A translation of Rasnohorkay Laszlo's masterpiece "Satan Tango" was published a few days ago, and on November 19, Yu Zemin, Ouyang Jianghe, and A Yi began a dialogue on this book at the Kubrick Bookstore. Ah Yi said, "I have been posting this book for about a month or two, but I can't help but want to show it off, as if I am the person who has read this book in this world, I have an unparalleled sense of superiority, and it is a pity that people who have not read it are so bad." Ouyang Jianghe believes that "this is the real literary orphan of the 20th century." Yu Zemin also said, "Laszlo magnified a small accidental event into the fate of the entire human race." ”
From left: Ouyang Jianghe, Yu Zemin, Ah Yi
What kind of book can a translator, a poet and a novelist utter what may sound exaggerated and absolutely admired?
One early morning in late October, shortly before the first raindrops fell on the dry and cracked saline ground west of the village (from there until the first frost, the stinking sea of mud and sand made the trails impossible to walk and the city unapproachable), Voltaki was awakened by a bell. The nearest chapel sat alone on the side of the road of the long-dilapidated Hawkemes Manor, four kilometres to the southwest, but not only did the chapel have no bells, but even the bell tower had collapsed during the war, and the city was so far away that it was impossible to hear any sound from there, not to mention that the crisp, cheerful bell did not seem to come from afar, but seemed to come from a very close place ("like from the mill..."). He propped his elbows on his pillow, propped himself up, and looked out through the small window like a rat hole in the kitchen wall, which was covered with a thin layer of fog, and in the blue morning light, the farm was bathed in the bells that were about to fade, still hoarse and unmoving, across the street, in the middle of the houses that were far away from each other, only the doctor's window with curtains was filtered out, and the reason why there was light there was only because the owner who lived in the house could not sleep in the dark for many years. Fortaki held his breath, afraid of missing even half of the sonorous sound that was drifting into the distance, because he wanted to find out where the bell was coming from ("You must be asleep, Fortaki..."), so he must not miss a single sound.
This is the first few sentences of the opening chapter of "Satan Tango". The whole novel is so thick and dense from beginning to end, without paragraphs, that in the words of the translator Yu Zemin, it is long to have a Tal Bella-style long shot from "Genesis" to "Revelation".
Laszlo, a strange-looking writer with a very romantic body and mind, a very genius temperament, he was proficient in music, worked as a data clerk, an editor, even a floor polisher, and after graduating from college, he ran to a small ravine with a passion for social service to become a village librarian. After starting his career as a writer, he traveled in many countries, was deeply attracted by Chinese culture, traveled to China many times, and created several books related to China.
He is a pure writer inside and out, including the Koschut Prize, the Republic Laureate, the Malloy Prize, the Yurów Attila Prize, the Moritz Zhygmund Prize, the Argonne Art Prize, and in 2014 won the American Literary Prize. In 2015, Laszlo received the Mambuk International Prize, the highest honor in the literary world after the Nobel Prize in Literature. Susan Sontag praised him as "the most philosophical novelist of our time... is a Master of the Hungarian Apocalypse comparable to Gogol and Melville.".
He was also the royal screenwriter of the film master Tal Bella, and almost all of Tal's films were adapted from his work. One of the most famous is "SatanIc Tango". In this seven-and-a-half-hour masterpiece, Tal Bella constructs a trivial and terrifying hell on earth with breathless long shots. Tarr says the film and the novel fit perfectly.
The legendary work that could not be translated was only translated into English in 2012 and won the Best Translated Book Award the following year. In 2016, Mr. Yu translated this work into Chinese, and because the European language and Chinese language structure are extremely incompatible, the Chinese translation of "Satan Tango" itself is a miracle. Teacher Yu Zemin and the author have known each other for twenty-five years, and have accompanied him through China as a translator and assistant, and many years later, the translation of "Satan Tango" is a witness to the friendship of the literati, the precipitation of literary exchanges, and the fatalistic encounter between a good author and a good translator. Satan Tango, with its difficult linguistic structure and profound English, is called a miracle of postmodern literature, and its difficulty of translation has become a touchstone. With years of profound accumulation, Mr. Yu Zemin is undoubtedly the person who can best understand and control the author's language and transmit his ideas. Its translation process has also gone through hardships, as the translator Yu Zemin said:
"For me, this book is a kind of sadistic reading, a new experience, torture plus enjoyment, suffocating pleasure; after pleasure, there is more lasting suffocation."
Satanic Tango, by Rasnohorkay László, Translation Forest Press
Spanning just a few days and with few scenes, "Satan Tango" tells the story of a small, dilapidated village where a dozen villagers with nowhere to make a living staged in a live newspaper drama of alcoholism, adultery, voyeurism, betrayal, dreams and dreams in the rainy and muddy late autumn. Indifference and insensitivity brutally kill all life, until the appearance of two deceivers ignites everyone's hopes, leading them to take the cycle of death dance steps to the imaginary bright future... The constant dampness, the muffled cruelty, the scalp-tingling despair throughout the book, all of them have no room for autonomy, they are all slaves of hope, and the pawns of fate, including the writer himself, eventually merge with the doctor who keeps himself in his home and spies day and night and diligently records, manipulating the cobwebs and tying them up. We think we live in a hopeful world, where we know that the world is in the trap of the devil; we think that we may flee with long feet, and we know that we are a rice moth stuck to a spider's web. The history of mankind is a cycle that never escapes the evil circle of the devil.
Some of the most classic scenes in the book are vividly presented in the film: little Ashti abuses the cat to death, walks on the muddy road with the dead cat, the doctor who tries to record and control everything behind closed doors, the morbid and funny dance steps and carnival in the tavern... Together with Tal, László follows with great interest this group of people who do not know how to follow Satan, exploring the bottom line of man, and testing reality to madness. To the reader, Satan Tango is absolutely black, but the author himself does not admit it. Laszlo said that everything has both tragic and joyful sides, "from this side it is comedy, that side is tragedy." We in Eastern Europe are particularly sensitive to both sides of this contradiction. Truth be told, I don't think Satan Tango is a dark work, it's not a tragedy, it's a tragicomedy about unfounded beliefs. ”
A B said at the event that "Satan Tango" is about the experience of the whole human race, and readers who have experienced factories and mines will have a sense of familiarity when they read it. In this age when nothing is much respected, we need to have the ability to acknowledge greatness and respect greatness. He concluded that The Satan Tango stood on top of a hill with Shakespeare, Dante, and Don Quixote.
Ouyang Jianghe felt that the kind of thing about what is the highest standard of literature appeared in "Satan Tango", and this novel was even more cruel than greatness.