"Remembrance of The Age of Water" and "Dream of the Red Chamber" - a dialogue between Chinese and French literature and beauty

According to the European Times, from mid-August to the end of October every year, French literary publishing is unprecedentedly prosperous. There are classics by previous writers, and there are also new works by new writers. Every September, the French Goncourt Prize, the Fermina Prize, the Renault Prize, the Académie de France Literary Award and other blockbuster literary awards enter the selection stage, and the "Literary Return Season" is launched with this series of literary events. At this stage, books received special attention from experts, readers, publishers, etc.

From the 1950s to the present, the French "literary return season" has gradually become a unique cultural phenomenon in the world. At the same time, with the development of Sino-French cultural exchanges, the cause of book translation between the two countries has also been heating up, and many mutual translation works have been presented to readers.

Gao Ming, Minister Counsellor for Cultural, Educational and Scientific Affairs of the French Embassy in China, has pointed out that in recent years, the cooperation between the Chinese and French publishing industries has become increasingly close, and since 2013, China has become the largest partner in the overseas sale of French books.

"French Night" opens with the return of literature

The 2021 Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF) World Reading Season Online Event was launched online on August 23, and famous translators and the French Ambassador to China and others opened the "French Night" to interpret the literary return season and the characteristics of Chinese and French literature, and share French literary works in China.

Judith Oriol, the Book and Speculative Culture Commissioner of the French Embassy in China, introduced at the event that this year's French "Literary Return Season" published a total of 521 new books, mainly novels, but also prose, poetry, essays and literary criticism and other genres, of which 379 are new books in French, and 75 of the new books are the debut works of writers. The themes of the 2021 "Literary Return Season" mainly range from history, family history, current affairs and public discussion to ecology, etc., which are very informative, and in form, they also take many forms from autobiography to other biographies.

"If you haven't been to France, read French literature. If you've been to France, read French literature. At the meeting, Yu Zhongxian, former editor-in-chief of World Literature, professor of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and judge of the Fu Lei Translation Award, said that China's acceptance of French contemporary literature is very high, and every year a new book is published, and the translators will do dynamic induction for the first time. ”

Yu Zhongxian has translated the works of Neval, Claudel, Apollinaire, Beckett, Simon, Rob Grillet, Gluck, Sagan, Kundera, Fernandez, Le Clézio, Tucson, Eschnoz and others, and was awarded the Order of the Knight of the Arts and Letters by the French government.

▲The 2021 Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF) World Reading Season online activity was launched online on August 23. (Screenshot of official website)

"Remembrance of the Watery Years" and "Dream of the Red Chamber"

Yu Zhongxian mentioned that some people compared the 20th-century French novelist Marcel Proust's novel "Remembrance of The Age of Water" and the two works of "Dream of the Red Chamber", one of the four masterpieces of Chinese classics.

He agrees with the similarities in the works of Eastern and Western cultures, saying that both works are the author's decades of painstaking efforts and have not been completed in the end; the novels tell the rise and fall of the four major families of Jia Shi Wang Xue and the decline of aristocratic society in the 19th century; and both have descriptions of people's names, place names, and cuisines, so that Chinese and French readers will be interested in each other.

"Now, although the cultures of China and France are far apart, they can be linked and compared, for example, "Dream of the Red Chamber" can be linked to "Remembrance of The Year of Water", the cultures of the two countries and the customs of the two countries are not the same, but in general, cultural exchanges have never been interrupted."

In this regard, Ou Yudi said that this year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Marcel Proust, as one of the most well-known writers in the history of French literature, his work "Remembrance of the Watery Years" is all-encompassing, talking about history, talking about the emotions and adventures of life, and also reflecting all aspects of France where Proust lived. Ou Yudi believes that the french literary statement actually refers to French expression, and one of the characteristics of French expression is pluralism in her view.

French literature is worth learning from and is different from beauty and commonality

When discussing the characteristics of Chinese and French literature, Xu Zechen, a Post-70s Chinese writer who won the Lu Xun Literature Award for Short Stories and was a Chinese writer after the 70s, believes that French literature has always had a tendency to explore inwards, allowing people to feel that "literature can also have such a face", focusing on exploring the possibilities of people and people's hearts. Chinese literature, on the other hand, pays more attention to history and reality, and at the level of reality, it is "very open and has a large territory", and pays more attention to the possibility of exploring reality, society and history.

Yu Zhongxian said that as a Chinese writer, he has drawn a lot of nourishment from French literature, whether it is Hugo and Balzac in the classical era, to today's French literature, which have their own special characteristics. He used the term "novelty" to describe what he thought of as French literature.

"This is no longer the literature of a country, but the literature of a language. Many people in other countries choose to express in French their country's own affairs, or their affairs with France. "In Yu Zhongxian's view, French literature is all-encompassing, and this is also worth learning from Chinese literature." We accept the literature of other countries, but also insist on what is good for us, and we are different, beautiful and beautiful. (Original title: "Remembrance of The Watery Years" and "Dream of the Red Chamber" - Chinese and French Literature Dialogue Between Beauty and Coexistence)

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