In recent years, Western urban research has become increasingly popular. As individuals, people interact in different cities, constantly shaping the characteristics of the city, and the city affects the personality of generations. Thus, the city formed a wonderful dialogue with the people. Under this opportunity, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House planned to launch the "Reading The City" series of books, through the exploration of the different difficulties encountered by people in the city due to different reasons such as geography and history, to show readers a picture of the city group portrait, and then seek a variety of possibilities for the best life of mankind. According to Lin Yalin, the responsible editor of the series, the publishing house has purchased the copyright of seven overseas works, and will add a bibliography in the future.
On the evening of July 7, the first book in the "Reading The City" series of books, "Berlin: Portrait of a City", was launched at the Shanghai flagship store of Jiantou Bookstore. Fu Jingmin, professor of the School of Foreign Chinese of Shanghai University and translator of this book, Fang Xudong, professor of the Department of Philosophy of East China Normal University, and Hu Sang, scholar of the Department of Chinese of Tongji University, were invited as guests. The three scholars started from different faces under the Berlin sky and had a wonderful discussion of German history and culture.
Lecture site
"Reading City" is not a Lonely Planet-like travel book
As a translator, Fu Jingmin first introduced the content and positioning of this series of books. Most of this series of books is a translation of foreign books, and there is no fixed format in terms of content and subject matter. But "it is not a travel book similar to Lonely Planet, not an essay or feeling after living in a city, nor a report and data statistics for the municipal government department to see", but is based on a wealth of historical materials, and at the same time can not be limited to historical materials, but can be described from a novel perspective and in an interesting way.
For example, the author of Berlin: A Portrait of a City, the Englishman Rory Maclean, is a very interesting person. He is a very experienced travel writer who has traveled to many places, especially in Berlin, and even sold his house in England to write this book, and went to Berlin to buy a house to live. In addition, Maclean was a journalist who developed a unique and near-reality understanding of Berlin through interviews with its diverse personalities. Based on this, Maclean's writing method is different from the urban biography we usually see, he uses many characters' small stories to connect the history of the city, each representing a space-time coordinate. Therefore, Fu Jingmin feels that the more than twenty faces under the Berlin sky shown in this book, such as the stories of the medieval folk poet and architect Schenkel, the Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels, the film superstar Daidley, and others, are "as charming as a novel, but also set off a true and grand historical narrative", which is the most unique place of "Berlin: Portrait of a City".
Berlin: A Portrait of a City
The beauty of Dietrich and Riefenstahl
Dietrich and Riefenstahl were well-known German women of the same period, and the coldness they embodied represented a certain temperament of Germany. Since both had an extraordinary relationship with Hitler, they have always been evaluated with political overtones.
Berlin: A Portrait of a City writes that "Riefenstahl discovered that Hitler was secretly watching Dietrich's films in the castle of Berchtesgaden", and even Hitler had the idea of taking her in, but Dietrich eventually chose to leave. She also said: "Soldiers don't go to war, this war is a bullshit, Hitler is an idiot." Husan believes that Dedley uses film and song to present a truly human character, a character with freedom at heart, showing an image of disobedience to a huge empire and disobeying power. What is seen in Riefenstahl's films, however, is a sublime and beautiful way to disguise the image of a brutal regime. In Hussan's view, Riefenstahl represents the Nazi spirit constructed by Hitler, saying: "Although Riefenstahl's films feel sublime, there is always an uncomfortable feeling that she will lead you and make you unable to maintain independent thinking, which is the real problem with the so-called fascist aesthetics." ”
Regarding the beauty of Dietrich and Riefenstahl, Fang Xudong put forward different views. He believes that The beauty of Dietrich is first and foremost a kind of physical beauty, this beauty is a neutral beauty, not only attractive to men, but also attractive to women, which is also an important reason why Hitler, Patton, hemingway have a good feeling for it, so much so that Hemingway once wrote such a love letter to Dietrich: "You are really getting more and more beautiful, what kind of work do you want to do in this life?" Want everyone to be heartbroken for you? You always break my heart so much, and I'm so willing. Riefenstahl, on the other hand, had a higher intellect, embodying "the German nation's pursuit of the sublime." While women in general show the beauty of weakness, Riefenstahl shows the magnificence of climbing the Alps with bare hands. Fang Xudong does not deny that Lifenstahl's filming of "Victory of the Will" is suspected of promoting fascism, but her "Olympia" perfectly expresses the spirit of the Olympics faster, higher and stronger. Fang Xudong said: "Riefenstahl photographed the Olympics, can make the beauty of sports, the pursuit of human beings for the limit so moving. She is an artist, she used her talent to create this beauty, this beauty is insurmountable, why must it be added the so-called fascist? ”
Berlin is a stubborn city that grew up in a crack
Rory Macklin once said, "Paris is a romantic city, New York means vitality, and London always represents fashion", while Berlin is always fickle. Fu Jingmin believes that Chinese like grand narratives, while Westerners like to engage in a kind of psychological exploration. Berlin: Portrait of a City records the anxiety in people's hearts, and many times tells that Riefenstahl's hands are shaking when she lies, which actually shows the torment in her heart. Because of anxiety, so "running a red light", causing too many disasters. Fu Jingmin said: "Therefore, German society needs to be regulated and ordered, and what we usually say about Germans is very stereotyped is this kind of historical precipitation." ”
Hussan believes that the author actually has a serious thinking behind the character story, thinking about what has changed in Berlin in the past five hundred years, he said: "The country of the Bruce people does not come from liberalism, but from human rights." Compared with southern Europe, Rome, Greece and Paris, Berlin, which grew up in the cracks, is a latecomer, in fact, there is no real cultural connotation, and there is a certain feeling that upstarts want to act as a cultural messenger. It is precisely because of the latecomers that they are eager to show their strength, and in the end they did not form a truly Western European-style state of liberal democracy, but formed a strong and stubborn nation. ”
After the event, the surging news reporter conducted an exclusive interview with the three guests, and the following is the content of the interview:
The Paper: Berlin: Portrait of a City is about more than twenty people, are they real?
Fu Jingmin: Of the more than twenty characters, most of them are real, and only two are fictional. One was Conrad and the other was Elsi. Conrad is a folk poet who is not well known in history, and the image in this book is created by the author who concentrates the characteristics of the characters who appear in previous poems on this person, and Elsie gives her some of the characteristics of a sex worker, and she is also the prototype of The Lost Girl's Diary. When I was translating, I thought Conrad was a real, plump figure, and I went to look up his information, but I couldn't find it, and I even went to find Kant.
The Paper: Can these unreal characters truly reflect the history and culture of Berlin?
Fu Jingmin: Actually, if you look at the English name of this book, Berlin Imagine A City, imagine a city. The title of the book I was translating at the time was "Imagining Berlin", and the current title was redrafted by the publisher after a combination of various factors, which may sound more poetic and attractive than my original title. The Washington Post commented on the book: "It's a work of imagination, contemplation, reverence, confusion, and a mixture of the author's love and hate for the city." ”
The Paper: The Germans we usually know tend to be a rigorous, even stereotypical image, is there anything different about the image of the Germans embodied in this book?
Fu Jingmin: Collective memory carries the suffering of history, and the emotional scars are so great that Berliners, like all Germans, have constructed rules to guard against it.
Hussan: Stereotypically berliners can be used as of World War II, but Berliners or Germans did think about it after World War II. The last chapter of the book speaks of the lack of sympathy among Germans, and later tells us that it is not because of a lack of compassion, but because of a battered heart, a memory that has been carried by Conrad ever since, and which has made Germans more sympathetic. Germany slowly began to think from a people who were cold and restrained and obeyed the order, and only such a path could give Germany a little hope. German memory becomes a stumbling block in their path, but if Germany does not have such a stumbling block, Germany will once again go to the fascist empire, so it must be placed a stone that stumbles on memory.
Three guests, from left to right: Hu Sang, Fang Xudong, fu Jingmin
The Paper: The preface to this book says that Berlin is always changing, so in the process of change, does the city shape the character of the people, or the people shape the characteristics of the city? Or change each other?
Fang Xudong: This book gives us the feeling that Berlin is always in change, and from another point of view, maybe he has not grasped the spirit of Berlin. For example, Dietrich and Riefenstahl, although it seems that these two people are completely different, can actually see that they are the common place of The Germans, whether Dietrich likes men's clothing, or Riefenstahl constantly challenges herself, learning deep-sea diving, photographing the underwater world, running to the wild places of Africa, including her own bare-handed climbing, you can see the characteristics of a Germanic woman. We need to think about whether being a people is necessarily built on top of change.
Fu Jingmin: The author has a sentence in the book, I live in Berlin, berlin lives on my heart. As far as I am concerned, I have lived in Shanghai for 30 years, but I feel that I am not a Shanghainese, but an outsider. Nearly 30 years ago, Shanghai had a completely different view of me, when I came to Shanghai, walking on the street and casually touching clothes in the store, the waiter would ask: What do you see, can you afford it? At that time, I was a poor student and dressed in a shabby way. But now go there and the waiter will say: Hello sir, what are you going to buy? Over the past 20 years, the number of foreigners has increased, and the perception of foreigners in Shanghai has also changed. From Berlin, in the beginning, Conrad lived in Berlin, to Frederick the Great, to World War I and World War II to the Berlin Wall, restless, insecure, Berlin is an isolated island, and castles constantly attack it. It was not until 1871 that it became an empire, and it all fell apart. What the author wants to express is that by imagining these characters to understand these characters, we can have an understanding of the real things, the future things. When we imagine this city, we must not only imagine the past of the city, but also imagine the future.