exile." By naipaul, Kazuo Ishiguro, Glena and others, "exile" became "diaspora", and the decline in the emotional dimension of words meant that the situation of these immigrant writers had improved, but they still wandered between the center and the edge, but the degree and feeling were reduced.

Anders Olsen, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy and chairman of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature Selection Committee, said: "In Göllner's literary world, everything is changing – memory, name, identity. This may be because his creation cannot be completed in any definite sense, and in all his works presents a never-ending exploration driven by the enthusiasm of the wise. ”

Memories, names, identities, and themes that almost all immigrant writers constantly write about. Kundera describes immigrant writers as acting like acrobats, walking on tight ropes between two languages, and for him, what matters is identity. When was he most himself? When does he express himself in the language he spoke in the first place, or in the language of his host?

The Bulgarian-born French writer Julia Christeva expressed the feeling of tearing that hovered between two languages, a feeling that Christeva portrayed as pain and alienation, explained in terms of a cultural concept, the "other." This concept involves the correlation between social identity shaping and subject status. The concept can be traced back to Hegel. Hegel argues that human consciousness cannot recognize itself without the recognition of the other. In this regard, "diaspora" is an emotional characteristic that is common to all human beings, and each of us is looking for our own homeland.

In today's globalized world, the flow is accelerating, and the essence of immigrant literature is rooted in modernity, and the problem of modernity is a larger topic.

This article is from [Jiaxing Daily - Jiaxing Online] and only represents the author's views. The National Party Media Information Public Platform provides information dissemination services.

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