今年秋天獲邀到普林斯頓大學講學的尤薩，在普林斯頓教授兩堂課，一堂是講述他認為未來五十，甚至是一百年最偉大的西語作家－－阿根廷小說家波赫斯（Jorge Luis Borges）；另一堂是創意寫作與小說的技巧。即使獲得今年的諾貝爾獎，他仍不改一貫的教學風格，就好像沒這回事一般。

尤薩認為諾貝爾文學獎一項只頒給有社會主義思想的作家，所以本來認為今生與諾貝爾獎無緣了，不過今年他就獲獎了。而他認為西語世界裡最好的作家波赫斯卻不曾獲得諾貝爾獎。


October 29, 2010
Prize in Hand, He Keeps His Eye on Teaching
By JULIE BOSMAN

PRINCETON,N.J. — Five days after the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa won theNobel Prize in Literature, he walked into a Princeton classroom where25 students awaited their weekly seminar on the magical realism of theArgentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.

And then, said one astounded undergraduate, he pretended nothing had happened.

“Thankyou very, very much,” he said, smiling broadly, according to studentswho were there and had presented him with a card and a spread of bakedgoods. “We’ll eat this during the break. But for now, let’s startclass.”

Sincehe won the Nobel on Oct. 7, Mr. Vargas Llosa has been at the center ofa whirlwind of attention — “a revolution in my life,” he said in aninterview. “It’s really fantastic to experience directly whatglobalization means,” he said, even though “it has been very comic insome cases.”

Hehad one offer to invest the prize money — about $1.5 million — in anice cream company. And someone writing from a remote village, he said,asked him to pay for an operation.

Butamid the chaos, this high-flying international literary celebrity hasfaithfully kept up his duties as a college professor here. Twice a weekhe wakes up in his Manhattan apartment at 5:30 a.m. to prepare for his classes, one on Borges and the other on creative writing and techniques of the novel, before boarding a train.

“Thecultural environment at Princeton is great because there are manywriters — Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Wood,” Mr. Vargas Llosa said,adding that he enjoys riding the train back and forth from Manhattan.“It’s very nice. But not if you take the train at 5 or 6 o’clock. Itcan be a Kafkaesque commute.”

Hairycommutes aside, Mr. Vargas Llosa has settled into a happy New York lifewith his wife, Patricia. They take an hourlong walk in Central Parkeach morning, usually around 8. The low-key cafe society of thecapitals of Europe and South America is nowhere to be found in NewYork, he said, so on days he is not on campus, he spends afternoons atthe New York Public Library, which he adores for its ample space andgenerous natural light.

“Everyone is in a rush in New York, even in restaurants and in cafes,” he said. “You don’t have the serenity. That, I think, is very important in order to read.”


Teachinghas been a part of Mr. Vargas Llosa’s life, on and off, since the1960s, when he had posts at universities in Britain, and later atHarvard, Columbia and Georgetown. He was a visiting lecturer atPrinceton in 1992, returning this fall at the invitation of the Programin Latin American Studies.

OnTuesday afternoon he arrived for his usual Borges seminar at JonesHall, walking into a small carpeted room with five rows of chairs and awooden desk in the front. As his students quietly filed in, openinglaptops and spiral-bound notebooks, Mr. Vargas Llosa, in asalmon-colored shirt and dark-blue tie, his silver hair neatly parted,took his usual seat behind the desk.

Restinghis elbows on the desktop, he began an hour of free-floating Borgesanalysis, describing passages from the stories “The Theologians” and“The Writing of the God,” and delving into a discussion of the point ofview of the narrator, the shift from reality to unreality and thethemes of isolation, inspiration and imagination. He read the lastparagraph of “The Theologians” aloud, a passage in which a charactergoes to heaven, only to realize that his rival is, metaphorically, hisother half.


“It’san act we can call fantastic,” Mr. Vargas Llosa said, as the studentslistened intently and scribbled notes. “It’s an act we can callmiraculous. Either way, it entirely changes the story we just read.”


Thefirst half of class is typically devoted to his lecture, deliveredwhile seated, with only the occasional glance at his notes.

“It’shard to really put your finger on it, but there is a gravitas to hisway of speaking and presenting ideas,” said Julia Kaplan, 21, of SouthBrunswick, N.J. “He likes us to deconstruct the stories and really lookclosely at what is the narrator doing, what tense is the story in, whatlevel of reality is the story at. He’s a wonderful professor.”


Bothseminars are taught in Spanish, to classes that include many nativespeakers who hail from Latin American countries like El Salvador andMexico.


Forhis students, holding a seat in Mr. Vargas Llosa’s class has become theequivalent of winning the academic lottery, earning them the suddenenvy of friends and fellow students.

“Iwoke up the day he won and had two e-mails from my parents and friendssaying, ‘Your professor’s a Nobel laureate,’ ” said Erick Walsh, 19, asophomore from El Salvador. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Studentsare asked to complete reading assignments each week, be prepared toanalyze the literature in class, make presentations and write termpapers at the end of the semester. The Borges books on the syllabus are“Ficciones”; “Historia Universal de la Infamia”; “El Informe deBrodie”; “Otras Inquisiciones”; “Historia de la Eternidad”; “El Aleph”;and “El Hacedor.”

Midwaythrough class on Tuesday, Mr. Vargas Llosa switched gears, indicatingthat it was time for presentations by students, who take turns sittingat his desk and analyzing Borges’s work.

HectorMoreno, a 21-year-old senior who is studying chemical engineering,began an analysis of the idea of infinity as a mathematical concept inBorges’s stories.

Mr. Vargas Llosa twisted around in his front-row seat to face the class. Can anyone, he asked, explain the difference between infinity and eternity?

Several students tried, but Mr. Vargas Llosa was not satisfied.

“But what’s the difference?” he said. “Who can explain the difference to me? It’s not clear to me.”

After other students suggested definitions and references to Borges stories, Marc Lanthemann spoke up.

“Infinityis an absolute, whereas eternity is a temporal relation,” Mr.Lanthemann said. “Infinity is a general property of having no bounds,whereas eternity is a property of time.”

Mr. Vargas Llosa paused and smiled. “I’m not that convinced,” he said, drawing laughs.

Thisfall was supposed to be a quiet sojourn in New York, said Mr. VargasLlosa, who sometimes lives in Peru and sometimes in Spain — or whereverhis writing and teaching take him. That changed early on the morning hereceived the phone call from Stockholm telling him he was to be honoredfor his “cartography of the structures of power and his trenchantimages of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat,” as theSwedish Academy put it in its citation.


Mr.Vargas Llosa, a frequent critic of leftist governments in LatinAmerica, has written more than 30 works of nonfiction, plays andnovels, including “The War of the End of the World” and “The Feast ofthe Goat.”

Borges,a short-story writer, poet and essayist, died in 1986 without theNobel. “It’s an old Scandinavian tradition,” he told an interviewer theyear before. “Every year they nominate me for the prize, and every yearthey give it to someone else.”

Until Mr. Vargas Llosa, who is 74, won this year, he had given up on it for himself as well.

“I was absolutely convinced that I wouldn’t win the Nobel Prize,” he said. “My impression was that the Nobel Prize in Literature was given to people more or less affiliated with, let’s say, socialist ideas, and that was not my case.”

RafaelRomero, a 22-year-old junior from Miami, said that on the first day ofclass Mr. Vargas Llosa said that in 50 or 100 years, if the worldremembers only one Spanish-language author, it would be Borges.

“Theirony is that the author we’re studying never won the Nobel Prize, andall of a sudden our teacher just won the Nobel Prize,” Mr. Romero said.“He clearly has a lot of respect for Borges. But as history would haveit, he won the Nobel prize and Borges didn’t.”

William Saborio contributed reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/30/books/30masterclass.html

人物：諾貝爾文學獎得主略薩

今年獲諾貝爾文學獎的馬里奧·巴爾加斯·略薩是西班牙語世界中最受好評的作家之一。他的作品包括小說、劇本和散文隨筆及政治雜文等。

被稱為「結構寫實主義大師」的略薩1936年出生於秘魯南部，曾獲秘魯國立聖馬爾克斯大學的文學碩士和西班牙馬德里大學的文學哲學博士。

從中學時代起就開始劇本創作的略薩以1963年出版的長篇小說《城市與狗》奠定自己輝煌的創作生涯，該書出版後不久，就在世界各地翻譯成二十多種文字。

《城市與狗》一書被普遍認為是標誌拉美文學勃發期的四部裏程碑小說之一，其它三部中包括馬爾克斯的《百年孤獨》。

兩年之後出版的長篇小說《綠房子》，使略薩在1967年獲得首屆加列哥斯國際小說獎和西班牙文學評論獎。

他還因為《綠房子》和1969年出版的長篇小說《酒吧長談》，獲1994年西班牙語世界最高的文學獎塞萬提斯獎。

略薩迄今為止出版了三十多部長篇小說、劇本、散文隨筆及雜文集。1976年當選為第41屆國際筆會會長。

曾經從政

略薩自1958年起在歐洲和美國讀書、工作，其中包括任英國倫敦大學、美國哥倫比亞大學和哈佛大學的客座教授。自1990年代起長期旅居歐洲，並在1993年獲西班牙國籍。

他還分別在1977年和1994年被授予秘魯學院院士和西班牙皇家學院院士。

除了文學創作之外，略薩還一度從政，他在大學時期短期加入過秘魯共產黨，還在1980年代後期擔任了數年當時新組建的政黨「自由民主陣營」的主席。

略薩還參加了1990年的總統大選競選，並在第一輪投票中獲相對多數票，與後來獲勝的藤森一起進入第二輪角逐，但最後敗給了藤森。

略薩有過兩次婚姻，生有兩個兒子和一個女兒。

http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/trad/world/2010/10/101007_nobel_literature.shtml