China News Service, August 9. According to a report from the South American Overseas Chinese News Network, a "literary explosion" in Latin America 60 years ago made the works of a group of Latin American writers such as Marquez famous in the world, and Latin American literature has since been included in the West. centered world literature system.
Including Mo Yan, the winner of the Chinese Nobel Prize for Literature, the "literary explosion" has greatly affected the creation of contemporary Chinese literature.
The Aftermath of the Latin American Literary Fever: A New Translation of "One Hundred Years of Solitude"
In Medellín, Colombia, in 2014, Fan Ye, an associate professor of the Spanish-Portuguese Department of Peking University, gave a lecture entitled "Magic Realism in Latin America and China", and received gifts from many unknown audiences.
"An aunt said that her sweets shop is called "Guava Fragrance" (the same name as the interview with Marquez), she must give me a taste of this pomegranate cake, and someone gave me precious Macondo (" The fictional town in "One Hundred Years of Solitude") commemorative silver coins." Speaking of these, Fan Ye still feels deeply, "I feel ashamed, I don't know if my trivial work is worthy of this deep friendship."
Like their local audience, most Chinese readers knew Fan Ye, the translator, from Márquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.
In 2011, the first officially authorized Chinese translation of the novel came out, and the "Latin American literature craze" that occurred in the 1980s regenerated new energy.
In 2012, Chinese writer Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He repeatedly expressed that he was influenced by Marquez, which strengthened the reputation of this classic and promoted the retrospect and research of Latin American magical realism literature in China.
According to the data released by the publisher, New Classic Culture, in 2021, the total sales volume of the newly translated version of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is about 10 million copies, which once became a phenomenal event in the history of Chinese translation of Latin American literature.
The "Pure Literature" of Latin American Magical Realism in China
Recently, some commentators have claimed that China is the country outside Latin America most affected by magic realism.
The origin of all this has to go back to the Latin American "literary explosion" half a century ago.
According to Fan Ye, in the 1960s and 1970s, after the victory of the Cuban Revolution, people focused their attention on Latin America. At that time, the European and American publishing circles published a batch of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Marquez and "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Llosa. Literary works such as "The City and the Dog" have caused a sensation around the world.
At that time, the special edition of Latin American Literature, the internal publication of the People's Literature Publishing House, introduced "One Hundred Years of Solitude" to China, calling it "a new genre of 'fantasy literature' or 'magic realism'".
In 1979, "Foreign Literature Dynamics" translated the characteristics of Latin American contemporary novels as "magic realism" for the first time, and Chinese academic circles began to evaluate and analyze "magic realism" from the perspective of artistic characteristics.
Until the 1980s to the first half of the 1990s, "going towards modernization" became the mainstream trend of thought in Chinese society at that time, and the mentality of Chinese writers turned to innovation and change.
In addition, after Marquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Latin American literature has been recognized worldwide, bringing courage and reference to the Chinese literary world.
More importantly, in response to the vision that "China and Latin America are of the same blood type, there will be no repulsive reaction when they communicate", Latin American magical realism fits the aesthetics of China's "magic" tradition, the famous opening of "One Hundred Years of Solitude". ——"Many years later..." and other variants of magical realism began to appear in the writings of Chinese writers such as Mo Yan and Chen Zhongshi.
Since then, Latin American magical realism has sparked a "Latin American literature craze" in China.
"Academia and literary creation are both in the midst of a research boom, and at the same time they are conducting close interactions and exchanges. The density and intensity are rare in the entire history of foreign literary communication," Fan Ye said.
However, “on the one hand, the academic world emphasizes successful experience and defining characteristics based on the locality, on the other hand, the creative world is committed to imitation and application at the technical level in practice, and some researchers regard Latin American magical realism as a It is a successful case of the combination of 'nationalization and modernization in means of expression', shaping it into a cultural practice of local themes and modern techniques." Fan Ye analyzed, "In this way, the separation of writing skills from the text of the work, to some extent , foreshadowing the direction of the 'pure literature' of magical realism."
In this regard, Fan Ye reminded that the binary opposition between "nation" and "world" behind this logic may itself be the product of colonial ideology.
Just as the insights of scholars such as Xu Zhiqiang, simply considering the nationalized Indian and black cultures as the basis of magical realism is inevitably limited, and the “mixed space” formed by transnational multicultural transformation is the source of magical realism.
More than "Li Bai + Mo Yan", how can Chinese literature "go overseas" in multiple ways?
Just as Latin American literature in the Chinese publishing market has always been unable to get rid of the label of "magic realism", Latin American readers' interest in Chinese literature has not completely escaped the "Orientalist" style of curiosity.
For a long time, representatives of Chinese classical literature such as the Four Great Classics, Tang Poems, Song Ci, Yuan Zaju, etc. have gone abroad one after another, and have been translated and published by prestigious publishing houses in the Spanish-speaking world. It was brought to the stage by a well-known Spanish troupe.
The western editions of modern and contemporary writers such as Shen Congwen, Zhang Ailing, Qian Zhongshu, Wang Xiaobo, Mai Jia, etc. also appeared in prominent positions in bookstores in Spanish-speaking countries, not to mention Mo Yan's Nobel Prize in Literature.
Fan Ye said with a smile, "Some people have half-jokingly concluded that the current translation of Chinese literature in the Spanish-speaking world is Li Bai and Mo Yan: Li Bai represents classical literature, and Mo Yan represents modern and contemporary literature." Therefore, how to present Chinese literature is more important. In order to enrich the diversity of the face has become an urgent problem to be solved.
In this regard, Fan Ye believes that when literary works are put on the market, they have the attributes of cultural products. In addition to the text itself, copyright agents or intermediaries are the primary factors that affect the circulation.
"If there was no discerning publisher like the poet Carlos Ballar who saw "The City and the Dog" and "Three Sorrowful Tigers", and no copyright agent like 'Mama Carmen' who smelled Mark Without a translator like Gregory Lavasa who can bring "One Hundred Years of Solitude" to the English-speaking world, the Latin American 'literary explosion' is another story."
Secondly, it is necessary to attract the attention of the "cultural elite" class of exporting countries and break the shackles centered on the European and American evaluation systems.
"Just like "The Orphan of Zhao" 700 years ago, thanks to the merits of the sinologist Lei Linke, the critics of the 21st century Spanish-speaking world can sigh. Greek tragedy is comparable to Shakespeare."
More important is to strengthen cultural self-confidence.
"The whole world is the tradition of Argentine literature." Borges' pride is perfectly displayed in the writers of the "explosive" generation.
"They have witnessed in different ways and to varying degrees, whether it is the splendid culture of the ancient Americas, the literary trends popular in Europe and the United States, or even the mysterious bypass of the far east, they can all be combined in their own writing. Such a strong appetite for cultural self-confidence, and an open-mindedness that has served me well, is still worthy of our admiration and mirroring.”
In recent years, Chinese government-supported foreign translation projects of literary classics have been in full swing, and China and Latin America have always maintained close cultural ties.
For the future, Fan Ye is very sure, "Literary classics often contain the most essential part of a language and culture, and translation is the foundation and guarantee for cultural exchanges and mutual learning. Through literature to meet friends and to communicate with each other, it will surely promote China and Latin America. People’s hearts are connected.” (Song Yu/Text)