On Tuesday, February 22, 2022, the twenty-second day of the first lunar month, on this once-in-a-lifetime day, the People's Literature Publishing House planned and held a seven-hour live broadcast "Dialogue: The Inexhaustible Grid Book" to dialogue with self, dialogue with the world, dialogue with distant places, and dialogue with life in the reading of foreign literary classics. Nearly 20 mainstream platforms on the whole network broadcast the event live, Zhang Yueran, Huang Lei, Hongying, Zhi'an, Shi Hang, Dong Qiang, Chen Luyu and other cultural celebrities helped the strong exposure, the total number of online views exceeded 5.33 million, readers have left messages saying that they have "benefited a lot" from this "literary feast" and from these "literature lessons".
The hosts of the event, Chen Luyu and Shi Hang, are both literature fans and reading fans, and they both like to read in parallel and read several books at the same time in their daily lives. They take turns to host four sessions, when one host hosts for the audience on stage, and the other host "hosts" in the background for the waiting guests, editors, and staff. After more than seven hours of hosting, they all called "enjoyable" and "happy", still unable to "brake" immediately, immersed in the mood and philosophy of classic literature.
The People's Literature Publishing House's "Series of Masterpieces of Foreign Literature" began in the 1950s, and under the strict requirements of "first-class original works, first-class translators, and first-class translators", it has dedicated valuable spiritual food to generations of readers. As the first large-scale series of foreign literary classics in New China, it embodies the wisdom and painstaking efforts of generations of writers, translators, researchers and editors who have studied Chinese and Western, and its quality has withstood the test of time, becoming a model for foreign literary masterpieces in the minds of readers, and has been nicknamed "grid book" because of its grid-like cover pattern. The old 2000 grid edition came to an end, but it became the darling of the used book market for more than two decades, and many readers struggled to find a book. The People's Literature Publishing House wants readers to think and launched a new edition of the grid book publishing project in 2019. The news came out, triggering the warm memories of many book writers, translators and readers. Wang Meng was pleased to say that the re-publication of the grid book evoked his "obsession with literature"; the Mai family defined the grid book as his "awakening of literary memory", Feng Jicai bluntly said that the grid book was his "entrance to the world literary classics", and Xu Yuanchong, Wang Zhiliang, Wen Jieruo, Li Yao, Li Zhiyi, Shi Qin'e and other translators praised him.
New edition of the Grid Book
By 2022, the new edition of grid books has published a total of 5 series and 147 titles, which has caused great repercussions among readers, and many books have been reprinted many times. With the advent of the new version of the grid book series after series, Cao Wenxuan opened a grid book area in his bookcase, so that the grid book occupies the "core position of the bookshelf". On the occasion of the warm spring, the People's Literature Publishing House invited heavyweight guests to read novels, read poems, appreciate beautiful texts, and recite dramas online with the majority of readers, taking genre as the starting point.
Chen Luyu and Shi Hang
The large-scale live broadcast "Dialogue: The Endless Grid Book" was hosted by Chen Luyu and Shi Hang. Chen Luyu frankly said that she belonged to the "generation nourished by the grid book", and experienced the grid book of "everyone who studied in China and the West", "the best translator" and "the most outstanding editor", which was a "particularly magical" "literary journey", which made her "love reading and awe words", and unfolded a colorful picture of world literature for her. In Shi Hang's view, the grid was originally a foreign literary classic that "should be what it should look like." They all felt the inheritance and tribute from the purpose of the compilation of the new edition of the grid book - "collecting classics, lofty and far-reaching, and inheriting the true color", and felt the new literary vitality, so they hoped to use this activity to help the whole people read and lead the majority of readers to closely contact the famous translations of famous masterpieces.
Wu Shulin, chairman of the Publishers Association of China, delivered a speech
Li Yan, Director and General Manager of China Publishing and Media Co., Ltd., delivered a speech
Wu Shulin, chairman of the Publishers Association of China, and Li Yan, member of the party group of China Publishing Group Co., Ltd., director and general manager of China Publishing and Media Co., Ltd., kicked off the event. In their speeches, they reminisced about the past. In Wu Shulin's eyes, the old grid version is not only the foundation of the People's Literature Publishing House, but also profoundly influenced the publishing cause of foreign literature in New China, not only driving the publishing work of other publishing houses, but also promoting world cultural exchanges with publishing exchanges. Wu Shulin highly affirmed the spirit of the grid book created by the older generation of editors, and was pleased to see that the new version of the grid book played a role in building a community with a shared future for mankind and promoting national cultural diplomacy. Li Yan proposed that one of the important factors why the old version of the grid book has created many firsts is that it is "full of the feelings and ingenuity of the old generation of publishers", while the new version of the grid book has become "a brand symbol with a high degree of unity of content and form" and "has become an effective way for us to absorb the essence of human knowledge and intellectual achievements and the treasure house of ideas in the new era".
The People's Literature Publishing House has rapidly accumulated rich experience in live broadcasting in the era of live broadcasting, and has repeatedly achieved good results, this time in the link setting, topic design, virtual and real interaction and other aspects of careful arrangement, the more than seven hours of activities are divided into four main links, all in the form of video "literature class", the on-site guests are quite accomplished in their respective fields, the activity links are wonderful, climactic, and sobering.
"Essays: Dialogue with Self" session From left: Zhou Xiaofeng, Zhi'an, Zhao Baisheng, Shi Hang
The famous essayist Liu Liangcheng's literature class opened the "Prose: Dialogue with Self" session. Liu Liangcheng, who has worked tirelessly in the field of prose, believes that "prose is the most popular style" and "a way for us to express every day", so it has always been an important part of domestic language education, and this narrative method of "starting from the hometown of the land and flying to the sky" is the most widely spread in the era of self-media. The prose proposed by Liu Liangcheng is impressively "desperate for life". Zhao Baisheng, a professor at Peking University, Zhou Xiaofeng, a writer and vice chairman of the Beijing Writers Association, shared their favorite prose writers and prose classics, quoting the golden sentences of Montaigne, Bacon, Thoreau, Zweig and other prose masters. February 22 marks the birthday of the philosopher Schopenhauer and the death anniversary of the writer Zweig. Therefore, two videos were used at the event to pay tribute to two essayists who left profound sayings for mankind.
This session ends with three beautiful prose excerpts. Zhou Xiaofeng's Reading of Zweig's "When the Stars of Mankind Shine", Sutter's "Literary Career" read by Zhi'an, and Zhao Baisheng's Thoreau's "Walden Lake" read aloud in English should be in line with Liu Liangcheng's conclusion with beautiful and wise sentences: "Prose is a solemn ritual for our mediocre and scattered lives."
"Novel: Dialogue with the World" session from left: Zhang Yueran, Li Er, Liu Zhenyun
The "Literature Lesson" in the "Novel: Dialogue with the World" session came from the famous novelist Bi Feiyu. He likens writing novels to "making clothes for characters" and defines reading novels as "a dialogue between the reader and the writer of the world constructed by imagination." Famous novelists Liu Zhenyun and Li Er and the new generation of novelists Zhang Yueran built a small "novel world" on the spot, talked about their feelings about writers and books, and recalled several writer-type translators who appeared in the grid book, including Feng Zikai, Ba Jin, Fu Lei, Yang Dai, etc. Film and television is another expression of literature, and many of Liu Zhenyun's works have also been put on the screen. The three guests shared their experiences of film and television adaptations of classic literature and improvised voices for clips from the 1970 film Jane Eyre. The young cartoonist Bai Cha drew a comic based on the famous bridge section in classic literature, and the guests and online audiences on the scene looked at the picture and guessed the book together, and the atmosphere was active.
"Poetry: Dialogue with distant places" session from left: Zang Di, Hongying, Dong Qiang, Liu Wenfei, Shi Hang
Recording the "Literature Lesson" for the "Poetry: Dialogue with distant places" was the famous singer Hu Haiquan. Famous translators Liu Wenfei and Dong Qiang, as well as famous poets Hongying and Zang Di, "poetically inhabited" the scene. Professor Liu Wenfei, a leading figure in the study of Russian literature, has a special position in the new edition of the Grid Edition: he is both a member of the new Editorial Board and a translator who has translated all of Pushkin's poems, becoming the preface author and translator of more than a dozen poems in the Grid Edition of Pushkin's Selected Poems, as well as the translator of the Selected Poems of Tsvetaeva. He talked about the problem of classic retranslation according to his personal practice and shared a little experience in the translation of poetry. Dong Qiang, chairman of the Fu Lei Translation and Publication Award, has studied novels under Kundera, and has translated a large number of art history works and many French modern and contemporary poems, and his narration revolves around the relationship between foreign poetry and novels and art, and talks about the significance of the Fu Lei Translation and Publication Award. The famous poet Nishikawa sent a short video clip. The poetry session ended with the much-anticipated russian, English, French, Arabic, Spanish, and Chinese multilingual reading, with Liu Wenfei reading Tsvetaeva's "I Want to Recover You", Hongying reading Shelley's "Philosophy of Love", Dong Qiang reading Baudelaire's "Wine Soul", Zang Di reading Wordsworth's "To the Lark", and Xu Jinlong reading "Selected Leaves" through video, Xue Qingguo reading Gibran's "Earth God", and Zhao Zhenjiang reading Garcia Lorka's "Poet Asking Couples to Write to Him". Take the reader to a distant place that has never been reached before.
"Drama: Dialogue with Life" session From left: Gu Chunfang, Wen Zheng, Pu Cunxi, Chen Luyu
The last link is "Drama: Dialogue with Life". Director and actor Huang Lei brings his experience and love for theater performance to all aspects of drama and theater appreciation in the "Literature Lessons" video. The famous actor Pu Cunxin is one of the actors who have starred in shakespeare plays in China and the actor who has performed the most Works of Chekhov, so he was invited to the event. He recalls that under the guidance of his father, Chekhov's works in the old grid book began his reading journey and literary journey, and his love of books continues to this day. Pu Cunxin came to the event site with the 1847 British version of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" to share his experience with everyone, and his love of reading and his profound achievements in Shakespeare's plays can be seen. And his father, as a professional actor, once starred in the Russian drama master Ya Ostrovsky's "A Thousand Worries of the Wise Man, There Will Be a Mistake". Wen Zheng, an Italian literature translator at the University of Foreign Chinese in Beijing, has long longed for the old grid, but he is shy in his pocket, and the first copy he bought is "Persian Letters". His definition of wealth freedom at the time was that you could buy grid books as you like. Today, his definition of wealth freedom is the freedom to have a book collection as you like. Gu Chunfang, a professor at Peking University's School of Arts, read the grid book "Andersen's Fairy Tales" in elementary school, and after starting to study drama, she came into contact with many of the plays in the grid book, and she felt that the grid book "is a classic symbol, it feeds generation after generation, it can be said that it is the breast milk of the literature of generation after generation."
Regarding the famous "to be or not to be" sentence in Hamlet, and about which golden sentence in Hamlet is, different people have different opinions on how to read it and how to translate it, and the debate is fierce on stage. As a result of this, Pu Cunxin performed the famous excerpt of "Hamlet" on the spot, and also introduced the details of the Chinese-Tibetan bilingual version of "Hamlet" that he gave to the director of the Sixth Tibetan Acting Class of the Shanghai Theater Academy. The conversation then shifted to women's issues in the play. Professor Wen Zheng and Gu Chunfang interpreted The fate of Nala in Ibsen's classic play "Doll's House" from different perspectives, and explored whether the fate of women can create a "miracle within a miracle". Pu Cunxin summarizes the theme of all cao yu's plays into one word: "exodus", and cao yu expresses his dissatisfaction with reality and his desire to change reality through the inner motivation of all characters who are eager to leave. Whether it is Ibsen, Shakespeare or Chekhov, their plays are the "rich mine" of "problem plays", and the improvisational performances of the three guests seem to bring the audience to the theater stage to face problems and dialogue about life. When talking about the film and television version of "Jane Eyre", Pu Cunxin shared his personal real experience, a very important point in the performance is the beauty of the language, the poetry of the language, and the philosophy of the language, so he himself is actually "creeping in front of the text".
A collective appearance of foreign literary book editors
The old version of the grid book is the hard work of the older generation of editors of the People's Literature Publishing House, and the new version of the grid book reflects the inheritance and innovation of the new generation of humanities editors. As the front-line executors of the new edition of the grid book, foreign literary book editors collectively appeared and recommended new books in one sentence, hoping to face readers face to face in the most down-to-earth way.
The leaders of the Humanities Society took a group photo with some of the guests present
The ancients said: "Learning is all about sex." "Books have always been the ladder of human progress, and at a time when the epidemic is not yet over, books are an important source of wisdom for us to absorb the wisdom of our predecessors and a reliable way to gain inner peace and courage."