Joyce once said, "The mysteries I hid in Ulysses are enough for scholars to keep a hundred years busy." Today, a hundred years later, scholars are still arguing with red faces about the mysteries of Ulysses, and of all literary scholarship, the number of papers on Ulysses is second only to Shakespeare's work. How to read this "Book of Heaven"? Why has its unique charm attracted generations of readers?
2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Ulysses, ireland's national treasure writer Joyce's stream-of-consciousness masterpiece. 28 years ago, Yilin Publishing House invited Xiao Qian and Wen Jieruo to complete the world's first full translation of Ulysses Chinese, becoming the first publishing house to fully translate Ulysses. Recently, the Translation Forest Agency launched the centennial edition of "Ulysses", which has become the designated version of the Consulate General of Ireland in China.
This thousand-page epic of the world of consciousness, based on the structure of the ancient Greek epic Odyssey, compares the day trip of Dubliner Leopold Bloom to Odysseus's ten-year wandering. The works integrate philosophy, literature, history, religion, psychology and other research elements of human society, portraying human senses, desires and emotions to the extreme, constituting a colorful and intricate portrait of human society. The book's abstract reflections on urban life and keen insight into cultural decay shaped the literary landscape of the 20th century and deeply influenced the creation of literary giants such as Hemingway and Faulkner.
Industry evaluation, if Shakespeare is the peak of classical literature, then Joyce is the key to open modern literature. Readers who read Ulysses a little will realize that this is not a masterpiece that creates difficulties in the storyline, its biggest difficulty lies in style and language, and requires readers to have a large accumulation of relevant cultural background and language knowledge. This is why when the first Chinese translation was launched in 1994, Xiao Qian and Wen Jieruo added nearly 6,000 comments.
Dai Rongrong, a joyce research expert and translator, said that in fact, Joyce's works can be aimed at ordinary readers and researchers. "Even if I don't know the History of Ireland behind it, or some of the allusions behind it, because the impression of literature he has created is extremely realistic and extremely emotional, he will still feel it." Joyce's language is extremely expressive, it is completely the expression of a poet, not the expression of a simple novelist. If you want to do a simple reading, ignoring the annotations, it is also possible, at that time you can directly feel the flow of life, city, time and space in the work. She advises the reader that if you want to go deeper into the encyclopedia, you should do some preparation - the first is to open yourself, do not imagine that this is a profound novel, "Ulysses" should definitely not be framed by the concept of stream of consciousness, his stream of consciousness writing, almost in the first 7 chapters have been explored, the literary researchers of the later genre carnival may not be able to fully open; second, Joyce is his own step by step, for example, in "Dubliner", he presents the city of Dublin to you. Then, in "Portrait of a Young Artist", his thoughts on the fate of life, society, family, etc. are put into the work. Read his previous works.
In honor of this great work, the Irish have designated June 16 as "Bloom Day", a major holiday in Ireland after National Day. On this day, Irish citizens will walk the streets and alleys, retrace the lines of Bloom's wanderings, relay fragments from reading aloud, drink a glass of Jameson whiskey, eat a piece of cheese bread, and relive the classic scenes in the book.
In 1991, Yilin Publishing House went forward in spite of the difficulties and decided to translate this "Book of Heaven". Li Jingduan, then president of the Translation Forest Agency, once sought out a large number of experts in the English community such as Wang Zuoliang, but they were all rejected. Ye Junjian also said humorously: "Only Qian Zhongshu in China can translate Ulysses, because there are not enough Chinese characters, Mr. Qian can translate and make words." When Li Jingduan went to Qian's house to ask for an interpreter, Qian Zhongshu said: "Eighty decaying men, and then they seek trouble and beg for food, it will be like a unique suicide." After learning that Xiao Qian had studied stream-of-consciousness literature in the Uk in his early years, and his wife Wen Jieruo graduated from the English Department of Tsinghua University and knew both English and Japanese, he lobbied many times. At that time, Xiao Qian was already in his old age, two years older than Qian Zhongshu, and at first he did not agree, but Wen Jieruo, who had a deep affection for the translation career, was impressed by Elder Li, and should take this arduous task, first asking Xiao Qian to help revise it, so as to "drag him into the water". In fact, as soon as he got started, out of a sense of responsibility for translation, Xiao Qian quickly became an active co-translator, and after four years of translation and publication, he achieved the world's first full translation of Ulysses Chinese.
The centennial edition of "Ulysses" is divided into two types: the general edition and the collector's edition, led by the book binding designer Zhu Yingchun, which combines Joyce's "unity of saints and customs" and the juxtaposition of classical and modern art patterns, showing Joyce's artistic charm from different angles.
In the view of the writer Sun Ganlu, "Ulysses" is a complex book and a simple book. "If you are a person who is very willing to enjoy exhausting all the meaning of this book, and of course have a better reserve of knowledge, you will know more about it when you read it." He believes that literature offers not only a novel, but also a work of color and fragrance—you feel the climate and humidity of that place, and you vaguely feel that you know a little about Joyce. "For Chinese readers, it is very difficult to look at the novel purely as a story. But broadly speaking, this book actually helps us build our horizons, and you can go back and look at the context in which these things we read on a daily basis unfold. Everyone who reads Joyce can read a different Joyce, and we can read it with the idea of knowing the new world. ”
Author: Xu Yang
Editor: Wang Xiaoli
Image source: Publisher