Memory is not only a trace of the past, but also a tunnel to the future. Through the screening of things by memory, we save valuable fragments in our own brains, and books are undoubtedly the ones that can most affect the way we remember. Through history and social science books, we can remember the phenomena that have emerged in human society, through literary and art books, we can capture details and subtle emotions that are ignored, and through children's books and life books, we can gradually grow up in time.
Declaration of Uncertainty (volumes 1-3), by Federico Payak, translator: Yu Zhongxian, edition: Houlang Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House, October 2021
Yu Zhong, the translator of the Declaration of Uncertainty, first thanked the video.
Tribute
Can a person's life find a definite self-existence in an uncertain future? In a person's life, can he find an independent mind in turbulent times? In the ups and downs of the 1930s, these questions plagued every intellectual and those who sought meaning. Walter Benjamin's life, trying to think about the temperature of civilization in a cold world, grasping a lone leaf that can inhabit him in a world full of drifting people, he chases philosophy, love, freedom, and he finally ends his life with a panic suicide, declaring his failure of an uncertain future. But what he left us with was a true path of the soul.
We pay tribute to the Declaration of Uncertainty, in which author and illustrator Federico Payak devotes a three-volume account of Benjamin's life. He opened the passage between literature, biography, art and historical memory in the most suitable way for Benjamin, and used black and white brushstrokes to depict the confused people in that era of light and dark. It outlines Benjamin's life in a concise form, and also uses visual effects to bring the reader into the same questions as Benjamin, giving his own exploration to an uncertain life and future.
Thank you
I would like to thank the Beijing News and the award committee for their recognition of my translation of the Declaration of Uncertainty. The Declaration of Uncertainty is my first attempt to translate pictorial or illustrative works. As the word "uncertain" is used in the title of the book, my grasp of this form of prose work is uncertain, but this "uncertainty" also gives a translator a degree of freedom in the handling of the final translation.
Federico Payak's work has pictures and texts, and his words need me to translate, but his pictures don't have to be translated, it's there. It is there to guide, to inspire, to make people think, to find in translation what the text is trying to say behind the picture, and this is what the author and painter have said and may still be hidden behind the text to say but not said. This quest is what makes me happy and challenging in my translation work.
The story of the character Benjamin in the book is good, the reflection of the author Payak is good, and the form of the book with pictures and texts is also good, and I hope that my translation can be worthy of these three good.
—— Yu Zhongxian (Translator
——
Dialogue with Yu Zhongxian, translator of the Declaration of Uncertainty
01
This book
Beijing News: "Declaration of Uncertainty" has won a large number of French literary awards, and in recent years, image novels have also appeared frequently in literary awards, can you tell us your views on the literary nature of image novels (why they are so popular, and what are the main aspects of high-quality image novels)?
Yu Zhongxian: The image book, I was translating for the first time, I didn't know much at first, and I deepened my understanding of it in translation. It is said that "pictures and texts are rich", but in my opinion, the key is still "text". The Declaration of Uncertainty has won several awards in France and Switzerland, both in the literary category: the Medici Literary Prize for Prose (2014) and the Goncourt Prize for Literature for Biography (2019). In 2021, Switzerland is giving the Literary Prize. Pictures give the "visibility" part of things, while words have a lot of room for imagination. Images are guiding, promoting, and inspiring, while words give fiction and imagination that pictures cannot give. It should be said that the reader can go from the image to the text, but cannot go from the text back to the image.
02
This person
Federico Payak (1955– ) is a writer, painter and filmmaker. Since 2012, the series "Declaration of Uncertainty" has been published, and the third volume won the Medici Prose Prize in 2014 and the Swiss Literary Prize in 2021 with all nine volumes.
Beijing News: In your opinion, the Declaration of Uncertainty successfully captured some very important parts of Benjamin's life?
Yu Zhongxian: There are many volumes of Payak's Declaration of Uncertainty. These three volumes, one of which are written about benjamin, are his thoughts and deeds on Ibiza, in Paris, and on his final escape, which are the periods of "writing" and "action" in Benjamin's life, which are quite representative, if not the most representative. By grasping them, we have grasped the three key points of this intellectual's mental journey.
03
This year
Beijing News: In this year, in addition to the "Declaration of Uncertainty", what other recommended graphic novel works have you paid attention to?
Yu Zhongxian: 2021 is the year the Chinese translation of the Declaration of Uncertainty was published, and in the same year, my previous translation of the Novel "Nagasaki" by the French writer Eric Fai also published its image in China. The illustrator is the Frenchman Agnes Ostash. The translator is still me, or rather, the publisher still uses my translation of that year. Through the Declaration of Uncertainty and Nagasaki, I have paid attention to many of the image books published by Houlang, including Melville's Moby Dick, Proust's Tracing the Lost Time (two volumes), Camus's The First Man, etc., all based on world famous works. However, I'm sorry, but I don't know much about this.
Writing | Miyako;
Edited by | Miyaru, Xixi;
Proofreading | Xue Jingning.