Frasi di Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, noto anche come V. S. Naipaul , è uno scrittore trinidadiano, naturalizzato britannico. Tra i maggiori scrittori viventi, nasce a Chaguanas, un piccolo villaggio dell'isola caraibica di Trinidad nel 1932 da genitori indiani di casta braminica. Suo nonno, originario dell'India nord-orientale, era emigrato a Trinidad nel secolo precedente per lavorare nelle piantagioni di canna da zucchero. Suo padre Seepersad era giornalista del Trinidad Guardian e autore di novelle. V. S. Naipaul si trasferisce in Inghilterra nel 1950 dove frequenta l'università di Oxford. Inizia a collaborare saltuariamente a diversi giornali e pubblica i suoi primi romanzi nel 1954.

La sua vita è segnata dai numerosi viaggi che compie: inizia a viaggiare nel 1960. Nel 1990 la Regina Elisabetta gli assegna il titolo di Knight Bachelor , tre anni dopo, nel 1993 è il primo beneficiario del premio David Cohen British Literature Prize, nel 1999 ha ricevuto il Premio Grinzane Cavour. Riceve il Premio Nobel per la letteratura nel 2001 con la seguente motivazione: "per aver unito una descrizione percettiva ad un esame accurato incorruttibile costringendoci a vedere la presenza di storie soppresse".

✵ 17. Agosto 1932 – 11. Agosto 2018   •   Altri nomi विद्याधर सुरजप्रसाद नेपाल
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Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul frasi celebri

“Senza la scrittura, ogni cosa diventerà insipida. Leggere non avrebbe più senso, perché uno scrittore legge con uno scopo.”

citato in Un fuga senza fine, Corriere della sera https://web.archive.org/web/20160101000000/http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2004/dicembre/06/NAIPAUL_Una_fuga_senza_fine_co_9_041206052.shtml, 6 dicembre 2004

“Odiare l'oppressione, ma temere gli oppressi.”

Origine: Citato in Paolo Lepri, Un fuga senza fine https://web.archive.org/web/20160101000000/http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2004/dicembre/06/NAIPAUL_Una_fuga_senza_fine_co_9_041206052.shtml, Corriere della sera, 6 dicembre 2004, p. 25.

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul: Frasi in inglese

“If a writer doesn’t generate hostility, he is dead.”

As quoted from , "VS Naipaul: A controversial author who crafted his lines and insults", Indian Express (12 August 2018) https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/books/vs-naipaul-a-controversial-author-who-crafted-his-lines-and-insults/

“The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.”

V.S. Naipaul libro In a Free State

Origine: In a Free State (1971)

“Men need history; it helps them to have an idea of who they are.”

V.S. Naipaul libro The Enigma of Arrival

"The Ceremony of Farewell"
The Enigma of Arrival (1987)
Contesto: Men need history; it helps them to have an idea of who they are. But history, like sanctity, can reside in the heart; it is enough that there is something there.

“Nehru was unique in recent world history: a colonial protest figure, a folk hero who did not appeal to fanaticism but was a reasonable, reasoning man. A man committed to science, religious tolerance, the rule of law and the rights of man.”

"India After Indira Gandhi" in The Daily Mail, and The New York Times (3 November 1984) https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/03/opinion/india-after-indira-gandhi.html
Contesto: India has been very lucky in the Nehru family. Nehru was unique in recent world history: a colonial protest figure, a folk hero who did not appeal to fanaticism but was a reasonable, reasoning man. A man committed to science, religious tolerance, the rule of law and the rights of man. Indira Gandhi, his daughter, carried on this way of looking at things. In Britain, she might have had the reputation of being domineering, harsh, even ruthless. And you can easily make a case for her being authoritarian, antidemocratic, stamping out protest. But it isn't enough just to do that. One must consider what was on the other side. In 1975, some opposition parties wanted India to go back to some pre-industrial time of village life. Piety can take odd forms.

“The universal civilization has been a long time in the making. It wasn't always universal; it wasn't always as attractive as it is today.”

"Our Universal Civilization" in The New York Times (5 November 1990) https://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/05/opinion/our-universal-civilization.html
Contesto: The universal civilization has been a long time in the making. It wasn't always universal; it wasn't always as attractive as it is today. The expansion of Europe gave it for at least three centuries a racial taint, which still causes pain. … This idea of the pursuit of happiness is at the heart of the attractiveness of the civilization to so many outside it or on its periphery. I find it marvelous to contemplate to what an extent, after two centuries, and after the terrible history of the earlier part of this century, the idea has come to a kind of fruition. It is an elastic idea; it fits all men. It implies a certain kind of society, a certain kind of awakened spirit. I don't imagine my father's Hindu parents would have been able to understand the idea. So much is contained in it: the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist, and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away.

“That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing.”

"Two Worlds," Nobel lecture (7 December 2001) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2001/naipaul-lecture-e.html
Contesto: I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true. It might seem strange that a man who has dealt in words and emotions and ideas for nearly fifty years shouldn't have a few to spare, so to speak. But everything of value about me is in my books. Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will — with luck — come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise. That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing.

“It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist, and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away.”

"Our Universal Civilization" in The New York Times (5 November 1990) https://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/05/opinion/our-universal-civilization.html
Contesto: The universal civilization has been a long time in the making. It wasn't always universal; it wasn't always as attractive as it is today. The expansion of Europe gave it for at least three centuries a racial taint, which still causes pain. … This idea of the pursuit of happiness is at the heart of the attractiveness of the civilization to so many outside it or on its periphery. I find it marvelous to contemplate to what an extent, after two centuries, and after the terrible history of the earlier part of this century, the idea has come to a kind of fruition. It is an elastic idea; it fits all men. It implies a certain kind of society, a certain kind of awakened spirit. I don't imagine my father's Hindu parents would have been able to understand the idea. So much is contained in it: the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist, and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away.

“Non-fiction can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies.”

V.S. Naipaul A Bend in the River

Origine: A Bend in the River

“After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities.”

V.S. Naipaul A Bend in the River

Origine: A Bend in the River

“The time before Islam is a time of blackness: that is part of Muslim theology. History has to serve theology.”

V.S. Naipaul libro The Enigma of Arrival

Among the Believers
The Enigma of Arrival (1987)

“One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas — and you have to work through it all.”

As quoted in "V.S. Naipaul in Search of Himself: A Conversation" with Mel Gussow, The New York Times, (24 April 1994) http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/07/specials/naipaul-conversation.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

“We knew nothing but despotism. That is why the very rich Mughal empire could break up into nothing. Turn to dust at the merest touch of a foreign power. There was no institution, there was no creative nation, no university, no printing press, there was nothing but personal power. …. How do you ignore history? But the nationalist movement, independence movement ignored it. You read the Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru, it talks about the mythical past and then it jumps the difficult period of the invasions and conquests. So you have Chinese pilgrims coming to Bihar, Nalanda and places like that. Then somehow they don't tell you what happens, why these places are in ruin. They never tell you why Elephanta island is in ruins or why Bhubaneswar was desecrated. So history has to be studied, it is very painful history. But it is not more painful than most countries have had. …It isn't India alone that has had a rough time, that has to be understood. But the rough time has to be faced and it cannot be glossed over. There are tools for us to understand the rough time. We can read a man like Ibn Battuta who will tell you what it was like to be there in the midst of the fourteenth century, terrible times. An apologist of the invaders would like to gloss that over. But it would be wrong to gloss that over, that has to be understood. …But I would like to see this past recovered and not dodged.”

V.S. Naipaul, Interview, with URMI GOSWAMI, JANUARY 14, 2003 0 'How do you ignore history?' https://web.archive.org/web/20070106194746/http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/comp/articleshow?artid=34295982

“A writer is in the end not his books, but his myth. And that myth is in the keeping of others.”

"Steinbeck in Monterey" (1970), in Daily Telegraph Magazine (3 April 1970), later published in The Overcrowded Barracoon, and other articles (1972)

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