China News Service, Beijing, October 17th, title: Shucai: Does the French pay attention to Li Qingzhao because of feminism?
China News Agency reporter Ge Lulu
There were several collections of poems on the table, two cups of coffee were brought up, and the reporter's interviewee, the poet and translator Shu, was making a phone call.
Could it be that the poet is on the other end of the phone. They are also talking about a poet. In the 1980s, Shu Ting and others were also called the "Five Great Poets".
Data map: Buddhist scriptures "Bao Qi Yin Dharani Sutra" on display in the Inner Mongolia Library.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Liu Wenhua
Chinese civilization has a very digestive stomach
Shucai's current status is an associate researcher of the Institute of Foreign Languages of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. From 1990 to 1994, he worked as a diplomat in the Chinese Embassy in Senegal. In 2008, he was awarded the "Knight of Education" by the French government.
These experiences, in the words of Shucai, gave him a social personality, "Poets are not always so timely." Now he is doing poetry translation, doing research, and teaching children to write poetry. "I am still willing to return to the scene of aesthetics. , Wrapped in language.” He talked about poetry translation, Sino-French culture, and the golden age of poetry in the 1980s.
After putting down the phone, Shu began to talk about Jiang He, "I haven't seen him since he went to the United States in 1988." And this time, Shu unexpectedly got news from Jiang He because of poetry translation, "He is in the American spirit." Depressed, infatuated with the Romanian philosopher Emile Cioran who wrote in French, Tomerfy asked me if I had translated Cioran." The tree was immersed in the poet’s context, "What has he experienced can make him Infatuated with Zion, a philosopher who has tried suicide all his life?"
Speaking of the golden age of poetry that China experienced in the 1980s, it seems to be the narrative of a generation, and this narrative has an inevitable connection with poetry translation.
"For example, Jiang He is so obsessed with French things, but he can only access them through poetry translation. When we were in college, we were basically influenced by foreign poetry. Every poet has his own preferences."
"This is a group of people who have the courage to explore poetry." The poet Duoduo once proposed to keep up with the pace of translation. "Behind this is the attitude towards language exploration." Shucai believes that this attitude looks like a poetic attitude, but actually The above is the attitude of culture and the attitude of value.
This attitude implies acceptance of others.
"The French anthropologist Levi Strauss mentioned the concept of the other in "The Melancholy Tropics", and the ancient Chinese also said that rocks from other mountains can be used for jade." Shucai believed that translation is the other. .
The acceptance of Chinese for others can be traced back to the translation of Buddhist scriptures in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Zhao Puchu, the former chairman of the Chinese Buddhist Association, said in "Song Yu Fo Yuan" that the word "world" came from Buddhist scriptures.
"I have always believed that the'stomach' of our Chinese civilization is very flexible and capable of digestion."
Data map: A "red special car" of Beijing Public Transport Group drives past the New Cultural Movement Memorial Hall.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Jiang Qiming
Chinese poetry forced into modernity
From ancient times to the present, translations reflect the needs of social development and cultural thoughts at that time.
Take Yan Fu's translation of "Tian Yan Lun" as an example. In order to encourage Chinese people to become stronger, he only compiled the evolutionary part of Huxley's original book, emphasizing "survival of the fittest", while ignoring the ethical dimension of sympathy and helping the weak.
"Lu Xun's translation of Gogol's "Dead Soul" was also intended to be used in China."
However, in Shucai's view, the modernity of Chinese poetry was forced to enter, and the background was precisely the New Cultural Movement.
"At that time, a group of people with very good classical culture started China's new poetry movement." Hu Shi, the leader of the New Culture Movement, regarded his "Can't Be Closed" as his "Era of the Establishment of New Poetry", and this is exactly a poem. Translated poems, translated from American poetess Sarah Tisdale.
Shucai believes that in the 1930s, the poet Liang Zongdai's translation of French symbolist poets promoted the important progress of new Chinese poetry, but the War of Resistance against Japan interrupted this process.
"Otherwise, the modernity of Chinese poetry may have already opened up."
"Poetry language is a symptom of cultural change." Shucai said that the rhythm of Chinese culture in Hu Shi's time has been disrupted, forming a kind of anxiety about tradition and the future, about "naturalization" and "westernization." Anxiety.
"This anxiety has always been there. I am inclined to the future, but the roots must be rooted in tradition."
Shucai gave a charming sense of entanglement between tradition and modernity, between the East and the West, in a unique way for poets.
He talked about the influence of Lacan's psychoanalysis on him and how French lacks sensibility and how it made him good at analysis. At the same time, he also talked about his love for Wang Wei, Tao Yuanming and his fascination with the number nine.
"When an individual can become silent, I think he should go back to the ancients more and have the ability to re-experience the state of mind they had when they wrote those great classical poems, the kind of relationship between man and nature. And when you get there When going through the relationship between people, a poet must gain the depth of expression through creative betrayal and loyalty to his inner anxiety."
In Shucai's view, modernity is an inevitable trend, and every culture and language faces the problem of how to enter modernity.
"When the classical Chinese literary jumped to modern Chinese with vernacular writing as its origin, we have lost the exquisite form of Tang poetry and Song ci." Classical poetry in every language has its own sound system, including sentence patterns and rhymes. The transition of western classical poetry to modernity is more gentle, but the process of modernity of Chinese poetry is more decisive.
Therefore, modern French poets have better inherited the form of their classical poetry, which is beyond the reach of modern Chinese poets.
However, the traditional Chinese breath is still there.
"The root is there, and the root is the proof of the breath of life." Shucai wrote in a poem, "turning back, but there is no turning back." This may be able to explain the poet's attitude towards traditional culture: attachment, but continue to move forward. .
"Only by moving forward can we connect with the ancient times and let the language generate new vitality. Only the classic works that have generated vitality in the past have their sustenance."
Li Qingzhao (1084-about 1151) The Paintings of People in the Qing Dynasty Source: Picture Reading Times/Visual China
French people pay attention to Li Qingzhao because of feminism?
The unique aura of Chinese culture has something in common with modernity.
"For example, Hanshan's poems win with Zen. Zen is a state that you cannot know whether you have reached it or not. This corresponds to the paradox of modern poetry, which is an important component of modern poetry." Han Shan mentioned by Shucai Poetry also directly influenced modern western poets such as Gary Snyder.
The French philosopher, translator, and Sinologist Julien also developed his own philosophical thoughts from the process of studying Chinese ancient poems.
Chinese classical poems have been noticed by Western poets very early and have undergone a large number of translations.
"Translation is the transformation of culture. The time dimension collapsed in poetry translation. The translation of Li Bai's "Jing Ye Si" into French must be a modern poem."
Shucai pointed out that there is no person in Chinese classical poetry, and the subject of "I" is missing. Therefore, whether it is "raising your head and looking at the bright moon, bowing your head to think about your hometown" or "feeling flowers and tears, hating goodbye to birds" , The emotions it expresses are open to anyone.
"But if it is translated into French, the translator will definitely ask who is "raising his head"?" The tree laughed.
"The French are very concerned about Li Qingzhao's poems, which may be due to the fact that they looked at Chinese women from a different perspective. They believed that she had a subjective consciousness early on, able to express her feelings recklessly, and was amazed at her understanding of language. The creative use is in line with the French concept of'language needs to be played in poetry'."
In the process of Chinese culture going out, the West is gradually getting to know China.
According to Shucai, the translation and introduction of contemporary Chinese poetry in France has also reached a certain scale, but compared with their translation and introduction of Chinese novels, it is still relatively small.
"This also reflects a certain pragmatic standpoint. They hope to perceive the changes in Chinese society by translating Chinese novels." But the tree believes that they will become more and more aware that only by translating modern Chinese poems can they hear the Chinese. What happened in the depths of my soul for more than 40 years.
"France and China have a natural closeness, because both countries are poetic and have a desire to build poetry on top of reality."
It is almost night outside the window, and the topic of poetry in the cafe will not be perceived by the rushing pedestrians outside.
"People always yearn for those legendary years." For Chinese poets, the legendary years are the 80s when they were fanatical about poetry.
"But as a person who has experienced it personally, I don't think there is anything to yearn for."
Although admitting that poetry is marginalized in both China and France, Shucai still chooses to live a life related to poetry.
After the interview, the tree only got in touch with Jiang He that night, and the two talked until 2:30 in the morning.
(over)
About the interviewee:
Shucai, a famous poet and translator.
Doctor of Literature.
People from Fenghua, Zhejiang.
Graduated from the French Department of Beijing Foreign Studies University in 1987.
From 1990 to 1994, he served as a diplomat in the Chinese Embassy in Senegal.
Currently working at the Institute of Foreign Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Has published "The Alone", "Selected Poems of Talents", "Rhythm Practice", "Two Sides of the Soul", "Heartbeat", "No Direction in Spring", "Go Come" and other poems; Selected Poems, Selected Poems of Bonafoix, Selected Poems of the Nine French, "Dover's Motion and Stillness", "Little Prince", "Selected Poems of James", "Long Anchor Chain" and so on.
In 2006, he won the first "Xu Zhimo Poetry Award".
In 2017, he won the "October" Poetry Award.
In 2020, he won the "Chen Ziang Poetry Award Translator Award".
In 2008, he was awarded the "Knight of Education" by the French government.