Chapter 49 Postscript of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature

JM Coetzee's novels are characterized by exquisite structure, meaningful dialogue and profound speculation.However, he is a skeptic with moral principles, and he mercilessly criticizes the shallow moral sense and cruel rationalism in contemporary Western civilization.With intellectual honesty, he dissolves the basis of all self-consolation and keeps himself away from vulgar and worthless dramatic enlightenment and confession.Even when he expresses his own beliefs in his work, such as arguing for animal rights, he articulates his premises, not just one-sided claims. Coetzee's interest is more concerned with those situations where right and wrong are clear but appear to be in constant conflict, just like the man in Marguerite's famous oil painting studying his own neck in front of the mirror. At the critical moment, Coetzee's works Characters are always hesitant, shrinking, timid, and unable to act according to their will.This kind of passivity is not only the haze that covers personality, but also the gathering place for the last party facing humanity—people might as well refuse to carry out those tyrannical orders on the grounds that they cannot achieve their goals.It is in the exploration of human weaknesses and failures that Coetzee captures the sacred fire in human nature.

His earliest novel, The Dark Place, for the first time reveals the artistry of empathy, which takes him repeatedly into the midst of alien cultures and into the minds of his loathsome characters.The novel describes a man who worked for the US government during the Vietnam War, trying to invent an invincible psychological warfare system, while at the same time his personal life was terrible.The man's whimsy is juxtaposed with an eighteenth-century report of Boer expeditions in the heart of Africa, showing two different ways of escapism.One is intellectual exaggeration and psychological self-importance, and the other is full of vitality, which is a life process full of wild atmosphere, and the two reflect each other.

In his next novel, The Heart of the Nation, another style emerges, focusing on psychological description.A white spinster living with her father discovers the abhorrent truth about her father's illicit relationship with a young woman of color.She fantasized about killing them both, but in reality everything revealed the spinster's own desire to keep up with the houseboy.There is no clear ending to that series of events, and readers can only find clues from her notes, but the true and false records in the notes are intertwined, and the vulgar and elegant writing styles are parallel.The boastful style of depicting women's inner monologues in the period of Edward VII blended harmoniously with the natural environment of the African land.

is a political horror novel in the vein of Joseph Conrad, in which a naive idealist opens the door to terror.The game-style fable "Fu" weaves together the incompatibility and inseparable characteristics of literature and life-the woman longs to be the protagonist of the novel, but in life she is just a nameless little person. "The Life and Times of Michael K" continues the literary tradition of Defoe, Kafka and Beckett, and the image of Coetzee's independent writer becomes more striking here.The novel describes the spiritual predicament of a small character. He escaped from the increasingly severe turmoil and the coming war, but fell into a state of indifference without desire and a state of negation of the logic of power.

It is an interpretation of Dostoevsky's life and creative world.If a person (a character in Coetzee's imagination) despairs of the real world, the temptations he faces can become a source of terrorism without moral restraint.Here, the author's confrontation with evil is tinged with demonic belief, a point that appears again in his most recent book, Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons. In Shame, Coetzee gives us a disgraced university professor's struggle to preserve his dignity and that of his daughter in the new and changing landscape of South Africa, as the tradition of white supremacy crumbles.The theme of the novel is the central question that the author has been concerned with: Can people avoid history?

His autobiographical novels mainly revolve around the father's personality humiliation and the resulting psychological split of his son.But the novel also presents fantastic scenes of old-school rural life in South Africa and the never-ending conflicts between Boers and English, whites and blacks.In the sequel, the author grimly dissects himself, portraying a young man who crazily hopes for approval from others. Coetzee's works are rich and colorful literary wealth.No two works here employ the same creative approach.However, many of his works present a pattern of repeated construction: the fate of spiraling downward is the necessary way for his characters to save their souls.His protagonists are always able to miraculously gain the strength to stand up again after being hit, sinking, and even deprived of their outward dignity.

Wen Min translation