A novel about the theme of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, which has been reprinted 11 times in a row, has been collected by hundreds of universities.
Li Guangtian's "Gravity" in Japan (Chinese Classic Writers Overseas)
The first version of Gravity
Translation of Gravity, Institute of Chinese Studies
1952 Iwanami Shoten edition of Gravity
The birth and reality of Gravity
Modern Chinese writer Li Guangtian is famous for his poetry and prose, and Gravity is his only novel. This novel, which writes about the fate and daily life of characters during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, began in July 1941 and has been interrupted for a long time. According to Li Guangtian's daughter Li Xiu, it was not until August 11, 1945, that the author "wrote his last sentence in the sound of firecrackers celebrating the victory of the War of Resistance." As a painstaking work, "Gravity", together with Ba Jin's "Cold Night" and Qian Zhongshu's "Siege of the City", was serialized in the large literary and art journal "Renaissance" hosted by Zheng Zhenduo and Li Jianwu, and published in June 1947 by Chenguang Publishing Company. "Gravity" tells the story of Huang Menghua, a middle school teacher living in the occupied area, who is not willing to be a "slave to the country", and under the call of her husband Lei Mengjian, he resolutely takes his children to try to leave the occupied area and find the light. When she reached her husband's residence after all the hardships, he had left, leaving only a letter telling her that she was heading for a brighter place. Inspired by her husband's actions, Huang Menghua finally put aside his personal gains and losses, bid farewell to the old self, and kept up with the pace of the times.
Compared with the famous "Siege" and "Cold Night", Gravity has received very limited attention in China. During the serialization of the novel, except for Li Changzhi's "Comment on Li Guangtian's Creation of Gravity", there were few critical articles. After the novel was republished in 1983, it still did not receive enough attention from the research community. In the author's opinion, the continuous "coldness" of "Gravity" in the domestic research community is also constrained by the context of the times in addition to the reasons for the style of the text. Different from the anti-war works that win with stories and plots, the content of "Gravity" is trivial, and the intensive psychological descriptions and landscape portrayals in the writing reduce the reader's reading interest. At the same time, this novel lacks the pursuit of grand narrative and epic character, and the original ecological writing of life in the occupied areas is quite different from the mainstream writing method of anti-war literature at that time, so it has long been out of the sight of readers and literary research circles after publication. However, it is precisely such a different kind of anti-war theme work that has aroused considerable attention and research in Japan, which can be described as a unique case of the overseas dissemination of Chinese modern and contemporary literature.
"Gravity" was accepted and studied by Japan
A few years after its publication in China, Gravity was translated into Japan. The Institute of Chinese Studies in Japan first published an excerpted translation of Toshio Okazaki, and then another translation by Hiroshi Takada was published in the December 1950 issue of the Journal of the Chinese. In 1952, Iwanami Shoten published a complete translation of Toshio Okazaki. (Chen Jiaguan: "Gravity in Japan") In addition to the 1952 edition, the novel also has a 1959 edition, during which it was reprinted 11 times in a row.
This novel not only attracts many ordinary readers, but also is highly respected by professional researchers. According to the author's investigation, there are 114 universities in Japan that have the 1952 edition of Gravity, and 11 universities that have the 1959 edition of Gravity. In addition to the translator of the book, Toshio Okazaki, scholars such as Hiroshi Yoshida, Shusuke Tachima, Shintaro Okino, and Pumiko Sato have all written book reviews or research articles. In addition, the book has also been selected into a variety of Monographs on Japanese Chinese Literature, such as the famous Japanese scholar Ono Shinobu in his book "Modern Chinese Literature" (Mainichi Shimbun 1958 edition) in the sixth chapter of the book "Chinese Literature during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and Revolutionary War", which lists "Gravity" and Lao She's "Four Generations Together" as a representative work written in the occupied areas, and makes a detailed evaluation of the novel under the title of "The Foreign Country in the Motherland (Part II)-Li Guangtian's "Gravity"". The Image of a Teacher in Literature (Meiji Books Published 1957), written by Ictarō Kunita, Hideo Oda, and Tsuneyoshi Yamashita, analyzes the novel under the title of "Teachers' Distress and Action Under Occupation: Lee Hirota's Gravity" (1957).
Japanese researchers have three main angles in their research on "Gravity", one of which is the revelation and elaboration of the characteristics of the novel's "resistance literature". In the article "Reading the Novel 'Gravity', There Is a Feeling--The Beginning of Resistance": "After reading Gravity, one of the words that came out of my mouth was: 'Resistance'. In his opinion, it was the will to resist that summoned Menghua's tenacious action, which eventually led her to a new state of life. Ono pointed out that it was the will to "resist" that enabled Menghua to break through the ordinary people's indulgence in the family, and then "from the individual to the group, from the group to the public", and finally gained a valuable national consciousness. In "Let the "Decadent Things" Speak- Try: The Fixed Point of Li Guangtian's Literature, Pumiko Sato more directly pointed out that "Gravity" "has gained wide resonance as resistance literature", and further pointed out that "Gravity" also reflects Li Guangtian's consistent creative tendency to focus on "ordinary people". In her view, this "de-conceptualization" writing orientation and its "simple and idyllic" tone are undoubtedly an important reason why the novel can resonate widely with Japanese readers. The second is the discovery of the novel's "autobiographical" style. For example, the translator Toshio Okazaki discovered the strong autobiographical nature of the novel, and he pointed out in the afterword: "The author published the "Journey to the West" last year (1950), which is a record of the impressions along the way when he moved to the mainland during the War of Resistance Against Japan... This is exactly the same as Meng Jian's whereabouts in "Gravity". Li Xiu recalled that when she was about to leave Kyoto University of Foreign Chinese in 1992, she donated the books she carried and the collection of essays by her father, Li Guangtian, to the university, and at the handover ceremony, scholars present who knew her identity called her "Xiao Ang Ang" (Huang Menghua's son) in "Gravity". In their conversations with her, Maruyama Sheng and other well-known Japanese experts on Chinese studies also talked many times about their love for the "ideal of peace" conveyed by "Gravity", which confirmed the great influence of the novel. The third is an analysis of the artistic style of the novel, in which Ono believes that Gravity is both solemn and feminine, and Menghua's last lesson before leaving the occupied area "reminds people of the Last Lesson of the French writer Dodd, who was selected for the Chinese Chinese textbooks." And Li Guangtian's depiction of Menghua's spiritual transformation process shows "extraordinary delicate and soft brushstrokes... Almost mistaken by Japanese readers as a woman."
What is the "gravity" of "Gravity"?
Why did a novel with the theme of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression arouse such a strong response in Japan that "Gravity" became a window for Japanese readers and scholars to understand China's War of Resistance Against Japan? In the author's opinion, to understand the spread of "Gravity" in Japan, we must not only consider the fit between the aesthetic style of the novel itself and the aesthetic acceptance of Japanese readers, but also place this cultural communication phenomenon in a broad historical time and space.
In explaining his aesthetic claims, Li Guangtian once borrowed the words of a Spanish writer and stressed that he "opposed the excessively artificial artistic structure, but wanted to express the highest truth" ("Two Novels"). This aesthetic pursuit makes "Gravity" based on individual personal experience when presenting life in the occupied areas, insisting on writing straight books, and retaining the vivid details of personal survival experience during the War of Resistance. At the same time, this tendency to write also makes the novel free from simple "binary opposition" thinking, not to treat the invaders comically, but to write about its complex side. This aesthetic style of "taking truth as the truth" undoubtedly strengthens the artistic appeal of the novel. What is implied in it is the author's criticism of aggression and atrocities, showing the cruelty of war, and calling on China and Japan to move toward peace and friendship from generation to generation. This yearning for peace is obviously in line with the psychology of the Post-War Japanese people.
In addition, "Gravity" is a typical poetic novel, and the classical poetic imagination and oriental love rhyme that are everywhere in the text, as well as the novelist's meticulous presentation of the heroine's inner world, are similar to the "private novel" tradition that arose during the Taisho period in Japan. This loose, trivial, and fluid writing style is in line with the Japanese literary tradition of attaching importance to emotional portrayal and emphasizing inner reflection, and is therefore easily appreciated by Japanese readers.
The boom in the acceptance of "Gravity" is closely related to the special historical environment of Japan in the 1950s. On the one hand, the complex social contradictions and rigid social system of post-war Japan led to the widespread rise of left-wing movements, and socialist China became the ideal sustenance of many Japanese progressive intellectuals. Li Guangtian's status as a democracy fighter and the novel's repeated metaphors for liberated areas naturally stimulated the reading interest of Japanese readers at that time. On the other hand, the OCCUPATION OF JAPAN BY THE US MILITARY AFTER WORLD WAR II made the Japanese people feel that they could not control their own destiny. As Shintaro Okino pointed out in his essay "Reading Gravity": "After the end of World War II, I was convinced that the U.S. occupation policy would democratize Japan, but later showed the intention of colonizing Andi's military bases. Once the freedom granted gradually decreased, the Japanese people had the feelings of oppressed citizens, which resonated with the novel. ”
"Gravity" is widely disseminated in Japan and is valued by Japanese scholars, which can be described as "flowering inside the wall and incense outside the wall". This also fully shows that as an anti-war novel that exposes the trauma and disaster caused by war to the people, "Gravity" writes the common voice of mankind and has the value of transcending time and space and nationality.
(Author: Lv Yanlin, Lecturer, College of Humanities and Academy of Literary and Art Criticism, Hangzhou Normal University)
Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition