2001年度诺贝尔文学奖授奖辞

来源：扬子鳄

（根据诺贝尔文学奖官方网站发稿翻译。）

2001年的诺贝尔文学奖授予英国籍特立尼达作家奈保尔，为表彰他“将逼真的叙事艺术和严正的观察能力结合于作品之中，驱使我们去认识那被掩盖的历史的存在。”
奈保尔是个文学的旅人，他真正的家永远只在自己体内，在他那不可模仿的话音中。特立独行于各种文学流派和主义之外，他将所有文学形式尽皆融入自我的风格，小说和非小说文体的传统界限在他的作品里已不再重要。
奈保尔的文学疆域远远逾出特立尼达这个西印度洋的小岛，他最初的母题；而今他将印度、非洲、南北美洲、亚洲的伊斯兰国家以及英国尽揽怀中。作为康拉德的继承者，他担负起为帝国命运编年记史的职责，而那是部道德史：即帝国究竟对人类做了什么。他的叙述的权威来自他的记忆，他记住了他人所遗忘的，那被征服者的历史。
他处女作《神秘的理发师》(The MysticMasseur)中滑稽的传奇与《米格尔大街》(MiguelStreet)中的短小故事，把契诃夫与特立尼达民间歌曲搅拌在一起，奠定了他幽默作家和街道生活讲述者的名声。但在《比沃斯先生的房子》(AHouse for Mr.Biswas)这本奇特的书中，他迈开大步，在书中建立了一个独立而完整的世界，因此可以在里面发现帝国边缘的一个微型的印度和他父亲封闭的生活的一幕幕场景。当边缘人的形象也占据了伟大的文学的一角，他便已颠覆了通常的视角，摧毁了读者内心那自我保护的冷漠感。这是他以后一系列作品的原则，尽管其中有越来越强的纪实感，书中的人物并未因此而失去色彩。小说家言、自传和纪实交织于奈保尔的作品中，而且很难说清哪个才是主导要素。
在他的杰作《抵达之迷》(The Enigma ofArrival)中，奈保尔仿佛一位人类学家，探访了英国的真相，前去考察了丛林深处与世隔绝的一些土著部落。他带着明显是短视和随意的眼光，描绘了古老的殖民地文明悄然塌陷的冷漠画面，以及其欧洲近邻的衰败。
奈保尔注意到小说作为一种文体，缺乏汪洋恣肆包揽无遗的气概。小说先假设了一个圣洁的人类世界，而后伴随着征服的是这个世界的破裂。当他开始写作《失落仙境》(TheLoss of ElDorado)，他体验到小说的这个缺陷。在阅读过浩瀚的文献资料后，他写下了特立尼达可怕的殖民历史。他发现细节和声音的真实是必须抓紧的，同时在以文学形式叙述他的材料之时，他又必须回避纯粹的虚构。他的游记的情节转折处必定会有目击者作证，这一点在他对东伊斯兰国家的力作《信仰之外》(BeyondBelief)一书中得到有力的体现。作者通过听觉的敏锐，找到了情感的倾泻口。
奈保尔是位现代的哲人，他继承了《老实人》与《波斯人信札》开创的传统。以一种值得敬佩的清醒的文风，他把愤怒转变成明察秋毫的本领，让事件说出自身内在的可笑之处。

Original Text:
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001
V.S. Naipaul

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2001 is awarded to the Britishwriter, born in Trinidad, V.S. Naipaul

“for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutinyin works that compel us to see the presence of suppressedhistories”.

V.S. Naipaul is a literary circumnavigator, only ever really athome in himself, in his inimitable voice. Singularly unaffected byliterary fashion and models he has wrought existing genres into astyle of his own, in which the customary distinctions betweenfiction and non-fiction are of subordinate importance.

Naipaul’s literary domain has extended far beyond the West Indianisland of Trinidad, his first subject, and now encompasses India,Africa, America from south to north, the Islamic countries of Asiaand, not least, England. Naipaul is Conrad’s heir as the annalistof the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do tohuman beings. His authority as a narrator is grounded in his memoryof what others have forgotten, the history of the vanquished.

The farcical yarns in his first work, The Mystic Masseur, and theshort stories in Miguel Street with their blend of Chekhov andcalypso established Naipaul as a humorist and a portrayer of streetlife. He took a giant stride with A House for Mr. Biswas, one ofthose singular novels that seem to constitute their own completeuniverses, in this case a miniature India on the periphery of theBritish Empire, the scene of his father’s circumscribed existence.In allowing peripheral figures their place in the momentousness ofgreat literature, Naipaul reverses normal perspectives and deniesreaders at the centre their protective detachment. This principlewas made to serve in a series of novels in which, despite theincreasingly documentary tone, the characters did not thereforebecome less colourful. Fictional narratives, autobiography anddocumentaries have merged in Naipaul’s writing without it alwaysbeing possible to say which element dominates.

In his masterpiece The Enigma of Arrival Naipaul visits the realityof England like an anthropologist studying some hitherto unexplorednative tribe deep in the jungle. With apparently short-sighted andrandom observations he creates an unrelenting image of the placidcollapse of the old colonial ruling culture and the demise ofEuropean neighbourhoods.

Naipaul has drawn attention to the novel’s lack of universality asa form, that it presupposes an inviolate human world of the kindthat has been shattered for conquered peoples. He began toexperience the inadequacy of fiction while he was working on TheLoss of El Dorado, in which after extensive study of the archiveshe described the appalling colonial history of Trinidad. He foundthat he had to cling to the authenticity of the details and thevoices and abstain from mere fictionalisation while at the sametime continuing to render his material in the form of literature.His travel books allow witnesses to testify at every turn, notleast in his powerful description of the eastern regions of theIslamic world, Beyond Belief. The author’s empathy findsexpression in the acuity of his ear.

Naipaul is a modern philosophe, carrying on the tradition thatstarted originally with Lettres persanes and Candide. In a vigilantstyle, which has been deservedly admired, he transforms rage intoprecision and allows events to speak with their own inherent irony.

The Swedish Academy

昨天劫还骂奈保尔来着