(Milan Kundera won the jerusalem prize in May 1985, and Kundera quoted a sentence in his speech at the ceremony. )
Milan Kundera? Czech novelist. In 1967, his first novel "Joke" was published in the Czech Republic, which was a great success. In 1968, after the Soviet Union invaded the Czech Republic, his literary creation was difficult, and his portable wife moved to France in 1975. Since then, he has created many sensational works such as Laughter and Forgetting Records? 1978, The Unbearable Lightness of Being? 1984, Immortality? 19 and so on. Kundera is good at depicting the human situation with irony and humorous tone, and is full of life wisdom. Kundera began to try to write in French in recent years, and has published Slow? 1995 and Identity? Two novels in 1997.
When people think, God laughs
(Milan Kundera won the jerusalem prize in May 1985. This article is an excerpt from Kundera's speech at the ceremony. )
It is no accident that Israel reserves its most important prize for world literature, but it is due to tradition. Those great Jewish ancestors have been in exile for a long time, and their eyes on Europe have therefore transcended national borders. For them, the meaning of "Europe" lies not in territory, but in culture. Although the brutal atrocities in Europe once made Jews sad and desperate, their belief in European culture remained the same. Therefore, I say that Israel, a small land, is the real heart of Europe. This is a strange heart that grows outside the mother's body.
Today, I come to receive this award named after Jerusalem and based on the great Jewish spirit, and my heart is full of strange excitement. I accepted the prize as a "novelist". Not a "writer". Flaubert, a French writer, once said that the task of a novelist is to try to disappear from behind his works. He cannot be a public figure. However, in our highly developed era of mass communication, often on the contrary, works disappear behind the image of novelists. Of course, no one can completely avoid exposure today. Flaubert's warning is still a timely warning: if a novelist wants to become a public figure, it will be his works that will suffer. At best, these novels can only be regarded as vassals of his actions, declarations and political views.
novelists are not spokesmen. Strictly speaking, he shouldn't even speak for his beliefs. When Tolstoy conceived the first draft of Anna Karenina, Anna in his mind was a very unlovable woman, and her miserable end seemed to deserve it. This, of course, is quite different from the final version we saw. This is not that Tolstoy's moral concept has changed, but that he has heard a voice other than morality. I'll call it "the wisdom of novels". All true novelists listen to this supernatural voice. Therefore, there is always more wisdom in a great novel than its creator. A writer who thinks he is more insightful than his works might as well change careers altogether.
however, where did this "novel wisdom" come from? What about the so-called "novel"? I like a Jewish proverb very much: "When people think, God laughs". This proverb inspired me. I often imagine that one day rabelais suddenly heard the laughter of God, and the first great novel in Europe was born. The art of fiction is the echo of God's laughter.
why does god laugh when people think? Because the more people think, the farther away the truth is from him. The more people think, the farther the ideological distance between people is. Because people are never the same as they think they are. When people entered the threshold of modern society from the Middle Ages, he finally saw his true colors: Don Quixote thought and thought, and so did his servant Sancho. Not only have they never seen through the world, but they can't even see themselves clearly. The earliest novelists in Europe saw the new situation of human beings and established a new art, that is, the art of fiction.
rabelais, a French monk, doctor and novelist in the 16th century, created many new words for French, which are still in use today. Unfortunately, one word has been forgotten. This is the Agelaste from Greek, which means those who don't know how to laugh and have no sense of humor. Rabelais hates and fears these people. Their persecution almost made him give up writing. Novelists have no room for compromise with these guys who don't know how to laugh. Because they have never heard the laughter of God, they believe that they have the absolute truth and are rooted in Miao Zhuang, and they also believe that everyone should "unify their thinking". However, the reason why "individual" is different from "everyone" is that he has penetrated the myths of "absolute truth" and "one side of a thousand years". Fiction is a paradise for individuals to exert their imagination. No one there has the truth, but everyone has the right to be understood. In the past 4 years, the birth and development of individualism in western Europe is guided by the art of fiction.
Baruch is the master of the first great novel in Europe. He is the protagonist of rabelais's Biography of the Giant. In the third volume of this novel, Baruch's biggest trouble is: Do you want to get married or not? He traveled around looking for good doctors, prophets, professors, poets and philosophers. These experts also quoted Hippocrates, Aristotle, Homer, Heraclitus and Plato. It's a pity that despite the poverty, in the end, Baru's strange shape still can't decide whether to get married or not. We readers can't draw a conclusion. Of course, in the end, we have measured the funny and serious situation of the master from all different angles.
rabelais's allusion is as great as Descartes' argument, but it is not the same in nature. Although the matrix of the novel is exhaustive, it is humorous.
One of the biggest failures in European history is that it knows nothing about the spirit of novel art, the new knowledge it suggests and the tradition of independent development. The art of fiction actually represents the artistic spirit of Europe. This art, inspired by God's laughter, does not bear the mission of propaganda and reasoning, on the contrary. Like Penelope, it takes apart the tapestry carefully woven by theologians and philosophers every night.
In recent years, blaming the 18th century has become a fashion. We often hear this kind of cliche: "The consequences of Russian totalitarianism were planted in Western Europe, especially the atheistic rationalism of the Enlightenment and the belief that reason is omnipotent." I am not qualified to argue with those who accuse Voltaire of being responsible for Soviet concentration camps. But I am fully qualified to say, "The 18th century belongs not only to Rousseau, Voltaire and Holbach, but also to Falldin, Stern, Goethe and Leroux."
among the novels of the 18th century, I like Lawrence stern's The Story of Sandy best. This is a strange novel. At the beginning of the novel, Stern describes the night when the protagonist begins to stir in the matrix. As he was writing, Stern was inspired by another story. In the following hundreds of pages, the protagonist of the novel was actually forgotten. This kind of writing skill seems to be playing games. As an art, skill is more than just playing games. Whether consciously or unconsciously, every novel should answer this question:
"What is human existence? What does it really mean? "
Falldin, a contemporary of Stern, thinks that the answer lies in action and the grand ending. The answer in Stern's novels is completely different: the answer is not the action and the ending, but the interruption of action.
Therefore, it may be said that there was an indirect but important dialogue between novels and philosophy. The rationalism in the 18th century was based on Leibniz's famous saying: "Everything that exists is reasonable."
Based on this idea, the scientific community at that time actively sought the reason why everything existed. They think. Everything can be calculated and explained. If people want to live worthily, they must abandon all irrational behaviors. Biographies are written like this: life is always full of causes and consequences, success and failure. Humans watched anxiously as this chain reaction rushed to the end of death.
Stern's novel corrects the equation of this complicated reaction. He does not focus on the cause and effect of behavior, but on the end of behavior. When the bridge between cause and effect broke, he wandered around looking for it. Looking at Stern's novels, we can find out the existence of human beings and their true meaning by digressing into irrelevant details. These things are incalculable and unreasonable. It's very different from Leibniz.
To evaluate the spirit of an era, we should not only start with ideas and theoretical concepts, but also consider the art of that era, especially the art of novels. When the steam engine came out in the 19th century, Hegel firmly believed that he had mastered the spirit of world history. But Flaubert is talking about human ignorance. I think that was the greatest idea in the 19th century.
Of course, people knew ignorance long before Flaubert. But because of lack of knowledge and education, there are differences here. In Flaubert's novels, ignorance is inherent in human beings. Poor Emma, whether in love or death, has an indissoluble bond with ignorance. After Emma's death, the conversation between Hao Mai and Bourny Xian was really stupid, just like the speech at the funeral. The most surprising thing is Flaubert's own view of ignorance. He believes that the prosperity of science and technology and social progress have not eliminated ignorance, but ignorance has grown with social progress!
Flaubert deliberately collects some popular expressions, which are often used by ordinary people to show off their striking and keeping up with the trend. He compiled these popular expressions into a dictionary. We can learn from this dictionary: "The stupidity of modernization is not ignorance, but eating all kinds of thoughts alive." Flaubert's original ideas have a far-reaching impact on the afterlife than Freud's theory. We can imagine that this world can be without Freud's psychoanalysis theory. But we must have the ability to resist all kinds of flood thoughts. These floods of thoughts are input into computers, and with the help of mass media, I am afraid they will condense into a force to crush independent thoughts and personal ideas. This force is enough to stifle European civilization.
Eighty years after Flaubert created Madame Bovary, that is, in the 193s of our century, another great novelist, Hermann Broch of Vienna, wrote such a wise saying: "Modern novels fought bravely against the tideofkitsch and were finally drowned."
the word p>Kitsch originated from Germany in the middle of last century. It describes the mentality and practice of pleasing the majority by hook or by crook. Since you want to please, of course, you have to confirm what you like to listen to. Then put yourself into this established mode of thought. Kitsch just disguises this ignorance with established patterns with beautiful words and feelings. Even myself will shed tears for such mediocre thoughts and feelings.
Today, 5 years have passed, and Brock's famous words are getting brighter and brighter. In order to please the public and attract attention, the "aesthetics" of mass communication must go with Kitsch. Under the omnipresent influence of mass media, our aesthetic feeling and moral values are gradually Kitsch. Modernism in modern times means not sticking to the rules, opposing the established mode of thinking, and never fawning on the vulgar. Today's modernism (commonly known as "trendy") has been integrated into the torrent of mass media. The so-called "trendy" must follow the fashion intentionally and cater to the established thinking mode harder than anyone else. Modernism has put on a kitsch coat. This coat is called Kitsch.
those who don't know how to laugh and have no sense of humor are not only conformist, but also fawn on others. They are enemies of art. As I emphasized, this art is the echo of God's laughter. In this art field, no one has the absolute truth, and everyone has the right to be understood. This kingdom of free imagination was born together with modern European civilization. Of course, this is a very idealized "Europe", or our dream Europe. We often betray this dream, but it is it that unites us. This cohesion has transcended the boundaries of Europe. As we all know, this broad field (whether it is the imagination of novels or the entity of Europe) is extremely fragile and easy to die. Those guys who can't laugh and have no sense of humor are always staring at us.
In this war-torn city, I have repeatedly reiterated the art of fiction. I think you probably understand my painstaking efforts. I'm not avoiding talking about issues that everyone thinks are important. I think today's European civilization is beset with internal and external difficulties. The precious heritage of European civilization-independent thoughts, personal ideas and sacred private life are all threatened. For me, individualism, the essence of European civilization, can only be kept in the treasure box of novel history. I want to attribute this thank-you speech to the wisdom of the novel. I should stop gabbing. I seem to have forgotten that God saw me thinking seriously about my speech here, and he was laughing.