MCLC: meet Malmqvist

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: meet Malmqvist
***********************************************************

Source: SCMP (4/18/14):
http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1486045/meet-goran-malmq
vist-nobel-prize-member-and-champion-chinese

Meet Göran Malmqvist, Nobel Prize member and champion of Chinese literature
By Janice Leung

When Gao Xingjian won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2000, Göran
Malmqvist came under fire for not recusing himself in the awards process.
Critics accused Malmqvist, a senior member of the selection panel, of a
conflict of interest because he was a friend of the dissident Chinese
writer and had translated many of his works.

A similar controversy emerged 12 years later when Mo Yan became the second
Chinese author to win the prize.

Mo Yan receives the 2012 Nobel Prize for literature from Sweden's King
Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony.Photo: AFP"Actually, I met Mo Yan
here for the first time in 1990, by this pond," Malmqvist says, seated by
a pool of koi at Chinese University where he gave a series of public
lectures last month. "I'd only met him three times before he got the
prize," the Swede says, but "people said we were old buddies".

Questions about his role in the choice of Gao and Mo for the Nobel Prize
are perhaps inevitable. Malmqvist is the only sinologist among the 18
members of the Swedish Academy who decide on the award, and is widely
assumed to be the driving force in their selection. Many believe his
influence is all the greater since he translated their works for the
academy to review.

At the same time, the authority of the Swedish Academy as an adjudicator
of world literature is sometimes called into question.

The academy comprises mainly writers - novelists, poets, playwrights and
screenwriters - along with some historians, scholars, literary critics and
translators. All are Swedes and their primary role is to maintain the
vigour of the Swedish language. Members meet weekly to select recipients
for dozens of literary awards; the Nobel Prize for literature is just one
of many that the panel bestows.

The prize was first issued in 1901 along with the four other awards
(chemistry, physics, medicine and peace) established under the will of
industrialist Alfred Nobel. Monetary reward aside, the prize undoubtedly
confers considerable prestige in the world of letters - and with it a fair
share of controversy.

All the same, Malmqvist says we shouldn't make too much of the award.

"It's a prize awarded by 18 people living in the very periphery of Europe,
in a small country. And it's given to someone whom the majority of these
18 people agree is a very good writer," he says.

"It's not a world championship. It couldn't be."

Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian. Photo: Jonathan WongThat's why some of the
most distinguished writers ever - Leo Tolstoy, August Strindberg and
Henrik Ibsen among them - have not received Nobel recognition. The prize
is not awarded posthumously. Besides, Malmqvist says, "there are too many
good writers!"

Over the next few weeks, members of the academy whittle down a preliminary
list of 20 Nobel candidates to just five. That means making a lot of tough
choices to come up with the shortlist next month, before announcing the
winner in October.

Bumping clenched fists against each other to illustrate the head butting
that sometimes goes on behind the scenes, Malmqvist says, "the discussions
can be very heated".

But he adds, "Once we have decided, we go and have a very good meal. And
then we are good friends again."

Malmqvist grins. A tall man with a hearty laugh, he is remarkably fit for
his age - the Swede turns 90 in June - and generally maintains a composed
view of the Nobel hoopla. After 29 years on the literary panel (he was
inducted into the Swedish Academy in 1985), he knows how dramas can be
played out.

"Membership is for life. So you can't leave the academy," he says with a
shrug.

His lifelong love of Chinese culture began in 1946 while he was studying
Greek and Latin at Uppsala University in Sweden. He stumbled across The
Importance of Living, a book written in English by the Chinese linguist
Lin Yutang, and was immediately piqued by the Taoist philosophy it
described.

The young Malmqvist went on to read Dao De Jing, a seminal work believed
to have been written in the 6th century BC.

He found himself lost in its various translations in English, French and
German, and decided he had to learn Chinese to properly understand the
text. He moved to Stockholm to study Chinese language and literature under
renowned sinologist Bernhard Karlgren.

In 1948, he made his first trip to China, thanks to a Rockefeller
fellowship to study dialects in Sichuan; travelling by ferry and plane,
the journey from Gothenburg took two whole months.

This first visit proved life-changing. He met his first wife Chen Ningtsu
in Chengdu, and they spent half a century living and studying together
before she died in the 1990s.

A sojourn on Mount Emei during this period also made a profound
impression. Today, he still relishes the seven months he spent at a
Buddhist monastery, learning classical Chinese literature from an educated
monk, surrounded by a serene landscape.

"There were no tourists. It was really quiet," he says slowly, as if
reciting a poem. "The only noise was the crickets and the birds singing."

Is his affection for this rural experience reflected in his taste in
literature? "Yes," he admits, "the countryside and the unsophisticated
Chinese people, whom I met in those villages. It's simple life that I
really enjoy."

Even all those decades ago Hong Kong was far too busy for Malmqvist.

"There were too many people and it was too noisy," he says of his brief
stop in Hong Kong in 1950. Returning to Sweden after his marriage, he and
his new wife had to make a stop in the city en route and spent a honeymoon
of sorts on Lantau.

"I rented a stone hut on the peak of Lantau island, and stayed there for
several months."

In the following decades, except for a two-year stint in the late 1950s as
Sweden's cultural attaché in Peking (he still likes to refer to the
capital by its old name), Malmqvist has established himself as a
sinologist and taught Chinese literature and linguistics at the University
of London, Australian National University in Canberra, and Stockholm
University.

He "dabbled" in translation, too. Malmqvist has published more than 50
Swedish translations of Chinese literary works, including collections of
poetry from the Han, Tang and Song periods, Taoist classic Zhuangzi and
two of China's four great classical novels - Water Margin and Journey to
the West.

Translation plays a critical role in promoting world literature, Malmqvist
says, especially in bringing a writer's work to a readership beyond his or
her home country. "A former secretary of the Swedish Academy once said:
'World literature is translation.' I think this is a very important
statement."

That's why he believes sinologists should not only engage in academic
research but also in translation; and for himself: "It's to allow people
from my country to appreciate the Chinese literature I like."

Unfortunately, he says, there are as many poor translators as there are
good writers in China.

"What makes me angry, really angry," he cries, eyes blazing, "is when an
excellent piece of Chinese literature is badly translated. It's better not
to translate it than have it badly translated. That is an unforgivable
offence to any author. It should be stopped.

"Often translations are done by incompetent translators who happen to know
English, or German, or French. But a lot of them have no interest and no
competence in literature. That is a great pity."

There are notable exceptions such as the late British sinologist David
Hawkes' rendition of Cao Xueqin's epic novel The Story of the Stone, which
he regards as a rare gem of translated Chinese literature.

Malmqvist also translated works by modern Chinese writers such as Ai Qing,
Lu Xun, Wen Yiduo and Shen Congwen. Of Shen, he says: "If he hadn't passed
away, he would have got the Nobel Prize in 1988."

In the 1980s, he began to translate contemporary works by Bei Dao and Gu
Cheng, Taiwanese poetry, and works by Gao Xingjian and Mo Yan.

It's natural to think that Gao and Mo beat other prominent Chinese authors
because they happen to be the sinologist's favourites.

But even though he concedes that the Swedish Academy's choice of the
literary prize-winner is largely subjective, Malmqvist insists that the
literary value of a writer's oeuvre is the sole criterion for awarding the
Nobel Prize, and geopolitics is never a consideration.

"The prize is given to a writer, not to a country. Before Gao received the
prize, a journalist from Peking asked me: 'How is it that China, with its
5,000 years of glorious history, never got the prize, but poor little
Iceland has?' I said: 'Iceland hasn't got the prize, but an Icelandic
writer has got the prize.'"

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