1, Ulysses Joyce

"Of the 100 people, no 10 people can finish Ulysses, but among the 10 people who can finish Ulysses, 5 people regard him as a masterpiece of art."

"Ulysses is the greatest contribution of novels in the 20th century literature, and it will certainly make the author immortal, just as Legend of the Giant made rabelais and brothers karamazov make Dostoevsky immortal."

These are two judgments made by The New York Times book reviewer J. Collins in the same book review from No.65438 to No.0922. By the end of the twentieth century, these two very different predictions were "fortunately correct"-I wish the book reviewer eternal life.

For Ulysses, even the professor of western literature has nothing to say, and others naturally have nothing to say.

What needs to be added here is that it is because of the hard work of translators that China people can finally see the Chinese version of Ulysses (translated by Xiao Gan and Wen Jieruo; Di Chin).

While expressing our deep gratitude to them, we can say that although most people in China can't understand the strangeness and exquisiteness of the original Ulysses, at least in the Chinese version of Ulysses, we feel the possibility of elegance of modern Chinese.

2. Proust, recall the past years.

When The House of Gail Mount, the third book of Memories of Lost Years, was published in France, ezra pound, a famous literary critic and poet, said that the most perfect review article for this book should be only one paragraph, and it must be seven pages long, using only semicolons. This is used to exaggerate Proust's painful sentence.

However, when Proust died in 1922, his 15-volume novel, which was completed with unimaginable pain, has been recognized as one of the longest and greatest novels in history for countless times.

Like a great architect, Marcel Proust spent 30 years building a splendid time corridor with bricks and stones of memory, and at the beginning of writing, he thought that this work should be built like a church (preface to The Translator of the Lost Years). This makes his works reflect a brilliance beyond all details-a whole momentum and strength.

3. Kafka's Metamorphosis

An ordinary young civil servant woke up one morning and suddenly found himself a beetle, which was followed by a series of absurd and "normal" reactions: his family changed from shock and fear to indifference and boredom; The protagonist's desperate and tragic efforts to survive-everything is like a dream, a nightmare! However, in Kafka's world, nightmares never wake up. ...

It is Kafka's talent as a novelist to describe "all activities of human life and their realistic details" in the absurd and illogical world. For Kafka himself, survival is a struggle that must "use our own strength properly (because our strength is always limited)".

Through writing, Kafka found the image of existence for his own struggle. When we read Metamorphosis, Castle, Trial and other works, it is almost like facing a powerful sculpture. You can feel the throb and conflict of life from extreme deformation and exaggeration. Through Kafka's own letters and diaries, we will be able to obtain endless sources of strength. Surprisingly, they even have such gestures: sadness, understanding, pain and humility. ...

We can say a lot about Kafka (it is said that in the study of modern literature, Kafka's papers are so big that dozens of pages will be printed just on the title). However, in my feeling, listening quietly is the most appropriate way (isn't this the most lacking ability in our time? )

4. Outsider Camus

The novelist Camus has another identity, that is, the philosopher Camus, and he is one of the representatives of existentialism. In a sense, the confusion of these two identities often leads to such a problem in novel creation, that is, thought is greater than image. This problem is more obvious in Sartre, who is also a representative figure of existentialism: to put it bluntly, Sartre, as a first-class philosopher, is at best a second-rate figure in the novel.

On the other hand, the evaluation of such novels often focuses on their ideological content. In layman's terms, it is Camus's novel The Outsider or The Plague, and its success depends on its central idea. "The central idea is not the highest form of creative art, but it may be so important that if it is abandoned for artistic criticism, it will desecrate the human spirit." (The New York Times Book Review)

Stylistically, it is pointed out that "Camus is very good at Defoe's narrative style." If this is not enough for people to read, then his unique delicate feelings and abundant passion make up most of the narrative space. People will never forget that The Myth of Sisyphus, though a philosophical work, is undoubtedly a beautiful and passionate prose masterpiece.

5. Lolita Nabokov

Before Lolita was published, Nabokov's resume as a literature professor was like this: male (1903——), Russian exiled aristocrat (revolutionary? Descendants, travelers, LEPIDOPTERA entomologists (especially butterflies) and specimen collectors, poets, university liberal arts professors (classical literature, writing and literary criticism), and chess puzzle makers. If you want to use a word to evaluate, then the closest thing is elegance.

But with the publication of Lolita, everything changed. In the eyes of thousands of American readers, Nabokov's "brand" represents: best-selling writer, "pervert", blasphemer, showoff, rich (Lolita's royal family), in a word: vulgar (and wearing a watch to attract people's love and envy)

To put it simply, Lolita tells an adult's sexual desire and "erotic story" about a girl. In this novel, Nabokov, as a linguistic genius, is amazed at the parody and development of American slang and slang (this is his first novel written in English, and all his previous works were written in his native language-Russian) and the "carnival" folk narrative technique since rabelais.

If we don't understand Nabokov's contribution to language style and narrative structure, it is difficult to understand what important position he will leave in the history of literature. It is suggested to refer to his other "elegant" book: autobiography "Speak, Remember".

6. "Garden with Crossing Paths" Borges

"Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentine writer, is predestined friends with China, so China may know more people than the population of his motherland. However, this premature baby, 1899, who was born on August 24th, has never been to China, although he has a feeling that he has been in China all the time. This is because, in his mind, China is synonymous with remoteness and mystery and the birthplace of books. " This is a commemorative article written by Chen, a famous foreign literature expert and translator, on the eve of Borges' centenary birthday.

Indeed, as a poet and novelist, Borges's influence has gone far beyond his native Argentina. Some people seem to have been born in any particular era and region-Borges belongs to such people. For him, the familiar space-time exists in another way. In all his works, this existence is repeatedly expressed by several metaphorical images: books, mirrors, mazes and dreams. They are constantly copied and derived until they are infinite.

The Garden with Crossed Paths (a collection of novels) is a book about the maze of infinite books. Just through this tongue twister explanation, we know how worth reading. ...

7. One Hundred Years of Solitude Marquez

For most literary lovers, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Garcí a Má rquez have almost become synonymous with "magic realism" in Latin America. For the predecessors and writers who started and developed this genre with Marquez's contemporaries, the sentence "The sower is unwilling to pick the biggest fruit" may be a good comfort.

However, it is not without reason that this novel, known as "the most representative magical realistic novel", became popular all the way until it was invited to a temple in Nobel Prize in Literature. On the one hand, the unique creative principles and ideological connotation of magic realism itself, as well as the novel itself "easy to read" are the reasons why more readers choose it.

"This work reveals its meaning through carefully designed grotesque plots, ancient mysterious stories, hidden family secrets and unique internal contradictions, and gives people pleasure through these direct ways." (The New York Times Book Review)

Please note that "pleasure" is "through these direct ways." This means at least one thing:

There is no necessary connection between "masterpiece" and "difficult to read"-this sentence is good advice not only for readers, but also for our writers.

8. black heart Conrad

Perhaps China readers don't know much about Conrad. However, among the English novels of this century 100 selected by Random House 1998, the maritime writer Conrad was selected as four. Beyond Joyce, who ranks first, and Faulkner and Foster, who are familiar to domestic readers.

Even for readers who have never known Conrad, reading Conrad's novels will be a "pleasant trip". From the external experience, the "loud call of the sea" in Conrad's novels immediately let us sail with the author and experience all kinds of "big adventures". Let us know "the great and monotonous existence between the sky and the sea"; Feel the ordinary passage of life.

Internally, Conrad is also known as the first novelist in the West who "focuses on the study of psychological phenomena". His delicate grasp and anatomy of human emotions remind us of Zweig, and his exploration of human nature reminds us of Dostoevsky. As far as the importance of literary history is concerned, Conrad may not be among the "greatest", but he is undoubtedly one of the best writers.

9. The Sound and the Fury Faulkner

"I found that the stamp-sized land in my hometown is worth writing. Even if I write for a lifetime, I can't finish writing people and things there." (Faulkner's self-report)

As a recognized master of American literature, Faulkner's greatest contribution is to leave a fictional and mythical literary region for mankind-located in Yorknapatafa County, northern Mississippi. Fiona Fang spans 2,400 miles and has a population of over15,000. Jefferson City is the center of the county. Faulkner drew two maps for this fictional county, and proudly claimed that he was its "sole owner and owner".

The Sound and the Fury is one of the representative works of this huge "York Napatafa" pedigree (consisting of more than ten novels and nearly 80 short stories). The theme can be summarized as an "elegy" of the southern plantation system.

In terms of writing style, The Sound and the Fury fully demonstrated the technique of stream of consciousness and became a classic of modernist literature. The title of the book comes from a monologue in Shakespeare's play Macbeth, "Life is just a walking shadow, a bossy performer on the stage. After a moment, he quietly retired in silence; This is a story told by an idiot, full of noise and commotion, but it can't find any meaning. " This can be used as a wonderful annotation of this novel.

Yasunari Kawabata 10

From 65438 to 0968, Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel Prize for his "keen feelings and superb narrative skills, which showed the essence of the Japanese".

For many readers, Yasunari Kawabata has almost become the representative of "traditional" Japanese literature. Japan written by Yasunari Kawabata has also become a symbol of "remoteness, mystery and loneliness" in the eyes of western literature researchers. In fact, when Yasunari Kawabata first appeared in the literary world, he was obsessed with learning from western literature, and even declared that "expressionism can be called our father and Dadaism can be called our mother".

After being frustrated on the road to Europeanization, he declared that he would switch to "Orientalism" and went to the other extreme of completely inheriting the tradition. In the end, I found a bridge for the integration and exchange of eastern and western literature from my failure, thus creating Kawabata Yasunari's own "beauty of the East".