美国国家公共电台 NPR Amitav Ghosh: 'The World Of Fact Is Outrunning The World Of Fiction'

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The author Amitav Ghosh often sets his books at the blurry¹ boundary between land and water. His latest novel stops in several of those places, from mangrove² islands on the border of India and Bangladesh to the canals of Venice, Italy. The book is called "Gun Island." It's a modern retelling of a Bengali myth that Amitav Ghosh grew up with. He uses this ancient story to reflect on contemporary themes of climate change and migration³.

The goddess at the center of this myth is named Manasa Devi. She's not just a goddess. She's also a sort of interpreter, connecting humans to the natural world.

AMITAV GHOSH: She is the goddess of snakes and all poisonous things. And the stories around her all revolve⁴ around her curious kind of battle with this figure called the merchant. You know, his name is actually Chand Saudagar (ph), or the merchant Chand.

SHAPIRO: That's his name in Bengali.

GHOSH: Chand Saudagar in Bengali, yes. And there's this sort of conflict between them, and she wants him to become her devotee, and he won't. And she sends all these kinds of terrible calamities⁵ upon him - droughts and famines and great waves. And finally, he flees overseas, and she pursues him overseas. And finally, he comes back, and he sort of, you know, capitulates. But it's an amazing story in the sense that I think it poses, as it were - or it conceptualizes a conflict between the profit motive⁶ and nature, you know?

SHAPIRO: Because the merchant wants to make money...

GHOSH: Yes.

SHAPIRO: ...And the goddess is sending these natural phenomena⁷ to try to get him to pay attention.

GHOSH: That's right. That's exactly it. I mean, that's it. She wants him to pay attention to the world around him, to the natural world around him. So it's a metaphor⁸ for that, you might say. So, you know, it's clear that this basic conflict was perfectly⁹ well-understood by, you know, our distant ancestors.

SHAPIRO: When did it occur to you as an adult author that this story you had known as a child actually has really strong connections with what we are seeing today in the changing climate - I mean, apocalyptic¹⁰ weather, animals in unfamiliar¹¹ places, kind of the world turned upside down?

GHOSH: Well, you know, I wrote the book "The Great Derangement," which is about, you know, literature and climate change.

SHAPIRO: It's a nonfiction book, your last book.

GHOSH: It's nonfiction, yes, about why climate change is so difficult for modern writers and for modern literature. And at the end of writing that book, I decided¹² that I needed to read more pre-modern literature. And, you know, there it was. I was - I suddenly saw it through new eyes. I realized that what these old legends were about were exactly what we are living through today - you know, catastrophic floods, droughts, famines, storms.

SHAPIRO: Seems like the goddess got your attention.

GHOSH: (Laughter) She certainly got my attention, absolutely. And, you know, what really struck me, what was very moving to me is that in those times, they could address these issues so much more directly than we can today. At that time, people could respond. You know, they could create paintings. They could create buildings. I mean, in Venice, the basilica of Santa Maria della Salute¹³, which is its greatest landmark¹⁴, is actually a commemoration of a great catastrophe¹⁵. You know, if the plague - when we have these catastrophes¹⁶ unfolding around us, we don't seem to be able to even imaginatively grapple with what's in front of us.

SHAPIRO: Would you read a section of the book that kind of talks about the power and importance of stories? This is on Page 141.

GHOSH: Yes. (Reading) At that time, people recognized that stories could tap into dimensions that were beyond the ordinary, beyond the human, even. They knew that only through stories was it possible to enter the most inward mysteries of our existence, where nothing that is really important can be proven to exist, like love or loyalty¹⁷ or even the faculty¹⁸ that makes us turn around when we feel the gaze of a stranger or an animal. Only through stories can invisible or inarticulate or silent beings speak to us. It's they who allow the past to reach out to us.

SHAPIRO: Do you think you're able to do things through fiction, the stories that you're telling in books like this, that nonfiction, that journalism¹⁹, that research can't accomplish?

GHOSH: Well, I kind of have to believe that - don't I? - because I'm an author.

SHAPIRO: It's your chosen field, right.

(LAUGHTER)

GHOSH: I'm a writer of fiction. I live in fiction. It's my world. It's my life's work. But, yes, I do believe that. I do believe that fiction allows us to look at the world in a different way. And I think that is really the crisis of contemporary fiction - that it finds itself at this catastrophic time for humanity. It finds itself unable to look at the reality around us.

SHAPIRO: The characters in your book explore a tension between science and spirituality. Do you feel like you're doing the same thing here by talking about climate change in the context of myths and goddesses?

GHOSH: Well, it's certainly very different from talking about climate change within the framework of science, which is - or technology...

SHAPIRO: Yeah.

GHOSH: ...Which is what we normally get. But let's face it. You know, I mean, science and technology, climate scientists have played a very, very important part in alerting us to what's going on in the world. We owe them a great debt. But in a way, that framing of what's happening today has also proved its own inadequacy²⁰, you know? We can see that, in a way, we have to rise up in our hearts to appreciate the enormity of the changes that are upon us. I mean, all the science communication in the world hasn't got us moving anywhere, really.

So I do think that, you know, we have to be able to open up those parts of our lives or those parts of our minds or those parts of our consciousnesses that can actually accommodate different ways of thinking about the world. So I'm not really thinking about spirituality or goddesses or anything. What I'm really trying to confront, if you like, is the uncanny - you know, the uncanny in the world around us, how it exists around us and the ways in which we relate to it.

SHAPIRO: How do you define the uncanny?

GHOSH: Well, I'll give you an example you'll know. You'll remember that there's a chapter in the book that's set in Los Angeles. We're in a museum, and suddenly there's a wildfire that advances towards this museum. And you may remember that something like that did happen. I think it was in 2017, the Getty Museum suddenly had a wildfire racing²¹ towards it.

SHAPIRO: Yeah.

GHOSH: It had to evacuate²² and so on. But, you know, the really weird²³ thing is that I had - I wrote that chapter six months before it happened.

SHAPIRO: Wait; really?

GHOSH: Yeah. It was so uncanny.

SHAPIRO: And you set it at the Getty Museum.

GHOSH: I didn't name it, but, yeah, that was what was in my head. A couple of friends that had read the manuscript, and they wrote to me and said, how does this feel? And I could only say to them that I feel completely shaken...

SHAPIRO: Yeah.

GHOSH: ...You know, because to see things that you've seen in your mind sort of playing out in real life, it's just so disturbing, you know? But that is the world that we are in. I mean, the world of fact is outrunning the world of fiction.

SHAPIRO: Amitav Ghosh, thank you for talking with us.

GHOSH: Thank you so much, Ari. It's been a great pleasure.

SHAPIRO: His new novel is called "Gun Island."

(SOUNDBITE OF TOM MISCH'S "THE JOURNEY")

1 blurry   

adj.模糊的；污脏的，污斑的

参考例句：

• My blurry vision makes it hard to drive. 我的视力有点模糊，使得开起车来相当吃力。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The lines are pretty blurry at this point. 界线在这个时候是很模糊的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 mangrove   

n.(植物)红树，红树林

参考例句：

• It is the world's largest tidal mangrove forest.它是世界上最大的红树林沼泽地。
• Many consider this the most beautiful mangrove forest in all Thailand.许多人认为这里是全泰国最美丽的红树林了。

3 migration   

n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙

参考例句：

• Swallows begin their migration south in autumn.燕子在秋季开始向南方迁移。
• He described the vernal migration of birds in detail.他详细地描述了鸟的春季移居。

4 revolve   

vi.(使)旋转；循环出现

参考例句：

• The planets revolve around the sun.行星绕着太阳运转。
• The wheels began to revolve slowly.车轮开始慢慢转动。

5 calamities   

n.灾祸，灾难( calamity的名词复数 )；不幸之事

参考例句：

• They will only triumph by persevering in their struggle against natural calamities. 他们只有坚持与自然灾害搏斗，才能取得胜利。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• One moment's false security can bring a century of calamities. 图一时之苟安，贻百年之大患。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

6 motive   

n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的

参考例句：

• The police could not find a motive for the murder.警察不能找到谋杀的动机。
• He had some motive in telling this fable.他讲这寓言故事是有用意的。

7 phenomena   

n.现象

参考例句：

• Ade couldn't relate the phenomena with any theory he knew.艾德无法用他所知道的任何理论来解释这种现象。
• The object of these experiments was to find the connection,if any,between the two phenomena.这些实验的目的就是探索这两种现象之间的联系，如果存在着任何联系的话。

8 metaphor   

n.隐喻，暗喻

参考例句：

• Using metaphor,we say that computers have senses and a memory.打个比方，我们可以说计算机有感觉和记忆力。
• In poetry the rose is often a metaphor for love.玫瑰在诗中通常作为爱的象征。

9 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

10 apocalyptic   

adj.预示灾祸的，启示的

参考例句：

• The air is chill and stagnant,the language apocalyptic.空气寒冷而污浊，语言则是《启示录》式的。
• Parts of the ocean there look just absolutely apocalyptic.海洋的很多区域看上去完全像是世界末日。

11 unfamiliar   

adj.陌生的，不熟悉的

参考例句：

• I am unfamiliar with the place and the people here.我在这儿人地生疏。
• The man seemed unfamiliar to me.这人很面生。

12 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

13 salute   

vi.行礼，致意，问候，放礼炮；vt.向…致意，迎接，赞扬；n.招呼，敬礼，礼炮

参考例句：

• Merchant ships salute each other by dipping the flag.商船互相点旗致敬。
• The Japanese women salute the people with formal bows in welcome.这些日本妇女以正式的鞠躬向人们施礼以示欢迎。

14 landmark   

n.陆标，划时代的事，地界标

参考例句：

• The Russian Revolution represents a landmark in world history.俄国革命是世界历史上的一个里程碑。
• The tower was once a landmark for ships.这座塔曾是船只的陆标。

15 catastrophe   

n.大灾难，大祸

参考例句：

• I owe it to you that I survived the catastrophe.亏得你我才大难不死。
• This is a catastrophe beyond human control.这是一场人类无法控制的灾难。

16 catastrophes   

n.灾祸( catastrophe的名词复数 )；灾难；不幸事件；困难

参考例句：

• Two of history's worst natural catastrophes occurred in 1970. 1970年发生了历史上最严重两次自然灾害。 来自辞典例句
• The Swiss deposits contain evidence of such catastrophes. 瑞士的遗址里还有这种灾难的证据。 来自辞典例句

17 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。

18 faculty   

n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员

参考例句：

• He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
• He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。

19 journalism   

n.新闻工作，报业

参考例句：

• He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师，可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
• He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。

20 inadequacy   

n.无法胜任，信心不足

参考例句：

• the inadequacy of our resources 我们的资源的贫乏
• The failure is due to the inadequacy of preparations. 这次失败是由于准备不足造成的。

21 racing   

n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的

参考例句：

• I was watching the racing on television last night.昨晚我在电视上看赛马。
• The two racing drivers fenced for a chance to gain the lead.两个赛车手伺机竞相领先。

22 evacuate   

v.遣送；搬空；抽出；排泄；大(小)便

参考例句：

• We must evacuate those soldiers at once!我们必须立即撤出这些士兵！
• They were planning to evacuate the seventy American officials still in the country.他们正计划转移仍滞留在该国的70名美国官员。

23 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。