Chapter 4 The temple of literature is upstairs in the stock market

Author's note: From the so-called "new era of literature" until today, Chinese literary circles have always regarded whether or not they can win the Nobel Prize for Literature as a sign of Chinese literature going to the world, and there is even a saying of "Nobel complex".A Nobel Prize has haunted many Chinese writers, and some even wrote many works that Chinese readers grinned at and foreigners could understand after reading this award.However, there are probably very few Chinese writers who have actually had an interview with the host of the Nobel Prize for Literature and have some "first-hand information", but I have this opportunity, and it can be said that I have contacted the Nobel Academy of Literature among Chinese writers The first one.This article was written in 1983. At that time, Mr. Yan Wenjing was the head of our delegation of Chinese writers visiting Northern Europe. Mr. Wen and I were members of the delegation. The accompanying interpreter was Ms. He Bin from the External Relations Department of the Writers Association.More than ten years have passed, and the hosts of the Nobel Prize judging have changed, but the Nobel Academy of Letters remains the same, the tradition has not changed, and no "system reform" has been carried out.I think it is of practical significance to publish this article again.

Visiting the Swedish Academy, which is famous for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature, is a major agenda of our trip to Northern Europe. The Swedish Academy is in an old building.In Northern Europe, the interior cannot be considered grand.When we entered through the side door, we immediately felt very gloomy, as if we had entered an ancient castle.Stepping up the uncarpeted granite stairs to the second floor, I saw the bright sunlight coming in through the large windows.At the top of the stairs is the cloakroom. After taking off his coat, he walked through the long corridor and the library where many hardcover books were displayed against the wall, and finally arrived at the office of the Secretary-General of the Faculty of Arts, Yu Liensden.

Yu Liensden is a gentle and elegant scholar, not tall, with a rosy face, gray hair neatly combed back, wearing a black old-fashioned suit, completely in the style of a European gentleman in the last century.He is the one who signs the document that decides who wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.That is to say, who wins the Nobel Prize and who does not, most of the decisions are in his hands. After greetings, he first introduced us to the history of the Swedish Academy.The Swedish Academy was founded in 1783 by King Gustav III, who is still remembered by the Swedes.At that time, it completely imitated the establishment of the French Academy, and its main task was to develop Swedish culture.Because the development of the Swedish language is closely related to literature, the Swedish dictionary was compiled from the first letter of the Swedish language to the last letter.It is the books we see in a library in the corridor.The significance of those books in their history is very similar to the "Yongle Dadian" in our country.But their dictionaries are well preserved, while our "Da Dian" has been lost.

The awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature is only a subsidiary work of the Swedish Academy.Uliensden especially emphasized the word "subsidiary". I personally feel that he has a tone to show that the Swedish Academy has more important work to do.He said that the undertaking to award the Nobel Prize in Literature began in 1901.At that time, some academicians disapproved of taking on such an errand, thinking that it would be very difficult for Sweden to undertake the worldwide literary award, and this was not a serious business for the Swedish Academy of Letters, because the various Nobel prizes were nothing like What we see now is so sublime.Later, I finally accepted it (Why I accepted this job again, Yu Liensden did not say, I personally guess it is to get more financial support).And once the work was accepted, a huge library had to be built.He said that you can visit the library later.

The Swedish Academy has 18 academicians, more than half of whom are writers, and the rest are professors of linguistics and humanities.Academicians are elected.The government has no right to interfere in all affairs of the college; in Sweden, each college is an independent institution and is not affiliated to a certain department of the government.Academicians are all tenured and are not affected by any government, that is to say, no matter which political party is in power, academicians will not advance or retreat accordingly.However, the government does not provide a penny of funding, and the college's funding is entirely privately funded.The Nobel Foundation provides for the running costs of the Academy (this is the crux).

The 18 tenured academicians elected a "committee of five" to decide who would win the Nobel Prize in Literature.Organizations of writers from all over the world have the right to propose candidates to the Swedish Academy, and the Academy receives a list of 100 to 150 candidates each year.At this time, Comrade Wen Jing asked whether Ba Jin and Ai Qing of our country were on the list.Yu Liensden said, "On the list. There is also a Chinese writer named Shen Congwen." Comrade Wen Jing asked again, will they be able to win the Nobel Prize?Yu Liensden smiled and said, "This is absolutely confidential. I can only reveal one thing, that is, the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature in the future will focus on the countries of the Middle East and Far East, because writers from these regions have been very few in recent years. There are few prizes, but literature in these areas has grown a lot lately."

Yu Liensden also said that many people on the list in 2009 were nominated many times.In fact, it's difficult to do justice (he says this with an apologetic expression).Because no matter whether it is the "Committee of Five" or the 18 academicians, they cannot read the original works of most of the recommended works, and they can only rely on translations into Swedish, English, and French. Finally, he said that they know that Chinese writers have been unable to write for a long time, and hope that middle-aged and old Chinese writers will work hard to recover the lost time.His last sentence was somewhat Chinese.

In this way, the interview was over, and it took only forty minutes before and after.In a foreign country, it takes half a day without a chat in the office.After we left, Uliensden sent a staff member to show us around the Swedish Academy. There are only two places worth seeing, one is the meeting room of the eighteen academicians.They hold the selection meeting of the Nobel Prize for Literature here every year, and we have a very general impression: there are large oil paintings on the wall, all of them are previous academicians, and we have not seen a picture of Nobel.Around the long conference table were eighteen antique gold-lacquered chairs.The paint was also peeling off.I took a picture while sitting on the main seat, but the seat was uncomfortable.It is impossible for those old men to hold meetings for a few days like us, otherwise they would be unbearable, their buttocks cannot sit still, and they are not as good at sitting in meetings as we are.These eighteen people are all in their octogenarian years, and they probably just raise their hands when they come here.The main decision-making power rests with the "committee of five", and the most important one is Yu Liensden.Another place is the library introduced by Yu Liensden, which is specially set up for the selection of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

This library does not seem to be open to the public, and is only used by internal personnel of the Faculty of Arts.The books in the collection are, of course, all literary works: novels, poems, essays, literary criticism, etc.As we can see, the majority are in French, followed by English, and then Spanish. There are rows and rows of bookshelves from the roof to the floor, all of which are gilded hardcover books. Thanks to the kindness of the library staff, for the visit of our Chinese writers, we specially arrange the Chinese literary works translated into foreign languages ​​and put them on the long table for exhibition.This exhibition made me understand a technical reason why world-renowned writers and poets such as Ba Jin and Ai Qing have not been able to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

According to the staff, the books on the long table are all the Chinese literary works translated into foreign languages ​​collected by the Swedish Academy, but it seems that there are only a few dozens of them.I didn't count carefully, at best it was no more than a hundred.The long table is slightly larger than the ping-pong table, and all the books on display are open, readers can imagine how many there are.Among them, the Four Books and Five Classics, Classics, Classical Poetry, Song and Yuan Storybooks, and Ming and Qing novels are mostly translated into foreign languages.However, people like Lao Tzu and Wu Chengen are no longer eligible for the Nobel Prize.Among modern Chinese literary works, there are several works by Lu Xun, but they are all thin; there is one work by Mao Dun: .These masters are also dead.We have only seen two of Ba Jin's works that are still alive, one is true, and the other is also very thin, which does not seem to be true.As we all know, it has been translated into many foreign languages, but it is a pity that this most critical library has not.There is no special collection of Ai Qing's poems, only the collection "Still Water and Dawn" with Wen Yiduo, and it is a bilingual version in Chinese and Swedish, so it can be estimated that the selected poems are not many.For the works of contemporary Chinese writers, we only see two "Panda Series" edited by "Chinese Literature". photos, so you can recognize them at a glance.The other is "Selected Chinese Contemporary Short Stories", which includes mine.

As for modern literary works, it can be seen from the cover that Hong Kong and Taiwan have translated and published more works than we have translated and published.Leaving aside this, what surprised us was that a collection of literary reviews by Yao Wenyuan was placed in a very prominent position as a major contemporary Chinese literary work.This book has more than 300 pages, and the format is larger than the thirty-two format in my country; I flipped through it, and it is a typed book, not a printed one.I don't know who the translator is, but the cover is printed, and it may be a self-printed reference book of some university. The staff were friendly and courteous to us and clearly did not put the book on purpose to embarrass us.He may not know until today that Yao Wenyuan has been defeated by us and has been imprisoned, or he may follow the Western habit of thinking that although a person has broken the law, his works can still be preserved.We wanted to tell him that what Yao Wenyuan wrote was of no academic value, just a lot of sticks to beat people, but then we thought about it, I am afraid that even if we told him one day, he would not understand the political situation in China at that time. As for the background, I have no choice but to let it go, just let it go.Perhaps it will have some historical value in the future. The best way is to provide them with literary books translated and published in my country.As a staff member of the Chinese Writers Association, He Bin established contact with the librarian on the spot and promised to send books to the Swedish Academy in the future.The fat administrator was delighted, and both parties exchanged correspondence addresses.After returning to China to this day, I don’t know whether He Bin, a small staff member, has the conditions to send him books, and whether he has sent them.I'm afraid she also has more than enough heart but not enough energy. After more than an hour, we walked out of the Swedish Academy.When we walked around to the front, we realized that the door we just entered was a side door, and the main door faced a small square.On the steps of the main entrance, there are many young men and women basking in the sun. By the way, due to the geographical location, Stockholm rarely has sunny days.Comrade Jin Sheng said that he worked in the embassy in Sweden for several years, and because of the lack of sun exposure, people in their forties almost lost all their hair.When we went, spring had just arrived, so the streets were full of people when the weather was sunny.Swedes love the outdoors.When time does not allow them to go far, they often huddle at the base of the south wall to bask in the sun like our old farmers. At this time, the wooden chairs in the small square were also full of people.They all look lazily enjoying the sunshine.There are many pigeons walking freely in the square.The ground is very wet, and there is a lot of pigeon droppings and garbage scattered on the ground.The stately, world-renowned Swedish Academy is not very clean. Here is another sentence: the street sanitation in Oslo, Stockholm, and Copenhagen is not as good as we originally imagined. The shops do not even sweep the snow in front of their respective doors, and the garbage outside the threshold is all taken care of by municipal workers.Once when I went shopping, I introduced my country's "Three Guarantees" to Professor Ma Yueran, and he also thought it was very good. After visiting the Swedish Academy, we had a feeling that being famous is worse than meeting, and meeting is worse than not being seen.I thought to myself, it turned out to be nothing more than that, and I was a little disappointed.Of course, this impression is largely caused by the books displayed in the library. Later, Comrade Jin Sheng told us that in order to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in modern times, not only rely on works, but also have some "knowledge".First, of course, is the political background. For example, the reason why Solzhenitsyn won the literary award is almost entirely because he is a "dissident" in the Soviet Union; at the same time, there are changes in literary trends and the unpredictable interests of Western readers. .For example, Marquez in Latin America won the award, because the West generally suddenly pays attention to Latin American politics, coupled with his "magic realism".Also, there are technical factors: one is translation and the other is activity.The so-called activity shows that it is a relationship.The Swedish Academy is nominally free from government interference, but it does not live in a vacuum. Eighteen old men are still subject to the influence of this or that group of celebrities.Comrade Jin Sheng said that if the cultural propaganda department of our country can confirm our attitude towards the Nobel Prize for Literature and think that winning is also an important symbol of our contemporary literature going to the world, then under the current international situation, through our active efforts There is a possibility that Ba Jin or Ai Qing will win the event. Of course, as Yu Liensden himself admitted, it is impossible for them to judge the awards fairly. Therefore, not winning the Nobel Prize for Literature does not necessarily mean that our country's literature has not reached a certain level.Through this visit, I deeply felt this.In my opinion, those academicians who were unwilling to undertake this awarding activity at the beginning of this century had the insight: relying on 18 old men who are impossible to be familiar with the literature of various countries in the world, to select the best works and the best writers in the world every year. The thing itself is ridiculous.Facts have also proved that since 1901, many great writers in the world have not won the Nobel Prize for Literature without affecting his greatness, such as Tolstoy; But in obscurity. As I walked, I thought this way.Go around the square at the main entrance and walk to a small alley on the other side.This alley is busier than the one we entered (in Stockholm, I can't tell the north, south, east, west, so I can only say this side, that side).There was a hotel by the alley, and it was Friday——Sweden is a holiday on Saturday, so many people were queuing up to buy wine and prepare for the weekend.There are also a few little "pankes" playing in the alley.They live next to the Swedish Academy of Letters, and they are completely unaware that a prize awarded by the academy next door to them affects the brains of thousands of writers around the world. After Miss Hall led us into this palace of literature, she stayed in a room in the corridor and did not participate in our conversation with Yu Liensden.We didn't pick up the tour guide until we got out of the library.When we got into the car to go back to the hotel, Miss Hall told us that the floor below the Swedish Academy, where you enter from the main entrance, is not a liberal arts academy, but a stock exchange. This is a bit symbolic: the bonuses issued by the college upstairs to literary works sometimes do not reflect the actual value of literary works, and the price and value are separated; Reflecting the actual value of the object, the price and value are also separated.