The seven-hour live broadcast focuses on foreign literary classics in "Dialogue: Endless Grid Book" courtesy of the People's Literature Publishing House
Beijing, February 24 (China News Network) -- The People's Literature Publishing House recently held a seven-hour live broadcast, focusing on the reading of foreign literary classics in "Dialogue: The Endless Grid Book", with the participation of nearly 20 cultural celebrities such as Liu Zhenyun, Bi Feiyu, Pu Cunxin, Huang Lei, Li Er, and Zhi'an.
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 edition of the grid book 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 seven-hour live broadcast focuses on foreign literary classics in "Dialogue: Endless Grid Book" courtesy of the People's Literature Publishing House
In 2019, the People's Literature Publishing House launched the new edition of the grid book publishing project. The news came out, triggering the warm memories of many book writers, translators and readers. The writer Wang Meng happily stated 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", and Feng Jicai bluntly said that the grid book was his "entrance to the world literary classics". By 2022, the new edition of grid books will be published in 5 series and 147 titles, which will cause great repercussions among readers, and many books have been reprinted many times.
Li Yan, director and general manager of China Publishing and Media Co., Ltd., pointed out in his speech 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".
Essayist Liu Liangcheng's literature class opened the "Essays: Dialogue with the 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 our daily life", and this narrative method of "starting from the hometown of the earth and flying towards 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.
The "Literature Lesson" in the "Novel: Dialogue with the World" session came from the 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." Novelists Liu Zhenyun, Li Er and the new generation of novelists Zhang Yueran constructed 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.
Recording the "Literature Lesson" for the "Poetry: Dialogue with distant places" was the singer Hu Haiquan. Translators Liu Wenfei and Dong Qiang, as well as poets Hongying and Zang Di," "poetically inhabited" the scene. Professor Liu Wenfei, a leading figure in Russian literature research, talked about the problem of classical retranslation in his personal practice and shared a little experience in the translation of poetry. Dong Qiang, chairman of the Fu Lei Translation and Publication Award, studied novels with Kundera, and his narration revolved around the relationship between foreign poetry and novels and art, and talked 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 reading in Russian, English, French, Arabic, Spanish, and Chinese.
In the final session, "Drama: A Conversation with Life," director and actor Huang Lei brings his experience and love for theater to all aspects of theater and theater appreciation in the "Literature Lessons" video. Actor Pu Cunxin recalled that under the guidance of his father, Chekhov's works in the old grid book opened his reading journey and literary journey, and his love for books continues to this day. Pu Cunxin also came to the event site with the British version of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" in 1847 to share his experience with everyone, and his love of reading and his profound achievements in Shakespeare's plays can be seen from this.
Regarding the famous "to be or not to be" in Hamlet, and about which golden sentence in Hamlet is exactly, different people have different opinions on how to read 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.
It is reported that the total online viewing of this live broadcast activity exceeded 5.33 million, and topics such as "the grid book in my memory", "the people's literature publishing house launched the grid book" and "the grid book that cannot be said" were discussed more than 15 million times on the hot search platform, and readers left messages saying that they "benefited a lot" from this "literary feast" and from these "literature lessons". (End)