今年的文学奖因对人类脆弱性的深刻探索而获奖。在历史创伤的背景下，深渊总是和对转变的渴望一样近，它揭示了人类的脆弱状况。

——阿斯特丽德·瑟德贝里·维丁

诺贝尔基金会主席

by 韩江

2024 年12月10日 斯德哥尔摩

Han Kang’s speech at the Nobel Prize banquet, 10 December 2024.

Your majesties, your royal highnesses, ladies and gentlemen,

I remember the day when I was eight years old. As I was leaving my afternoon abacus lesson, the skies opened in a sudden downpour. This rain was so fierce that two dozen children wound up huddled under the eaves of the building. Across the street was a similar building, and under those eaves I could see another small crowd— almost like looking into a mirror. Watching that streaming rain, the damp soaking my arms and calves, I suddenly understood. All these people standing with me, shoulder to shoulder, and all those people across the way — were living as an “I” in their own right. Each one was seeing this rain, just as I was. This damp on my face, they felt it as well. It was a moment of wonder, this experience of so many first-person perspectives. 

Looking back over the time I have spent reading and writing, I have re-lived this moment of wonder, again and again. Following the thread of language into the depths of another heart, an encounter with another interior. Taking my most vital, and most urgent questions, trusting them to that thread, and sending them out to other selves.

Ever since I was a child, I have wanted to know. The reason we are born. The reason suffering and love exist. These questions have been asked by literature for thousands of years, and continue to be asked today. What is the meaning of our brief stay in this world? How difficult is it for us to remain human, come what may? In the darkest night, there is language that asks what we are made of, that insists on imagining into the first person perspectives of the people and living beings that inhabit this planet; language that connects us to one another. Literature that deals in this language inevitably holds a kind of body heat. Just as inevitably, the work of reading and writing literature stands in opposition to all acts that destroy life. I would like to share the meaning of this award, which is for literature, with you — standing here together. Thank you.

尊敬的陛下，尊敬的诺贝尔奖得主，女士们，先生们：

在韩江的写作中，有两种颜色相遇：白色和红色。白色是她许多书中落下的雪，在叙述者和世界之间拉起了一道保护的帷幕，但白色也是悲伤和死亡的颜色。而红色代表生命，也代表着痛苦、鲜血和用刀割开的深深伤口。虽然韩江的声音可能很诱人地柔和，但它诉说着难以形容的残酷，无法弥补的损失。大屠杀后堆积的尸体中流出的鲜血，变得黑暗，成为一种诉求，一个文本既无法回答也无法忽视的问题：

我们应该如何与死者、被绑架者、失踪者相处？我们能为他们做些什么？我们亏欠了他们什么？

白色和红色象征着韩在小说中回归的历史经历。

韩江《不做告别》

九州出版社

韩江用如诗的语言书写了济州岛大屠杀

在《不做告别》中，雪创造了一个空间，生者和死者之间，以及那些漂浮在两者之间但尚未决定自己属于哪个类别的人可以在这里相遇。整部小说在暴风雪中上演，在拼凑她的记忆时，叙述自我穿越时间的层层叠叠，与死者的影子互动并从他们的认知中学习——因为归根结底，它总是关于认知和寻找真相，尽管它可能令人难以忍受。在一次精妙的唤起中，这位朋友，尽管她的身体被限制在数英里外的医院病床上，但她还是能够从书架上拿出一盒文件，找到一份可以为历史马赛克添加新碎片的档案。梦想溢出到现实中，过去溢出到现在。这些界限被消解的转变在韩江的写作中是永恒的，人们不受阻碍地四处走动，他们的触角指向两个方向，准备收集和解释信号。也许他们被所看到和目睹的事情击垮了，这总是以他们自己的内心平静为代价的。然而，他们继续以所需的力量前进。遗忘从来都不是目标。

“谁杀了我？”被谋杀的男孩的灵魂问道，因为定义他一生的面部特征正在消融和消失。对于幸存者来说，问题是一个不同的问题：我怎么能带着这个只会让我受折磨的身体继续生活？我怎样才能恢复被折磨化为一无所有、只剩血之物的身体呢？但是当身体放弃时，灵魂会继续说话。

韩江《少年来了》

书写1980年韩国的光州运动，意外地照进了近日韩国的现实

当灵魂疲惫时，身体会继续行走。内心深处隐藏着顽强的抵抗，一种比言语更强大的安静坚持，一种需要记住的需要。同样，忘记不是目的，也不可能。在韩江的世界里，人们是受伤的、脆弱的，在某种意义上是虚弱的，但他们拥有足够的力量，而且是恰到好处的力量，可以再迈出一步，提出另一个问题，索取另一份档案，或采访另一个幸存的证人。随着光线的消逝，死者的影子继续在墙上移动。没有什么是逝去了的，一切没有尽头。

尊敬的韩江，我很荣幸代表瑞典学院向你转达我们对 2024 年诺贝尔文学奖最热烈的祝贺。现在请允许我邀你上台，从国王陛下手中接受你的奖项。

・英文版・

Your Majesties, Esteemed Nobel Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen,  

Two colours meet in Han Kang’s writing: white and red. The white is the snow that falls in so many of her books, drawing a protective curtain between the narrator and the world, but white is also the colour of sorrow, and of death. Red stands for life, but also for pain, blood, the deep cuts of a knife. While her voice can be seductively soft, it speaks of indescribable cruelty, of irreparable loss. Blood flows from the bodies piled up after the massacre, darkens, becomes an appeal, a question that the text can neither answer nor ignore: how should we relate to the dead, the abducted, the disappeared? What can we do for them? What do we owe them? The white and the red symbolize a historical experience that Han returns to in her novels.  

InWe Do Not Part from 2021, the snow creates a space where a meeting can take place between the living and the dead, and those floating in between who are yet to decide which category they belong to. The entire novel is played out within a snowstorm where, in piecing together her memories, the narrative self glides through layers of time, interacting with the shadows of the dead and learning from their knowledge – because ultimately it is always about knowledge and seeking out the truth, unbearable though it may be. In one exquisitely realized evocation, the friend, despite her physical body being confined to a hospital bed many miles away, is able to pull out a box of files from a shelf and find a document that adds a further piece to the historical mosaic. The dream spills over into reality, the past into the present. These shifts, by which boundaries are dissolved, are a constant in Han’s writing, where people move around unhindered, their feelers pointing in both directions, ready to gather and interpret signals. Perhaps they are broken down by what they see and witness, which always comes at the price of their own peace of mind. And yet they keep on going with the strength that is required. Forgetting is never the goal.  

‘Who killed me?’ asks the murdered boy’s soul, as the facial features that defined him in life dissolve and disappear. For the survivor, the question is a different one: how can I live on with this body that has only led me to torment? How can I regain the body that torture has reduced to nothing but a bleeding object? But when the body gives up, the soul continues to speak.  

When the soul tires, the body keeps on walking. Deep within lies a stubborn resistance, a quiet insistence stronger than words, a need to remember: again, it is not the aim to forget, nor would it be possible. In Han’s world, people are wounded, fragile, in some sense weak, and yet they possess just enough strength, and just the right kind of strength, to take another step or ask another question, request another document or interview another surviving witness. As the light fades, the shadows of the dead continue to move around on the wall. Nothing ever passes; nothing ever ends.  

Dear Han Kang, on behalf of the Swedish Academy, it is my privilege to convey to you our warmest congratulations on the Nobel Prize in Literature 2024. May I now please ask you to step forward and receive your prize from His Majesty the King.