2012 Nobel Prize in Literature
2012 Nobel Prize in Literature | |
---|---|
Mo Yan | |
Date |
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Location | Stockholm, Sweden |
Presented by | Swedish Academy |
First awarded | 1901 |
Website | Official website |
The 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Chinese writer Mo Yan (born 1955) "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary."[1] He is the second Chinese author to win the prize after the exiled Gao Xingjian.[2]
Laureate
Mo Yan's writings cover a wide span from short stories, to novels and essays. His earlier works such as
Reactions
Aged 57 at the time of the announcement, he was the 109th recipient of the award and the first ever resident of mainland China to receive it. In his Award Ceremony Speech, Per Wästberg explained: "Mo Yan is a poet who tears down stereotypical propaganda posters, elevating the individual from an anonymous human mass. Using ridicule and sarcasm Mo Yan attacks history and its falsifications as well as deprivation and political hypocrisy."[4]
Swedish Academy's permanent secretary Peter Englund said less formally, "He has such a damn unique way of writing. If you read half a page of Mo Yan you immediately recognize it as him".[5] During a seminar on Mo Yan at Beijing Normal University in April 2011, executive director of CLT and WLT, revealed that he had proposed Mo Yan for the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature. Davis address that, given Mo Yan's fame and production, his work should serve as the best ground in quality and depth of modern Chinese literature for Westerners.[6]
Following the awarding of the prize to Mo Yan in 2012, Göran Malmqvist, a member of the Swedish Academy, was criticized for a possible conflict of interest, as he had close personal and economic relations to Mo Yan.[7] He had translated several of Mo Yan's works into Swedish and published some through his own publishing house. Mo Yan had also written a laudatory preface to one of Malmqvist's own books, and been a close friend of Malmqvist's wife for 15 years. The Nobel committee denied that this constituted a conflict of interest, and said that it would have been absurd for Malmqvist to recuse.[8][7][9]
Controversies and criticism
Winning the Nobel Prize occasioned both support and criticism. Firstly, it won warm welcome from the Chinese government immediately after the announcement of the Nobel Prize. The People's Daily Online, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, published on 11 October 2012: "Congratulations to Mo Yan for winning the Nobel Prize in Literature! It is the first time for a writer of Chinese nationality to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Today is the day that Chinese writers have awaited for too long and that Chinese people have awaited for too long."[10]
The Chinese writer
Mo Yan released a publication by the name of Big Breasts and Wide Hips that caught criticism and came under fire for its sexual content and how it portrayed the
Anna Sun, an assistant professor of Sociology and Asian studies at Kenyon College, criticized Mo's writing as coarse, predictable, and lacking in aesthetic conviction. "Mo Yan's language is striking indeed," she writes, but it is striking because "it is diseased. The disease is caused by the conscious renunciation of China's cultural past at the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949."[18] Charles Laughlin of the University of Virginia, however, accuses Sun of "piling up aesthetic objections to conceal ideological conflict," comparing her characterization of Mo to the official China Writers Association's characterization of Gao Xingjian as a mediocre writer when Gao won the Nobel Prize in 2000.[19]
Charles Laughlin, however, published an article called What Mo Yan's Detractors Get Wrong[21] on ChinaFile against Link's argument. As a response to Link's criticism that Mo Yan trivialized serious historical tragedies by using black humor and what he called "daft hilarity", Laughlin emphasized the distinction between documentary and art and literature: "art and literature, particularly since the traumas of the twentieth century, never simply document experience." Laughlin argued that Mo Yan's intended readers already know that "the Great Leap Forward led to a catastrophic famine, and any artistic approach to historical trauma is inflected or refracted." According to him, "Mo Yan writes about the period he writes about because they were traumatic, not because they were hilarious."[21]
Salman Rushdie called Mo Yan a "patsy" for refusing to sign a petition asking for Liu Xiaobo's freedom.[22] Pankaj Mishra saw an "unexamined assumption" lurking in the "western scorn" for these choices, namely that "Anglo-American writers" were not criticized for similarly apolitical attitudes.[23]
In a rare interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel, Mo Yan, using a translator said "I know he envies me for this award and I understand this. But his criticism is unjustified," about fellow Chinese writer and musician Liao Yiwu.[24] He also stated that his major critics, "use magnifying glasses to look for my flaws and they even distort the meaning of my poems".[24]
In his Nobel Lecture, Mo Yan himself commented, "At first I thought I was the target of the disputes, but over time I've come to realize that the real target was a person who had nothing to do with me. Like someone watching a play in a theater, I observed the performances around me. I saw the winner of the prize both garlanded with flowers and besieged by stone-throwers and mudslingers." He concluded that "for a writer, the best way to speak is by writing. You will find everything I need to say in my works. Speech is carried off by the wind; the written word can never be obliterated."[25]
Following the awarding of the prize to Mo Yan in 2012, Göran Malmqvist, a member of the Swedish Academy, was criticized for a possible conflict of interest, as he had close personal and economic relations to Mo Yan.[7] He had translated several of Mo Yan's works into Swedish and published some through his own publishing house. Mo Yan had also written a laudatory preface to one of Malmqvist's own books, and been a close friend of Malmqvist's wife for 15 years. The Nobel committee denied that this constituted a conflict of interest, and said that it would have been absurd for Malmqvist to recuse.[26][7][27]
Gallery
- 11 October 2012: Permanent secretary Peter Englund's announcement of the 2012 Nobel Prize laureate in Literature
- 6 December 2012: Nobel laureate Mo Yan during the Academy's press conference.
References
- ^ The Nobel Prize in Literature 2012 nobelprize.org
- ^ a b Mo Yan britannica.com
- ^ Mo Yan – Facts nobelprize.org
- Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 25 May 2017.
- ^ Flood, Alison (28 February 2013). "Mo Yan dismisses 'envious' Nobel critics". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
- S2CID 164333914.
- ^ a b c d "Nobel academy member 'friends with Mo Yan'". www.thelocal.se. 6 November 2012. Archived from the original on 18 October 2019. Retrieved 18 Oct 2019.
- ^ "Friend of writer Mo Yan serves on Nobel Prize selection panel - AJW by the Asahi Shimbun". Archived from the original on 9 July 2013. Retrieved 20 November 2013.
- ^ Groll, Elias (18 October 2012). "Was there a conflict of interest behind the Nobel literature prize?". Archived from the original on 18 October 2019. Retrieved 18 Oct 2019.
- ^ 人民网评:祝贺莫言荣获诺贝尔文学奖! (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 14 October 2012.
- ^ "From cowherd to Nobel, it was a long lonely journey: Mo Yan". Business Standard. 11 October 2012. Retrieved 11 October 2012.
- ^ "Mo Yan Nobel lecture derided by China dissidents". Agence France-Presse. 8 December 2012. Retrieved 8 December 2012.
- ^ "Mo Yan's Nobel nod a 'catastrophe', says fellow laureate Herta Müller". The Guardian. 6 December 2012.
- ^ Zhou, Raymond (9 October 2012). "Is Mo Yan man enough for the Nobel?". China Daily. Retrieved 9 October 2012.
- New York Review of Books, (6 December 2012).
- ^ "The Nobel prize in literature: A Chinese Dickens?". The Economist. 20 October 2012. Retrieved 14 November 2012.
- ^ "Big Breasts and Wide Hips". 2005. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
- ^ Anna Sun. "The Diseased Language of Mo Yan", The Kenyon Review, Fall 2012.
- ^ Laughlin, Charles (17 December 2012). "What Mo Yan's Detractors Get Wrong". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 December 2012.[permanent dead link]
- New York Review of Books, (6 December 2012).
- ^ a b [1], What Mo Yan's Detractors Get Wrong
- ^ "Rushdie: Mo Yan is a "patsy of the regime". Salon 6 December 2012.
- ^ Salman Rushdie should pause before condemning Mo Yan on censorshipThe Guardian 13 December 2012.
- ^ a b "Mo Yan dismisses 'envious' Nobel critics". the Guardian. 2013-02-28. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
- ^ "Mo Yan – Nobel Lecture: Storytellers". translated by Howard Goldblatt, 26 February 2013
- ^ "Friend of writer Mo Yan serves on Nobel Prize selection panel - AJW by the Asahi Shimbun". Archived from the original on 9 July 2013. Retrieved 20 November 2013.
- ^ Groll, Elias (18 October 2012). "Was there a conflict of interest behind the Nobel literature prize?". Archived from the original on 18 October 2019. Retrieved 18 Oct 2019.
External links
- Prize announcement 2013 nobelprize.org
- Award Ceremony nobelprize.org
- Award ceremony speech nobelprize.org