{"id":2036,"date":"2013-09-02T09:30:02","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T01:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2036"},"modified":"2013-08-27T10:46:08","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T02:46:08","slug":"even-more-mo-yan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2036","title":{"rendered":"Even more Mo Yan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Translators<\/a>“An Epic Tale of Comic Realism”: a reader’s words<\/a> on Life & Death are Wearing Me Out<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Peter Tieryas Liu <\/a>on Sandalwood Death<\/em>:<\/div>\n
\n
The best of Chinese literature doesn\u2019t just give insight into the Chinese condition, but that of all humanity. Mo Yan\u2019s specialty is the uniquely local spectrum through which he plays out the tragicomedy of life as in this case with a rebellion in a small town and its cast of eclectic characters.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And Mo Yan on translation in conversation with Adonis<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“From the perspective of literature and art, it’s undoubtedly a huge loss. My attitude is, forget the translators when you write. Care not about whether they feel happy to translate. The real talented translators aren’t afraid of difficulties,” he says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[not that I know who translated that passage]<\/p>\n

In “White Happy Doves<\/a>,” Nikil Saval reviews Change<\/em>, Pow<\/em>, and Sandalwood Death<\/em> for the London Review of Books<\/em>:<\/p>\n

When the English translation of Mo Yan\u2019s novel Big Breasts and Wide Hips<\/em> (1996) was published in 2004, it was seen by some critics as his bid for global literary prestige. It hit all the right notes: it was a historical saga of modern China featuring a proliferation of stories, it was unceasingly violent and nasty, and it came near to puncturing Party myths … the Washington Post<\/em> praised Mo Yan for having \u2018spoken out courageously for freedom and individualism\u2019. Here was a liberal voice in repressive China. \u2018The Swedish Academy, which leaps at any chance to mix literature with politics,\u2019 he concluded, \u2018might well find in Mo Yan just the right writer through whom to send a message to the Chinese Communist leadership.\u2019<\/p>\n

Last year the Academy did indeed give Mo Yan the prize. But this time the Nobel\u2019s literature-politics mix came out all wrong. Rather than taking it as a targeted affront, as it had with the Peace Prize awarded to Liu Xiaobo two years earlier, the Chinese Communist Party was ecstatic. Li Changchun, minister of propaganda, wrote to congratulate Mo Yan on a victory that \u2018reflects the prosperity and progress of Chinese literature, as well as the increasing national strength and influence of China\u2019. Mo Yan\u2019s dissident reputation in the West, it turned out, was false. He was an established figure in Chinese literary officialdom. He had been a member of the Communist Party since 1979. He was vice chairman of the China Writers\u2019 Association. He had participated in a public ceremony in which he copied out several Chinese characters from Mao\u2019s Zhdanovite \u2018Talk at the Yan\u2019an Forum on Literature and Art\u2019, a text which declared the subservience of literature to the class struggle. And in Stockholm before receiving the prize, Mo Yan spoke up in favour of censorship: it was, he said, a bit like airport security. The cadres were already moving swiftly to turn his ancestral village into a literary theme park.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Brendan O’Kane, interviewed by Jeffrey Wasserstrom for LA Review of Books<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
Mo Yan didn\u2019t send Liu Xiaobo to jail, and there is absolutely nothing he could say or do, up to and including getting the words \u201cFREE LIU XIAOBO\u201d tattooed on his bald pate, that would do one bit of good for Liu Xiaobo or anyone else in China. (This is especially clear given the Chinese government\u2019s continued persecution of Liu\u2019s brother in law Liu Hui, and the ongoing extrajudicial house arrest of Liu\u2019s wife Liu Xia: the authorities are impervious to moral argument, and they have no shame.) Mo is a deputy chairman of the China Writers\u2019 Association, which is to say that he has slightly less power, in actual terms, than your average deputy chairman at the National Endowment for the Arts in the US. Meanwhile, as much as we might wish otherwise, moral\/political courage and literary merit are not the same thing \u2014 if writing bad poetry were a criminal offense, Liu Xiaobo would never see daylight again. So I wrote that post on Rectified.name<\/em> in hopes of getting people to disentangle the two.\u00a0Once you do that, and once you actually read Mo Yan\u2019s books, I think you find that he\u2019s a much sharper writer than he\u2019s been given credit for. His books don\u2019t make any kind of overt criticisms of the system \u2014 perhaps because he\u2019s overly cautious; perhaps because he\u2019s just not much interested in lifting his gaze from the village level \u2014 but they are all, in one way or another, about the human suffering created, perpetuated, and intensified by that system.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“An Epic Tale of Comic Realism”: a reader’s words on Life & Death are Wearing Me Out. Peter Tieryas Liu on Sandalwood Death: The best of Chinese literature doesn\u2019t just give insight into the Chinese condition, but that of all … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[766,1202,990,1200,1201,556,553,552,189,1203],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-wQ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1687,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=1687","url_meta":{"origin":2036,"position":0},"title":"Ever Mo Yan","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"March 21, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Spiegel Online interviews Mo Yan, who says \"I am guilty.\" The Guardian writes that \"Mo Yan dismisses 'envious' Nobel critics.\" Mo Yan writes that \"Good Literature Should Let Readers Discover Themselves\" One \"Mo reason for culture promotion\" The Complete Review notices Mo Yan has more than one agent with \"full\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn2.spiegel.de\/images\/image-466055-galleryV9-ntfn.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1484,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=1484","url_meta":{"origin":2036,"position":1},"title":"Mo Yan & Liu Xiaobo: Another Nobel Roundup","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"December 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Mo Yan \u83ab\u8a00 has given his Nobel acceptance speech, but that doesn't mean the debates about whether he deserved the award have stopped--or that older pieces haven't been resurfacing. A good deal of the debate focuses on the contrast between Mo Yan and Liu Xiaobo \u5218\u6653\u6ce2, the imprisoned critic who\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/C1y8l2TV65M\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":412,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=412","url_meta":{"origin":2036,"position":2},"title":"Path Light: New Chinese Writing","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"November 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Issue #1 of Path Light: New Chinese Writing, edited by Li Jingze \u674e\u656c\u6cfd, Alice Xin Liu, and Canaan Morse, is already out at the Beijing Bookworm and other venues (once it's got an online presence \/ ordering page I'll put up the link). Read this for the Xinhua English writeup,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Publications"","block_context":{"text":"Publications","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=12"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/PathLightcover.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2229,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2229","url_meta":{"origin":2036,"position":3},"title":"Xi Chuan, Yu Hua, Mo Yan, & others at Istanbul Book Fair","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"October 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"China will be guest of honor at the International Istanbul Book Fair (Nov 2-10), with the theme being the Journey of Chinese literature from traditional to contemporary as illustrated by the \u201cNew Silk Road.\u201d Festivities are scheduled to include Xi Chuan \u897f\u5ddd and sixteen other Chinese authors, such as Ge\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1518,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=1518","url_meta":{"origin":2036,"position":4},"title":"After Mo Yan: Three Literary Editors on the Latest Crop of Sinophone Writers","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"January 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1982,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=1982","url_meta":{"origin":2036,"position":5},"title":"Spring 2013 Pathlight","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"June 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Spring 2013 issue of Pathlight is out the door! This issue, featured loosely around \"The Future\", features several works of science fiction by some of China's best sci-fi writers, including Liu Cixin, Chen Qiufan and Hao Jingfang, and an overview of the genre by Wu Yan and Xing He.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.paper-republic.org\/img\/pubs\/pathlightcovers\/onlinecoverimage.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2036"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2184,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036\/revisions\/2184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}