莫言獲獎演講英文版
a person can experience only so much, and once you have exhausted your own stories, you must tell the stories of others. and so, out of the depths of my memories, like conscripted soldiers, rose stories of family members, of fellow villagers, and of long-dead ancestors i learned of from the mouths of old-timers. they waited expectantly for me to tell their stories. my grandfather and grandmother, my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, my aunts and uncles, my wife and my daughter have all appeared in my stories. even unrelated residents of northeast gaomi township have made cameo appearances. of course they have undergone literary modification to transform them into larger-than-life fictional characters.an aunt of mine is the central character of my latest novel, frogs. the announcement of the nobel prize sent journalists swarming to her home with interview requests. at first, she was patiently accommodating, but she soon had to escape their attentions by fleeing to her son's home in the provincial capital. i don't deny that she was my model in writing frogs, but the differences between her and the fictional aunt are extensive. the fictional aunt is arrogant and domineering, in places virtually thuggish, while my real aunt is kind and gentle, the classic caring wife and loving mother. my real aunt's golden years have been happy and fulfilling; her fictional counterpart suffers insomnia in her late years as a result of spiritual torment, and walks the nights like a specter, wearing a dark robe. i am grateful to my real aunt for not being angry with me for how i changed her in the novel. i also greatly respect her wisdom in comprehending the complex relationship between fictional characters and real people.
after my mother died, in the midst of almost crippling grief, i decided to write a novel for her. big breasts and wide hips is that novel. once my plan took shape, i was burning with such emotion that i completed a draft of half a million words in only eighty-three days. in big breasts and wide hips i shamelessly used material associated with my mother's actual experience, but the fictional mother's emotional state is either a total fabrication or a composite of many of northeast gaomi township's mothers. though i wrote "to the spirit of my mother" on the dedication page, the novel was really written for all mothers everywhere, evidence, perhaps, of my overweening ambition, in much the same way as i hope to make tiny northeast gaomi township a microcosm of china, even of the whole world.