MCLC: Mo Yan says censorship necessary (2,3)

Denton, Kirk denton.2 at osu.edu
Sat Dec 8 11:08:44 EST 2012


MCLC LIST
From: Wolfgang Kubin <kubin at uni-bonn.de>
Subject: Mo Yan says censorship necessary (2)
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I am afraid we have to make a difference between a person and a writer.
What Mo Yan said as a person according to China Daily today is the most
awful thing a person can say. But as a writer Mo Yan might be quite
Different.

We had and have this problem in German speaking countries before:
Gottfried Benn, Martin Heidegger, Peter Handke. And please think of Ezra
Pound. From the political point of view these persons were and are
unbearable, but from the aesthetic point of view are their writings as
well problematic? Probably not.

Wolfgang Kubin (Gu Bin) from Shantou

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From: Michael Day <mday at nu.edu>
Subject: Mo Yan says censorship necessary (3)

Does this mean that the defenders of Mo Yan and his literary values and
qualities must also defend censorship?
Matters seem to be becoming a bit difficult, I would imagine.

This morning, I received the following from Liao Yiwu as an addendum to a
published letter on the subject of the 12-year prison sentence handed out
the writer Li Bifeng in Sichuan:

" ...
Finally, I would like to add to my views about this year¹s choice for
Nobel Prize in Literature:

"That the Sweden Academy of Letters is in concurrence with the Chinese
totalitarian regime about a writer has, in part, something to do with the
academy¹s life tenure system. Mr. Göran Malmqvist has kept too cozy a
relationship with China¹s officially-sanctioned writers, and even become
close friends with some of them. Such relationship impedes his judgment of
literary creation in current China. The mistake one old man has made
becomes one of the worst mistakes that the Nobel Committee has made over
its hundred-year history. It is almost a subversion of the universal
values that literature is supposed to represent. I am grateful that this
prize has been in the past awarded to writers, such as Solzhenitsyn,
Brodsky, Pasternak, Herta Meuller, Camus, Sartre, García Márquez and more,
who have exemplified the best conscience of the human race and our refusal
to make compromise with the evil."

Sigh.
Oh, that it were as easy to justify Mo's award as it is that of Gao
Xingjian (my opinion: specifically in reference to his drama work and
writings about fiction writing in the 1980s and the great influence these
had at the time... so, yes, I prefer to think of Gao receiving the Nobel
as a "Chinese" writer from the PRC, primarily, though I'm fully aware this
may not have been the case, unfortunately).

Michael M. Day,


 




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