中国作家协会主管

迁徙与欧美文学

大家好！很高兴能够参加“中澳文学论坛”，也欢迎来自澳大利亚的作家同行Jones、Wright来到广州，和我们一起探讨关于“文学、迁徙、地域”这样一个论坛主题。对于这个主题，我想大家都会有切身之感，因为我们中的很多人，可能都是这个主题中“迁徙”一词的亲历者和见证人。

确实，迁徙在今天已经成为一个全球性的话题了，非但在中国，众所周知，澳洲、欧美等国也都在被这个话题所席卷。那些发生在国与国之间、城与乡之间的大量的移民和迁居，已经成为我们这个时代少数几件为各国、各地区所共有的事实之一。

中国有句古谚叫“树挪死，人挪活”，意思是说，倘若一个人处在困苦、逆境中，那么换个地方生活，或许就能改变逆境。我想，这也是迁徙之于人的最大魅力，通过变迁、游走、流动，借以改善、改良生活。无独有偶，《圣经》上也有类似的劝诫。《出埃及记》是一篇关于信念的动人故事，可是另一方面，我们也可以理解为，它是一个人带领一群人迁徙，从而获得新生的故事。

这种种事例无非是在告诉我们，迁徙是一种古老的人类行为。大抵从人类诞生那天起，迁徙就在伴随我们，为了存活，我们的祖先中总有人会离开出生地，拖儿带女，披荆斩棘，一点点地拓展生存疆域；不定到了什么地方，他们就会停下来，开荒，耕种，繁衍……尔后子承父业，由年轻的一代人继续向远方探险。所以人类文明的历史，有时真说不上是因为安居还是来源于迁徙。或者说，人类本来就像钟摆，几千年摇晃于安居和迁徙之间，直到今天也不能停止。

今天我们说到迁徙，大概不会有人否认，这是我们时代的一个关键词——也许说到底，在任何时代，它都称得上是关键词。究其然，我想是因为迁徙带来太多迁徙之外的东西，不比安居只是安居本身。

我平时很少关注国际新闻，却也知道，整个欧洲都受困于迁徙之痛，大量中东难民的涌入，把一向平和有序的欧洲逼进了死胡同。对于无辜的欧洲人来说，迁徙这件事，就像一大清早他们醒来，突然发现家门口躺着一群受伤的人，这群人饥饿，哀号，正急迫地想挤进屋里来。很明显，他们不是自己人，身份可疑而危险。拒绝他们吧，于心不忍，而且很有可能会被攻击；帮助他们吧，家里的孩子就会饿死。我想，这便是今天欧洲的两难处境，单纯的人道主义在“迁徙”这样一个强大的现实面前，显得力不从心。

坦率地说，我了解这一切，不是通过网站新闻，而是依赖文学作品。有一篇小说叫《2666》，前些年在中国很受追捧。这篇小说有一部分是写到了欧洲的当代生活，主人公是几个年轻的高校知识分子，分别来自英国、法国、意大利、西班牙。他们相识于一次国际会议上，成了好朋友。这四个朋友，其中有一位是女性，这就使他们的关系变得很暧昧。可是无论如何，他们仍然是好朋友。他们虽然性格不羁，却很重情谊，常常深夜通电话，表达对彼此的思念。也常常约会，有一次他们就约在伦敦相见了，喝到深更半夜，醉醺醺地上了一辆出租车。车上他们先谈了些哲学、文学，尔后很坦诚地谈到了爱情。开车的是个巴基斯坦人，起先还参与他们的谈话，后来就不说话了。他在听，慢慢他就听明白了这四个人的关系，非常震惊，很生气。于是他就开始骂人了。他骂他们是畜生、母狗，他请他们下车，因为他们不但坐脏了他的车，还弄脏了他的耳朵。后来他就哭了。那个夜晚，我估计那个巴基斯坦人的星空是倒塌了，那是他一生最耻辱的经验，他听了他不该听的话，知道这世上还有人在过着猪狗不如的生活。他的一生就这样毁了。那几个欧洲人呢，一开始是被他骂闷了，后来气不过，就把巴基斯坦人从车上揪下来打了一顿，他们越打越生气，以至于忘了为什么要打他，就是凭着本能，心怀愤恨，直到把他打成肉糊，他们害怕了，开着他的车跑了。车上他们也哭了。

我想说明的是，《2666》的主题并不是写移民，可是这偶尔一个闲笔，却足以使我们窥见欧洲社会的一个侧影，那就是纷繁，混乱，人心深处，烽烟四起。如果我们不能说这全是因迁徙而起，至少可以说，迁徙得担很大一部分责任。读完这篇小说不久，我就看到一则消息，法国正在启动立法程序，用来处理中东移民、难民问题。我想一件事情，但凡能惊动到国家立法，说明这件事麻烦大了。

较之欧洲，美国的情况略为宽泛些，当然他们本来就是移民国家，对待一切都见怪不怪。有一篇小说叫《沉溺》，前些年出版的，被誉为是当代美国文学里程碑式的作品。为什么这么说呢？因为这篇小说完全是以一个异域人的眼光和思维，来书写一个我们很熟的、早已被定型的美国。作者胡诺特•迪亚斯是多米尼加人，八九岁的时候跟随家人来到美国。这小说应该是他的自传。他们家，先是父亲一个人过来打拼，不定期地寄钱回家。这样过了些年，母亲就带着一家人过来团聚了，却发现父亲已另组了家庭。于是两家人含而糊之就这么过着，他们住在新泽西的一条小街上，贫穷，嘈杂，绝望，常常母亲会哭，其实生活是很无望的。可是因为这小说是以一个外国小孩的视角写的，他又忧伤，又快乐，又好奇，他知道自己是在美国，所以心里又很珍惜。他观察街上的行人，看他们怎样穿衣打扮，听他们吹口哨，看天上的鸽子……这一切跟他的家乡有什么不一样吗？当然不一样，因为这是美国。

我读这篇小说，完全被这个外国小孩的视角迷住了，一个穷国家的穷孩子，虽然来到美国也还是住在贫民窟里，可是跟着他的目光，我们却看到了一个全新的、朝气蓬勃的美国，一个越过新泽西的穷街陋巷、只会出现在好莱坞歌舞片里的花团锦簇的美国。而美国人自己写的小说，我们是看不到这些的，我们看到的只是成人社会的无聊、贫乏、空虚，我们也会看到某种衰败。我想说的是，通过《沉溺》这篇小说，我们大概也能感到迁徙另外的赐与，除了不安，危险，种种冲突……它也赐与我们眼光，一个全新的看待世界的视角，由着这个视角，即便灰暗的生活也会生发光辉和希望。

在这篇发言的最后，我想简略地聊聊南非作家戈迪默的小说《偶遇者》，这是一篇典型的移民小说。南非姑娘茱莉爱上了一个中东来的小伙子，因为种种原因，两人一起回到沙漠，过着远离尘世的生活。后来，连丈夫都不能忍受当地生活的孤苦，逃到美国去了。而茱莉却决定留下来，和一群穆斯林做朋友。茱莉当然也是迁徙，只不过她是反向迁徙，逃离文明社会，主动趋近贫苦。大概对于像茱莉这样的富家女来说，物质只会使人软弱，贫苦里却能生出清坚的力量。

总之迁徙有很多种，有人是为避难，有人是为趋富，而茱莉却是就贫，也可以说，她是靠迁徙来进行精神自救。

不得不说，当今社会，固守于本土的人确是越来越少了，即便我们没在迁徙，也必是迁徙者的后代，或将是迁徙者的父母。也就是说，迁徙是人类社会的一个常态，虽然它看上去是非常态的。在人类祖先留下的诸多积习里，迁徙已经成为我们人性的一部分，那就是对于远方、未知的无止尽和好奇和渴望，它带来了纷争、仇视、冲突，可是同时，它也意味着活力、创造，它带来了某种程度的融合，文化的、生活方式的；因为很难有完全的融合，比如宗教。无论如何，纷争将会继续。

就复杂性和丰富性，我认为是迁徙而不是安居一直在承担文学的永恒主题。这方面的事例，欧美文学可以举出很多，因为时间关系不多说了，谢谢大家！

Migration and European & American Literature

Wei Wei

Good Morning everybody! First of all, I’m very glad to participate in the “China-Australia Literary Forum” and would like to warmly welcome my Australian peers, the writers Jones and Wright, to Guangzhou, where we have the opportunity to discuss a topic titled “Literature, Migration and Region”. I guess everyone here must have a certain sense of personal concern towards the word “migration”, for amongst us surely many have witnessed or even had a first-hand experience of such an issue.

Indeed, migration is a subject of global importance nowadays, which as we all know, has swept not only China, but also across Oceania, Europe and America. Migration and immigration between countries and between rural and urban areas has become a common issue of this generation and one of the topics that every country and every region share in one way or another.

There’s an ancient saying in Chinese that goes: “Movement means life for a person as much as it means death for a tree”. In other words, when a human being finds himself living in anguish and distress, moving to another place may shackle those feelings of uneasiness and restlessness. I do think this is the greatest charm of migration, for it is through change, movement and flow that one attempts to make one’s own life happier. The Book of Exodus of The Bible is a touching story about faith, but seen from another perspective it is also a story about migration: a narrative about one man leading his people from one place to another into a new life.

This tells us that migration is as ancient as humanity itself. Many of our ancestors left their birthplace for survival, then hacked their way through thorns and thistles with women by their side and children on their back, and little by little started widening the limits of their land. No matter where they arrived, they settled down, tilled the land, threw a seed, reproduced…then the son would continue his father’s endeavour and the youngsters of the new generation would further explore faraway places. Therefore, migrating and settling down are equally important and it’s impossible to tell which one prevails in the history of civilizations. Or we can say the human being resembles a pendulum that sways between settling down and migrating over through the millennia …a pendulum that keeps oscillating. 

Today we discuss the topic of “migration”, a word that, no one would deny it, is a fundamental keyword of our generation … even maybe of every generation, and I believe that a close analysis would reveal that this happens because migration brings so many things other than migration itself, a point in which essentially differs from settling down.

I actually seldom follow international news, but still I do know that at this moment all Europe has suffered the anguish of migration due to the huge amounts of people that has arrived from Middle East, jeopardizing the peace and stability that Europe once had. If we see it from the perspective of the blameless Europeans, migration is just like waking up one morning and realizing that a bunch of injured, wounded people is lying on your doorway. They’re starving, moaning and eager to enter your house. It is clear that they’re not your own people; they’re suspicious and might be dangerous. If you reject them you might feel inhumane and they will likely attack you; if you help them, then your children will starve to death. I think this is the big dilemma Europe faces nowadays, for it seems that in this powerful reality called “migration”, your pure humanism can’t reach your will.

Frankly speaking, I understand all this not because of the Internet news but because of literature. There is a novel that was widely welcome in China some years ago called 2666. A part of the novel swirls about contemporary life in Europe with four young university intellectuals from England, France, Italy and Spain as its main characters. These intellectuals became good friends after meeting in an international congress and, one of them being a girl, at its turn winds up developing a very ambiguous relationship among the four. But regardless of that ambiguity, they remained being good friends and, although they all had quite an unleashed personality, all highly cherished that particular friendship. They called each other at night, talked for hours over the phone about how much they missed one another and every now and then got together. One time, they gathered in London, drank until dusk became midnight and then got into a taxi. Drunk as they were, they first started debating on philosophy and literature and then, very bluntly, moved to talk about love. The taxi driver was a Pakistani who first got involved in the conversation but then remained quiet until he realized the nature of their relationship. Then he became astonished, disgusted, furious…and started to insult them. He scolded them as beasts and bitch. He ordered them to get out of his taxi, for they had stained his car seats and disgraced his ears. They have made him cry. That night, I believe the starry sky of this Pakistani driver collapsed, for this episode was the most humiliating experience of his life. He heard what he shouldn’t have and thus learnt that there are people on this world that live filthier lives than beasts and swine. They’ve destroyed his life. As for those European intellectuals, at first they were indifferent towards the whole cursing but, as the driver went on, they started to get angry until they ran out of patience, dragged him out of the taxi and started beating him. The more they hit him, the angrier they got and that went on until they utterly forgot the reasons why they were hitting him, but still kept going driven by an instinctual force of hatred and wrath. They hit him until he was but a meat plaster against the pavement. Then the intellectuals got scared, jumped into the taxi and ran away. Once inside, they also started crying.

What I want to illustrate with this story is that although the main topic of 2666 is not by any means migration, this narration allows us to get a glimpse of European culture, to gaze at its complexity and chaos, at their human heartedness and at the confusion of a society utterly beset by war. Thus, although we can’t say that all of these aspects are a result of migration, we can at least say that migration is highly responsible for the bigger part. Not long after I finished reading this novel, I happened to stumble upon a news article in which France was bringing forth legislative amendments to tackle the problem of Middle East immigrants and refugees. I believe that something that can go as far as to startle a country’s legislation is evidence enough of the extent and importance of this issue.

The situation in the United States is slightly broader than in Europe. Of course, this may have to do with the fact that the United States is a country of immigrants on the first place, so what once weird was become familiar. There’s a short story, published not long ago called Drown, which has been praised as a milestone literary piece of contemporary America. Why? Because the story depicts a stereotypical image of an America we’ve been long acquainted with, but from the eyes and thoughts of an absolute outsider. The writer, Junot Diaz, was born in Dominican Republic and moved to the U.S. at around eight or nine years old along with his family, so this story might be his autobiography. In the narrative, the father first migrates and struggles to send money back to his family every now and then. Many years later, when his wife and son finally arrive, they realize he was already living with another family, so both families had no choice but to settle in a little street in New Jersey: a poor, noisy, hopeless little street in which his mother used to cry for her equally hopeless life…But this story is told from the eyes of a little kid, so distress mixes with happiness and curiosity. The little boy knew he was in America and treasured that fact. He observed the pedestrians walking down the street, what they had for clothes and wore for make-up, how they whistled, how the pigeons flew up on the sky…was there a difference with what he saw back home? Of course there was. This was America.

I was absolutely charmed with the way this little foreign kid saw the world while I was reading this story. A poor boy from a poor country through whom, although he lived in a desolated slum, we could see a brand new, youthful and vibrant America; an America that transcended that shabby street of New Jersey; a splendid, brightly colourful America that could otherwise only be seen in a Hollywood dancing musical. On the other hand, when this same America is depicted by American writers, we can only see the boredom, meagreness and void of an adult society portrayed with a certain sense of decay. What I like to highlight is that in Drown we are able to see another kind of gift offered by migration, a brand-new horizon to approach life in which the murky grey can be turned into bright light and hope.

Before finishing my speech I would like to shortly talk about The Pickup, a typical novel about migration written by the South African writer Nadine Gordimer. In this novel, a girl named Julie falls in love with a young fellow from the Middle East. For a certain reason they wind up going back to the desert of the fellow’s hometown, living a life far distant from the mundane world. Afterwards, even the husband can’t take the solitude of his own place and decides to run off to America. But Julie decides to stay and forges a friendship with a group of Muslims. Julie is, of course, an immigrant, but a sort of backwards immigrant who left the civilized society to plunge into poverty. For these wealthy girls, it seems, material things can only render us feeble, whereas amidst poverty we can put forth our unyielding will. In sum, many are the causes of migration: some seek asylum, some want to become wealthy and some, like Julie, plunge into poverty in a search to realize her spiritual self through migration.

We have to admit that those who entrench themselves in their own native places are fewer than ever before. Even if we are not migrants ourselves, we could be the descendants or the parents of migrants. In other words, although migration seems to be an abnormal phenomenon, it actually is a common and ordinary behaviour of the human species and among the practices left by our ancestors; migration was already rooted in their habits, for the endless curiosity and eagerness to approach faraway places and the unknown world is part of human nature. Surely, it has brought disputes, hostility and conflicts but at the same time it has conveyed vitality, creation and, to a certain extent, an integration of cultures and ways of living that is only limited because absolute fusion is almost impossible, just like religion shows us. In any case, wrangles are not likely to end in the future.

I believe that is migration and not settling down what has been and will be an on-going inspiration topic for literary creation to approach the complexity and richness of this world. Examples in European and American literature are numerous but due to time limitations, I shall stop here. Thank you very much!