【North Mountain Building with four windows open】
◆ Shi Jingcun said that he had pushed open the four windows all his life. The east window is a literary creation, the south window is a study of classical literature, the west window is a translation of foreign literature, and the north window is a compilation of golden stone tablets. From 1941 to 1944, When Shi Jingcun taught at Xiamen University, under a mountain in Changting, Fujian Province, the name of this mountain was "Beishan", and he began to use Beishan Lou as the name of The Zhai, and there was a hermit living in the "Wenxuan Beishan Moving Text", although it was a false hermit, but the meaning of Beishan avoiding thousands of dollars was not bad.
【Hundred rivers and seas, no limit】
◆ Shi Ji saved in the dance hall, smoked cigars, read fashionable books, could write new and old styles, compiled hundreds of controversial publications, and could also dive into the habit of playing with the ancients. The real Baichuan Huihai, there is no limit. Sun Kangyi analyzed the theme of Shi Jingcun's old style poem of fleeing to the west, and the diarrhea and bed bugs and the neurotic reactions caused by them were blatantly listed, completely based on the psychological situation of modern people into classical poetry; it was more painful for modern people than the pain of the traditional chaotic departure from the home country.
【Traveling for the "Dragon Gate" brushwork】
◆ Although he has lived in the bookstore for many years, Shi Jingcun has always loved to travel. The motivation was to learn the articles of "Tai Shi Gong" - the Lin translation novel he loved to read was the "Dragon Gate" brushwork, and this method was due to the famous mountain Dachuan. Until his serious illness in 1983, he also spent a "year of tourism". "Whether it's riding a horse, a boat ride or hiking, every trip evokes some emotion in me. I have also done dozens of poems, read them myself, and feel that I have quite the style and mood of the Tang and Song dynasties, because my sense of travel is consistent with the ancients. ”
["His taste cannot be deprived of end"]
"He lives entirely by fun." If you deprive him of his taste, you deprive him of his life. But his interest is inexhaustible, and if you don't let him teach, he does research; if he is not allowed to write articles, he goes to make inscriptions. ...... Although most of the people around him were white eyes, he had warmth in his heart; as far as his eyes could see, there was no shortage of beautiful landscapes and splendid figures. Therefore, although it is inevitable that he will feel lonely from time to time, he is also quite able to swim freely and enjoy himself. In the 2003 Dragon Boat Festival, Qian Gurong wrote a congratulatory message to Shi Jingcun, who was about to enter the hundredth year old.
Photo by Shen Jianzhong
【Academic Archives】
Shi Jingcun (1905-2003) was a modernist writer, literary translator and scholar. Born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, he later moved to Songjiang, Shanghai. His original name was Stepp. From 1926 onwards, he successively published novels such as "Shangyuan Lantern", "Kumarosh", and "General's Bottom Head", and in 1932, he edited the large literary monthly magazine "Modern". Since 1937, he has taught at Yunnan University and Xiamen University, and since 1952, he has been a professor in the Department of Chinese of East China Normal University, and has long been committed to the study of Chinese classical literature, cultural relics and archaeology and the translation of foreign literature. In the 1980s, he published a number of poetry anthologies and research works. In 1993, he was awarded the "Shanghai Outstanding Contribution Award for Literature and Art".
"Shi Jingcun is completely a fluttering young master." Qian Gurong listened to colleague Xu Zhenyuan introduce it like this. In the 1930s, Shi Jicun, who was a "writer in the pavilion" in Shanghai, was notorious for persuading literary youth to read "Zhuangzi" and "Selected Writings" for language cultivation, and won the reputation of "the evil few in the foreign field". Later, in his own words, he moved from revolution to copying ancient monuments. The real stele will live much later, but he did in his early thirties, that is, to turn to the study in its entirety. When he described his early years as a writer and was planning to write several meaningful novels to mark his "thirty-year-old standing", the War of Resistance Against Japan broke out: "My profession has changed, my living environment has changed, and the spiritual and material conditions of literary creation have also changed." After a few big waves, he understood: "My creative life has long ended in 1936." In the "Floating Miscellaneous Songs" composed at an advanced age, it can be seen that on his westward journey in 1937, his bag has been loaded with a half-hanging period: "The atmosphere has seen the wind and clouds change, and the scribes are still fighting for slogans." I am tired of the sea dust, and I have a shoulder of luggage to give the West Expedition. ”
Born in Hangzhou in 1905, Shi Jingcun grew up in Songjiang, Shanghai, and began to learn to write novels and poetry in middle school. In 1922, he was admitted to Hangzhou Zhijiang University, was expelled from this church university for participating in the Great Non-Religious League, entered Shanghai University with a strong revolutionary atmosphere the following year, and transferred to Datong University two years later to participate in the May Thirtieth Movement. In 1926, he transferred to the French class of Aurora University, joined the Communist Youth League, and together with his classmates Dai Wangshu and Liu Naou, he ran a journal and opened a bookstore, and participated in the translation of the Soviet literary and art theory series drafted by Feng Xuefeng and Lu Xun. At this time, the revolutionary youth in the north went south one after another, and when Shi Jie existed in Songjiang to get married in October 1929, Ding Ling, Hu Yipin, and Shen Congwen together sent a congratulatory message of "more blessings and many lives and more men and women". He described it as "the most romantic period of my life" and "the time when this group of literary youths was most spirited and had the most harmonious feelings for each other." In the 1930s, Shi Jingcun was influenced by the psychological analysis and inner monologue popular in modern Western literature, and wrote a number of trendy novels; from 1932 to 1934, he edited "China's only pure literary and art monthly magazine" and the non-fan magazine "Modern" that took the middle line. In April 1933, in "Modern", he risked publishing Lu Xun's battle essay "For the Remembrance of Forgetting" that others did not dare to board. In October, there was a pen battle with Mr. Lu Xun about whether to read "Zhuangzi" and "Anthology" and whether it was retro and counter-current. In 1956, in "Hanging Mr. Lu Xun's Poems and Prefaces", Shi Jingcun said: "I am determined to be a hongwen, and the public will is heavy on Confucianism. "Those who have gone through the same path return together, and those who are worried are the same."
In the 1940s, Shi Jingcun taught at Yunnan University and Xiamen University. In 1952, he was transferred from Hujiang University to East China Normal University. Qian Gurong and Shi Jingcun worked together for fifty years, and could feel the accuracy and transmission of the "fluttering" sentence: "The Great Young Master is careless except for his own interests and hobbies. On the surface, Mr. Shi has a wide range of interests and is involved in many subjects; and no matter what he does, he is always thoughtful and full-fledged, so he can achieve something and make greater or smaller achievements. But his mind is devoted only to what he loves and is interested in, and he seems to turn a blind eye to other things, or to paraphrase an old saying, "regard it as a river man.". ”
The philosophy of life of the "wandering" person is sometimes more somber than that of the "depressed" person. Shi Jingcun said that the meaning of life is to "follow the destiny of heaven, live, and complete a role." He who belonged to the serpent said that the word "sting" was "to determine the code of conduct of my whole life: to sting in order to survive." ”
"If you don't do it, you will have a significant personality"
The Shi family has been a Confucian for generations, and his father is an old Xiucai who sits in the museum. After the Xinhai Revolution, the normal school where his father was a supervisor was suspended, and he had to "not seek to be perched", and the following year he went to the Songjiang Hospitable and Hosiery Factory to engage in national industrial and commercial undertakings. Shi Jingcun has lived a carefree life since childhood, he has been familiar with ancient poetry books since he was a child, and he has received a formal modern school education, and at the age of seventeen or eighteen, his reading and writing skills in Chinese and English have a fairly good foundation. In the university era, under the influence of the May Fourth New Literature, it was also convenient for the Shanghai land to see the six roads, close to Western modern literature, extremely avant-garde in creation, and almost synchronized with the world. However, when shi Jingcun, who was precocious in literature, talked about "governing learning", he said that although he was "curing" almost every month and every day, he had no "learning" at all: "Because of my personal impatience, lack of patience, lack of perseverance, coupled with the instability of living conditions, I have cured many studies, but I have only walked two roads and have not completed the whole process of studying... Just a 'three-legged cat'. He also said in the "Preface to Tang Poems and Hundred Words": "I have been a language and literature teacher for forty years, and classroom explanation is my old practice. I can't write research articles, I can write articles, and people still read them like lectures for classroom teaching. ”
However, Shilin has a public opinion, as xu Zhongyu, an old colleague, said, "Mr. Ji Cun's knowledge cultivation is extremely extensive, and all the translations he writes can stand up and have characteristics. Don't talk about the system, write large blocks of articles. ...... The old style poems, literary texts, and small examinations are all well-founded and reasonable, and frankly speak what they see, they will never agree with perfunctory, and the words are fresh and handsome, with poetic charm, just like their people. ...... Strong memory... Lifting weights is light. ”
The scope of Shi Jingcun's "seeing different thoughts" is breathtaking. He has selected and translated Boccaccio's "Ten Days of Talk", commented on Virgil, and in the "literary youth" period of the 1930s, he focused on reading Soviet, Eastern European countries and American literature, and also was keen on Ming people's essays under the influence of Zhou Zuoren and Lin Yutang. In 1937, he came to Yunnan University and became acquainted with a large number of scholars who gathered in Kunming after the fall of Beiping, often walked and chatted together, and reunited with Pu Jiangqing, the classmate who knew him best in childhood and adolescence. Shi Jingcun said of himself in Yunnan for three years, "For me, I was deeply influenced by the management of learning, my knowledge was wide, and my vision was broadened. At that time, he paid attention to the ancient history documents of Yunnan, and under the influence of Xiang Da, he was interested in Dunhuang studies, proofread more than a dozen variations, and compiled lecture materials such as "History of Chinese Literature" and "Prose Sources". After four years at Xiamen University, he selected and translated Greek poems and dramas; he worked the Records of History and the Notes of the Song Dynasty, and copied out two materials, one was the cultural relics of the Golden Stone Tablet, and the other was a trivia of lexicological commentary.
Twenty years accumulated four or five million words
In the first five or six years of liberation, Shi Jingcun translated more than two million words of Eastern European, Nordic and Soviet novels. These were translated from English and French, and according to him "at the service of publishing houses". After 1957, Shi Jingcun returned to the garden of classical literature. During this period, he did hard work and was criticized during the day, and at night he climbed up to the attic to read books and write articles, saying that he regarded this routine as a kind of routine work and commuting procedures", which can also be regarded as "cooking words to heal pain". The place where the characters are boiled, the "Beishan Building", that is, the three-story small building on Yuyuan Road, where the characters have been lived since the 1930s, was first partially requisitioned by the post office, then partially occupied, and finally shrunk into a small room of four or five square meters on the north side of the second floor, with a small square table and a flush toilet still in use in the corner of the house. The shrinking living space, coupled with the large number of people waiting to be fed at home, Shi Jingcun had to sell many books and some furniture, this time shrinking clothes and dieting, and accumulating over time, he also purchased more than 3,000 copies of various engravings of gold stone inscriptions, Ding Yi tablets and Ancient Artifact Inscriptions of Qin and Han Dynasties, and he compiled three volumes of "Beishan Lou Tibetan Stele Catalogue". He also recorded the relevant stone carvings from the "Notes on the Water Classics", "checked their provenance and collected the old and heard the comments of various families", and after examining the facts, he wrote down the words, and by 1960, he had completed the 300,000-word "Notes on the Water Classics".
Shi Jicun said that he had loved Tang and Song poems when he was sixteen or seventeen years old, but for decades, he had been using them as a way to entertain tao, and did not consider them to be a science. In the 1960s, he suddenly had a new love for words, and found that there were still many problems worth studying, but there were not many words and words, so he began to read the word collection with the method and feeling of studying scholarship, and copied the prefaces and examples of the previous generations of lexicons, which became the "Dictionary Preface Compilation" as a lexical research material. In 1968, Shi Jingcun also compiled ten volumes of the Song Huajian Collection, and the following year compiled the ten volumes of the Qinghuajian Collection, so that the long-buried "Huajian" tradition, that is, the folk literature among the literati, could reproduce the style. New entries have been made in the compilation, and it is even more necessary to open up new ways in research methods. Shi Jicun said to himself: "General research on lexicology begins with literary history... Myself, on the other hand, focused on the review of the poets and dictionaries of the past generations as the starting point, advocating that it is not appropriate to use the old scale of criticism, but should absorb Western literary theory. By reading various collections of words, I can write a note on reading words at any time, as a research, and will not make empty theoretical articles. "My first research process was to figure out the correct meaning of many noun terms related to words. I found that some words, since the Song and Yuan dynasties, although many people have used it in articles, reflect the phenomenon that seems to be different for everyone to understand the word. I used a little research to sort out dozens of lexical terms to get the right concept. The same is true for those popular Tang poems, since the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, the understanding of the poetry and even the words has been different, Shi Jingcun began to write from 1978, checking, examining, refuting, in the form of string talk and rambling, to 1985 to complete the "Tang Poems Hundred Words", after publication praise.
Shi Jingcun sat on the lid toilet to read, write notes, study tablets, read large rubbings, and receive guests. This continued until the early 1980s. But he never put down the pen in his hand for twenty years, accumulating four or five million words. So after the age of eighty, his "new works" continued to come out.
"Translation of the TuiShi by the One Who Believes in Daya"
After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, Shi Jingcun restored his original rank and salary and began to recruit graduate students. He also implemented his own "Three Hundred Policies": "Hundred Words of Tang Poems", "Hundred Songs of Jinshi", and "Hundred Selected Poems of Tang Tablets". In the early 1990s, it became the "Five Hundred Policies": the old style poem "Floating Life Hundred Songs" and the long and short essay on literature were added: "Hundred Words of Literature and Art" were added to the old style of reading the first third of his life.
In the essays that come from the pen, there are sharp such as "The Theory of Pifu's Irresponsibility", funny such as "On Old Age", and there are also discussions and points such as "Sighing for the Book". In the era of cultural prosperity, it is inevitable that fish and dragons will be mixed. People who write and compile books, people who print and bind books, are all "book makers", and Shi Jicun is worried that the culture and art of making books is declining. He has always been a warm-hearted "book maker". Since 1981, Shi Jingcun has been the chief editor of the "Lexicology" collection of the Department of Chinese of East China Normal University for ten years. The collection organizes discussions and excavations of works, and at the same time pays attention to overseas research, Shi Jingcun formulates each issue of columns, organizes drafts, writes supplements, and reviews and proofs by himself. However, "I know that the more I make up, the better, but the number of orders is getting less and less, which makes me very sad." The times are changing rapidly, and the question of whether to applaud or not to be applauded also appeared in the "Selected Foreign One-Act Plays" co-compiled with Hai Cen of the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, and finally completed six volumes by the end of 1991. At the same time, the elderly Shi Jingcun spared no effort and "fought alone" to preside over the editing of the three volumes of the "Collection of Modern Chinese Literature and Translated Literature", each with 500,000 words. He spent more than a year combing through all aspects of modern translated literature, and wrote an editorial note in front of each volume, "almost giving up his life for this set of books", and finally compiled and published in 1990.
Shi Jingcun was entrusted with compiling this difficult collection of translated literature because he was in the "bustling city" of China's new literary movement, familiar with modern Western literature, and more proficient in translation. Chen Zuogao's "Shi Jian Cun Ii and Three Incidents" records: "Professor Wu Lifu was an admirer of Shi Lao's translation before his death, and he once saw that those who could believe in Daya pushed Shi Shi's translation. Regarding the "Biography of Pompidou" and "History of Niger", two collective French translations undertaken by Shi Jicun in the late "Cultural Revolution", Chen Zuogao said: "Several chapters are extremely difficult, and only Shi Lao has to write most of the whole book. Although he is not listed, Elder Wu knows that all those who practice elegant and elegant tamers will be born with Shi's handwriting. Talk about the times, called the North Mountain writing, careful words, meticulous, but also the conquest of this gong will be a high lifespan. ”
Shi Jingcun believes that translation should also achieve unspoken meaning. He told his friend that the farther away the translation was from the original, the better; and to draw vocabulary from classical literature. But his propositions are more conservative than those of Fu Lei, who is more "preaching god.". When it comes to syllables, rhymes, rhetoric, and poetry that present the beauty of poetry, he believes that the first three items are all languages and cannot be translated: "When we translate foreign poems, I am afraid that we can only ask for the most faithful translation of their poetic meanings. Therefore, he translated the poems of Britain, the United States, France and Belgium from the original text, and did not hesitate to translate the poems of other countries from the English translation. In the 1960s, Shi Jicun translated nearly a hundred French Symbolist poems. Since the "Cultural Revolution", it has been copied again and again. "This is my most painstaking translation, and the loss of them all makes me very sad that I do not believe that they have really been destroyed." In the 1980s, thanks to the help of the new secretary of the general branch, all translations of French poems, including French poems, were found in a small room with cleaning tools stacked next to the toilet in the Wenshi Building. In 1987, he wrote the book "Foreign Poetry Copy". Shi said it was a milestone in his "experience in translating poetry." In this way, my work of translating poems can be ended from now on. ”
In addition to translating poems, there are also novels. Throughout his life, Shi Jingcun paid attention to the introduction of literature from weak countries: "When I was young, I studied French in order to appreciate French literature, but I studied English, but I did not appreciate English literature very much. I used English as a bridge to appreciate Eastern European literature in English translation. He has translated short stories by Shemkwitz, Lemont, and Słowatsky in Poland, Moritz and Morna in Hungary, Ivan Vazov, Erin Pirin, Karalicev and others in Bulgaria, and martin Anderson Nixor in Denmark. He first read novels from small European countries in Zhou Shuangjuan's "European and American Short Story Series", "Novel Monthly, Weak and Small Ethnic Literature", and Zhou Zuoren's "Modern Novel Translation Series", "most of them are extremely short, but they strongly express the sad emotions in all aspects of life." These novels have touched me more than any novel of great power. ”
"Always have something to do"
At the age of eighty, Shi Jicun had a serious illness of opening his chest and breaking his cavity, so he stopped going out and sat at home all day. However, the sudden excavation of the so-called "Neo-Sense" writers in the 1980s brought to light the imitations of his "erotic, exotic, grotesque" (erotic, exotic, and bizarre) Western European literature, and people "gave rubbing, commenting or imitation like newly unearthed antiquities." He cried out in a hurry for these works to rest in peace.
It is difficult to stop the enthusiasm of visitors from all over the world, and Mr. Shi, who has always been "noble and undeceived" at will and funny, simply opened the small door of the North Mountain Building. Mr. Shi's usual image is a dressing gown and a cigar, sitting in front of the south-facing room window on the second floor of the living room, study and bedroom. Reading several kinds of books and newspapers every day, he does not leave his home and knows the world's affairs. Under the smoke, the home is warm and quiet, and Mr. Shi, who wears a hearing aid, looks leisurely and sometimes talks about it. Some people have marveled that an old man in his nineties has such a beautiful look!
Apartment on Yuyuan Road (1993)
Chen Julai, a seal carver, said: "The nobility of his character and literary qualities is beyond his reach." Mr. Shi taught Zheng Qiwu's parents at Xiamen University, and Zheng quoted his mother Chen Zhaozhang's recollection: "For one of the articles about an old man who sold his own soda cakes, he asked me, in the depths of my mind, is there any respect for the old man's labor? ”
The biggest impression of the students on him is that he is equal and casual, there is no shelf, but he is not polite and straightforward. And every assignment must be changed, including punctuation; when a student writes outside, he will also carefully review it. The silent teaching of moisturizers also fell on the unknown descendants. The sending book will write an eyebrow and a note, and the sending magazine will check the articles required to be read by the younger generations in the catalog with a red pen; for the materials that can be made in a worrying situation, he always seeks a way for the other party to transfer, but earnestly says that "success is in heaven... I hope you work as usual and work hard. "I also sent a philatelic rural student a variety of stamps for many years. Therefore, if the friendship encounters difficulties, he must give help from many parties. Taiwanese Lin Meiyi wrote that Mr. Shi once even asked her to bring a letter to Su Xuelin, "He said that Professor Su was old, and he didn't know if anyone had helped her compile the anthology, and he was willing to help, forgetting that he was also over ninety years old." ”
"Mr. Cun: I didn't know that you had so many concerns about human affairs, but that you had so much enthusiasm for your work (I say non-writing work). But now I feel more courage to hope. You humbly said, 'Always do something.' I think I'll keep that sentence in mind. In April 1940, Yang Gang, a reporter for the Ta Kung Pao, told Shi Jingcun, who was stopping in Hong Kong and helping to prepare to teach patriotic language classes to Hong Kong youth, "If you still have a small thing left in your memory, you should remember that I am also one of the many people who have been encouraged by you." ”
As student Chen Xiaofen put it, Mr. Shi "will neither pay attention to making a high standard, nor will he pay attention to showing humility and ease." "Although he has never held an administrative position in the school, in his own way, he expresses his high responsibility for the construction of the school, the department and the discipline." As he has always been a person, his sense of responsibility comes from the depths of his heart, manifested in nature, expressed in all moments. For the Department of Chinese of East China Normal University, Mr. Shi Is "a pillar and cornerstone stabilizer."
In his later years, Shi Jicun liked to reminisce about Songjiang, who spent his childhood and adolescence, and also liked to recall Yunnan, which had mountains and rivers and scenery in the three years of westward travel, old rain and new knowledge. In 2002, he said to Li Oufan, who was excited to celebrate his 100th birthday: "A hundred years old means nothing to me! I am a man of twenty centuries, and my time has passed. This poem, which he chanted in 1938 by the green lake in Kunming, is like a non-keyframe on a page of twentieth-century China:
The slanting sun is still smoking in the willows, and the fish leaping crows are turning over each day. Thousands of rivers and mountains come to sit small, where is this body is not the fate.
Shi Ji used "Wuxiang'an" as the name of the book in his youth and middle age, but he did not believe in Buddhism, but only "literati Zen". There is no one, there is no self, so firm and clear, so sit on the North Mountain Tower, so floating through thousands of rivers and mountains.