2009.02.05

语言的背叛

哈金

哈金是一位华裔美国作家。他出生在中国，于1984年移民美国后开始用英文创作小说。他发表过五本小说，包括《自由生活》(A Free Life, 2007)、《等候》(Waiting, 1999)和《战废品》(War Trash, 2005)。其中《等候》连获美国国家图书奖(National Book Award)和笔会/福克纳奖(PEN/Faulkner Award)，《战废品》获笔会/福克纳奖。

以下内容摘自哈金在莱斯大学(Rice University)举办的"坎贝尔讲座"(Campbell Lectures)的讲义汇编《移民作家》(The Writer as Migrant, 2008)。

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"背叛"的反义词是"忠诚"或"效忠"。移民作家对这几个词感到不安，对身不在母国感到内疚，而母国一些同胞历来将此视为"离弃"。然而，选择用非母语写作，才是真正的背叛。无论作家本人怎样认为有理由，用外语创作都是一种作家脱离母语、将创作能量注入另一种语言的背叛行为。这种语言背叛是移民作家迈出的最大胆的一步，此后的其他任何疏离之举都再不足挂齿。

从古至今，一向是个人被冠以背叛国家之名。我们为什么不应当转而指责国家背叛个人呢？况且大多数国家一贯都有背叛本国公民之举。国家对作家所犯的最大罪行莫过于使他无法本着艺术良知诚实写作。

但非可能，作家都会尽可能留在自己熟悉的母语内。德国作家西博尔德(W. G. Sebald)在英国生活和教学长达30多年，精通英文和法文，但他一直用母语写作。当有人问他为什么不改用英文时，他的回答是：没有必要。他能够这样回答的原因想必是，由于德文是一种主要的欧洲语言，把他的作品翻译成其他欧洲语言并不困难。相比之下，法裔捷克作家米兰·昆德拉(Milan Kundera)是在年过六旬后才开始用法文写作。这一壮举可能反映着让这位小说家必须作出重大改变的某种危机。如果我们将昆德拉后期用法文创作的小说与其早年用捷克文撰写的著作比较一下就会发现，他继《不朽》(Immortality)之后的晚期作品在篇幅上缩短不少。然而，他改用法文是一种以不屈不挠的精神进行的文学上的大胆冒险。正如他的小说《无知》(Ignorance)中的主人公将奥德修斯重回伊萨卡等同于承认"生命有止境"一样，昆德拉自己的征途也是不能倒回再继续的。这也能够说明他将法国称为"第二故乡"的原因。

有人曾问我为什么用英文写作。我往往这样回答："为了生存。"人们会将"生存"等同于"生计"，因而称赞我谦逊、亦或卑微的动机。其实，物质生存只是动机的一个方面，它还包含另一方面，那就是：存在──过有意义的生活。存在还意味着最充分地利用人生，追求自己的理想。

芝加哥大学出版社(University of Chicago Press)2008年版权所有。保留一切权利。

(完)

05 February 2009

The Language of Betrayal

By Ha Jin

Ha Jin is a Chinese-American writer who was born in China, migrated to the United States in 1984, and began to write novels in English. He has written five novels, including A Free Life (2007), Waiting (1999), which won the National Book Award, and War Trash (2005), which received the PEN/Faulkner Award.

This excerpt is from The Writer as Migrant (2008), a collection of the Campbell Lectures given by Ha Jin at Rice University.

The antonym of ‘betrayal’ is ‘loyalty’ or ‘allegiance.’ Uneasy about those words, the migrant writer feels guilty because of his physical absence from his native country, which is conventionally viewed by some of his countrymen as ‘desertion.’ Yet the ultimate betrayal is to choose to write in another language. No matter how the writer attempts to rationalize and justify adopting a foreign language, it is an act of betrayal that alienates him from his mother tongue and directs his creative energy to another language. This linguistic betrayal is the ultimate step the migrant writer dares to take; after this, any other act of estrangement amounts to a trifle.

Historically, it has always been the individual who is accused of betraying his country. Why shouldn’t we turn the tables by accusing a country of betraying the individual? Most countries have been such habitual traitors to their citizens anyway. The worst crime the country commits against the writer is to make him unable to write with honesty and artistic integrity.

As long as he can, a writer will stay within his mother tongue, his safe domain. The German writer W.G. Sebald lived and taught in England for over three decades and knew both English and French well, but he always wrote in his native language. When asked why he had not switched to English, he answered there was no necessity. That he could give such an answer must be because German was a major European language from which his works could be rendered into other European languages without much difficulty. In contrast, the Franco-Czech writer Milan Kundera started writing in French when he was already over sixty. Such a heroic effort might signify some crisis that prompted the novelist to make the drastic switch. If we compared Kundera’s recent fiction written in French with his earlier books written in Czech, we can see that the recent prose, after Immortality, is much thinner. Nevertheless, his adopting French is a brave literary adventure pursued with a relentless spirit. Just as the narrator of his novel Ignorance regards Odysseus’s return to Ithaca as accepting ‘the finitude of life,’ Kundera cannot turn back and continues his odyssey. That also explains why he has referred to France as his ‘second homeland.’

I have been asked why I write in English. I often reply, ‘For survival.’ People tend to equate ‘survival’ with ‘livelihood’ and praise my modest, also shabby, motivation. In fact, physical survival is just one side of the picture, and there is the other side, namely, to exist – to live a meaningful life. To exist also means to make the best use of one’s life, to pursue one’s vision.

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