[1] I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.
私が今日エルサレムを訪れましたのは,小説家として,つまり嘘を騙ることを生業としている者としてです。
Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies.
もちろん,小説家だけが嘘を騙るわけではありません。
Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders.
Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?
[2] My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies - which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true - the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it.
In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately.
多くの場合,真実を原型のまま把握し,それを正確に描写することはおおよそ不可能です。
This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form.
This is an important qualification for making up good lies.
これは,嘘が優れた嘘である上で大切な条件なのです。
[3] Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.
A fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came.
[5] The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza.
このように言われる理由は,もちろん,激しい戦闘がガザを襲っているからです。
The UN reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded Gaza City, many of them unarmed citizens - children and old people.
[6] Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power.
This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.
Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me - and especially if they are warning me - "don't go there," "don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that." It's in my nature, you might say, as a novelist.
[8] And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.
[9] This is not to say that I am here to deliver a political message. To make judgments about right and wrong is one of the novelist's most important duties, of course.
[10] It is left to each writer, however, to decide upon the form in which he or she will convey those judgments to others.
しかし,善悪の判断をどのような形で他者に伝えるかは,個々の小説家に委ねられています。
I myself prefer to transform them into stories - stories that tend toward the surreal. Which is why I do not intend to stand before you today delivering a direct political message.
I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:
"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."
「高くそびえ立つ堅牢な壁とその壁にぶつかっていく卵があるとすれば,私は必ず,卵の側に立つのだ」
[12] Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg.
壁がどれほど正しくとも,卵がどれほど誤っていようとも,私は卵とともに立つのです。
Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?
Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.
[14] This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning.
しかし,これがすべてではありません。このメタファーにはもっと深い意味が含まれています。
Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you.
The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others - coldly, efficiently, systematically.
[15] I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it.
私が小説を書く理由は一つしかありません。個人の魂の尊厳を浮き彫りにし,それに光を与えることです。
The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them.
I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories - stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter.
This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.
だからこそ,私たちは来る日も来る日も,あたうる限り真剣に小説を紡ぎ続けているのです。
[16] My father died last year at the age of 90. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China.
As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the war.
[17] He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.
[18] My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.
[19] I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System.
If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.
I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.