Today marks the centenary of the birth of American writer Jack Kerouac. He is the soul of the "Beat Generation" and a controversial writer, and his autobiographical novel "On the Road", which accompanies jazz, spirits, and drugs, has influenced generations of American youth, including Bob Dylan and the Beatles, and has greatly intervened in the spiritual construction and daily life of Americans.
Burning, then dying, was Kerouac's life. He wrote in On the Road: "All my life I have loved to follow behind the people who interest me, those who are a little crazy, who live madly, who express themselves madly, who desire to be redeemed madly, who at the same time desire everything, tirelessly, without convention, who keep burning, burning, like amazing yellow fireworks that can burst out continuously, like spiders through the stars, and in the middle of the sky you will see the blue central point of light bursting, and everyone can't help but exclaim." ”
Kerouac
"On the Road" was written by Kerouac in one breath on a 30-meter-long typewriter paper, and this dense text without broken sentences was Kerouac's burning passion, and Kerouac, who was in his thirties at the time, probably did not expect that the words "Beat Generation", which appeared incidentally in the first part of Chapter 9, were later distilled by critics to summarize the spiritual temperament of the young people of an era, Kerouac was never a social theorist, and "On the Road" became an important part of the American spirit. Because it is highly directed at the spiritual world of youth, "On the Road" can get rid of the burden of time and space, and even can be separated from the text, the reader does not have to read the preface and the table of contents step by step, and can open a chapter at random to see the free to almost crazy life of the Kerouacs, who indulge in all good things and roam aimlessly.
Kerouac Jack Kerouac died in 1969, and in 2020, all of his works have entered the public edition period, and in the past two years, there has also been a wave of Kerouac publishing in China, and The Paper interviewed Tao Yueqing, the translator of the first Chinese full translation of "On the Road".
On the Road (2020 edition) book cover
Chinese mainland's study of Kerouac began in the 1960s, when Kerouac was mentioned in the "Beat Generation", and china's criticism of the Beat Generation and Kerouac at that time was class-conscious, believing that the characters in the text were degenerate and decaying.
In 1962, the Writers Publishing House published a Chinese translation of "On the Road", which was translated by Shi Rong (huang yushi and Shi Xianrong). The translation of this verse is an "internal reference book", and this translation of this verse, also known as the "Yellow Book", spread among the underground youth, which greatly shocked the young people who were suppressed during the "Cultural Revolution" at that time. Time passed, and in the 1980s, known as the "Golden Age of Literature," the "Golden Age of Literature" became very tolerant of "On the Road" and the Beat Generation, and by the 1990s, translations of Kerouac's works began a new situation.
In 1990, Lijiang Publishing House published Tao Yueqing and He Xiaoli's translation of "On the Road", which was the first officially published full translation in the world Chinese after the previous abridged translation of Shi Rong.com.
Tao Yueqing said about the origin of the translation of "On the Road": "I studied English and American literature, I am very aware of the value of "On the Road" in the Western world, it directly triggered the American culture in the fifties and sixties, I was reading "Glory and Dreams", "The Gate of Eden" mentioned the 'Beat Generation', Bob Dylan also said that the book had a strong inspiration for him. Secondly, "On the Road" resonated with my mentality as a young man at the time. We college students in the eighties were a very special group, and we had a natural sense of mission that we could make a difference in the future. The word 'beat', as we understand it, is the passion and courage of youth, and a mentality of individuality that faces society independently. ”
As a result, Tao Yueqing received a strong spiritual inspiration when he first read "On the Road" and hoped to translate the book into China. In 1988, Tao Yueqing contacted Shen Dongzi, the editor of Lijiang Publishing House, through his classmates, and quickly got a reply from Shen Dongzi's teacher, so Tao Yueqing and his sister He Xiaoli quickly sent the manuscript of the trial translation to Lijiang Publishing House. In a very short period of time, Shen Dongzi agreed to let the two of them translate the entire "On the Road", which made Tao Yueqing, who was still a student at the time, very excited.
Translator Tao Yueqing
【Dialogue】
Resonates with the author
The Paper: Writers sometimes introduce their translation strategies, whether to try to fit the Chinese context or try to fit the english side. When you were translating, how did you think of presenting this work?
Tao Yueqing: When I was translating in 1988, I discussed with He Xiaoli that our principle was to be as faithful as possible to the original work, and I would translate it as much as he wrote, including sentence forms. Because the English sentence pattern is different from ours, sometimes there will be inversion, or the emphasis is different, or there are some grammatical problems, which are not the same as our reading habits. We try to write it according to the state of the original work.
In fact, the book "On the Road" is not very literary, there are not so many literary problems, almost all of them are flat and straightforward narratives, and there are few descriptive things. Foreign works, there are indeed many places for translation is a test, such as humor, if there is something humorous in the work, for our translation, it will cause great trouble, because humor has a lot to do with culture, population, language, environment, etc., as a translator, it is sometimes difficult to grasp where the point of humor is, where the stem is.
Fortunately, "On the Road" does not have too many difficulties in translation, you just have to write out his emotions, his state, because Kerouac wrote it in one breath, so he gives you a feeling that life has been moving forward and moving forward. You just have to translate it according to his ideas and language. Of course, the reason why we can translate this work very expressively is related to our young and enthusiastic mentality, we have a sense of resonance with the author and the work, and we can feel the demeanor and language of the author and the characters, as if that is our life.
I think this book does not have to look at the end from the beginning, there is no need to read page by page, you can turn a page to see a page is no problem, you can feel the emotions of the whole book every time you look at a fragment, that passion, no scruples, indulgence, this book is always cheering you on, adding different colors to people's lives. You may have a very plain life, you may feel very depressed and tired in bed at night, at this time you can open the book casually, and suddenly you will find that this book makes you let go of all the burdens, without any sorrow and sadness, everyone in the book is so sunny, so passionate, all the difficulties you encounter in life, all the problems, in front of this book are all no longer there, he just needs you to follow him on the road.
Stills from the movie On the Road (2012).
The Paper: This is also the most exciting part of "On the Road": although the Kerouacs are relatively poor in their wanderings, there is not a single complaint in the book. How do you see the state of life reflected in this book and the state of life in China?
Tao Yueqing: They are deviating from the scriptures, but they are not consciously deviating from the scriptures, but that is a path I chose, which is my personal choice. I'm not comparing or competing with anyone, that's the life I've chosen. The 1980s were the same, this is the life I chose, since I chose to try to move forward, I encountered some problems and then overcome.
We are accustomed to reading works using the dichotomy, or using the dualistic method, and naturally we will feel that it is different from you, it is just a problem. In fact, society should have a variety of choices, and every choice should be respected, so what's the problem? It is precisely I think that when we are now more and more concentrated on one road, other roads will be considered deviant. I don't think it's fair to people right now, I don't have to go to college, or all my talents are concentrated in finance, or I have to make money. When the whole society forces you, or you don't have the ability and courage to choose, I think either there is a problem with society or a problem with the individual. But normal society allows everyone to make different, independent choices.
The Paper: As you said, when you read "On the Road", it is like a diary, and when you open a chapter at random, it is a complete adventure and a story in one go. So how do we determine it, whether it's a literary work or an autobiographical work?
Tao Yueqing: I actually don't think this is a problem, how to determine that a certain literature has a fixed framework, or a certain novel has a fixed template.
I think that the reason why a literary work has its success is obviously that the basic literary structure is complete, such as characters, shaping, plots, and structures. Most importantly, it can arouse your empathy, emotionally, rationally, can make you have more empathy. Third, you can see something rationally through it. I think literature can only have something like that. As for whether it is a stream of consciousness, whether it is a plot, or whether it is a literary work in the traditional sense, I think there is no problem.
I think this book is actually very realistic. To what extent is this realism, and later someone specifically compared Kerouac's life with the novel, and in the process of comparison, it was found that all the archetypes and all the plots of "On the Road" were directly related to his life at that time, so the autobiographical nature of the book was very strong, and it could almost be regarded as an autobiography.
However, due to later revisions, the book has jumped out of the original character archetype and become a representative of what we consider to be a culture. So the value of the book jumps out of the state of the autobiography itself. It is also an autobiography when Margaret wrote Lover. Why did that book become a classic? The more real and detailed all its details are, the more we read like literature. I don't think it's about how close there is to authenticity or archetype, including how many elements of fiction there are, it's not a question, it's about whether we can resonate with it, or we can see through it for more content, which is our criterion for judging a literary work.
The Paper: I think everyone is very concerned about distinguishing this, and I also want to see what the real situation of society was at that time.
Tao Yueqing: I think, first, as you said, you may want to see the truth of society, and the truth of society is what he describes.
Second, we would like to see something unusual, unconventional, and secretive. First, American publications have very strict legal definitions, and secondly, they also have sociocultural restrictions, and not everyone can write anything as an official publication.
Most importantly, I think what it gives us is a spiritual thing, including some anti-war culture in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, and the reason why "On the Road" can be found at the source is also based on this. It's not that it inspires some of the content on sexual liberation, or it inspires everyone to fight against war, it's just that it makes everyone mentally realize that we can have different choices.
Embark on American culture in the 1950s and 1960s
The Paper: What do you think of the term "Beat Generation" and this genre?
Tao Yueqing: When we talk about the "Beat Generation", we may think that they are rebellious, abandoned by society, or left on the fringes of society, and their behavior and living habits are far away from mainstream society. In fact, I think Kerouac's Beat should have two meanings.
First of all, it is the rhythm of music. Kerouac lived in a time when pop music and blues music were very popular in the United States, and music has always been an integral part of his life. He wrote countless times in the book about music, about underground concerts, about pop musicians of his time, who thought they had grown up in the rhythm of pop music and blues music.
Second, they are a very beating generation, an active generation, not a silent generation, but hope to live in their own way. So it's not accurate to translate Beat Generation as "Beat Generation," but now the word has become conventional in China and has had a big impact, so there's no need to change another word. In any case, this vocabulary, and the works of this genre, are about their unique lives, but also their unique mental state, where they find their own value and the life they desire where others do not care. They don't need the approval of others, they prefer to choose independently. This is why their work was able to influence the entire United States in the 1950s and 1960s.
It should be said that the "Beat Generation" opened and shaped the culture of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, and this work ushered in a new tradition of American literature. Unlike writers such as Macville, O Henry, Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc., it solidifies its own life into a new form of literature. This spontaneous way of writing is also very common in contemporary American literature, and the influence of this way of writing can be seen in works such as "The Naked and the Dead", "Lolita" and so on.
There's a bar street in New York that's where Beat Generation writers used to hang out regularly, and it's on this street that Ginsburg's Howling was first published. It is still a holy place of worship in the American literary world, where many writers gather and communicate, and they still have the shadow of the "Beat Generation" on them. Bob Dylan's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature is a testament to the vitality and influence of the Beat generation.
The Paper: I read in the second chapter of Part III that he describes black people, saying that all that the white world gives is not as fascinating as the black world. People often use this description to discuss the attitude of his time toward black people, but there is also a theory that this is actually just a poetic imagination, not that generation understands the truth of black people. I think that's one reason people have to discuss how many aspects of the book are real.
Tao Yueqing: This passage you are talking about is his impression after seeing a scene in Denver. He was particularly frustrated, and after a wild encounter, he returned to Denver and lived a quiet life. This quietness gave him the illusion that he began to examine himself and their lives, and suddenly felt that their rush was so contrasting with the quiet life of Denver that he suddenly had an urge to settle down. I felt that everyone had a complicated heart, although he felt at the time that the life of a black man was very stable, very much like the kind of life he longed for. But he doesn't really want to live like this in his heart.
On the other hand, he recognizes rock music, blues, and pop music. The book deals with almost all of the most important pops of that era, or musicians of blues music, and most of these musicians are black, so Kerouac felt that there was a special meaning in black people that made him feel that there was something primitive, intrinsic, divine, and he had a sense of worship for black people, and this kind of worship was very strong in American culture.
I think that at that time, the understanding of black people was actually more expressed in culture, and as for what black people really looked like in life, this book did not really deal with it. We know that until the 1960s, the status of blacks in the American South was very low, which is why Martin Luther King Jr.
We don't need to dwell too hard and look at this book with an ideological eye. That's actually a misreading. What this book really wants to tell us is the courage and passion of young people, the unscrupulous, independent choices, without any burden, not even social criticism. His emphasis is on the individual and the self, on the independence of the self.
The Paper: In what ways did you understand "On the Road" affect american society afterwards?
Tao Yueqing: I think "On the Road" and "The Beat Generation" inspired American culture in the 1950s and 1960s. After each war, there is often a regular period, and after the Second World War, everyone is very miserable, the society is very torn, and the whole society hopes to be able to settle down. Therefore, the social atmosphere in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s was relatively stable and quiet. However, this kind of stability is relatively dull for young people, so many personal choices are in opposition to society. Kerouac collided and contradicted the mainstream atmosphere of society at that time in a personal way, which was the most direct impact.
The second influence is that when Kerouac wrote "On the Road", there were some new trends in American culture, and the culture from the bottom represented by blues music became a breakthrough in the whole culture. The culture and spirit of the American fifties and sixties was inherited from the "Beat Generation" and the spirit of blues music, and representative singers like Bob Dylan emerged. The reason why Bob Dylan became the representative of anti-war culture and popular culture in the 1960s was because he absorbed the spiritual nourishment of the "crossed generation". It also gave the American culture of the time a variety of choices.
It should be said that the American culture of the first twentieth century has inherited more of the tradition of European literature, Such as Hemingway, Mark Twain, etc., and they have obvious shadows of European culture. But Leapfrogging a Generation and On the Road suddenly breaks these past traditions and opens up a new path, which is a completely different category. American culture is largely due to European culture, including the "confused generation" in the United States, which basically lives in Europe, so American culture used to draw more nourishment from European culture. But "On the Road" drew its nourishment from native American culture for the first time. It is a cultural phenomenon that emerged entirely indigenously and nourished later American culture. So "The Beat Generation" and "On the Road" have a special meaning in American culture.
"Spontaneous writing" with revisions lasting five years
The Paper: You mentioned that college students in the 1980s did not understand the "Beat Generation" as a very negative group, but saw their free and positive side, is this related to the entire cultural environment of that era?
Tao Yueqing: Yes, people think that era was very enlightened, energetic, and very passionate. For "On the Road", we college students have never felt that this writing is sinking, nor have we seen decadence in it.
In particular, I would like to summarize the characteristics of university students in the 1980s. First, we have a special sense of mission, the college students of that era believe that we will be the backbone of this society in the future, will be an important force to promote social development; secondly, we are very open, there is no special taboo, in front of you, all the windows are open, you can see anything, you can think about any problem; third, we are also very independent, this independence, means that I want to have my ideas, I have to think about the problems I can think, I am willing to learn for my ideas, Try hard, try to convince others.
The Paper: Judging from the market and the acceptance of readers, in the context of the time, what was the social response to the introduction of a work like "On the Road"?
Tao Yueqing: "On the Road" was published in December 1990, and I got the manuscript fee in March 1991. I hardly know the repercussions of the book.
First of all, I had already joined the work at that time, left literature, and worked in government agencies, so I was relatively estranged from the literary circle, not particularly sensitive and understanding.
The second reason is that since 1990, the entire cultural world has been relatively quiet, and there was almost no relatively large literary trend at that time. In the 1980s, every year or two, a relatively large literary trend emerged. In the 1990s, we rarely saw a more obvious literary phenomenon, and the status of literature in people's social life began to gradually decline. Everyone began to do business, and the role of literature and the energy played by it became smaller and smaller.
The third reason is that the publishing industry and media at that time were not as developed as they are now, and the publication of such an important book seemed to have no publicity. However, the impact of this book is still very large, and I have seen that this book has been printed three times in a very short period of time, probably tens of thousands of copies, and then because of copyright problems, it cannot be printed again.
At that time, the cover design of the book was very colorful, especially in line with the cover design of the early 1990s stall literature, everyone found it eye-catching at a glance, and many people would like to try that kind of life. Moreover, for many readers, the "Beat Generation" should be like this, so this cover I think is very much in line with the typical imagination of "On the Road" at that time, the imagination of the United States, including the imagination of the "generation that crossed".
In fact, the characters and plots described by Kerouac are more appropriate than the paintings on the cover. Such a cover may make people feel that it does not look like a classic, serious publication, when China had just opened a window, and the imagination of Western culture was often intuitive, even literal, and could not see or understand the culture behind it. But in any case, after the publication of the Chinese edition of "On the Road", this classic has also attracted countless young people.
The Paper: I saw a material that said that when Kerouac wrote this book, there were no broken sentences, that is, a large text. What did the First English Version Look Like? Is there no broken sentence too?
Tao Yueqing: Kerouac began to write this book in 1949, and in the early 1950s, he glued all the print paper together and then spent nearly a month writing on the typewriter. He almost didn't break sentences, and typed out the text in one fell swoop, so everyone said he was "spontaneous writing" at the time.
"Spontaneous writing" is a very true record of his life in the primitive state that he can remember, and he writes about his life very faithfully. But then, when it was published, it encountered a big problem, and almost all the publishers who saw the book thought that the book was not easy to read and that it was being obscene.
Under pressure from the publisher, Kerouac began to revise, deleting almost all the content in the middle that the publisher thought was uncomfortable. Many people may not think that there is not even a single "F word" in this book, the most is "damn", and there is hardly anything that makes you feel uncomfortable after reading it, including some sexual descriptions are more obscure. From 1952, when he officially handed over the manuscript to the publisher, until it was officially published in 1957, he continued to delete and revise the manuscript. Before the official publication, the publisher also asked him to write about the character archetypes in his book, and each person had to sign a guarantee. Because the characters written in his book are basically his friends, although the names have been changed, the character archetypes are very easy to identify. Therefore, the publisher requires that the character prototype in this line must sign a waiver of the claim and waive the possible litigation with the publisher.
In addition, the publisher invited lawyers to carefully review the entire book and delete all paragraphs and texts that might cause litigation or, after publication, would cause seizure. At that time, the publishing culture in the United States had strong legal constraints, and it was not possible to describe promiscuity, drug addiction and so on as we imagined. Later, some people said that my first translation was an abridged version, filtering out all the content in it. I wouldn't have filtered or edited the contents of the original book at all, and at my age, I wouldn't have bothered to filter these things, because it was a masterpiece, and since it could be officially published, what could we not translate? Therefore, how he writes, we will translate, and we will not filter or abridge anything at all. As this book is now, it is a requirement for the United States to publish itself, and it has nothing to do with us.