Ding Ling: Walking with World Literature (Chinese classic writers are overseas)
Wang Zhongchen
World literature should of course include all the literature that exists in the world, but literary texts need to be read by readers in order to become a living "living text". No matter how outstanding classics are, they can only be read across countries, regions and languages. It can truly become a part of "world literature".
The Chinese new literature, which originated in the early 20th century, has been absorbing the nourishment of foreign literature with unprecedented consciousness during its incubation, initiation, and start-up. However, at that time, China was “colonized” in the “world system” dominated by European and American powers. Chinese literature, especially new literature, has naturally been ignored because of its disadvantaged position.
Until the "Red Thirties" when international left-wing literary thoughts flourished, Chinese new literature, especially left-wing literature, began to gain widespread attention worldwide, and had a synchronic interaction with contemporary world literature. Ding Ling was in this context. , Walked into the sight of readers outside the territory.
"Rescue Ding Ling": International Left-wingers responded in unison
Ding Ling first attracted the attention of the international literary world because of her arrest by Kuomintang agents in May 1933.
At the end of 1927, Ding Ling, who appeared in the world with works such as "Mengke" and "Ms. Shafei's Diary", was first known for describing "modern women", and soon became a representative of Chinese left-wing writers with works such as "Wei Hu" and "Water". .
The international literary community voiced the arrest of Ding Ling, which not only expressed a protest against the white terror created by the Kuomintang regime, but also contributed to the international spread of Chinese left-wing literature.
The American journalist and novelist Smedley and her left-wing friend Yi Luosheng, who were active in Shanghai at the time, not only quickly published the news of Ding Ling’s arrest to the English media, and widely called for the rescue of Ding Ling, but also translated Ding Ling’s novels. His work was published in the famous American magazine "Asia and the Americas" (Asia and the Americas).
According to relevant research, both Smedley and the famous American writer Upton Sinclair have noticed the potential political appeal of Ding Ling’s realist works, and the natural disaster scene in her novel "Water". It reminds American readers of similar natural disasters in the Midwest, and the growing collective resistance of the people at the bottom of the "flood" metaphor can be interpreted as transcending cultural differences and calling readers from different countries and regions to join the tide of human anger. symbol of.
The English translation of "Water", which Smedley participated in the translation, deliberately highlighted the description of the rushing flood and the rapidly moving human body in the original work, thus integrating Ding Ling's novels into the trend of American left-wing novels that emerged in the 1930s.
(See Su Zhen "How to Rescue Ding Ling: A Case Study of Transnational Literary History")
Almost in the same period, the European left-wing literary circles also participated in the "rescue Ding Ling" operation.
The famous French writers Romain Roland, Barbics, and Vayan Gujourie issued public statements to protest. Among them, Vayan Gujourie is the editor-in-chief of the French Communist Party newspaper "Humane" and secretary of the French Revolutionary Artists Association. Long, he is deeply concerned about the fate of the oppressed peoples in China and the East. He once formed the Committee of Friends of China together with Marraux, a novelist who is famous for describing contemporary Chinese revolutions.
In July 1933, Vayan Gujulie and Aragorn founded the monthly "Commune", and the following year they published Ding Ling's novel "A Certain Night" translated by Edenberg.
After World War II, Aidenbo participated in the "Modern" magazine founded by Sartre, Raymond Aron and others, and became a world-renowned scholar for studying the symbolic poet Rimbaud and the relationship between ancient Chinese civilization and Europe.
But at that time he was still a fledgling young scholar. Dai Wangshu, a Chinese poet living in France, helped him to convert Ding Ling's works into French for the first time and present them to the avant-garde left-wing literary readers in high-quality translations.
It is also worth mentioning that Puschke, who later became the founder of the Prague School of Sinology, also participated in the "rescue Ding Ling."
He came to China to study in 1932, his professional interest was in classical literature, but the common situation between China and the Czech Republic made him feel resonance in Chinese new literary works, and Lu Xun and other new literary writers did what they did to translate the literature of weak and small nationalities. Efforts made him admire even more.
In 1934, he published a commentary on Ding Ling in the Czech "Creation" magazine, introducing this woman writer to a weak nation-state located in Europe for the first time, and its significance far exceeded the general cross-cultural translation. .
Understanding the Chinese Revolution through Ding Ling
After the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance in 1937, Ding Ling escaped the captivity of the Kuomintang and appeared in the revolutionary base of northern Shaanxi. She ran on the frontline of the war of war as a literary warrior. Her legendary experience made her a target of international media attention.
Foreign reporters who came to northern Shaanxi during this period to interview all rushed to use Ding Ling as the target of their coverage: American journalist Anna Louis Strong’s "One Fifth of Mankind", Smedley’s "War Hymn of China", Nim Wells's "Continued Westward Journey" and so on, all vividly record Ding Ling's battlefield life and literary creation.
On the occasion of the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Ding Ling's new works during the Anti-Japanese War were quickly translated into many languages and became an important text for readers from all over the world to understand the Chinese revolution and revolutionary literature.
In 1944, Hu Feng compiled and published a collection of Ding Ling's works "When I was in Xia Village" in Guilin, which facilitated the centralized translation of Ding Ling's works.
In 1945, India's Kutub Publishing House published an English translation of this book, making Ding Ling's name known to the people of South Asia.
It is intriguing that Ding Ling has also become a writer who has received much attention in Japan, the defeated country in World War II.
According to the investigation by the late Professor Maruyama of the University of Tokyo, "When I was in Kasumura" was "the earliest post-war Japanese translation of Chinese literature during the War of Resistance Against Japan".
The translation was published in the "Human" magazine Vol. 2, No. 1 (January 1947), founded by the famous writer Kawabata Yasunari, etc., and was placed in the catalog with French writer Malraux's novel "Hope".
The magazine’s No. 4 of the same year published recent photos of four foreign writers, namely Hemingway, Sartre, Sholokhov, and Ding Ling. In the context of the European and American civilizations deeply immersed in Japanese society and culture after the Meiji Restoration, this cannot be done. Not to mention a noteworthy change.
This change occurred because of some writers who have begun to reflect on the war of aggression. From Ding Ling’s works, they felt the strong rise of China, which has been bullied and despised by the imperialist powers in modern times, and the renewal of Chinese literature. The post-war writer Taichun Takeda wrote with admiration: They are all moving forward. Their homes were burnt down, their homes were left home, their relatives were lost, and they were tempered into sharp blades as they rushed around." The critic Odagiri Yuhide interpreted "I'm in Xia Village" from the perspective of questioning war responsibilities. At the time," he believed that "this novel is an indictment against the Japanese, and this is something we cannot avoid". At the same time, he also reads "a person's stubbornness" and a nation's "solid foundation" from the image of the heroine in the book. As a new generation of scholars after the war, Maruyama selected Ding Ling as the subject of his graduation thesis at the University of Tokyo. He paid more attention to how Ding Ling, who was "born as an intellectual class", "completed'self-reform' and became a representative of'People's Writer'" "At that time, Maruyama was arrested for participating in the "May 1st" parade. He wrote to the university research office in prison and said: "Now, I read Ding Ling in the morning and Das Capital in the afternoon." From this we can see Ding Ling's influence in the progressive youth of Japan after the war.
The novel "The Sun Shines on the Sanggan River" won the 1951 Stalin Prize for Literature and Art, which not only gave Ding Ling a great reputation in the socialist camp, but also made her well-known worldwide.
Understanding the Chinese revolution and post-revolutionary China through Ding Ling's works has become an observation path that many people who want to understand the face of China are willing to adopt.
A typical example is the French writer Beauvoir, this radical feminist, in order to understand the "true face" of China in September 1955, when the Cold War pattern between the East and the West was already formed and the new China was blocked, he and Sartre visited China together for more than 40 days. After returning to China, he did a lot of literature surveys. Two years later, he published a "China Journey" titled "Long March".
"Long March" includes many aspects of Chinese society that the author observes, from farmers, households to industries, and cities. It is like a small Chinese encyclopedia. Ding Ling is frequently mentioned in it.
In the "Foreword", she said: "If I hadn't seen China's rural areas and farmers, I would not have understood Ding Ling and Zhou Libo's novels about'land reform' so deeply."
In the "Peasant" chapter, Beauvoir quoted a lot of the plots of "The Sun Shines on the Sanggan River" and "The Storm", and cross-referenced with the actual situation she saw.
Beauvoir believes that the reform practice of the Chinese Communists in rural areas has gained more trust and support from farmers and effectively promoted the simultaneous progress of "socialism and personal liberation".
This can be described as a rather insightful observation, and new Chinese literature works including Ding Ling's novels provide resources and references for Beauvoir's observations.
Answer important propositions of world literature with actions
Beauvoir’s "Long March" certainly talks about literature, and the section "Literature" in the "Culture" chapter is almost a condensed brief history of modern Chinese literature.
Beauvoir talked about Ding Ling's "On the Sanggan River" in an admiring tone, but also frankly criticized the simplification of the end of the novel.
When discussing the relationship between the writer's subjective experience and literary writing, she specifically mentioned Ding Ling's article "Life and Creation".
In response to Ding Ling’s call for a writer to go deep into life, Beauvoir first affirmed that Ding Ling herself "participated in the revolutionary struggle for a long time" was "really penetrated into the lives of the people", but whether her experience of Ding Ling is universal The application is not without worry, because the so-called "deep life" is still the writer's top-down, and may only stay in "understanding the situation" instead of sharing the experience of the people from the heart and turning it into oneself Experience.
Beauvoir believes that Ding Ling’s suggestion is “correct in theory, but too broad in practice.” In her opinion, only when “culture becomes familiar to workers and peasants, and language no longer makes them feel afraid. , They can tell their lives truly."
Obviously, Beauvoir expects writers who are truly "from the people", the direct narration and writing of workers and peasants.
In fact, the relationship between writers and people has always been a subject that world literature needs to face.
During his visit to Beijing, Beauvoir was hosted by Ding Ling at a family banquet, but he did not communicate on the above topics.
Ding Ling has never read "Long March".
In 1983, when she visited France, her old friends met again, and Beauvoir did not return to the old topic.
However, from another perspective, Ding Ling founded and presided over the literary workshop in 1950, with the goal of letting young people "from the people" learn literary writing.
After arriving at the Great Northern Wilderness in 1958, she tried her best to teach female farm workers to read, and of course she hoped that they could learn to express themselves.
After her comeback in the literary world in 1979, Ding Ling's first work was the novel "Du Wanxiang" about a farm worker. During her visit to France, the gifts she gave to her French friends were also the French translation of this novel.
Not only helping the people at the bottom to learn to express themselves, but also to speak for the people at the bottom, Ding Ling responded to Beauvoir’s questions with such actions, and also responded to the cutting-edge issues of contemporary world literature.
(The author is a professor at the School of Humanities, Tsinghua University, and the pictures for this article are provided by the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature)