Nobel's Last Wish is wonderful, but it is not easy to master idealism. What is idealism? How many moral principles and aesthetic art principles does idealism contain? When mastering the ideal principle, should we emphasize its classical and eternal content or its modern content? This is not something that students can solve by doing a few theoretical answers on the test paper. It requires art colleges to choose some basic perspectives and standards that are in tune with human ideals, overall expectations and overall hopes. However, even if you choose the most idealized critical perspective, it is difficult to avoid the subjectivity of criticism. Perspectives, standards and aesthetic judgments are all created by people in the final analysis. Literary works are extremely rich and complex, and people's horizons, horizons and abilities are extremely limited. Although the three-headed and eight-armed Swedish literary academicians have made great efforts and made great contributions, they have to show great limitations. We might as well take a literary journey in the next century, and then look at Nobel Prize in Literature's gains and losses.
Look at the list of Nobel Prize in Literature winners first.
190 1 nian Lenny Sally-Proude home (French)
1902 Dior Munson (German)
1903 Beyonsten Bejon jonsson (Norway)
1904 Flederick mistral (France), José de Echegale I izaguirre (Spain).
1905 Henrik Sean Kevic (Poland)
1906 Giorgio Calduch (Italy)
1907 Joseph Rudyard Kipling (UK)
1908 Rudolf Christopher Ou Ken (Germany)
1909 Thelma Lagrov (Sweden)
Paul Heyzer (Germany)
Maurice maeterlinck (Belgium)
19 12 Gerhart Hauptmann (Germany)
19 13 Rabindra Nas Tagore (India)
19 14 (no reward)
Romain rolland (French)
Karl Gustav Weilner von Heidenstam (Sweden)
Karl Adolf Gerarup (Denmark), Henrik Pontoppidan (Denmark)
19 18 (not awarded)
Carl spitteler (Swiss)
1920 Knut Hamsun (Norway)
192 1 Anatole France
1922 Singto Benavent martí nez (Spain)
William yeats (Ireland)
1924 uradi slava Stanislas lemon (Poland)
1925 George Bernard Shaw (UK)
1926 grazia deledda (Italian)
Henri bergson (French)
1928 sigrid undset (Norway)
1929 thomas mann (German)
1930 Henry sinclair lewis (USA)
Erik Axel Kalfeld (Sweden)
1932 John Galsworthy (UK)
Ivan alexeyevich Bunin (Russian Federation)
1934 Luigi Pirandello (Italy)
1935 (not awarded)
1936 Eugene o' neill (USA)
1937 roger martin du gard (French)
Pearl S. Buck (USA)
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpaa (Finland)
1940- 1943 (not awarded)
1944 Johannes Vernem Zhan Sen (Denmark)
1954 Jia mistral (Chile)
1946 Herman Hesse (Switzerland)
Andre gide (French)
1948 Thomas stian Eliot (UK)
William faulkner (USA)
1950 Bertrand Russell (UK)
195 1 year Pal Fabian Lagerkvest (Sweden)
Francois Mauriac (French)
Winston Ronald Spencer Churchill (UK)
Ernest miller hemingway (USA)
1955 Halldor Kirian laxness (Iceland)
1956 Juan Ramon Jimenez (Spain)
Albert camus (French)
Boris Leonidvich Pasternak (Soviet Union)
Salvador quasimodo (Italy)
1960 St. John Perseus (French)
196 1 year Yves Andric (yugoslavia)
John steinbeck (USA)
1963 George Severus (Greek)
Jean-Paul Sartre (French)
Mikhail Alessandro sholokhov (Soviet Union)
1966 Samuel Joseph Agnon (Israel), Nelly Leonie Sachs (Sweden)
1967 Miguel á ngel Asturias (Guatemala)
1968 Kawabata Yasunari (Japan)
1969 samuel beckett (Ireland)
Alexandr isayevich solzhenitsyn (Soviet Union)
Pablo neruda (Chile)
1972 henrich burr (Germany)
Patrick Victor Martin Dahl White (Australia)
1974 Ivan orlov Werno Johnson (Sweden), Harry Edmund Marthinsen (Sweden)
1975 Eugenio Montalais (Italy)
Saul Bellow (USA)
1977 Vicente Aleixandre Meg (Spain)
1978 Isaac bashevis Singh (USA)
1979 Odysseus Eglitis (Greek)
1980 czesiaw miiosz (Poland)
Elias canetti (UK)
Gabriel Garcí a Má rquez (Colombia)
William golding (UK)
1984 yaroslav seff (Czechoslovakia)
Claude simon (French)
1986 Wale Soyinka (Nigeria)
1987 Joseph Alessandro broschi (Russian-American)
1988 Najib Mohammad (Egypt)
1989 camilo jose cela (Spain)
1990 Octavio Paz (Mexico)
Nadine gordimer (South Africa)
1992 Derek Walcott (Trinidad)
Tony Morrison (USA)
1994 Kenzaburo Oe (Japan)
1995 Sims Heaney (Ireland)
1996 Wislawa Shim Bhoskar (Poland)
1997 dario fo (Italy)
1998 José Saramago (Portuguese)
1999 Gunter grass (German)
According to this list, let's take a look at the award-winning status of various countries:
France 12 persons
Nine people are in the United States (excluding broschi, who is an American).
Six people in England
Germany and Sweden each have seven people.
There are six people in Italy and six in Spain.
5 Russians (including broschi)
Denmark, Norway, Poland and Ireland each have three people.
Switzerland, Chile, Greece and Japan each have two people.
Australia, Belgium, India, Colombia, Finland, Guatemala, Iceland, Israel, Yugoslavia, Czech Republic, Nigeria, Egypt, Mexico, South Africa, Trinidad and Portugal each have 1 person.
Up to 1998, * * * 95 people have been to Nobel Prize in Literature, while there are 59 people in eight countries including France, the United States, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain and Russia. If Denmark, Norway, Poland and Ireland are added, there are 7 1 person. Obviously, the focus of the Nobel literature family is in Europe and America, and the inclination is obvious. However, we can't help but admit that Nobel Prize in Literature is indeed international, and its vision is to try to cross the ocean and extend to all parts of the world, even to small countries such as Nigeria and Trinidad. Especially since 1982 was awarded to Marquez and 1986 was awarded to W. Soyinka (Nigeria), in the past 20 years, the Nobel literature family has added eight nationalities, including Colombian, Czech, Nigerian, Egyptian, Mexican, South African, Trinidad and Portuguese, which shows that the Swedish Academy of Literature is developing in a more international direction and trying to reduce its inclination. 1992 When I was in Sweden, the winner was Derek Walcott of Trinidad, which was a great surprise. The Swedish newspaper told People magazine that the poet and playwright was in Boston, USA when the news was announced. He has got up, ready to have breakfast, and then flew to Virginia to give a lecture to the drama students of the University of Virginia. He is alone, his wife is in her hometown in the West Indies, and she is lonely around him. When the phone rang and the secretary of the Swedish Academy informed him, he was surprised, just like many people.
I was invited by the Swedish Academy Literature Award to listen to his award-winning speech. As soon as I entered the door, I got an English lecture entitled "Andreas' Fragments of Epic Memory". The speech showed such an aesthetic concept: an intact vase, no matter how beautiful, lacks enough charm, but if several vase fragments excavated from historical tombs are carefully pieced together, this bridged vase will have inexhaustible artistic charm. Exquisitely carved statues are beautiful, but the pure dew condensed on them in the morning is even more exciting. Walcott's speech has both the ideological charm of the paper and the inherent charm and elegance of the prose, which is really brilliant. His aesthetic ideal also reflects some aesthetic ideals and standards of the Swedish Academy of Literature: not seeking completeness, but seeking to gather various cultural essences of human history and condense a lively and energetic personality. The theme of Walcott's speech and the connotation of his works are completely in tune with the direction sought by the Swedish Academy of Literature after the 1980s, and fully accord with their cultural ideals. Therefore, they explained the reason for awarding the prize to Walcott in the award speech: his poems have great light energy and historical vision, which comes from his dabbling in many cultures. At the end of this sentence: the involvement of multiculturalism is the effort of the Swedish Academy of Literature in the last twenty years of the end of the century. The so-called "internationalization" is the intervention and integration of various cultures. After Walcott won the prize, my friend Chen Maiping made a very pertinent comment on this direction of the Swedish Academy Literature Award. He said: "In recent years, Swedish colleges in the literary world have paid attention to so-called third world literature or so-called marginal literature, and it is increasingly difficult for European and American writers to be interested in the Nobel Prize. Naturally, the College of Arts is also very concerned about the issue of' cultural identity', and the work itself represents an effective solution to the problem, that is, the intervention and integration of various cultures. Generally speaking, Swedes are tolerant and modest. Instead of advocating the philosophy of struggle, they prefer peace, neutrality and mutual tolerance. So are academicians. They don't want to evaluate the works of other cultures from the standpoint of western cultural centralism, nor do they advocate mutual opposition, exclusion and competition between cultures, but advocate mutual connection, integration and even intervention. "
Judging from the list of "torch families" in Nobel literature in the past century, I still think that the evaluation after World War II is better than before. They did choose a group of outstanding writers recognized by the world, and the general idea of their works really embodies the basic ideal of human love. 1949 Faulkner said in his acceptance speech that what a writer fills his workshop space should only be the true feelings that have existed in the depths of human hearts since ancient times. The ancient and ever-present spiritual truths are: love, honor, sympathy, dignity, pity and sacrifice. Without these eternal truths and truths, any story will just be exposed and fleeting. He also said: "Man is immortal, which does not mean that only he can leave endless voices in the biological world, but because he has a soul-a soul that can make human beings pity, sacrifice and work hard. The responsibility of poets and writers lies in writing these, these unique truths, true feelings and true spirits of human beings. "The Swedish Academy of Literature chose Faulkner, and Faulkner's writings fully reflected Nobel's idealism and the evaluation criteria grasped by the Swedish Academy of Literature. Over the past 100 years, the torch family of Nobel literature has indeed demonstrated a kind of "truth of the soul", the rationality of the universe, which is love, honor, sympathy, dignity, pity and sacrifice. The other side of this truth is hatred, violence, depravity, indifference, selfishness and so on. Swedish colleges in the literary world flatly refused, no matter how talented they were.
In the past century, almost every writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature has been controversial. It is difficult to find a writer who is unanimously recognized by public opinion all over the world, and even it is difficult to find a writer who is unanimously recognized by Swedish public opinion. It is said that only Bernard Shaw, the winner of 1925, was accepted by Swedish public opinion in the first 25 years. Apart from Bernard Shaw, even Swedish writers cannot be fully recognized by Sweden. For example, in 1974, two Swedish writers, Ivan Olov Werno Johnson and Harry Edmund Marthinsen, were attacked by Swedish public opinion and decided that they were not eligible for the prize. Marthinsen is a master of Swedish literature. After winning the prize, he was so demanding by his compatriots that he was in a very bad mood. He died four years after winning the prize. As far as I know, Churchill and Pearl Buck are often criticized. Some people say that Churchill won the prize because of political needs. However, in 1983, 30 years after Churchill won the prize, another British award-winning writer, william golding (whose masterpiece Lord of the Flies is a required reading for literature courses in British and American universities), paid special tribute to Churchill in his acceptance speech. He said: "... we can't forget Churchill, who won the Nobel Prize regardless of the critics' criticism;" He won the prize not for poetry and prose, but for a simple and concise narrative work, which is a true expression of human victory and contempt for all difficulties. Anyone who has experienced the war knows that Churchill's poetic actions changed the history of a period. " Finally, he even sighed sincerely: "I think it's time for me to step off this podium." Churchill, juliana, not to mention Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, what an outstanding group of people! "I don't hide my admiration for Golding. This is not only because I was moved by the profound poetry in Churchill's World War II speech, but also because I think that the literature created by human beings should not succumb to the narrow definition in textbooks. Poetic remarks like Churchill's, which represent the wonderful remarks of a generation of human soldiers conquering the devil, are absolutely beautiful prose and also prose with the flame of idealism. I also have a crush on Pearl Buck. Her real name is Pearl Sedenstrik Booker (1892- 1973), and Pearl Buck is her Chinese name. She came to China with her parents since she was a child and didn't leave China until she was 35. She not only read China's Scriptures since childhood, but also loved China and tried to understand China. Therefore, in her mind, she has always regarded China as her second motherland. In her acceptance speech at 1938, she said, "Although I am completely unofficial, I still want to speak for China people here, because otherwise I would be disloyal to myself, because for so many years, the life of China people has been my life and a part of my life. Mentally, my own country and my second country, China, have many similarities, the most important of which is that we both love freedom. "Pearl Buck was only 46 years old when she won the prize, and she was the youngest award-winning writer (broschi, who won the prize later, was often regarded as the youngest writer, but she was 47 years old when she won the prize). Pearl Buck writes very diligently. She has written 85 works, mainly novels, biographies, essays, political essays and children's literature. In the "acceptance speech" given to her, the Swedish Academy Literature Award specifically pointed out that her works conform to Nobel's ideal principles. The congratulatory message reads as follows: Pearl Buck's excellent works make human sympathy cross the racial gap and show human great and lofty ideals in art.
Although I haven't finished reading all the works of Pearl S. Buck, from her representative works The Good Earth (1932) and Mother, I can't help being infected by the painful fate of the people in China, especially the fate of women in China. Her tragedy of double slavery can be said to be breathtaking. In her works, women in China live in double darkness: one is the darkness of the past-how dark the traditional concept of not treating women as human beings is; One is the darkness of the future, waiting for the old in front of women and being rejected by her husband. In China literature in the 20th century, it seems that no other writer can describe the tragic fate of women in China better than Lu Xun. Therefore, it may not be appropriate to take Pearl Buck as an example to criticize Nobel Prize in Literature. Of course, Pearl Buck can hardly be compared with truly first-class writers such as Faulkner and Hemingway.