Wandering Clézio

　　Clézio, who was born in the 1940s, entered the French literary world in the 1960s and has published more than 40 novels at an average rate of 10 books per year, which is recognized as the greatest contemporary French novel. one of the homes”. In a survey of 23,660 middle school teachers by the famous French publishing house Gallimard on “Which writer’s work should be selected as the best textbook for middle school?”, Clézio’s vote rate exceeded that of Maupassant and Duras. Few famous writers. However, despite this, Clézio rarely won literary prizes. However, although Clézio was not well received by literary awards, he was able to write many works that were liked by many readers, and finally won the Nobel Prize for Literature. .
　　
　　A wandering career
　　
　　Clézio doesn’t like to be lively, and he doesn’t care about fame. He once said in an answer to a reporter: “Reputation is really annoying, people are invited everywhere, I have to eat out every night, and I know so many people… This is not good”, “I am indeed a little withdrawn, but it is absolutely It’s not timid, I can face any environment, but there are too many people and I’m not comfortable.” Because of this, he seldom appeared in Paris, and he was even more reluctant to be familiar with the complicated and noisy literary and social circles, to be busy with impetuous things “for fear that others would not know”, and to win those so-called Fake name. Perhaps because of this, he is the only one whose works are read by a wide audience, but he is rarely praised because of the lack of “timely communication” with the judges of the literary awards and the literary brokers in the media circle.
　　However, Clézio does not feel lonely and lonely, his life is actually very colorful. He avoided the cocktails, salons and hustle and bustle of Paris, and chose the life of wandering travel, and gained rich life experience and feelings about the world in the non-stop wandering travel. His wandering travels have unavoidable origins. In the early colonial expansion of Europe, French power spread to Africa, America and Asia. Clezio’s ancestors left Brittany’s hometown and immigrated to the African island of Mauritius with the wave of French colonialism in the 18th century. Grandfather was a judge on the island. From the Mediterranean Sea to the small islands in the Indian Ocean, the wandering life of his ancestors influenced later Clézio’s persistent wandering around the world.
　　In 1940, Clézio was born in Nice, a seaside city in southeastern France. His father was French and his mother was British. Influenced by the English and French bilingual environment, he showed his talent as a writer at a very young age. He was fluent at the age of 4. He started writing at the age of seven or eight. At the age of 8, in the shadow of World War II, he went with his family to Nigeria, where his father worked as a doctor. In 1950 the family returned to their hometown of Nice. He spent most of his teenage years in Nice, and after graduating from secondary school he went to study English at the University of Bristol in 1958-1959, completed his university studies at the University of Nice in 1963 and the University of Aix-en-Provence in 1964 After studying for a master’s degree, in 1967, he went to Thailand and Mexico as a volunteer (according to French rules, volunteers abroad can replace military service). After 1970, Clézio left Europe to teach French and travel to universities in Mexico City, Boston, Austin, New Mexico, etc. He mainly traveled in Mexico and Central America from 1970 to 1974, and in 1975 Married a Moroccan woman, Jamil. Since 1990, he and his wife have exchanged residences in Albuquerque, a famous health resort in New Mexico, the island of Mauritius in Africa, and Nice in France. But he spends more time traveling, wandering, and living in Mexico, New Mexico, Mauritius, and Native American areas, so his home in his native Nice is almost always closed.
　　From his ancestors to himself, Clecchio continued the tradition of wandering travel of his ancestors, away from the prosperity of Europe and the United States, and wandered in the vast regions of Africa and the Americas. He focuses on and loves the wandering life in the exotic cultures of Africa and America, so in his 1997 “Singing Festival” he said: “These experiences have completely changed my life, changed my view of the world and art, changed It has changed the way I interact with other people, changed my necessities, changed my love, and even changed my dreams.” In fact, his wandering travel experience has also completely influenced his literary creation, the fantasy America, Africa And the Indian world gave him a unique feeling and experience, which became the source of his literary creation.
　　
　　wandering theme
　　
　　Wandering literature is an important motif in Western literature, from the ancient Greek epics of Homer, to Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe, from the early wandering across the ocean to the spiritual wandering of modern Westerners. It has always continued the great tradition of wandering literature. Clezio, adhering to the wandering tradition of his ancestors, experienced wandering travels in the exotic worlds of Africa, America and Indians. Therefore, the narrative of wandering has naturally become the core proposition of his novels.
　　In fact, as early as the age of 8, when he went to Nigeria with his family, when he first started writing, Clézio wrote a book called “Journey to the Road” based on this journey, of course, this book It is not yet officially released to the public. In 1963, the 23-year-old Clézio published his debut novel “The Proceedings”, which won the Reynolds Literary Prize that year and caused a sensation in the French literary world. In this work, the protagonist Adam Poirot is withdrawn and out of tune with the world, dislikes modern urban life, runs away from home with a dog, wanders around, and is regarded by the police as a “mental patient” because of his speech in public. Go to jail. The wandering life of the protagonist who abandoned the world is actually a portrayal of the wandering state of people in modern society. Therefore, at the beginning of the novel, the author specifically quoted the words in Robinson Crusoe as the inscription: “My parrot, as if it is my darling, is the only one allowed to speak.” The parrot that Robinson adopted learned to call his own name “Poor Robinson”, and aren’t the homeless people in modern society also pitiful? From this, Clézio really began his unique meaning. Wanderlust theme writing.
　　In the novel “Flood” (1966), the protagonist François Besson is reluctant to study in the university, leaves the campus, and becomes a wandering homeless person. He is disgusted with reality and even deliberately blinds himself by staring directly at the sun. eyes. The protagonist “Young Man Ogang” in “The Escape” (1969) roams the world in order to escape from reality and find an ideal living realm, but from Asia to America, he finds that there are fast-growing cities and people dying of poverty everywhere. , and finally have nowhere to shelter himself. Mundo in “Mundo and Other Stories” (1978) is also wandering freely in the city. “Daughter of the Desert” (1980) is Clézio’s most influential novel, in which the old chief running and calling, the wandering protagonist Lara, the mysterious shepherd, and Nur trudging on the wasteland are all driven out of their homes by life. A homeless man running around in deserts or exotic lands. Through their whereabouts, the author draws our attention to the prosperous but actually sinister European and American modern societies, and the great deserts where the living conditions are harsh but full of vitality.
　　The author’s later novels still run through the writing of the theme of wandering, but the brushstrokes have shifted from describing wandering in cities in the past to more describing wandering in Africa, the Americas and the Mexican Indian regions, where the author’s wandering travel experience endows The fantastic and exotic cultural colors of the works. The Wandering Star (1992) is a novel that depicts Estelle, the heroine in the shadow of World War II, wandering around in search of her “city of light”. Raila, the abducted heroine in “Goldfish” (1997), wandered all over Morocco, Paris, Nice, Boston, Chicago and other places. Nasima, a mixed-race girl in “A Chance Encounter” (1999), wandered around the small pier every day after being abandoned by her family as a child. “Ulania” (2006) tells the story of a French geographer who accidentally discovered a utopian ideal kingdom while exploring in Mexico, where all the wanderers from all over the world lived in equality and freedom.
　　Although Clézio is good at writing works on homelessness, the characters in his novels are not homeless people in the traditional sense. They are not homeless people who are looking for work everywhere for a living, and they are not homeless people who make their homes in the world. World-weary people in modern society are those who are driven out by foreign forces and have to find a place to live. Why does Clézio describe these people, saying that he is an outstanding representative of the new allegorical novels, then the allegorical significance of his intense description of wandering should be to express his doubts and reflections on modern Western civilization; he reproduces so colorfully The exotic cultures and scenery of Africa, America and Indian regions should express their yearning for the primitive life of the Indians. So, he once said affectionately: “I’m an Indian. I didn’t know this before I met Indians in Mexico, Panama. Now I understand. I may not be a very good Indian. I can’t grow corn. , and can’t carve a canoe…but whether it’s the way of walking, talking, loving, or fearing, I can say that when I met these Indian tribes, it was like meeting countless fathers, brothers, and wives all at once. ”