Reporter | Dong Ziqi
Edit | Yellow Moon
A hundred years ago, with the help of Sylvia Bicci, the owner of the Shakespeare bookstore in Paris, the first six chapters of James Joyce's Ulysses were typeset, but the process of publishing did not go smoothly. Because of the possible charges of "corrupting the mind" and "offending morality", the book has entered the US court twice. In 1922, Ulysses was first published in a French Shakespeare bookstore, and the first edition was printed in only a thousand copies, and the first hundred copies were signed by the author. Ten years later, when the American publishing market was opened by Random House in New York, Joyce, who was plagued by illness at the time, could finally survive the rest of his life on this book. The Chinese edition of Ulysses was jointly translated by Xiao Qian and Wen Jieruo, and a full translation was released in 1994.
Ulysses describes the life of an ordinary Dubliner in chronological order during the day and night of June 16, 1904, and Joyce compares his master's announcement of Lum's day trip through the streets of Dublin to Odysseus's decade of overseas wandering. Joyce once said that he had set up a lot of mysteries in the book, and the translator Xiao Qian said that the book is like a kaleidoscope, with endless changes, and the epic, dramatic and lyrical genres are not enough to summarize it.
On the occasion of the centenary of Ulysses, Yilin Publishing House launched a centennial edition, which is still a classic translation of Xiao Qian and Wen Jieruo. How should we understand this "kaleidoscopic" masterpiece? On August 22, writer Sun Ganlu, Professor of Chinese Department of Fudan University Dai Congrong and Lecturer of English Department of Fudan University Bao Huiyi exchanged their reading experiences on this work at Duoyun College.
<h3>"Book of Difficulties" can be read several ways</h3>
Dai, the translator of Joyce's Finnegan Vigil, still remembers how she felt about reading the entire book in college. "It was 1994, and I was lying on my dorm bed, feeling like my whole life was unfolding in front of me, and my mind and vision were opened up." She said that Joyce's works have a large number of Irish folk songs, and the most quoted is the song of the Irish poet Thomas Moore, "Moore's lyrics are a bit like song lyrics, they can be sung and melodic, very easy to understand." "Joyce's novels have a lot of sublime and profound cultural content, such as allusions and imprints of Egyptian, Indian, and biblical civilizations, but also the most modern, everyday life," he can fully present different cultures, regardless of country, ancient and modern, and noble, and bring you a view of yourself, whether you are a person who is positioned at a certain point or a person who is open to the world. Dai said that reading "Ulysses" will find that the novel can take people into rather than escape from the real life, and the perception of life and the world has changed. The Irish ballad "The Lass of Aughrim" (from "The Dubliners")," quoted in Joyce's novel "The Dead" (from "The Dubliners"), was also played at the event, and the player used the guitar that Joyce used during his lifetime, and it was from this mournful folk song that Joyce established the atmosphere of the novel "The Dead".
Sun Ganlu said that from the perspective of looking at the story, this book is undoubtedly a difficult book. Among Chinese writers, Joyce did not resonate and influence as other classic writers, which is an interesting phenomenon and a testament to the difficulty of his text. But in fact, if Ulysses is seen as a play, it may be easier to understand. "There are a lot of voices in the novel, there are many different voices of different people, a person has different voices of his own, there is self-talk within the characters, and these voices are sometimes brought together, sometimes separated, sometimes secular and sometimes poetic." He explained that Joyce's novels use many folk songs, the sounds of the city well, and a large number of elephant words, as if various sensations come together in one space, and are like exceptionally beautifully woven fabrics.
Bao Huiyi introduced that people know that Ulysses is the Latin Odysseus spelling, but in fact, "Odyssey" and "Ulysses" are not exactly the same, "Ulysses" is organized by a story, and each volume of "Odyssey" does not correspond. Because Joyce read the Odyssey Stories of the British essayist Charles Lambe when he was a child, his earliest memory is a story and character, and the original Ulysses chapter title corresponds to an Odyssey character, such as Odysseus's son Theremaco, his wife Penelope, and the Lotus Eater. What Joyce wanted to do was contrast between epics and imitation epics or satirical epics, which were later removed when they were published, and it was more of a response to the Odyssey than a mirror image. For "Ulysses", Bao Huiyi recommends a new reading method that can skip the previous realism part and directly appreciate Joyce's shocking customs from chapter 18, which includes newspaper style, epic style, lyric poetry and essay style. There is also a chapter, "Kergi," which corresponds to the banshee in the Odyssey, which is 180 pages long and is actually a "novel within a novel." She also reveals to readers Joyce's preference for certain of his characters, such as the protagonist of the first three chapters of Ulysses, who is actually the builder of the first labyrinth of Greek mythology, the man who built the labyrinth for the Minotaur monster Minotaurus, who is also the protagonist of Joyce's first two novels, the first one is too obvious because of the autobiographical component, and the latter is Stephen Didalus, the protagonist of Portrait of a Young Artist.
<h3>Retrace the island experience without mercy</h3>
Now, in Ireland, Bloom Day is celebrated every year on 16 June, and people can experience the wandering of books on this holiday. Bao Huiyi once participated in Bloom Day and saw the roaming grand scene throughout the day. People gather at 8 a.m. at the Joyce Memorial in the Round Tower by the Sea, where they cosplay The Joyce-era attire, recite or recite the contents of the book, and then go to Bloom for lamb loin breakfast. "Now Ireland's tourism industry is following the book, and every breakfast point claims to be the most authentic lamb loin breakfast." The drugstore where Bloom bought lemon soap is still in place, and it is also an important stop for roaming. "At that time, there will be an actress who plays Mori half lying on the couch performing a monologue, which is originally the content of chapter eighteen in the book, and this monologue requires a very high level of line skills for the actor, because the whole text has no period, like a storm. If you are afraid of this book, there is nothing wrong with opening it like a festival," Bao Huiyi said.
Joyce had drawn a genealogy for himself, and every chapter of Ulysses from Bloom corresponded to human organs, from the kidneys to the genitals to the heart, so the whole book was also a sensory wandering, giving people a new understanding of what is dirty and what is sublime, "like a round tower that has been changed into the Joyce Museum, and as soon as you enter the door, you can see the paintings that the writers of the time painted for Joyce, which now look yellow." Ms. Pao said Joyce responded to Odysseus's multi-way and multi-subjectivity with Bloom's wanderings, so he was not the "lower middle class, mediocre, cynical" as is commonly thought, "he has both the better parts of the humanity that each of us pursues, and the humble places that cannot stand up to scrutiny, telling people how to face themselves." ”
Judging from the relationship with the Irish literary scene, Joyce also has an insider-outsider conflict. "He was critical of Yeats's revival of national literature because he was a cosmopolitan at his bones," Bao said, adding that although Joyce had not advertised himself so much, Ulysses had shown that he was an intellectual poet. His handling of the urban experience, the ills of modern civilization, and the possibility of dealing with civilization in a poetic way at a time when it was falling apart set him apart, which set him apart from other Irish poets. When Ireland became independent, Yeats proposed to put an Irish mark on literature and wrote "The Twilight of Celtic", and Joyce eventually left his homeland with his family. "Lyrical Ireland once again exiled intellectual Ireland, as if in this way it would be possible to exile complex issues, religion, gender, and other conflicts, and Ireland would remain an island of emeralds, preserving the romance and beauty of organs, harps, myths, and fairy spirits dancing. Europe, by contrast, is empirical, corrupt, and has nothing to do with Ireland. Ms. Pao said Joyce, who refused to join the Irish lyricism as a writing card, was doomed to be lonely, rooted in more general world literature rather than island experience — though he would constantly look back on island experience, but that was relentless.