According to the Institute of Foreign Languages of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Ye Tingfang, a German-language translator and kafka research expert, died in Beijing on September 27, 2021, at the age of 85 due to illness. At the age of 9, Ye Tingfang lost her left arm in an accident. Under extremely difficult conditions, Ye Tingfang translated a group of classic German writers such as Kafka and Dürrenmatt to China, and was called "the first person to translate Kafka in Chinese academia".
"In Search of the Muse" is an anthology by Ye Tingfang. As the name suggests, the book contains Ye Tingfang's experience of the beauty of literature, fine arts, architecture and other arts. As Ye Tingfang said in the preface, "My life is supported by these muses."
"In Search of the Muse", by Ye Tingfang, The Commercial Press, May 2004.
Anxiety and relief
Anxiety is the fundamental living condition of modern people, first and foremost modern intellectuals or cultural people.
If it is said that Europeans rushed out of the darkness of the Middle Ages, discovered the New World, and set off the Industrial Revolution, so that mankind saw its own greatness and beauty, and then issued the praise of "the essence of the universe, the primate of all things", then modern people look back in shock in the face of the accelerated development of science and technology and the rapid progress of productive forces, but find themselves as "the killer of the earth and the natural enemy of all things", and thus the "pest of the universe". So, before we have time to repent, nature begins to take fierce revenge; the monster "El Niño", which has never been seen before, is threatening, the completely unfamiliar plague "AIDS" is raging; today the rivers break the embankment, tomorrow the sand rises in the sky; the species here are endangered, and the ozone hole is burning there... We were convinced that the world would always be better and better, and that humanity would become more and more peaceful. Who expected that there would be some unexpected alarms coming from time to time. Could it be that God really added "original sin" to Him when he created man, so that he would never be able to redeem himself in the world?
Although we are struggling to redeem our sins against nature, there is at least one goal to be done. The paradoxical law that modern man is increasingly discovering— paradoxes or circles — is particularly embarrassing and confusing. Have we ever seen that when we broke free of a shackle, we thought we were free, but we didn't know that on the other side of freedom, a new shackle held us back. You see: without the rule of law, we will feel fear and enthusiastically call for its birth; once the rule of law is established and perfected, we must be careful, and even have to pay for the hiring of lawyers to act as psychological guards, otherwise there will be a risk of breaking the law at any time; we shape the gods in the hope that it will bless us, and once we cause it, we fall into its enslavement; we cheer Newton and Einstein, thinking that physics can transform the world, but the development of physics has led to the storage of tens of thousands of nuclear warheads. They are enough to destroy the earth again and again. ...... This strange circle of paradox once plagued the Austrian novelist Kafka, making him write a series of masterpieces that shocked the world literary world like a "whipped". This strange circle also tormented the American writer Heller, causing him to spend eight years completing the "black humor" masterpiece "22 Military Rules". It even thrilled the Marxist dramatist Brecht, who in that wise play "The Good Man of Sichuan" asked the protagonist to say, I can't do good, I can't do evil, how can I live? The Swiss dramatist DürrenMatt derived an aesthetic sense from this situation of life and created one after another thrilling tragicomedy.
In the face of the difficulties or anxieties of survival, the most serious and "silly hat" is Kafka, who really carries out the experience of alienating reality and regards writing as a process of this experience. The following passage would not have been written out of his own personal experience, he said: We think that we have been running forward, the more we run, the more excited, the more energetic we run, in the end, we actually did not run, or stood where we were! This feeling of absurdity and embarrassment is accumulated in the heart, becoming a "huge world", anxious and anxious to vent, otherwise it will be "torn", and once it is vented, it is "a huge push from the inside to the outside", which is great happiness and happiness.
Much more intelligent and "cunning" than Kafka, Dürrenmatt saw that "reality appears in the form of paradoxes", but he turned it into an aesthetic game and as a creative mystery: "It is impossible to write drama without paradoxes." No wonder, his plays always make people laugh, and at the same time there are two tears hanging from them. If he and Kafka both derive pleasure through writing, then the latter is a joy of anxiety and catharsis, while he is a pleasure of "aesthetic fiction".
Nowadays, people rarely do what Kafka did, kundera is probably the only one, his admonition that "life cannot bear the lightness" cannot be written without the pain of life experience, and it is worthy of being the hometown of old Ka. The difference is that after all, he has walked out of Prague and out of that era, so his life is being praised by flowers, and Kashi is still suffering from the unbearable lightness in the underworld, because he may not approve of his praise in the Yang World now, otherwise why would he have to "burn all his works" before he died?
Today's cultural people are becoming more and more anxious in the experience of survival and under the inspiration of modern philosophy, but most of them are willing to take the path of Dürrenmatt, that is, they are helpless to the world and simply "silence him", covering an anxious soul in the hustle and bustle. I don't play aesthetic games, I just know how to run freely in the kingdom of beauty to balance the weightlessness of life. When I feel a voice in my heart shouting and moaning, I simply pull out to see a painting exhibition, watch a ballet, listen to a piece of music... I call it "the repressive aesthetic balance of life." This attitude is exactly in harmony with Mr. Zhou Guoping, who said that under the pressure of material and money, it is advisable to choose an "aesthetic life"!
What do you think of the Nobel Prize in Literature?
The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded from 1901 onwards, exactly the same age as the century. Seven years in the process were not carried out due to two world wars, and in fact a total of 91 awards were awarded. Four of them were double winners, so there were 95 lucky winners in total. But in fact not every winner felt lucky, such as Sartre in France, who refused to accept the prize by declaring that he "rejected all honors from the bourgeoisie". Some people are not enthusiastic about this, let alone flock to it, such as Lu Xun in China, when someone intends to recommend it, he claims that he does not want to become a "King-appointed" writer, so that he will no longer have vitality. Of course, such examples are unique. For the vast majority, this award is accepted as a great honor. However, the selection of literary awards is not as simple as the science prize, which can be empirically determined by the results of an invention, or whether it solves a problem that many people have struggled for. Literary achievements are unpredictable, and literary awards are more influenced by a variety of factors. Some works do not have profound content of the times and lasting aesthetic charm, but can play a certain sensational effect, so they are on the list, but soon become the yellow flowers of tomorrow; some writers have prophetic characteristics, before the arrival of the tide of the times, they grasped the spirit of the times and captured new aesthetic information. Such writers are often blinded to them or seen as "non-literary" heretics. No wonder it is said that "contemporary history is the most difficult to write, no matter how much the historian strives for justice subjectively, in the end he will inevitably look at some wrong people, neglect some people, or blame some people." Moreover, the jury of the Nobel Prize in Literature was formed by scholars from a country, that is, Nobel's native Sweden, and its lack of internationality is in itself a limitation. Despite the heated debates at the annual awards, she is a testament to her quest for justice. However, the announcement of the results of the annual selection is almost always accompanied by dissenting or complaining voices of disapproval.
This is not difficult to understand. People often say that literature is anthropology and the art of emotion, and when reading or judging, it must not only be objectively affected by factors such as times, nationalities, regions, history, culture, politics, language, and customs, but also by subjective factors such as each person's personality, life experience, and knowledge background. No wonder there is a paradoxical phenomenon in the selection process of the Nobel Prize in Literature: there are almost as many geniuses discovered by her as there are geniuses buried by her! Therefore, if we want to select the top 60 from the world writers gallery of this century, we cannot but regret to point out; almost half of them are missed by the Swedish Academy! Of these, austria, with a population of only 7 million, had six: the novelist Kafka (1883-1924), the poet Rilke (1875-1926), the novelist Muzier (1880-1942), the poet and dramatist Hoffmannstahl (1874-1929), the novelist Bloch (1886-1951), the poet Celan (1920-1970), etc.; france also had six: the novelist Zola (1840-1902), the novelist Proust (1902), the novelist Proust (1920-1902), and the novelist Proust (1970) 1871-1922), poet Valery (1871-1945), poet and dramatist Claudel (1868-1955), poet Breton (1896-1966), novelist Malraux (1901-1976), five English: the novelist Hardy (1840-1928), the novelist Lawrence (1885-1930), the novelist Conrad (1857-1924), the novelist Woolf (1882-1945), the poet Auden (1882-1945) 1907-1973); at least two Russian and Soviet: novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) and novelist and playwright Gorky (1868-1936); two Americans: poet Pound (1885-1972) and poet and novelist Nabokov (1899-1977); one Irish: novelist Joyce (1882-1941); Sweden: novelist and dramatist Stirlingberg (1849-1912) One Norwegian: dramatist Ibsen (1826-1906); one Spanish: poet and dramatist Lorejin (1898-1936); one Turkish: poet Hikmet (1902-1963); one Japanese: novelist Ukif Mishima (1925-1970); three Swiss: novelist Walser (1878-1956) and dramatist and novelist Dürrenmatt (1921-1990), Frisch (1911-1991) Lebanon: Gibran (1883-1931). With a population of 1.2 billion, China has always been known as a literary power, and she should have at least three to five: Lu Xun, Lao She, Shen Congwen, Guo Moruo, and Mao Dun.
From the above list, it is not difficult to see that the Nobel Prize for Literature Committee has at least three problems: First, her perception of the modern spirit in world literature in this century is insensitive, and most of the above-mentioned writers who have been "missed" by her are writers with a strong modern spirit, or "modernist" writers, not only the considerable group of writers who have risen in Austria have not been recognized by her, but even the three "fathers of modern literature" recognized by the whole world - Kafka, Joyce, Proust was ignored from her field of vision! So much so that even the dramatist and novelist Strindberg, who had a great influence on world literature in her own homeland, turned a blind eye to her! This cannot but be said to be due to some kind of prejudice. Second, this prejudice of the Nobel Prize in Literature is also exposed in the ideological aspect, focusing on the "omission" of Brecht, Gorky and Lu Xun. Brecht, in particular, is a banner of Western artistic innovation in this century, and his dramatology belongs to both the common people's world and is "modern", and recognized by both the East and the West, and its influence is still in the ascendant and the scope is increasing, and there is no reason to exclude him from the genealogy of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Again, there are significantly fewer third-world winners. Judging from the results of the selection in recent years, it seems that the Swedish Academy of Letters has realized this and has made some remediation.
Of course, the Swedish Academy of Letters also has a defense for the above-mentioned criticism. It should be said that there are reasons to be justified, such as when it comes to the three "fathers of modern literature", of which Kafka and Prusste died, most of their works or major works have not yet been published, even if they have been published (such as Joyce), it is not easy to find for a while, because the universal awakening of the modern humanistic spirit and modern aesthetic consciousness takes a certain amount of time, and we cannot demand that the Nobel Prize jury have this advanced consciousness. But her reasons for the lack of prizes for some writers are unconvincing, such as to say that Tolstoy did not give the prize because tortie's late novels had shifted, mainly to write educational and religious pamphlets, promoting anarchism, and thus contrary to nobel's "idealism". This is difficult to establish. As we all know, Tolstoy became Tolstoy mainly because he wrote such masterpieces as War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and Resurrection, which are the most essential things of his life as a writer. Should the reward be an evaluation of his life's major achievements, or should it be only for a moment? The answer, of course, should be the former. For example, Zola did not win the prize because of his "unrefined cynical naturalism"; Ibsen's defeat because of his "negativism"; Hardy's "lack of religious ethical foundations" for his heroine; Strindberg because of his "immoral and evil blasphemy"; ... These reasons are clearly far-fetched.
Still, we owe a debt of gratitude to the Nobel Prize jury, whose selection has led us to discover a large number of world-class literary masters, at least as many as the number of writers who have been missed for a few days. Although this list will have to be screened for the next century or more, it is believed that some of them will go down in history forever. Without the Nobel Prize in Literature, we would have neglected some of it! Therefore, we need the Window of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and we do not demand absolute justice from her.
"The Old Road of the West Wind", by Ye Tingfang, Haitian Publishing House, September 2016.
Study, my spiritual home
The study is to the reader as the farmland is to the peasant. Although not every scholar has to have a study, it is indeed something that must not be left from me. It is the foundation of my work and the home of my spirit. It is the crystallization of my decades of hard work, and it is also a venue for my vision, knowledge, and interests.
The bookstore, as the name suggests, is a place to collect books and use books, and books are its main content. My collection of books is not too much in terms of quantity, whether there are more than ten thousand, never counted; whether there are no unique books in the sea, I dare not say. But I value them very much. Because they didn't come easily. Especially in the years when I went to school on financial aid, the pocket money of three or five yuan a month was pitiful enough, but most of it was consumed by my books. After working, I received the well-known salary of tens of yuan every month, and the first thing I thought of was to visit the bookstore and buy a few books quickly. When there is an opportunity to go abroad, the desire to buy books is even more difficult to curb, because the books there are extensive in content and exquisitely bound, and they do not hesitate to eat and clothing to meet some desires. In particular, in 1991, almost none of the daily necessities were bought, and they were used to purchase German documents, totaling more than 100 kilograms, including a large number of albums. However, when visiting bookstores abroad, it is not so much happy as it is uncomfortable, because the pocket is shy, and you can only itch in your heart when you look forward to more books, and look forward to "books" and sigh.
Although it is happy to buy books, it often makes the family worried, and even quarrelsome. Until now, whenever there were guests in the house, the hostess could not hide the coldness of the home, so she complained to the study: "There is nothing in our house, only a few books." In a way, that's true, until two years ago, my bank passbook never exceeded $3,000! Even now, people can't help but laugh when they see the crooked cabinet in my bedroom: the contrast between the bookcase and the big cabinet in this family belongs to the spirit and the other belongs to the material, and the contrast between the two is so great!
Books have also caused me long-term troubles, because it has competed with people for space, especially after 16 years of starting a family, I have been living in a house, two beds, two bookshelves, a writing desk, where there is still an empty place! As a last resort, two wooden boards were set up on the writing desk to store books. Later, I simply put the bookshelf against the wall and put it on the writing desk! After having a two-bedroom apartment, it was only a little more relaxed in the first year or two. But a study should also be combined with the bedroom and the living room. And the number of books is constantly increasing, every time you buy a book, you have to consider the old half a day, which book to take out and put under the bed? Over time, books are piled up with all the gaps, and to find a book is often searched for most of the day, although sweaty and can't help it, making you angry and don't know whether to cry or laugh. Two years ago, the unit finally gave me a one-bedroom apartment, so that I had the conditions to free up a large room for study. I decorated the house slightly, drew the design myself, went to the Big Red Door Wood Factory to make six 2.7-meter-high hardwood bookcases (two floors stacked), "standing on top of the sky" to make full use of the space; each bookcase with two drawers in the lower part, a total of 12 drawers, sorted into some documents, much more convenient to use. The height of each bookcase varies, and two layers of books are placed inside and outside each layer; a baffle is added to the six centimeters high on the inner layer, so that part of the spine of the book in the inner layer is higher than the outer layer. However, only one layer of books is placed in the middle three floors of the four bookcases of "One Wall", so that the outer layer can be freed up to place some crafts and other toys. Every time I go out, both at home and abroad, I have to bring back one or two pieces of art with local characteristics and put them in a glass bookcase, which not only increases the artistic atmosphere and exotic flavor of the bookstore, but also has commemorative value. Of course, six cabinets can not solve the fundamental problem, so I sealed the corner balcony of about six square meters, invited the four bookshelves that had been eliminated to the balcony, and put some minor books; at the same time, the original two bookcases were moved to the bedroom, placed together with the writing desk, and put some books for daily use. The bookshelf on the writing desk continues to be preserved, and all the reference books are placed. It can now be said that each of my books has "got its own place" and is no longer subject to the sin of rummage or dust. This is my long-awaited wish. Of course, after three years, I am afraid that I will have to start worrying again.
In terms of content, my collection of books is relatively rich: both Chinese and German; in addition to literary books, there are also a considerable number of materials on art, music, architecture, and even landscape and scenic spots in various places. Whenever I need some information in my work and rely on my own study to solve it, I feel very pleased; whenever I think about what kind of books I read at any time, I feel happy at my fingertips. Now, I try my best to buy books to the highest end, especially the books that the library does not buy in my unit. For example, I saw that there was an Encyclopedia of British Perspective Art in the book market, and although it was more expensive, I did not hesitate to buy it. Soon, I saw the publication of large Chinese painting atlases such as "Yuan Sijia", "Ming Sijia", "Four Monks", etc., which were not cheap, and I also snatched them back in one go. The large German atlas purchased from abroad according to the clues of art history has also become a scale. Every holiday or late at night, I read and taste it, which is really a rare comfort and great enjoyment.
My philosophy of life is to pursue an aesthetic life. In order to increase the richness and three-dimensional sense of the study and achieve the effect of aesthetic "diversification", I put a combination sound and a tv set in the study at the same time, so that the memory symbols are integrated with the auditory and visual impressions to increase the concentration of the aesthetic atmosphere. In this way, when I am in this study every day, I am immersed in a kingdom of beauty every day. Although there are other deficiencies or shortcomings in life, as long as I have this study to be with me, I will feel happy and even intoxicated.
The original author | Ye Tingfang
Excerpts | Liu Yaguang
Edit | Qingqingzi
Introduction Proofreading | Dangerous