Dong Chun: How does Hugo's drama shine in the Sino-French literary and artistic exchanges?
China News Service Paris, February 24 Title: Dong Chun: How does Hugo's drama shine in the sino-French literary and artistic exchanges?
China News Service reporter Li Yang
On the occasion of the 220th anniversary of the birth of French literary hero Victor Hugo, China News Agency "East and West" interviewed the famous translator Ms. Dong Chun in Paris to explain how Hugo's plays shine in the sino-French literary and artistic exchanges.
As a representative of French Romantic literature, Hugo created a large number of works in his lifetime, including poetry, novels, plays, essays and political essays. The Chinese people know Hugo from the novels "Les Misérables", "Notre Dame de Paris", "1993", etc., and Hugo's plays are considered to reflect the high achievements of French Romantic theater aesthetics. Therefore, it becomes very meaningful for the Chinese people to further understand Hugo's drama.
Dong Chun said that 2002 was the 200th anniversary of Hugo's birth, and Rastair, president of the French Hugo Literary Society, invited her and her husband Shen Dali to watch Hugo's "Smiley Man" stage play. After watching the performance, she felt that the play had a profound intention, especially the novel artistic design, which successfully promoted people to have "spiritual resonance" and was worth introducing to the Chinese audience, so she translated the stage performance book of "The Smiley Man" into a Chinese and recommended it to the China Youth Art Theater, which had been cooperating with her for many years.
In December 2019, the Shanghai Pearl Art Museum and the Paris Museum Alliance (Hugo House Museum) jointly organized the exhibition "Victor Hugo: The Heart of Genius" to attract audiences. Photo by Chen Yuyu, China News Service
According to Dong Chun, Hugo's novel "The Man with the Smiley Face" was completed in 1869 and lasted for four years. In this work, he uses romantic contrasts to vividly portray many human figures, revealing the universal social phenomenon of "laughter alienation", expressing Hugo's anger at the injustice of the established order of human society and the desire for freedom and happiness for the toiling masses. The creation of The Smiley Man marked a major step towards realism by Hugo.
With the joint efforts of Dong Chun and Shen Dali, Hugo's "The Man with the Smiley Face" was put on the stage of the National Theatre of China in 2012, using a Chinese performance book co-translated by the two of them.
Dong Chun said that "The Man with the Smiley Face" was put on the Stage of Chinese Theater and won the joint support of the cultural departments of China and France, and the French theater director brought her team to China, including a complete set of teams such as stage art, lighting, stage design, sound engineering, etc., in order to maintain the "strong Baroque singular characteristics" of the work in terms of clothing and other aspects, and become a valuable crystallization of Sino-French cultural exchanges and cooperation. At that time, the French ambassador to China, Bai Lin, congratulated the Hugo play on its performance in China, saying that he was pleased to see that the play cooperated with the National Theatre of China, which had made great contributions to the promotion of French drama in China, and premiered at the 7th "Sino-French Cultural Spring" Festival.
The direct introduction of French artistic talents to promote the success of the Chinese version of "The Smiley Man" is the satisfaction of Dong Chun and her husband for this Sino-French exchange: the French stage designer at the opening of the curtain, based on Hugo's landscape painting "The Sea", depicted the turbulent scenes in the sea storm; the French lighting designers compared the philosophy of Hugo's "light and shadow" and matched the stage background to "show a solemn picture of the confrontation between purity and evil in black and white", all of which was completed and realized in Beijing.
In August 2019, the French musical "Notre Dame de Paris" was staged at the Tianqiao Art Center in Beijing. Adapted from the legendary classics of French writer Victor Hugo, the musical first became a sensation in Paris in 1998 and flourished for 21 years. Photo by Du Yang, a reporter from China News Service
Dong Chun revealed to reporters that at that time, the National Drama Theatre of China invested a lot of effort in performing Hugo's play well, and then president Zhou Zhiqiang, vice president Yan Fengqi, Wang Xiaoying and other people personally invested and guided. Zhou Zhiqiang and others personally went to Paris to implement a cooperative rehearsal plan with the French side. Hugo's classic masterpieces, French screenwriters and directors, and China's powerful art team, such an "unprecedented and far-reaching Sino-French joint cooperation, are all based on our reverence and love for Hugo."
When the Chinese version of "The Smiley Man" premiered in the Mandarin Theatre, the audience was full of people, and the Chinese audience resonated deeply with the characters on the stage, and when the "Smiley Man" Gwen Pulan saw the blind girl he loved die and jumped into the River Thames to commit suicide in despair, some of the audience burst into tears and achieved great success. The play was later staged again at the 5th International Drama Season of the National Theatre of China, "Brilliant Europa".
Dong Chun then translated Hugo's "free play" "A Thousand Yuan Bounty". Hugo, she said, looked forward to solving the major social problems of the 19th century, and in 1866, in less than two months, he wrote a four-act play "The Thousand Dollar Bounty", which directly touched on the social reality of France at that time.
In Dong Chun's view, Hugo flexibly used the "dissociation effect" in the social criticism of "The Thousand Dollar Bounty" that was theorized by brecht's system until the 20th century, and the protagonist Grabio actually plays a dual role in the play, which is both the core of the plot development and the spokesperson of the author, expressing the author's insight into all aspects of social life and resonating with the audience.
Portrait of the French writer Victor Hugo created by the famous Chinese translator, writer and painter Gao Mang. China News Service reporter Zhang Qin photographed
Dong Chun said that Hugo's romantic plays have long been introduced in China, and Zeng Pu and others have mentioned Hugo's "free drama", but they have never been put on the Stage of Chinese Theater. In 2002, the famous drama director Chen Yong said that he wanted to rehearse a Hugo play in China, and Dong Chun visited Molinari, then the female curator of the "Hugo House", in Paris, and she recommended the "Thousand Yuan Bounty".
Dong Chun said that compared with "The Smiley Man", "Thousand Yuan Bounty" is more humorous and is a more relaxed play. "The 1,000 Yuan Bounty" premiered in the auditorium of Beijing Normal University, and was later performed at the Drama Festival in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, where it won an award.
Dong Chun believes that the exchange of literature and art between the East and the West has many forms such as literary works, songs, and movies, and drama has a very special position in related exchanges. The theatrical stage presents "human drama" to the public in a more vivid and intuitive form. Hugo's drama has been put on the Stage of Chinese Theatre, and the performers and Chinese audiences have a direct interaction, so that the Chinese people can further understand the original French literature and art, which will undoubtedly help deepen the exchange of Literature and Art between China and France.
On the evening of November 1, 2005, the Peking Opera "Les Misérables", based on the French novel of the same name by the China Academy of Performing Arts, made its debut in Beijing. The play integrates the essence of Chinese and Western culture and art, uses and gives play to the different characteristics of Chinese and foreign stage art performance forms, and presents foreign literary works in front of Chinese and foreign audiences in the form of traditional Chinese Peking Opera art performances. China News Service reporter Qian Xingqiang photographed
Dong Chun told reporters that cultural exchanges are first and foremost spiritual dialogues, and all art is the appearance of people's hearts. Engaging in cultural exchanges is, in a certain sense, touching and touching work. The French Romantics, represented by Hugo, rejected "vulgarization" and "vulgar culture", and called on people not to be captured by materialism and face up to today's social reality. From this point of view, the significance of Hugo's drama for Chinese audiences is profound, inspiring people to think about today's society. (End)
About the Author:
Dong Chun, born in 1942, graduated from beijing Chinese University, has long been engaged in Sino-French cultural exchange writing and literary translation, and founded the French periodical "Silk Road" in Paris and served as the chief writer. She is a member of the Chinese Writers Association and an honorary member of the French Journalists Association, and was invited by the French international television station TV5 Monde to serve as a current political commentator for the Focus Forum program. He has won the Lu Xun Literary Award "Foreign Literary Translation Award", the Chevalier des Lettres des Arts and Literatures of the French Republic and the Order of the Golden And Red Cross of the French Academy. Bai Lin, a former French ambassador to China, said that Dong Chun and Shen Dali are senior Chinese translators of French works and tireless transmitters of Chinese and French cultures.
Dong Chun has published dozens of translations, including Chinese translations such as Sumanshu's Collected Novels and Chinese translations such as Gongur's novels. Her translations of French plays include Hugo's "The Man with the Smiley Face", "The Thousand Dollar Bounty" and Claude Puran's "Beauty in Blood", which were performed in Beijing by the National Theatre of China and the China Youth Arts Theatre.