Cover News Interview with Nobel Prize winner and French writer Le Clézio:

A Chinese heart, my favorite is Tang poetry

I came to Chengdu three times, and I had different feelings three times. French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Leclezio, a Nobel laureate who came to Chengdu again to participate in literary activities, chatted with reporters from West China Metropolis Daily and Cover News about his literary journey and his trip to Chengdu.

I was very happy to arrive in Chengdu with my wife and receive a giant panda doll

"Is this meow? Oh, read the cat, the word panda is composed of two animals, one is cat, the other is..."On the evening of December 12, Le Clézio and his wife arrived in Chengdu, and when they received the giant panda doll from the West China Metropolis Daily and the cover news reporter, the tall and energetic 4-year-old man happily opened the conversation.

"This is my third time in Chengdu. The first time I came to visit, I was by train, and that was fifteen or sixteen years ago. The second time was when I came to Chengdu a few years ago to participate in an event at a university. "On that occasion in Chengdu, Le Clézio also had exchanges with the writer A Lai, and discussed many issues related to literary creation and other aspects." In Chengdu, first of all, there are many different cultural traditions that meet here. In addition, there are many different ethnic groups here, and under the intersection of various ethnic groups, the literary atmosphere is strong. ”

Le Clézio himself had a lot of exchanges with Chinese writers, and he was a visiting professor at Nanjing University for more than a decade, coming to lectures for a few months every year. "I have dual French and Mauritian citizenship, and I am a bit like a French minority writer. In a multi-ethnic place like China, I feel that the environment is very good, and I have a feeling that I am a French minority teacher. ”

In Du Fu's thatched cottage, I felt the presence of literature

Le Clézio has a Chinese heart, and he once said that among Chinese literary works, he is most willing to recommend Tang poems, including the works of Li Bai and Du Fu, and Cao Xueqin's "Dream of the Red Chamber". He recalled: "I came to Chengdu Du Fu Thatched Cottage a few years ago, and I was very impressed by it, and I am very much looking forward to this trip to Chengdu. ”

In 2022, Leclezio co-authored the book "The Road of Tang Poetry" with Dong Qiang, a professor at Peking University, which became a bestseller in France and won the first Gui Bédouel Prize in France in 2021. In his view, Tang poetry is the pinnacle of human literary creation; At the end of his pen, the artistic conception of Tang poetry is far-reaching and long-lasting, like the title of a French book "The River of Poetry That Flows Endlessly".

When I came to Chengdu that time, Le Clézio had a different feeling: "Although Du Fu's Thatched Cottage was rebuilt later, not the real Tang Dynasty, I felt the presence of literature and the traces of people's lives at that time. ”

dialogue

On December 12, the West China Metropolis Daily and the cover news reporter interviewed Leclezio, talking about literature, poetry, and his "old friend" Lao She.

"When I was a child, I read "Journey to the West", it was not scary, it was very humorous"

Reporter: When you were in your 20s, you wanted to come to China and apply for programs in China, why are you so interested in China?

LECLEZIO: When I was very young, I was very familiar with Chinese culture, especially the legends, such as Wu Chengen's Journey to the West. I started reading these books when I was a kid. So I'm familiar with all the fantasies, imaginations, and humors in Chinese culture. For me, these imaginations are wild, and I like them very much. Some European children's works are actually very scary, but "Journey to the West" is not scary at all, and it is very humorous. A dragon can be turned into a horse and help a monk learn scriptures, which interprets the world of Chinese legends, which is very attractive to me.

Reporter: Another French writer, Anne Arnault, won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year, what do you think about the future of French literature?

Le Clézio: French literature, like Chinese literature, has diverse characteristics. Anne Ernaux's work is set in a small place, poor parents, the countryside where they live, etc., a very specific kind of literature, very realistic. Maybe I can't write something like this, but I appreciate her work.

"I like Lao She because we have something in common"

Reporter: You wrote a book "The Road of Tang Poetry", why did you write this book?

LECLEZIO: This is a collaboration between me and Dong Qiang, a professor at Peking University. He was a good scholar and wrote very well in calligraphy. This is a very bold and surprising work, because I don't understand Chinese, so I need to rely on translation. I have a lot of trust in Professor Dong Qiang's translation, and his translated poems are very close to the original.

In fact, it is still very difficult to write such a work.

Reporter: Why do you like Lao She very much?

LECLEZIO: I feel like the two of us are people of the same world. He was a Manchu who lived in an era of decline from a strong culture. Me too, my life is about the world of Britain on one side and the disappearing Mauritian culture on the other. I live in the world of the past and appreciate the world of the present. I think I have something in common with Lao She in this regard. That's why I admire him. I, a Frenchman, have something in common with a Chinese Manchu, and it's amazing, isn't it?

West China Metropolis Daily-Cover News Reporter Yan Wenwen, Zhang Jie, Wu Deyu Photo Report

Character business cards

Jean-Marie Gustave Leclezio, born in 1940, is a unique representative of the French literary scene in the second half of the 20th century, and is known as the "three stars of France" along with Modiano and Perec. He has published more than 1963 novels, essays, translations and other works. In 1980, his first work won the Reynoldau Literary Prize; In 1994, he won the Paul Moran Literary Prize; In 2008, he was named "the greatest French-speaking writer of our time" by the French magazine "Reading"; He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in <>. His representative works include "Litigation Transcript", "War", "Wandering Stars", "Hunger Interlude" and so on.