莫言寫作的飢餓誘因:渴望一日三餐有餃子吃

THIS year's Nobel literature laureate chose his pen name Mo Yan, which means "Don't speak," as a reminder to himself that he should talk less and write more.

今年的諾貝爾文學獎獲得者將他的筆名選擇了莫言，意爲“不要說話，”作爲自我提醒，他應該少說話，多寫作。

Mo, whose real name is Guan Moye, said he had "brought the family a lot of trouble" for his talkativeness when he was young.

莫言原名管謨業，說他年輕時的多嘴多舌“給家庭帶來了很大的麻煩”。

"My mother felt so anguished and persuaded me to keep my mouth shut. I was so moved by her painful expression and swore to be silent since then," he said. "That's why I gave myself such a pen name when I started writing in 1981."

“我的母親感到如此痛苦，並勸我閉嘴，她痛苦的表情使我伸手觸動，併發誓從那時起保持沉默，”他說。 “這就是爲什麼我在1981年開始寫作時，給自己取了這樣一個筆名。”

That was the year his novella, "Drizzle on a Spring Night," was published.

就在那一年，他的中篇小說《春夜雨霏霏》出版了。

Mo said several years ago that his literature dream stemmed from his crave for dumplings in the late 1950s when China was in economic difficulty.

莫言說，幾年前，他的文學夢想源於20世紀50年代末中國處於經濟困難時他對餃子的渴望。

He recalled that a writer became his new neighbor in Jinan, capital of his native Shandong Province, and had dumplings for three meals a day, a luxury for a common Chinese then.

他回顧說，在他的家鄉山東省省會濟南一個作家成爲了他的新鄰居，並且一日三餐都有餃子吃，那時餃子是一個普通中國人的奢侈品。

"At that time, my family couldn't afford such a meal in one year," Mo said in a speech in Open University of Hong Kong.

莫言在香港公開大學的一次演講中說：“那時，我的家庭一年之中都負擔不起這樣的飯。”

Mo said he began to nurse a dream of becoming a writer, with three dumpling meals every day.

莫言說，他開始萌生了成爲一名作家的夢想，一日三餐吃餃子。

His early education was cut short at the age of 12 by the "cultural revolution," a decade of political chaos when many of China's schools closed down.

他的早期教育在12歲時被“文化大革命”切斷，一場十年的政治混亂，當時中國的許多學校都關閉了。

Instead of avoiding memories of his poverty-stricken childhood, Mo valued it so much he said in a speech at Stanford University in California that "loneliness and hunger were my fortunes of creation."

莫言不是迴避他貧困的童年記憶，而是非常珍視它們，他在美國加利福尼亞州的斯坦福大學那場“孤獨和飢餓是我創作的財富”的演講中說道。

"When I was five or six, the whole nation was hungry. I had a deep love for food. Even now I feel tears in my eyes when I touch the rice in supermarkets," he said.

“當我五六歲時，全國人民都很飢餓。我對食物狂熱的愛，即使現在當我在超市觸摸到大米時，我覺得我眼裏仍含着淚水，”他說。

When he joined the army in 1976, he once filled his stomach with 18 buns.

當他1976年參軍時，他曾經往肚子裏塞了18個饅頭。

Mo has applied his experiences as well as relatives' stories to his works.

莫言把他的經歷以及親人的故事都寫到了他的作品中。

He created the figure "rural doctor" based on his aunt in his novel "Frogs," and described a typical Chinese intellectual called Shangguan Jintong to reflect his spirit in the book "Big Breasts and Wide Hips."

他在小說《蛙》裏創造的人物“鄉村醫生”是以他的姨媽爲原型的，在他的書《豐乳肥臀》中描述了一個叫上官金童的典型中國知識分子以折射其精神。

"The folk arts and folk culture accompanied my growth and I was influenced by the cultural elements I witnessed through my childhood in the rural areas. When I picked up the pen for the creation of literature, the folk cultural elements inevitably entered my novels and affected and even determined the artistic styles of my works," he said.

“民間藝術和民俗文化伴隨着我成長，我深受我童年時在農村目睹的文化元素的影響。當我拿起筆進行文學創作時，民間文化元素不可避免地進入我的小說，影響甚至決定了我作品的藝術風格，”他說。

Though Mo is intellectually sharp, he is an ordinary man in daily life. He married a factory co-worker about 30 years ago.

儘管莫言是思維敏捷，但在日常生活中他是一個普通人。大約30年前他娶了一個工廠同事。