Lin Shaohua
On the evening of September 23, the famous Japanese literary translator Lin Shaohua brought his own translation of Yukio Mishima's series of works " Kinkaku-ji Temple "Shiosu" and "Tenjin Five Declines" to the Shanghai Tsutaya Bookstore, sharing with readers the literary beauty of the modern Japanese writer Yukio Mishima and the mysterious realm.
As the "spokesperson for Chinese mainland" of Haruki Murakami, Lin Shaohua's translated Murakami works have become the reading memories of a generation of Wenqing. In this lecture entitled "My only reticence is not to be understood", Lin Shaohua started with the difference between Haruki Murakami and Yukio Mishima, talking about Yukio Mishima's self-determination: "It is generally believed that cracking the cause of Mishima's suicide also gives the key to opening the door of Mishima's literature", and analyzes several reasons behind it: samurai temperament, aesthetic pursuit, emperor worship, and love martyrdom. When it comes to these three works, although they are all reprinted, some of them were translated many years ago, but Lin Shaohua still remembers the process of translation at that time. In particular, the style of these three works is very obvious, if compared and summarized from an aesthetic point of view, Lin Shaohua feels that "ChaoSao" is a representative work of youth literature of Mishima, and what jumps everywhere is the temptation of life, the light and shadow of youth, and the key word is "survival"; "Kinkaku-ji" gushes with the charm of death and the grandeur of destruction, focusing on the so-called "beauty of destruction" of Mishima, and the key word is naturally "destruction"; and "Five Declines of Heaven and Man" expresses Mishima's exploration of death, the cycle of life and death, and the despair of unsuccessful exploration , the key word is "decay". Therefore, for Lin Shaohua, the translation process of "The Five Declines of Heaven and Man" is very painful.
In the interactive part of the final part of the lecture, a reader asked Lin Shaohua: "I often feel that Japanese literature is permeated with a sense of depression, and the mood after reading it is inevitably affected. Lin Shaohua replied that this is related to the aesthetics of the Japanese, who tend to take sorrow as beauty and believe that the essence of life is death. He believes that reading Japanese literature should learn to "stop at the right time", because the more Japanese literature looks at people, the more "small" they are, and they feel that their feelings are the whole universe; while Russian literature, Chinese classical literature, and French literature, the more they look at people, the more "big" they are.
As a translator of Japanese literature, in addition to the well-known Haruki Murakami, Hayashi has translated works by famous Japanese artists such as Natsume Soseki, Junichi Watanabe, Kyoichi Katayama, and Yasunari Kawabata. This time, Yukio Mishima's translation was launched by Qingdao Publishing House, and his other translations will soon be republished by the agency.
The following is lin Shaohua's text speech in this lecture, which is published by The Paper with permission.
Lecture site
The Chinese language seems to have the term "troika". If we use the analogy of the "troika", the "troika" of modern Japanese literature should be Natsume Soseki, Mori Ouwai, and Ryunosuke Wasagawa; the "troika" of modern Japanese literature is none other than these three: Yasunari Kawabata, Yukio Mishima, and Osamu Dazai. Mind-provokingly, four of the six died by suicide. Especially after the "troika", all three people succumbed to the process of life in the form of suicide. Dazai committed suicide by throwing himself into the river in 1948 at the age of thirty-nine; Yukio Mishima killed himself by caesarean section in 1970 at the age of forty-five; Kawabata committed suicide with a gas pipe in 1973 at the age of seventy-four. The cause of suicide, Wasagawa because of "trance uneasiness", Dazai Osamu due to "human disqualification", Kawabata may lie in the dilemma of creation. However, the cause of Mishima's suicide is so mysterious that it is difficult to determine. It is generally believed that by cracking the cause of Mishima's suicide, he also got the key to open the door of Mishima's literature. In this way, we may as well start with mishima's suicide.
By the way, Haruki Murakami didn't appreciate these three people very much. Regarding Yasunari Kawabata, Murakami said that he recognized his strength and talent as a writer, but did not appreciate the shape of his novel world. As for Dazai and Mishima, Murakami said, "Osamu Dazai can't read it, nor can Yukio Mishima. The body can't get into that kind of novel anyway, and it feels like the foot is inserted into a shoe with an inappropriate number. "To be honest, I can't read it either. The male protagonist of Osamu Dazai's pen is too untenable, too snuggly, or too negative and too decadent. A few years ago, I translated his "Human Disqualification", which made me breathless, and my spine was cold, and sometimes I had to put down my pen, go out and take a deep breath, look at the red flowers, green trees, blue sky and white clouds, and pull myself out of the almost suffocating miserable wind and rain. It is said that there are not very few young people who like Dazai Osamu, so that the term "funeral culture" has emerged. "Funeral culture"? If you don't want it, if you don't want it, you can't do it! To borrow a phrase from a great man, young people are like the sun at eight or nine o'clock in the morning, "The world is ours, it is yours, and in the final analysis it is yours." Energetic, sassy and heroic, still needed for this era, it is the style of young people who will never become obsolete, the beauty of young people.
Yukio Mishima
In this regard, Yukio Mishima is the opposite of Osamu Dazai. If Osamu Dazai is an honest and honest "nester", Yukio Mishima is a sharp genius and tough guy. Why Murakami didn't like him, Murakami himself didn't say it, and I didn't delve into it much. And I don't like him, mainly because I don't like his stacked bed frame house is not without artificial sentences. In addition, his pretentious obsession and the aesthetic appeal of the fire also made me, a mortal, have a huge sense of violation. In layman's terms, he's too ostentatious. In tonaugu: It's too much! I suspect that this may also be a reason why Murakami is not welcome. Murakami is a low-key and introverted person, Mishima's shoes are specially used for sprinting, and the number is certainly not suitable for Murakami's marathon feet.
Speaking back to Mishima suicide. British journalist Henry Scott Stokes wrote a biography of Mishima titled Beauty and Brutality: The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima, which begins with a detailed description of Mishima's suicide: "On November 25, 1970, Yukio Mishima got up early in the morning. When shaving, move slowly and cautiously. It would be his face when he died, and there must be absolutely no ugly blemishes. He bathed his whole body, tied a snow-white tuft of new Japanese traditional hood cloth, fastened his belt, and put on the shield uniform directly. "It's the scene before you leave the door. The process that follows is generally understood: he leads three members of the Shield Into the Superintendent's Department of the Eastern Front of the Self-Defense Forces, binds the Superintendent, gives a speech on the balcony to the members of the Self-Defense Forces in the courtyard, and finally commits suicide by caesarean section shouting "Long live His Majesty the Emperor"... As mentioned above, Mishima was forty-five years old at the time, leaving behind an eleven-year-old daughter and a nine-year-old boy, leaving behind a wife and elderly parents who were ten years younger than him.
Haruki Murakami also mentions Mishima's suicide in his novel The Adventure of Finding Sheep: "I still remember that strange afternoon on November 25, 1970... At two o'clock in the afternoon, the TV in the lounge repeatedly launched the image of Yukio Mishima. Something was wrong with the volume adjuster, and the sound was barely audible. It had nothing to do with us anyway, we ate hot dogs and drank a cup of coffee each. A student rode on the back of a chair and twisted the volume control button for a while, then gave up and jumped off the chair out of nowhere. In 1970, Murakami was twenty-one years old and was in his junior year of drama at waseda University's Faculty of Letters. It is not difficult to see from this that mishima's deliberate demonstration of the suicide by caesarean section has hardly caused repercussions in Murakami's mind. Hot dogs still eat, coffee still drinks, "it has nothing to do with us anyway." In other words, Mishima's elaborate suicide scenes were only dismissive and even somewhat disgusting to Murakami: eating hot dogs was more attentive than Mishima. In fact, this is also Murakami's consistent attitude toward right-wingers. The "gentleman" who appears in "The Adventure of finding sheep" is a right-wing gangster, and Murakami finally ends the life of the right-wing "host" with the "explosion in the distance" - cutting off the chain of right-wing genetic inheritance. There are not enough arguments to prove that there is a logical connection between the right wing of "Mr." and Mishima's flash in the novel, but it is not necessarily purely accidental. Therefore, I think murakami "can't read" Mishima should have a political attitude.
So the question is, why did Mishima commit suicide? Why is it impossible to commit suicide by caesarean section?
Tokyo, November 25, 1970, Yukio Mishima gives a speech on the balcony of the Eastern Directorate of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Forces
The British journalist just mentioned wrote a lot about this in his biography of Mishima, which can be roughly summarized into the following four reasons:
First, samurai temperament. Mishima (real name Hiraoka Gongwei) was brought up by his grandmother. My grandmother came from a noble samurai family, "she has a lonely and indomitable soul, a crazy poetic soul", instilled a lot of aristocratic samurai ideas into Mishima's head, making Mishima yearn for the samurai spirit from an early age, full of expectations for war - he was in high school at the end of World War II - "Even in war, I feel like a child..." Even anticipating my own death made me tremble with unknown joy." Especially in the last four years of his life, he enshrined the spirit of Bushido as a creed of life, and the "textbook" on samurai practice, "Ye Yin", was the book that had the greatest influence on him. According to Ye Yin, "The way of the samurai is to obsess over death." ”
Second, aesthetic pursuit. It may sound absurd to say that aesthetics have a causal relationship with suicide, but it is true in the case of Mishima. When Mishima was young, he read a large number of classical Japanese literature, drawing from the Japanese spiritual understanding of beauty- beauty is instantaneous, and at the same time widely dabbled in Western masterpieces, especially Wilde. In this way, the similarities between Japanese and Western cultures prompted him to form a unique aesthetic pursuit or aesthetic view: advocating the beauty of death, the beauty of destruction, the beauty of blood, the beauty of violence, and the ultimate state of beauty is violent death. This aesthetic view, the author writes, is what influenced Mishima most profoundly, "and is the root of his cruel decision to 'cut his abdomen to commit suicide,' rather than, as conventional wisdom suggests, that the samurai cut off his abdomen to show his loyalty to the emperor."
3. Worship of the Emperor. Nevertheless, the author does not deny the emperor factor in Mishima's suicide. However, Mishima's worship of the emperor is not absolute and blind. Sometimes he expressed boundless admiration; at other times, he took a harsh criticism of Emperor Hirohito, who was reigning at the time, and even argued that "the emperor and his staff were responsible for Japan's military expansion between 1931 and 1945." Relatively speaking, Mishima's worship of the emperor is more cultural —"My aesthetic outlook has a solid, rock-like foundation, that is, the emperor system", and says that "the emperor is the ultimate cultural form", and it is the emperor system and the long-established classical poetry that have led him to find the ultimate values. Perhaps it was in this sense that he expressed his dissatisfaction with the emperor's relinquishment of his theocracy: "Why does the emperor have to become a mortal?" Thus, his suicide "was essentially a classic act of protest — a protest against the emperor and his staff." Of course, this is the other side of the emperor's worship. Otherwise, his last three exclamations, "Long live His Majesty the Emperor," would be difficult to explain.
4. Homosexuality, that is, martyrdom. The author quotes Junro Fukayo, a veteran reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, that Mishima's motives for suicide can be summed up as "a splendid mosaic of homosexuality, Yang Mingxue, and the worship of the emperor." Moreover, regardless of the facts, Japanese public opinion at that time unanimously believed that Mishima and Morita committed suicide together as a "gay martyrdom", which is still the standard interpretation in Japan, which is also in line with the ultimate state of Mishima's aesthetics of "the combination of love and blood". In this regard, the author not only confirmed that Mishima was gay through reliable personal channels from Mishima's novel "Forbidden Colors", and believed that the suicide was planned by Morita, who was deeply loved by Mishima.
But the Chinese writer Mo Yan does not see it this way. Twenty-five years earlier, in 1996, he had published an article titled "Yukio Mishima's Conjecture," which was also primarily about Mishima's death. Mo Yan believes that Mishima's suicide has nothing to do with homosexuality, nothing to do with the emperor, and nothing to do with Bushido—Mo Yan "guessed that he was actually a person who was very afraid of death." He took his life very seriously, and his exaggeration of illness and evasion of military service was an example of his fear of death"—so what did it have to do with it? Mo Yan wrote that after he finished writing the Five Decays of Heaven and Man, "he must also die." He was already riding on the back of the tiger, and if he didn't die, he would fall into a laughing stock... In the final analysis, it is because of literature, because of fiction, not because of how loyal he is to the emperor. Mishima's efforts to portray himself as a mighty character with lofty political ideals and lofty beliefs are in fact intended to attract the attention of shallow commentators and boisterous populace. In his bones, he wanted to use such a non-literary means to advertise his last novel, an extremely successful and costly advertisement. From the moment his head landed on the ground, a blood light illuminated his entire words and his entire life. Since then, Mishima and mishima's literature has been immortalized." Haruki Murakami, who is also a writer, probably saw through this, so he used the protagonist of "The Adventure of Finding Sheep" to express disdain: hot dogs eat, coffee drinks, "anyway, it has nothing to do with us." Of course, Mo Yan's claim about the cause of Mishima's death is only a "conjecture."
However, Mo Yan's following statement is not necessarily a "conjecture", he asserted: "Mishima is for literary students, for literature to die." He was a man of letters through and through. His political activities are literary and literary in their bones. The study of Mishima must start from literature, using literary points of view and literary methods, and any non-literary method will misinterpret Mishima. Mishima is a man of seven passions and six desires, but the last knife makes him a god... Makes him a huge riddle. ”
Maybe you want to ask what the average Japanese person thinks? Flipping through the materials, the average Japanese seems to be more inclined to believe that homosexuality caused suicide, but few people talk about it openly, and even regard it as a taboo to talk openly about Mishima's death — after all, Mrs. Mishima is still there.
If you must ask me what I think, I think it has little to do with literature, and it is difficult for the value of literature to reach the point where writers will not hesitate to shed blood on it. In contrast, I think it has more to do with the aesthetics of Bushido and Bushido. Mishima's passion for Bushido is unmistakable, but in the 1960s and 1970s, Japan was also deeply influenced by the left-wing ideology that swept the world, and the "security struggle" and other learning trends were so popular that almost no one was interested in Bushido or the spirit of martial arts. Mishima was deeply disappointed by this, and vaguely felt that he had been ridiculed, and his self-esteem and sense of reputation were damaged. Therefore, he wanted to enlighten and warn the people of his country with his own death, and at the same time restore his dignity. And this kind of death, of course, should be exquisite, not like Dazaiji and the woman thrown into the river or like Kawabata Yasunari lonely mouth gas pipe to die, but to die vigorously, there must be a sense of ceremony, beauty. All he could think of was Bushido, which believed that the ultimate form of beauty was death. So he decided to commit suicide by caesarean section in public. In this way, it seems that the "beauty of death" and "the beauty of violence" are completed. But I think it's just a presentation as a result, not a true death for beauty. Beauty is not the purpose of death. In fact, most of those who "martyred" bushido were also for personal honor and dignity. Therefore, it is a misunderstanding to think that the beauty of violence and the beauty of death are the unique aesthetics of Bushido and even the unique aesthetics and ultimate aesthetics of Japan.
Yes, even the so-called beauty of violence, the beauty of death, and the beauty of destruction are not the unique traditions and patents of Bushido and even Japanese aesthetics.
It may be said that relevant expressions are not uncommon in Chinese literature. In the ancient poems, "Chrysanthemum residue is like proud frost branches", "Zero falls into mud and dust, only incense is as it was", and the "Dai Yu Funeral Flower" in the novel is another kind of poignant beauty that forms a strong contrast with the flowers, and the beauty of silence can also be called the beauty of destruction. Such bold words and heroic deeds in this regard can be said to be everywhere, such as "It is better to be crushed by jade than for the whole", "Bamboo can be burned but cannot destroy its knots, jade can be broken but cannot be changed to its white", "Soldiers can be killed but not humiliated", "Born as a master, dead are also ghosts", "I smile from the horizontal knife to the sky, to leave the liver and gallbladder for two kunluns". I remember reading "Three Kingdoms" at night, reading that the veteran general Yan Yan of Ba County was captured, and in the face of Zhang Fei's rebuke, he shouted in awe, "But there is a severed general, no surrender general", and he was excited for a long time. Of course, this kind of scene is a kind of beauty, that is, death can also reach the aesthetic realm.
In terms of the aesthetic rendering of suicide alone, Mishima's sword-drawing and dissection is much worse than Xiang Yu's sword-wielding self-inflicted wound. Try to see the classic scene of the overlord Bieji: Xiang Yu is surrounded, outside the tent but smells embattled songs, Yu Ji dances inside the tent, Xiang Yu pours himself a drink, generous and sad song "Pull up the mountain and the world, the unfavorable time does not die." Yu Ji drew her sword and killed herself- the end of her life was full of tragic beauty. Yu Qiuyu summed it up: "Xiang Yu is a hero who failed. This image needs to be aesthetically rendered. Aesthetic rendering is not a verbal evaluation, but an emotional farewell. At this emotional farewell ceremony, Sima Qian accurately chose the song of his hometown for him, chose the beauty who loved him, chose his own verses, chose blood, and chose to kill himself. The convergence of these aesthetic parts constitutes an extremely tragic and poignant classic scene. This scene is remembered by the entire Chinese history, and it also enhances the nobility of Chinese history. Is there another tragic hero in the world who has enjoyed such a noble farewell ceremony? I couldn't remember for a moment. ”
Since Yu Qiuyu, who is well versed in literature, history and philosophy, cannot be remembered, there are certainly not many people who can think of it. Needless to say, Yukio Mishima's suicide by caesarean section is completely out of Yu Qiuyu's field of vision, at least from the perspective of death aesthetics. Mu Xin may be a bit excessive in saying that Japanese culture is all "ruins of the Tang family", but it is really not necessary to over-evaluate the so-called unique aesthetic of Bushido's suicide by caesarean section. Moreover, most of the suicides of samurai were due to the need to maintain the personal honor and dignity of samurai, or to show loyalty to the group to which they belonged, which could not be compared with the pattern and level of sacrificing their lives for righteousness and becoming benevolent in the middle and Chinese realm.
Lin translation of Yukio Mishima's works "Kinkaku-ji Temple", "Chaosao", "Five Declines of Heaven and Man"
The following is a brief introduction to Mishima's three works, my three translations: "Chaosao", "Kinkaku-ji Temple", "Five Decays of Heaven and Man", the keywords are survival, destruction, and decadence.
The plot of "Chao Chao" is basically only one line, telling the story of the love of young boys and girls, which has been put on the screen, and the male and female protagonists are starred by the stars Yukazu Miura and Momoe Yamaguchi, who became popular that year. Everywhere is the bright sunshine and verdant pine forest, everywhere is the vitality of life and the hot and spicy breath of youth. On the beach under the stars, the young man's beloved girl meets unexpectedly, and the girl's breasts that remind of the "undulating blue ripples of the bay" make the young man fall into a happy confusion. In the rainy outpost, the young man who had snoozed and woke up suddenly saw the girl's round and jade naked body, and the breasts on her chest were like a pair of mischievous little animals. When the two embraced each other, what they felt was still a jade and clean atmosphere. Here, all thought is excluded, and all learning is despised. Female college students who returned from Tokyo for summer vacations are eager to get the love of young fishermen and can't do so, and Anfu, who can speak the tao, is doomed to lose the love field competition. The beauty of survival that the author praises is a strong physique, a simple character, a firm will, and a sincere faith. There is no twisting and turning here, no mysterious Sven, no sentimentality of complaining, no lyricism of the morning wind and sunset. Everything seems to be vivid, natural and wild.
Stills from the movie "Tides"
Kinkaku-ji Temple is based on an actual arson incident in July 1950 (the current Kinkaku-ji Temple was restored in 1955). After coming from the poor countryside to Kinkaku-ji Temple, Mizoguchi, a young man born distressed by stuttering, indulged in the beauty of kinkaku all day long and fantasized about the magnificent scene of dying with kinkaku in the fire of war. However, the end of the war made this wish forever in vain. In desperation, he resolutely threw the Golden Pavilion to the ground. The previous "Chao Chao" is full of the temptation of life, the light and shadow of youth; this "Kinkaku-ji Temple" is full of the charm of death and the magnificence of destruction, focusing on the so-called "beauty of destruction" of Mishima. Mo Yan also read "Kinkaku-ji Temple", and after reading it, he said a passage that can be described as extraordinary: "I think 'Kinkaku-ji' can be regarded as mishima's emotional autobiography. Mizoguchi's cowardly mental activity should have been experienced repeatedly by Mishima before he got married. I think that if kinkaku-ji temple is a symbol, then I guess that kinkaku is actually a symbol of a woman of noble birth who cannot be reached... Kinkaku's trembling and beeping explosion in the fire were the convulsions and moans of the woman in Mishima's heart in her erotic orgasm. Mo Yan also quoted the literary critic Mitsuo Muramura to prove his conjecture: "Mishima's performance of designing the burning of the Golden Pavilion is probably a form of estrus that he has felt most of the sense of life before." ”
Needless to say, Yukio Mishima's literary aesthetics are not limited to the beauty of survival and destruction. For example, the "decay" of "Five Declines of Heaven and Man", although the destruction is destroyed, it is difficult for people to connect with beauty. "The Five Declines of Heaven and Man" is the last part of the four-part series of "Sea of Plenty". The so-called "celestial beings" in Buddhism, similar to angels in Christianity, are supernatural beings, but they do not transcend death. The "five decays" are the five visions nearing death, which are different from the small five decays and the large five decays. The small five decay is "the music is not up, the body is faint, the body is bathed, the mirror is not willing, the body is empty and the eyes are instantaneous"; the big five decay is "the clothes are dirty, the head is wilted, the armpits are sweaty, the body is smelly, and the seat is not happy.". However, this novel does not specifically describe the vision of the "five decays", but mainly expresses the author's exploration of death, the cycle of birth and death, and the despair of unsuccessful exploration. If the beauty of survival and the beauty of the flesh in "Chaoshao" is the peak or peak of Tianren's career, then the beauty of the destruction of "Kinkaku-ji" is the confusion and pain of Tianren's inner tearing, and "Tianren Five Declines" is undoubtedly the tragic ending of Tianren. It may be asserted that Tenjin is the author Yukio Mishima himself, a portrayal of himself. In fact, "Five Decays of Heaven and Man" is also his masterpiece, and he committed suicide by caesarean section on the day the manuscript was delivered to the editor.
Editor-in-Charge: Gu Ming
Proofreader: Zhang Liangliang