MCLC: Mo Yan and Yu Hua seen from Indonesia

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: martin winter <dujuan99 at gmail.com>
Subject: Mo Yan and Yu Hua seen from Indonesia
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The author Goenawan Mohamad has consented to have the English version
circulated on this list. Translator: Jennifer Lindsay

Martin

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Source: Tempo Magazine (10/22/12):
http://www2.tempo.co/read/caping/2012/10/22/128550/Mo-dan-Yu (in
Indonesian)

Mo and Yu
By Goenawan Mohamad

Words have their own authority. With this proviso: within that authority,
there are words manifest as censors that attempt to drive away other
words – even though those other words have their own authority.

I see censorship as Words with a capital ‘W’ (you are forbidden to…..’)
that drown out words with lower case ‘w’ (like, ‘I am not sure’).
Censorship as Words brings Interpretation with a capital I, which sets out
to defeat other interpretations with a small ‘i’.

But ‘words’ and ‘interpretation’ cannot be extinguished. Works of
literature, even under the full power of ‘Words’, are like oceans where
‘words’ move with life, never completely dry. So too ‘Interpretation’ –
as official interpretation in the hands of the powers-that-be – does not
wipe out ‘interpretation’.

This year, the Swedish Academy honored Mo Yan, the Chinese novelist, with
the Nobel Prize for literature. Not surprisingly, many questions arose:
which words made his work so praised? What kind of words made his getting
the Nobel Prize feel awkward?

Most people in the world do not know Mo Yan’s novels. Most people in the
world are expected to have faith in the choice of the Swedish Academy’s
secret jury. There is no investigation about how they discovered Mo Yan
amongst the pile of other names. But there are people who know Mo more in
his connection to ‘Words’.

A member of the Communist Party, he began his career as a writer when he
joined the People’s Liberation Army and studied literature at the PLA
College of Literature and the Arts. When the 2010 book fair in Frankfurt
included works of literature by Chinese writers who oppose the Beijing
government, he boycotted that event. And when, at the London Book Fair this
year, he chose works to represent his country, he excluded the names of
dissidents banned by his government.

Yu Jie, a prominent author who fled China and moved to the United States,
viewed the Swedish Academy’s choice with sarcasm.  ‘A writer who chanted
“Hitler” couldn’t win the award, but a writer who chanted “Mao Zedong”
could. That shows the negligence of the West toward China’s human-rights
issues. Mo Yan’s award is not a victory for literature but a victory for
the Communist Party of China.’

It is not that Mo does not acknowledge censorship. But he has reasons –
justification even – for it. In an interview at the London Book Fair he
said, ‘In our real life there might be some sharp or sensitive issues that
[the writer does] not wish to touch upon. At such a juncture a writer can
inject their own imagination to isolate them from the real world or maybe
they can exaggerate the situation – making sure it is bold, vivid and has
the signature of our real world. So, actually I believe these limitations
Or censorship is great for literature creation.’

The Swedish Academy did indeed see how imagination was injected into Mo’s
works – producing a realism that combined with imagery which approaches
hallucination. His writing was compared to the ‘magic realism’ of Gabriel
Garcia Marquez or the poetic narrative in William Faulkner’s novels. In
Mo’s work, as in his views about the process of writing, ‘Words’ are even
considered capable of fostering the healthy growth of ‘words’.

But I think Mo does not see that imagination born of the creative impulse
has a different history to imagination as the skill in accommodating
oneself
to fear and anxiety. In the former, imagination is like a gleeful, spirited
leap. It brings energy. In the latter, imagination is like skillful dodging
because of fear of the fist. The first is a genuine flash. The second is a
calculated tactic; there is an element of trickery, which might even be
unconscious.

But to the Swedish Academy jury, the important thing to evaluate is not the
history of imagination in Mo’s work, but rather how that imagination is
evident in his novels. And Mo is correct: he emphasizes that, in the end,
censors cannot exert full control.

Yet there is still something disturbing. Mo is an example of how a writer
accepts censorship, ‘Words’, as an institution that neutralizes the sting
of the birth and life of words.

Maybe because Mo’s experience is different to that of other Chinese
writers, particularly Yu Hua. In his novel titled in English translation To
Live, here and there he compromises with the restriction of words. But
China in Ten Words, his collection of essays about China, has an
interesting chapter about how words live while restricted in the life not
of a writer, but a reader.

When Yu, born in 1960, was in his teens, the reading of novels was banned
In China – especially foreign novels. But he and a friend managed to
borrow a translation of Alexandre Dumas’s work, La Dame aux Camelias.
They could have the book for only 24 hours. So they hastily copied out
every word by hand. They worked all night long. But when they returned the
novel, they were confused: Yu’s friend could not read Yu’s handwriting,
nor could Yu read his friend’s. So, beneath a streetlamp they read aloud
their copy of the book. With a sense of joy. They discovered a moment of
liberation.

Unlike Mo, Yu does not see censorship as a paradoxical institution: as
‘Words’ that are repressive yet also productive. But Yu also proves that
‘interpretation’ of reality cannot be monopolized by ‘Interpretation’.
It can show how much authority ‘words’ have. Just reading them is already
an act of liberation.