The office of Gao Lizhi, deputy editor-in-chief of Beijing Publishing House, is no different from what I imagined, full of books, staggered, stacked and stacked. To my surprise, he was able to find exactly and randomly the books he needed and bring them out.
The "Little Books for Everyone" series occupies several floors of his bookcase, and there are many kinds. This is the fist product of Beijing Publishing House, which was selected as the first batch of the former State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television to recommend Chinese excellent traditional culture popularization books to the whole country. Its editorial purpose is to encourage everyone to write small books, so that the common sense of various disciplines becomes the starting point for our thinking.
Each book in the series is about 100,000 words in order to enable readers to gain more knowledge in a shorter period of time. The famous scholar Yuan Xingpei said in the preface to the series: The so-called "everyone" contains two meanings, one is that the author of the book is everyone; second, the book is written for everyone to see. The "Little Book for Everyone" is not very large: readers can put it in their pockets and pull it out anytime and anywhere to read a few pages.
Gao Lizhi is the main planner of this series of books, and on the occasion of the publication of two hundred books, Gao Lizhi launched the "Youth Edition of Everyone's Little Book". He said in an interview: "In 2020, the Ministry of Education announced the recommended reading list for primary and secondary school education, and the 'little book for everyone' was selected in large quantities, and I wanted to take this opportunity to take out the suitable reading for students and contribute to China's education. ”
Talking to Gao Lizhi, you can deeply feel his humor and wisdom. Making books is his profession and his hobby. His philosophy of writing books is integrated into his humor, which can support his gushing speech, and the words are full of "real money and silver".
Reading, getting started is very harmful
Gao Li's ambition to do "everyone's little book" is to open up the academic context since the 20th century when the West has gradually learned from the East. He believed that the best parts of human culture must be convergence, and that the differences were like mirrors. "If you want to progress, you need to look at yourself in the mirror, which is the root of philosophy. And before understanding this mirror, you must acknowledge and respect differences, cultural heritage knows no borders, inheritance is yours, not inheriting is never yours. "This is Gao Lizhi's philosophy.
At present, more than 200 kinds of books have been made, and Gao Lizhi consciously includes and integrates according to the concept, hoping to provide the public with a system, because only by understanding the system can we know "how traditional culture has come step by step".
"Everyone's Little Book" is a book written by professionals for the general public, that is, academic popularization, and many of the bibliographers are university scholars in the Republic of China period. Everyone in the Republic of China has generally received Chinese and Western education, and they know how to speak to ordinary readers, which is particularly important in Gao Lizhi's view. He said: "There is no subdivided discipline concept in the growth environment of these people in the Republic of China, and they mostly nurture and grow up in traditional culture, which is difficult for future generations to reach." They have also received a general Western education, and it is of great benefit to use Western ideas as a mirror to reflect on our culture. So they are generally good at writing, writing beautifully and atmospherically, and that thing is of course suitable for popularization. ”
Many of the authors of the contemporary "Little Book for Everyone" are also admired by Gao Lizhi. The common denominator of these authors is the pursuit of excellence. "Like Teacher Liu Beicheng, we gave him a manuscript, and his revision can fill every space, the words are still very correct, and the staff in the row can recognize it."
"Everyone's Little Book" has a tendency, the lower the reading object, the more cross-border, the better the sales of the book, such as Mr. Fei Xiaotong's "Rural China", which is a must-read list that cannot be avoided by all disciplines of literature, history and philosophy. However, like the "Brief Treatise on Exhortation" and "Introduction to Dunhuang Studies", the authors are everyone, and there are relatively few people who care, but for the "Little Books of Everyone", Gao Lizhi believes that they are also necessary.
In addition to emphasizing the concept of "everyone", Gao Lizhi also stressed the need to clearly define "civil science" and true experts, "for traditional culture and excellent Western culture, we should adopt a rigorous attitude." "And this rigorous attitude, in Gao Lizhi's mind, is the choice of version and the threshold of reading." I do not deny that many 'little books for everyone' are based on popularity, but there is a reading threshold. I don't think reading is willing to overcome difficulties and can't talk about the promotion of traditional culture. For the phenomenon that reading a "Selected Stories of Zuo Chuan" can talk about "Zuo Chuan", and reading a "Selected Translations of Analects" can publish a high theory of Confucius's thought, which is very absurd in Gao Lizhi's view, so he believes that it is urgent to popularize the knowledge of versionology.
Gao Lizhi often visits parks and used bookstores. Once, in the park, I saw a pirated book stall, and an old lady was asking the stall owner if she had the Analects. The stall owner took a very large and thick copy of the Complete Analects and handed it over. The old lady looked at it for half a day and said, "So the Analects look like this?" The stall owner replied, "There is only one copy of the Analects, and there is no other Analects." So the old lady bought it, saying that she bought it for her grandson.
Such a misleading thing, Gao Lizhi evaluated as "the entry is not right and very harmful." "The ancient book piece, especially the poetry, is really the hardest hit area of the edition." This was Gao Lizhi's long-term feeling, so after he went to the Beijing Publishing House, he immediately put Mr. Lai Xinxia's "A Brief Introduction to Classical Bibliography" into the "Little Book for Everyone". It is very necessary to choose books, to understand a little bit of bibliography and editions, to see the authors, arrangers, translators, publishers, and even responsible editors. If it is still difficult to distinguish, you can read the author's profile, "If the author is a manager, he cuts into the interpretation of Lao Tzu from a management perspective, and this reader is also engaged in management, buying it is very right; and if you want to understand the basic literature or intellectual history, it is obviously not appropriate to buy it." ”
Make books and dislike "quick finished products"
Before making the book, Gao Lizhi was a media person. When he was working on the news section of Jiangsu Wuxi Daily, he always wanted to make something that could last longer. "Feeling that books last longer than newspapers, I moved into publishing in 2003." Publishing and the media are in common to him, and the technical means and philosophy of publishing editors are generally the same as those of news editors.
Gao Lizhi once paid great attention to bestsellers, and found that there must be some kind of social trend behind super bestsellers, just like the news from the beginning. The publishing world is a peculiar field, and the most obvious manifestation is that having good ideas may not make money. "In whose hands does a book end up and in whose hands it comes out, the form is completely different, and the book has the fate of the book." But there is another saying: those who plant trees are not as good as those who pick mushrooms. Whether the book will eventually reach the people who need it, that is to say, how it will sell, I dare not say, the most creative products are often not as profitable as follow-up products. ”
Having seen too many booksellers who "die" on the road to best-selling books, Gao Lizhi understands that what should really be pursued is long-term sales. In the publishing industry, authors with traffic have an absolute advantage, and publishers also need a certain brand and traffic. As far as Gao Lizhi knows, many famous book publishers are losing money. And many times, the production of a high-quality book, the editorial power is not weaker than the author, this is a comprehensive work. A sentence from Han Jingqun, editor-in-chief of October Literature and Art Publishing House, Gao Lizhi agrees: The author writes what they can write, and the editor can edit what we can. Theoretically, the author is an intellectual producer, and the publisher is only a communicator, but highlighting a certain aspect of the work in order to make it suitable for the market reflects the wisdom of the editor. For the true sense of accomplishment of publishing editors, Gao Lizhi summed up three things: leading a certain tendency in the industry; discovering important authors; and being a book that others can't make.
Gao Lizhi was very disgusted with making a quick-made product in his heart, and felt that books such as "three minutes to understand world history" were extremely absurd, and he complained: "Three minutes to read world history, why do so many historians do it?" "There was a period of controversy over the picture books, and then the picture books were hot, and Gao Lizhi felt that it was not the right way. He believes that the imagination brought by images and words is of course different, and the embodiment in a certain sense limits imagination, but no matter what aspect a person wants to develop, imagination is indispensable.
Translation values the style and self-discipline of the translator
To do anything, you need to have an international perspective. The consensus between Gao Lizhi and his peers is that while understanding traditional Chinese culture, it is necessary to have Western cultural references, so he presided over the opening of the "Little Books for Everyone" translation library series.
For the translation, Gao Lizhi emphasized the translator, and paid attention to the version. He values the old translators who have only translated one book in their lifetime, "eat thoroughly, study thoroughly, and his translation is a research product." Gao Lizhi always believes that translation work is first and foremost a matter of attitude, "When we review translations, there are basically problems in all places where we can't read them, which is caused by the translators not thoroughly translating them in some places." ”
Gao Lizhi respects people who have a harsh attitude in translation work, "These people are naturally suitable for translation, such as Teacher Lin Yi'an. Gao Lizhi and Lin Yi'an co-published "The Old Man and the Sea" of "Everyone's Little Book Youth Edition", which is one of his proud works.
In order to do "The Old Man and the Sea", Gao Lizhi compared the English version with several excellent Chinese translations. He used to think that "The Old Man and the Sea" was relatively simple, but in comparison, he found that it was not so. "A perusal of the text reveals a lot of obscure things. The book was written by Hemingway in Cuba and is based on an old Cuban fisherman. In order to accurately reflect the situation, Hemingway's writing incorporated a large amount of local Spanish into English, so it would be quite a problem to translate it based on English alone. Lin Yi'an was awarded the title of senior translator by the China Translation Association, he is first of all a senior translator in Spanish, and he comes from a family of customs clerks, who has been good in English since childhood and has been studying Latin American literature.
Hemingway's masterpiece "The Old Man and the Sea" is generally characterized as a manifestation of the American spirit, but Gao Lizhi learned from Lin Yi'an that "The Old Man and the Sea" reflects a Latin American revolutionary spirit. Gao Lizhi recalled: "When he told me this, I immediately reflected in my mind the picture of Hemingway and Castro. Hemingway was undoubtedly left-wing, he participated in the Spanish Civil War, so Lin Yi'an said that "The Old Man and the Sea" is an epic of Latin American revolutions, which I think is basically true. ”
Some of Lin Yi'an's translations began to be unaccustomed to Gao Lizhi. For example, the first paragraph of "the old man and the child" is translated as "the old man and the young man", in his concept, "The Old Man and the Sea" is the image of an old man and a teenage child. To this end, he consulted a lot of information and finally came to the same conclusion as Lin Yi'an: with the old man was a young man of about twenty years old, not a weak child.
There are also many translations of third-person animals as "it," which Gao lizhi believed was contrary to Hemingway's style. "Because Hemingway's expression of animals in the original text is 'he', I think Hemingway wants to show the intimate companionship between man and nature, and he does not want people to be too divided in nature, so his names for old people, birds, and fish are all personified, and if translated as 'it', it will lose this layer of meaning."
Lin Yi'an has precise self-discipline in translation: sentences should not exceed 20 words as much as possible. "This also corresponds to the Hemingway telegraphic language, which is the distinctive style of Lin Yi'an's translations, while most of our translations have no style pursuit, and some even have the result of Chinese rewriting of Chinese." Gao Lizhi said, "The more important early Chinese translations of The Old Man and the Sea included Mr. Zhang Ailing, Yu Guangzhong, Haiguan, and Zhao Shaowei, and the most widely read later was Mr. Wu Lao's translation, because the Shanghai Translation Publishing House bought the copyright of Hemingway. The later translation of Hemingway's official edition was all over the place. ”
Lin Yi'an's version of "The Old Man and the Sea", Gao Lizhi's pride is that it reflects his own editorial thinking. "The Old Man and the Sea" text is very short, thirty or forty thousand words, which many editors are reluctant to touch. Because the profit margin is thin, it is difficult to support a book with few words. Gao Lizhi said, "The Old Man and the Sea on the market is strictly speaking, 'Hemingway's Short Story Selection', or in the form of Chinese and English contrast, but the version I made is clean, that is, the text and illustrations Chinese "The Old Man and the Sea". ”
The illustrators are Raymond Shepard and Charles Tunycliff, who made beautiful and elaborate illustrations for the 1953 edition of The Old Man and the Sea by the London Society for Reprinted Books. "Excellent!" High aspirations evaluation. The illustrations in the translation of Lin Yi'an's edition of The Old Man and the Sea are all from this edition, but are only partially selected. "If conditions permit, I want to get all the pictures of the original book in the future." Gao Lizhi said.
The accident in the birth of "Children's History of China"
There is also a "Children's Chinese History" in the "Everyone's Little Book Youth Edition", signed by Zhang Yinlin and Yuan Zhen, which is also a proud work of Gao Lizhi. The process of writing this little book was a bit of a surprise.
Zhang Yinlin graduated from Stanford University and is a particularly valued student of Liang Qichao and Chen Yinke. He went abroad to study philosophy, and later studied sociology, which was called non-doing. He said that his future aspirations were history, that to study philosophy was to acquire the method of transcendental world; to study sociology was to learn to understand the method of social evolution. Such a person with a clear big picture is the reason why Gao Lizhi values his works.
Initially, Gao Lizhi bought a set of "The Complete Works of Zhang Yinlin", including "Children's Chinese History", which was only a few pages thin. "I have read Mr. Zhang Yinlin's Outline of Chinese History in the past, and in the preface, I introduced that this is a middle school textbook commissioned by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China. I didn't expect him to have an elementary school textbook. "In the preface, Zhang Yinlin mentioned the issue of how to popularize Chinese history, believing that our history from primary school to university is from the Three Emperors and Five Emperors to the present, which is a waste of energy, so we should compile teaching materials suitable for students at all stages." His idea was that high school students should understand the general context of historical evolution, and children should understand some heroes. ”
Gao Lizhi carefully read Zhang Yinlin's "Children's Chinese History" and felt that "he used a person to reflect the writing method of an era's quasi-"Historical Records", which has a sense of closeness, good language, and great atmosphere."
The people who write books are always thinking about the topic, and Gao Lizhi intuitively feels that "Children's History of China" can be written. He noticed that the part written by Zhang Yinlin lacked several characters from the Northern Song Dynasty, which could be compiled through the "Outline of the History of the Two Song Dynasties" compiled by himself. But what about the part written by Yuan Zhen and Yang Liansheng? When he was worried, Mr. Xi Zhi brought him good news, and when he compiled the "Annals of Wu Han", he sorted out several articles by Wu Han's wife Yuan Zhen, and thought that they should be compiled into the "Wu Han Anthology". Gao Lizhi believes, "It would be nice if yuan zhen's song texts were added. But who is its author? Zhang Yinlin made it clear in the preface that the Southern Song and Ming dynasties were written by Yuan Zhen, and the Ming and Qing dynasties were written by Yang Liansheng. ”
However, Mr. Xi believes that although the article is signed by Yuan Zhen, it may be from Wu Han's hand. Gao Lizhi carefully analyzed and ruled out this possibility. He thought that at that time, Yuan Zhen was unmarried, Zhang Yinlin, as her brother-in-law, would not fail to understand her physical condition, and if Yuan Zhen's body did not support her to write a book, Zhang Yinlin could not force her to do it. In addition, the writing method is also Yuan Zhen's, unlike Wu Han, such as Yu Qian, compared with Yu Qian written by Wu Han, there is not a single sentence of the same sentence, and even some important views are different. Therefore, he decisively included Yuan Zhenwen in the "History of Children's China", and signed it by Zhang Yinlin and Yuan Zhen.
To Gao Lizhi's regret, Mr. Yang Liansheng's articles from the Qing Dynasty to the Anti-Japanese Resistance have never been found. He searched the National Library and the Peking University Library, but there was no trace, "there is no evidence to show where Mr. Yang's article is." I think it may have been lost, after all, it was a time of war. ”
It is more important to make books in a down-to-earth manner than to be a person with eight faces
As a book maker, Gao Lizhi does not like to recommend books, and feels that it is a kind of degeneration, "Reading should be active, why should others recommend it?" ”
When the "Little Book for Everyone" was made of a hundred kinds, some people proposed that the bibliography had depth and shallowness, could it be read and stratified? This incident really confused Gao Lizhi for a year. "I don't know how to divide it, such as the "Outline of the Poetic Rhythm", is it shallow or deep? I think people who learn to write old poems must read them, and students may have to read them as well. But like me, I am born uneven, just like reading a book in heaven, then I don't want to read it. "Gao Lizhi in confusion was rescued by Professor Chen Pingyuan's words," Professor Chen opposed reading stratification, because reading is a person's initiative to find books to read when considering problems, and stratification does not deprive people of the right to think? ”
Gao Lizhi also asked students to read the adapted version carefully. For example, he said, "When my son was in the third grade, the school asked to read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and I thought that the third grade words could not be read, so I bought him a children's version with pinyin, and later found that people did not read it at all. I wonder, how good is "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", why not watch it? Take a flip, up is taoyuan three knots of righteousness, the original beginning of the courage is all lost, the most essential part is lost, only a few stories. In fact, the child's comprehension ability is very strong, he finds it difficult to understand that he does not look. The cultivation of reading habits objectively requires a lot of reading, but it must be a more independent choice. ”
Gao Lizhi especially likes the writer Shi Tiesheng, believing that it is rare for a writer who thinks deeply in an impetuous society, "How high an evaluation for him is not excessive, and every day he endlessly ponders the spirit and awards, but says that there are great creations that are unimaginable, I think in addition to deceiving people or deceiving people." ”
Wang Zengqi also likes it and thinks that he is a rare writer who always adheres to purity. He felt greatly influenced by Mr. Wang and recalled the scene when Wang Zengqi came to give a lecture when he first entered the Chinese Department of Peking University in 1992. Mr. Wang's eyes did not look at people, his big eyes stared upwards at the ceiling, ignored no one for half a day, and then began to speak with his hometown accent: Someone asked me how I became a writer? I think the first is skipping class. Stop and think about it, and then say, the second is to skip class. Why can't I stay at Southwest United University? It is because Mr. Zhu Ziqing thinks that I always skip class... Read the books you want to read, and don't read the books you don't want to read. My favorite is my teacher Shen Congwen, like Chekov, Asorin, read it repeatedly. Tolstoy I don't like, I don't read. ”
When he was particularly bored, Gao Lizhi was willing to read a few pages of classic books and felt calmer. He opposes all kinds of inspirational books and doesn't like most online articles, which will only make him more impetuous. "Good language is not easy to get, there are natural components, Shen Congwen and Xiao Hong language are good, their language is not disciplined." Language is a spiritual thing, full of selfish distractions, and what is written is also a selfish distraction. This is Gao Lizhi's summary.
The scholar Mr. Wang Ning once put forward a fervent hope for the "Little Book for Everyone", hoping that its own language would become a norm. Gao Lizhi has been observing: "We have published several books on Chinese characters. "He has also always stressed the need to read the original texts for academic popularization, and although he is not a blind admirer of the philosophy of language, he believes that language is the most important point of all cultures." China's greatest invention is certainly not paper, compass, but Chinese characters. Chinese characters maintain the Chinese language and culture circle, which is the most basic thing that carries traditional Chinese culture. ”
The publishing industry has encountered a series of difficulties, how to adapt? Gao Lizhi believes that it is the wisdom of leaders that are tested in the context of the times, not editors. He often encouraged his editors that culture needed to spread no matter what era, so the creativity of editors was always needed. "What will really test editors in the future is aesthetic quality. Because the transformation of the form of communication makes the luxury of the book irreversible, judging whether a content value is worth the paper book will be the first test of the editor's judgment. ”
Gao Lizhi also knows that many things are difficult to do. After many years of writing books, he often thinks: humble benefits, full of losses, learning to listen is more important than learning language, and making books in a down-to-earth manner is more important than being a person with eight faces.
Text/Reporter Wang Mian
Courtesy of Photo/Square One