On October 11, 2012, when the Swedish Academy announced that the Chinese writer Mo Yan had won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature, the whole country was excited, and they lamented that the Chinese writer had finally entered the stage of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mo Yan's award is not only his personal glory, but also the glory of the entire Chinese literature. It is having a broad and lasting impact on the entire Chinese literary world, and has set off "Mo Yan fever" in the literary world. The reason why Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize is: "Integrating folktales, history and contemporary society through hallucinatory realism." The so-called "folktales" are actually stories about Mo Yan's hometown, Northeast Township, Gaomi, Shandong. The novel is full of complex emotions of "nostalgia". This reminds me of Faulkner, another winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Like Mo Yan, he is a local writer famous for describing the people and things in his "hometown as big as a postage stamp." Faulkner fictionalized a small county in the south of the United States, "Yoknapatawpha", "returning to history in the form of legends, memories and even fantasies, constructing an infinite realm of time in a limited space, and constructing a symbolic spiritual home." ?They are all good storytellers, using their hometown as the background to tell stories about their hometown and history, the rise and fall of their hometown and society. The attachment and care for their hometown are the inexhaustible source of their artistic creation. Now let’s explore their relationship with their respective hometowns using their sentiments towards their hometowns as clues.

1. The real hometown - the source of inspiration

Hometown is a person’s lifelong concern. No matter where he goes, he can never forget the place where he grew up. For writers, it has some special value. Their hometown is their lifelong wealth, and its influence and contribution to artistic creation are multifaceted. For Mo Yan, his hometown is the raw material for his artistic creation. Most of his novels use Gaomi as the regional background. Talking about the influence of his hometown on himself, Mo Yan was deeply touched. He said: "The memory of childhood plays a decisive role in the writer's creation." Mo Yan's hometown of Gaomi provides a lot of material for his creations, including historical or real people and events, as well as folk legends. After his transformation, the characters became the artistic images of the novel, and the events became the plot and details of the novel. For example, "Red Sorghum" mainly describes the story of a private anti-Japanese armed force ambushing Japanese cars, which shows a certain degree of national consciousness and national consciousness. It describes "the Japanese annihilated 39 enemies, including the battle at Pingxingguan". The enemy Lieutenant General Commander Nakaoka Yataka of Itagaki Division who escaped...burned four enemy vehicles and captured one"? This is actually a real incident that happened in Gaomi. In 1938, Japan launched a massive attack on China. During the Anti-Japanese War, Cao Keming and his cousin Cao Zhengzheng led the local guerrillas in Northwest Gaomi Township and joined forces with Leng Guanrong's troops in Northeast Gaomi Township to launch the Sunjiakou ambush. In this operation, Characters and events form the backbone of "Red Sorghum". The character of "My Grandpa" Yu Zhan'ao in "Red Sorghum" is adapted from the real experience of Liu Lianren, a Gaomi native. Liu Lianren was accidentally captured by the Japanese and was taken to Japan to work as a coolie. He escaped and was captured many times before finally hiding in Japan. After thirteen years of savage life in the deep mountains and forests of Hokkaido, he finally returned to his hometown. There are many cruel killing scenes in Mo Yan's novels, and many unbelievable things come from the history of Gaomi. In that special era, the people of Gaomi suffered a lot of inhuman treatment. Mo Yan once said that before he was 21 years old, he wanted to escape from his hometown because it was full of loneliness, hunger, depression and fear. But when he really left his hometown, he discovered that those painful memories opened a universal door for his writing. Everything that happened in Gaomi's hometown in the past, whether he experienced it personally, saw it with his own eyes, or heard it with his own ears, brought great inspiration to his novel creation. There are many incredible details in "Big Breasts and Wide Buttocks". For example, Shangguan Lu swallowed peas into his stomach and then spit them out for the hungry children to eat. These are taken from the real experiences of people in Mo Yan's village. , Shangguan Lu, who has gone through all the suffering in the world but never bows to fate, is a true portrayal of Mo Yan's mother.

Like Mo Yan, Faulkner also received rich material from his hometown. Faulkner said: "My hometown, which is as big as a postage stamp, deserves to be well described, and even if I write for a lifetime, I can't write enough about the people and things there." Oxford, Mississippi, is Faulkner's hometown. He spent most of his life there. However, in his creations, unlike Mo Yan, who appears in the name of his real hometown, he invented a place called "Yoknapatawpha" to describe the people and people in his hometown. thing. Many of the characters in Faulkner's works can be traced back to his hometown characters. It is mentioned in "The Biography of Faulkner" that when Faulkner was 5 years old, a black maid, Caroline, came to the family. She was loyal, decisive, kind, independent, and full of dignity. She had a profound influence on Faulkner's life. , especially has a huge impact on artistic creation. Dilsey in Faulkner's influential novel "The Sound and the Fury" is based on her. Dilsey is loyal, kind and courageous. She uses her love and responsibility to maintain the Compson family that is about to fall apart. The image of Benji the fool also comes from the people around Faulkner.

When Faulkner was in elementary school, there was a teacher named Anne Chandler. She had a mentally retarded younger brother named Edwin who had to be supervised at all times. The family often locked him behind a fence and prohibited him from doing so. Contact with strangers. He always played with his older sisters and didn't leave until he was in his 30s. Benjy in "The Sound and the Fury" is almost the same as the Edwin Faulkner came into contact with. He was looked down upon because of his mental retardation. Even his family disliked him and kept him at home all day long. And Katie, she carries the shadow of Estelle, Faulkner's crush and eventually his wife. Unlike traditional women, she dares to pursue her own happiness. He puts his beauty towards Estelle The fantasies were all about Katie. Mo Yan is a storyteller, and Faulkner is a storyteller. He can easily take the people and events in his hometown and transform them to create a new image.

Mo Yan can speak, and Faulkner can edit. In terms of collecting materials from his hometown, Mo Yan uses existing materials to change historical events, while Faulkner mainly collects prototypes of characters and then creates his own New storyline. For them, their hometown has complex emotions. Their sorrow and joy, love and hate are all deeply rooted in the soil of their hometown. The reality of their hometown is the source of their artistic creation.

2. Hometown Made in the Heart—Watching the Hometown World

Whether it is Mo Yan’s “Northeast Gaomi Township” or Faulkner’s “Yoknapatawpha County”, They are no longer their real hometown, but on the basis of retaining some truth, adding some modifications, pouring their own imagination, using their hometown as a platform for artistic creation, on which their own history and reality are interpreted, and the Their feelings, impressions and rational thinking about life are all reflected in the objects they describe. Since Faulkner first named his mysterious hometown as Yoknapatawpha County and Jefferson Township in "As I Lay Dying", Faulkner has been swaying in his fictional hometown. In his creative career of more than 40 years, Faulkner wrote 19 novels and 125 short stories. Most of these creative works were about Yoknapatawpha County. In this small county, Faulkner describes the stories of several generations of families from different social classes. The prosperity of the Compson family and the intrigue within the family in "The Sound and the Fury"; the patriarchy and the confinement of feudal tradition in "A Rose for Emily"; the insinuation of the United States in "As I Lay Dying" The human ugliness of southern farmers, as well as the stories of black people, poor white people, etc., all highlight and strengthen the history and reality of the American South in the artistic world created by Faulkner. Similarly, nearly half of Mo Yan's novels are about "Gaomi Northeast Township". The geographical concept of Gaomi first appeared in "White Dog Swing". Since then, the word Gaomi has appeared frequently in Mo Yan's novels. "Red Sorghum" with the theme of the Anti-Japanese War, "Big Breasts and Wide Hips" that eulogized the greatness and selflessness of mothers, etc., recounted the joys and sorrows of many ordinary people inside and outside Gaomi Township.

In fact, whether it is the suffering hometown or the suffering villagers, they all place the author’s watch on his hometown. The hometowns written by Faulkner and Mo Yan were created in their hearts. Their descriptions of the ruin and suffering of their hometowns are not reproaches, but deep attachment and resentment of "hating that iron cannot be turned into steel." Faulkner and Mo Yan have the same feelings for their hometown, with deep love and deep responsibility, but their methods of creating it are different. Faulkner paid more attention to maintaining the "original appearance" of his hometown. Although Yoknapatawpha County and the town of Jefferson were fictional, the mountains and rivers mentioned in the novel actually existed, and he also retained the reality of social life in his original hometown. Black people, black life and slaves, as well as the past glory and present decline of the manor family, their sins and divine punishment, the glory and pride of the South, etc., are all truly reproduced in Faulkner's novels. The southern society presented by Faulkner is a real southern society. In contrast, the Gaomi Northeast Township described by Mo Yan is no longer what it used to be. Contrary to Faulkner, in Mo Yan's hometown, only the place names are real, and almost everything else is made up out of thin air. Some scholars have verified that the Northeast Gaomi Township mentioned in the novel has swamps, lakes, rivers, mountains, and endless red sorghum, but none of it exists in the real hometown. Moreover, Mo Yan's expectations for his hometown are higher than Faulkner's, and he is more willing to transform his hometown. He said: "In less than ten years, I turned my Northeast Gaomi Township into a very modern city, and added many modern facilities. ... I dare to change what is happening around the world. When I got Gaomi Northeast Township, it seemed like those things really happened there. My real Northeast Gaomi Township didn’t have any mountains at all, but I moved a mountain to it, and there was no desert there either. I created a desert for it. , there is no swamp there, I got a swamp for it, and there are forests, landslides, lions, tigers... I made them up for it." It's not like what people in the American South see in Faulkner's works. Small counties will feel familiar with it, but Gaomi people will read Mo Yan’s novels and not recognize it as their hometown. Mo Yan did this deliberately. No matter which way they are presented, the local complex hidden in them cannot be ignored.

Both Faulkner and Mo Yan have contradictory feelings of love and hate for their hometown. In their artistic creations, they mostly express their resentment towards their hometowns, but in real life, their love for their respective hometowns is indescribable.

Mo Yan said that before the age of 21, he wanted to escape from his hometown because it was full of hunger, fear and suffering, so the novels about his hometown were all gray, without poetry or enthusiasm. He denies everything about his hometown. His first emotion towards his hometown is hatred and his impatient desire to escape. However, when he did leave, the memories of hunger and fear there became memories he nostalgic for. Especially after leaving my hometown for a long time, when I once again step into the land where I was born and raised, all the emotional memories become beautiful. A person's flesh and blood are connected with his hometown. Mo Yan was born and raised in Gaomi, and his spirit is inseparable from his hometown. Although some scenes in the novel are too cruel and exposed, they also show his sympathy for the suffering of the people in his hometown. The same is true for Faulkner, who has a mixed love-hate relationship with his hometown. On the one hand, he praised the bravery, loyalty and self-esteem of the southerners, especially the mountains and rivers of the south. He was very proud of them and described them many times in his novels; on the other hand, he had a hatred for the south. Especially on slavery and racism, Faulkner advocated freedom and equality and had a strong humanitarian spirit. However, racial discrimination has always been serious in the American South. He praised the loyalty and bravery of black people in his novels. He was once hated, attacked and ridiculed by southerners, who said he had betrayed the south. Who knows that it is precisely because of deep love that we dare to expose its shortcomings?

Mo Yan and Faulkner, the novel originated from their hometown, but also transcended their hometown and developed into a universal meaning. Through the description of the lifestyle in their hometown, they conveyed a certain universal human existence condition and transformed the general description of nostalgia into the understanding and discovery of human existence. It’s because of my attachment to my hometown that I will return.

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