Chapter 48 postscript

After finishing the translation of Coetzee's novel, I was at a loss when I was tired.The time was tight and it was impossible to refer to relevant materials in time. Coetzee himself was a scholar and writer, and his text was complex and profound, which made people's mind full of question marks.Why did the writer arrange Dostoevsky as the protagonist of the novel?For what purpose did he invent Dostoevsky's trip to Petersburg in the autumn of 1869?Why did he single out Dostoevsky's humble stepson, Pavel, as a clue for the novel?How does he deal with the relationship between reality and fiction?Is this Coetzee discussing the changes in Dostoevsky's creative thinking in the way of novels?Or is he trying to show his understanding of the Russian Revolution?The answers all seem to be in the text, and the answers don't seem to be in the text.

Grossman's Biography of Dostoevsky (Foreign Literature Press, 1987) has a detailed description of Dostoevsky's life. "Memoirs of Mrs. Dostoevsky" (Peking University Press, 1987) can also be used as good evidence.According to these two books, Pavel Alexandrovich Isaev was the son of Maria Dmitrievna and the clerk Isaev. Dostoevsky met the family in 1855 during his military service in Semipalatinsk.He fell madly in love with the mistress.Later, Isayev died of illness, and Dostoevsky married Isayev's widow.At this time, Pavel was only seven years old.Maria died of tuberculosis in 1864 shortly after returning to Petersburg with her husband. Pavel was sixteen years old. Pavel was nineteen when Dostoevsky married the young stenographer Anna Grigorievna in 1867.In the same year, Dostoevsky went abroad with his wife, while Pavel stayed in Petersburg, living on the money sent by his stepfather, from the age of nineteen to twenty-three.He even married a "beautiful woman, not tall, modest and intelligent".

Anna's Pavel is not likable.He is lazy, hostile to his stepfather's remarriage, and even rushed to the scene to inquire about the will just after Dostoevsky's death.On the contrary, Pavel in the film has become the object of Dostoevsky's affectionate mourning. The relationship between father and son is described incomparably. This is obviously a purposeful rewriting of Coetzee. (Coetzee's son died unexpectedly in 1984. I don't know if the pain of losing a son is a factor in Coetzee's creation of this novel?) Coetzee changed the date of Pavel's death in the novel, letting him die in 1869 Petersburg in autumn.It was his death that recalled Dostoevsky from Dresden to Petersburg, and caused the literary master to undergo a metamorphosis in his investigation of his son's death.Around Pavel's death, a series of characters in the novel are also connected in series, the landlady Anna Sergeyevna, the landlady's daughter Matryona, the anarchist Nechayev, and the imperial policeman Maximov, etc., they all participated in Dostoevsky's life because of Pavel's death.Under the influence of changing reality and complex psychological struggle, Dostoevsky in the novel finally conceived the image of Stavrogin (the protagonist in "Demons"), and at the same time, the novel also The painful writing process is over.

This incident is completely fictitious.The plot of the landlady and the description of the scene in Petersburg are somewhat reminiscent of the novel (1866).Coetzee's design seems to be an annotation for Dostoevsky's novel creation.However, in the fictional process, he strengthened the role of Pavel, making this son who died prematurely the fuel for his spiritual transformation. Another important character in the novel is the anarchist Sergei Gennadevich Nechayev.Nechayev in historical materials, born in 1847, was once an auditor at Petersburg University, one year older than the real Pavel.He participated in the student movement in Petersburg in the spring of 1869.After that, he went to Switzerland and met the veteran anarchist Bakunin in Geneva. In September 1869, Nechayev came to Moscow with a plan to establish an anti-government secret organization and established the underground organization "People's Punishment Association".Nechayev advocated atheism and advocated the establishment of a new social system "without God" through adventurist struggle tactics and unprincipled terrorism. The most sensational event of the "People's Punishment Committee" was the creation of the "Ivanov Incident".Ivanov, a student of the Petrov Agricultural Academy (the same name as the beggar killed in the novel), was brutally killed because he tried to quit the organization.The death of Ivanov gradually brought these young conspirators to the surface.After the crime was exposed, Nechayev fled abroad, was arrested in Geneva in 1872, was extradited to the Russian government, was sentenced to 20 years of torture, and died in Peter and Paul Prison.

In the novel, Coetzee links Pavel's death to Nechayev., several chapters deal with Nechayev.In fact, neither Dostoevsky nor Pavel had any direct contact with Nechayev himself.Even Bakunin, whom Dostoevsky had only met once, was extremely disgusted with.Pavel was designed by Coetzee to be a follower of Nechayev, making it possible for Dostoevsky to directly confront the anarchists before the creation of "Demons".Here, Coetzee's imagination played a role. He dealt with the relationship between real events and fictional events in a "postmodern" way, providing a certain kind of support for the birth of the literary character "Stavrogin" in the last chapter of the novel. Reasons that can be justified.

According to Grossman's account, Nechayev's case did indeed attract Dostoevsky's attention.In fact, in the autumn of 1869, Dostoevsky, who was in Dresden at the time, read the report about the assassination in Moscow and decided to write a novel with two generations of Russian revolutionaries, father and son, as the protagonists. It is "Demons".In order to write this work well, Dostoevsky once personally explored the scene of Ivanov's death, and personally attended the public trial of Nechayev by the police in 1871. "Demons" was published in 1871 and was directly drawn from the "Nechayev Case". The prototype of Verhovinsky in "Demons" is Nechayev, and the prototype of the student Shatov is Ivanov.Concentrate all these clues on Pavel, concentrate all contradictions and conflicts on him.Because of Pavel and Nechayev, and the police, and the landlady, and the landlady's daughter, Dostoevsky had various connections. In the end, he kept talking to Pavel's shadow, and in the process of confession Started writing.From this point of view, if we regard it as Coetzee's narrative interpretation of Dostoevsky's process of creating "Demons", it seems that it is not an exaggeration.However, such a single interpretation seems to underestimate Coetzee. His novels have always been rich in meaning and should have stood up to multiple views.

Coetzee, himself a professor of literature, was intimately familiar with Dostoevsky's biographical material.He reshaped Dostoyevsky's story, half-truth, half-false, half-covered, and more able to arouse readers' interest in many confusing events in the novel.Obviously, this is a story of competing knowledge with readers, like a process of deciphering. The more you understand, the more incredible you feel, and the more you understand, the more you feel trapped in a deeper secret.If readers happen to be unfamiliar with Dostoevsky, his works and his life, then it will be a difficult process to understand this novel. If the imitation of the polyphonic characteristics of Evsky's novels, I'm afraid it is going to challenge Bakhtin's theory.Here, we can only speculate that Coetzee's plan is to show readers the unfathomable imaginary world in the small room of the study.

Finally, a word about translation.Mr. Wang Yongnian is a senior translator whom I admire.His translation is clean and soothing, with aristocratic elegance.If it were not for the time limit of publication, he could have translated the manuscript calmly.Following Mr. Wang's translation really made me uneasy.The continued translation is hasty and hurried, like a novice swimmer out of breath, which is really different from Mr. Wang's translation.Of course, time constraints are the reason, but my shallow Chinese skills are the real reason for my shortness of breath.Fortunately, it's time to hurry up and finish, and leave other things for readers to comment on.

Kuang Yongmei March 14, 2004