◆ Xu Xunlei
120 years, two "sixty jiazi".
April 6, 2024 is the 120th anniversary of the birth of Mr. Li Jiye, a famous literary translator, writer, poet, Lu Xun research expert, and foreign language education expert. On this day, Tianjin Nankai University, Shanghai Lu Xun Memorial Hall, The Paper News Network and other documents have issued articles to commemorate.
Li Ji was born on April 6, 1904, and he was a "post-00" of the last century. He was a student of Lu Xun and a leading member of the famous "Weiming Society".
Li Jiye's hometown is in Yeji, Huoqiu, Anhui Province (now Yeji District, Lu'an City), where there are outstanding people and talents. Li Jiye's education and experience are extremely rich:
In 1914, Li Jiye entered Yeji Mingqiang Primary School to study, and among his classmates were Tai Jingnong, Wei Suyuan, Wei Congwu, etc. In 1919, he entered Fuyang No. 3 Normal School, and in the fall of 1923, he was admitted to Chongshi Middle School in Beijing. In 1924, he met Mr. Lu Xun, and in 1925, under the sponsorship of Mr. Lu Xun, he entered Yenching University to study. In the same year, under the advocacy of Mr. Lu Xun, he participated in the establishment of the Weiming Society.
In 1929, Li Jiye went to teach at Confucius College; from 1930 to 1937, he was hired as a professor in the English Department of Hebei Women's Normal University in Tianjin; in 1938, he was hired to teach at Furen University in Beiping; in May 1943, he was introduced by Cao Yu to teach at Fudan University in Xiaba; and after leaving on March 8, 1944, he taught in the English Department of Baisha Women's Normal College.
In 1946, at the invitation of Mr. Lu Xun's close friend, Mr. Xu Shoushang, he went to the Taiwan Provincial Compilation Museum to serve as a compiler. In 1947, he transferred to the Department of Foreign Languages of National Taiwan University to teach. In 1949, he returned to the mainland and taught in the Department of Foreign Languages of Nankai University in September. She has lived and worked in Tianjin for a long time, which has become her second hometown.
Li Jiye "Ji but not wild", the "Ji" in the name, means to clear after rain or snow. The idiom "light wind and moon" is to describe the scene of the rain and the clear sky, and the scene of all things is clear, and it is also a metaphor for an open mind and heart. That is actually the image of Mr. Lu Xun. Lu Xun's friend Xu Shoushang once said that chatting casually with Lu Xun "can also be seen that he is open-minded, witty, and bright" (see Xu Shoushang's "Impressions of Deceased Friend Lu Xun").
Mr. Li Jiye.
A. Li Jiye and Lu Xun
Lu Xun is Li Jiye's mentor.
Lu Xun is the soul and banner of the Weiming Society.
In the more than ten years of communication with Lu Xun, Li Jiye, as a student of Lu Xun, has received Lu Xun's warm and selfless care, help and support.
Lu Xun said in the famous article "Remembering Wei Suyuanjun": "I'm afraid it was more than ten years ago, I was a lecturer at Peking University, and one day, I met a young man with terrible hair and beard in the teacher's preparation room, this is Li Jiye. My acquaintance with Suyuan is probably the same as that of Sasuke Kino......"
In the Preface to the Second Collection of Novels in the Great Series of Chinese New Literature, Lu Xun commented: "Li Jiye, who creates with a keen sense, is sometimes deep and detailed, as if he were counting the veins of each leaf, but because of this, he often cannot be wide, which is also difficult for lonely excavators to do both. Li Jiye's collection of short stories "Shadow" has a "tender cucumber", which has this description: "When my hand caresses the vine leaves, I can clearly feel its veins. ”
In Mr. Lu Xun's correspondence and diaries, Li Jiye's name appears in large numbers. On February 17, 1925, Lu Xun said in the earliest letter to Li Jiye: ""To the Stars" was done earlier, and I thought it was good. "Into the Stars" is a work by the Russian playwright Andreev translated by Li Jiye.
The first literary work that Li Jiye began translating in 1924 was Andreev's "In the Stars", which was published by Weiming Society.
Li Jiye's memories of Lu Xun are sincere and affectionate. In 1951, the Cultural Work Society published Li Jiye's "The Spirit of Lu Xun", which was one of the "Unnamed Books". In 1956, the New Literature and Art Publishing House published his Memories of Mr. Lu Xun, and in 1984, the People's Literature Publishing House published his Mr. Lu Xun and the Weiming Society. In 1999, the Beijing Publishing House published the six-volume "Memoirs of Lu Xun", which was the largest "Memoirs of Lu Xun" at that time, which included three reminiscences by Li Jiye.
In 1951, the cover of the "Unnamed Series" of the Cultural Work Society, "The Spirit of Lu Xun".
Li Jiye's "Memories of Mr. Lu Xun" cover book shadow.
In the article "Remembering Mr. Lu Xun", Li Jiye recalled the first visit to Lu Xun's home accompanied by a friend on an afternoon in the winter of 1924. When he was still a middle school student, he translated "To the Stars" from English, and was sent by his primary school classmate Zhang Muhan to Mr. Lu Xun for advice, so that he was able to visit and get to know Mr. Lux. There is a detail written in the article:
Mr. Lu Xun was a constant smoker, and the room was already full of thick smoke, Lu Xun saw that he was afraid of smoking, so he smiled and said that he was too wronged, and then he was going to open the window. I said that I was not afraid, so I took advantage of the end of the conversation to get up and say goodbye, because I was afraid that sitting for a long time would delay his work. He said that if he is not afraid, then there is no harm in sitting for a while. So the first visit took a long time, and when he saw us off, he told us to talk often. ”
This is Lu Xun, Mr. Lu Xun.
"Mr. Lu Xun is indeed approachable, without a bit of arrogance, and I don't feel restrained at all. Since then, Wei Suyuan, Tai Jingnong, and Wei Congwu have all met Mr. Lu Xun. Several of us are from the small town of Yeji, and we are classmates in primary school, and we regard Mr. as a respected teacher, and we are very respectful, and we always do so. Lu Xun said that they were "more careful, not spicy enough", partly because of this. What I mean by "Ji but not wild" is obviously not just Li Jiye, but includes many "small-town writers", but they are much more chic than today's "small-town writers".
Li Jiye said from the bottom of his heart: "Mr. Lu Xun is so serious in his work, and how he loves and is responsible for young people. It was with the sponsorship of Mr. Lu Xun that Li Jiye was able to study in the Chinese Department of Yenching University, and dropped out in 1927.
Li Jiye took a photo in Beijing in 1924.
In the article "Remembering the "Unnamed Society"", Li Jiye wrote such a detail:
The manuscripts written by Mr. Lu Xun are extremely neat, and the blank lines of the title and the text are clearly marked one by one when typesetting. However, when the printing office sent the first proofreading, there were always more typos than the scribbled manuscript. I felt sorry for my husband, but he pointed out disapprovingly: the font of the manuscript must be clear by the new workers, and everyone writes scribbly, so they will not be proficient.
When it comes to the details of printing, Mr. often likes to be funny with people. I remember once he pointed to the subtitle of the number six character in "Out of the Ivory Tower" and asked me if it was a novelty. He said it was his first trial. The advertisement of the bookstore, Mr. is not happy, and always writes a few sentences honestly by himself. After reading an advertisement that I had drafted myself, he said, "Okay, the reader who comes to buy a book after reading such an advertisement should not scold us for fooling him?" Don't fool the reader, this is what Mr. often uses to warn the unnamed society.
In the era of movable type printing, typesetting workers were very hard, and it was inevitable that mistakes would be made when looking for words in the dense lead font library. For the sake of the young typesetters, Mr. Lu Xun conscientiously transcribed the manuscript clearly, so that they could easily pick up the characters and have more training opportunities.
Only by "bowing your head and being willing to be a son of a cow" can you be truly qualified to "cross your eyebrows and point coldly at a thousand people". "Feel free to think about it for everyone and make some profits. Lu Xun has not only always had the strong feelings of "bowing his head and being willing to be a son of a cow", but also always had the pioneering spirit of "opening up a way out from where there is no road".
Lu Xun is thoughtful and always so serious and careful. On June 11, 1929, Lu Xun sent a letter to Li Jiye from Shanghai: "After bidding farewell at the station, I arrived in Shanghai on the afternoon of the fifth day without any hindrance. ...... In Beiping, he was afraid that the Shanghai bookstore would not use the three-color version, so he did not bring the portrait of Lunacharsky. After that, they said they were willing to use it. Therefore, if you can still borrow it and send it by registered mail, you must clamp it with cardboard to avoid wrinkling. Here, "registered mail" and "clamped with cardboard" are clearly explained.
Mr. Lu Xun sent a letter to Li Jiye.
Lu Xun also helped Li Jiye's wife, Liu Wenzhen, whose translation of John Brown's Leiby and His Friends was forwarded by Li Jiye to Lu Xun and published in the fifth issue of the second volume of the Translation.
To be a student of Mr. Lu Xun, you must learn from Lu Xun. After the reform and opening up, Li Jiye paid special attention to the research work of Lu Xun in Mr. Lu Xun's hometown of Shaoxing. On October 26, 1982, at the age of 78, he was invited to Shaoxing Division to give an academic report on Lu Xun's spirit for teachers and students of Chinese, and took the lead in making donations for the establishment of the Shaoxing Lu Xun bronze statue. In 1982, at the age of 16, I had just enrolled in the Chinese department of Lishui Teachers College.
On November 18, 1978, Li Jiye took a photo when he visited the tomb of Lu Xun in Shanghai.
B. Li Xiaono Yomisha
Weiming Society is a famous literary group in the history of modern Chinese literature, it is not only a literary society, but also a publishing house, it is not a retreat, but a pragmatic.
Under the advocacy of Lu Xun, the Weiming Society was established in Beijing in the autumn of 1925, and its main members were Lu Xun, Wei Suyuan, Cao Jinghua, Li Jiye, Tai Jingnong, Wei Congwu, etc. Although he is not a member, he has a working relationship with the Weiming Society, as well as Li Helin and Wang Qingshi.
In the early days of the Weiming Society, Wei Suyuan presided over the affairs of the society, and in the later stage, Li Jiye presided over it. After the autumn of 1931, due to economic difficulties, it disintegrated invisibly.
There is an old photo, in the 20s of the 20th century, when the members of the Weiming Society gathered, a group photo of 4 people, from left to right, Wei Congwu, Li Jiye, Wei Suyuan, and Tai Jingnong, all of them are proper handsome guys, with an extraordinary "Republic of China fan" temperament. Among them, Wei Suyuan and Wei Congwu are brothers.
In the 20s of the 20th century, members of the Weiming Society gathered for a group photo, from left: Wei Congwu, Li Jiye, Wei Suyuan, Tai Jingnong.
The name "unnamed" actually means that there is no purpose for the time being. The famous "Weiming Lake" on the campus of Peking University is named after the "Weiming Society", not when Professor Qian Mu was teaching at Yenching University in the 30s of the 20th century.
The Weiming Society focuses on introducing foreign literature, especially Russian and Soviet literature, and has successively edited and published the semi-monthly magazine Mangyuan, the semi-monthly magazine Unnamed, the Unnamed Semi-Monthly, the Unnamed Series, and the Unnamed New Collection.
Li Jiye is one of the "Unnamed Four Heroes", and the other three are Wei Suyuan, Wei Congwu brothers and Mr. Tai Jingnong. They are all from Huoqiu in western Anhui and are outstanding representatives of the "Huoqiu Writers Group" during the May Fourth period. They are based on the unique space of Huoqiu, the "west gate of Anhui" - "located at the northern foot of Dabie Mountain, on the south bank of the Huai River, inheriting the Central Plains culture, Chu culture and Lianghuai culture, with quiet and beautiful scenery and simple folk customs", and integrate the feelings of family and country, the thoughts of worrying about the country, and the sense of troubled times into the literary text of "Huoqiu Memory".
Under the leadership of Mr. Lu Xun, in that youth era of "poetry and wine", the young people of the Weiming Society were full of vitality.
Li Jiye's "Mr. Lu Xun and the Unnamed Society" cover book shadow.
The Weiming Society is not only a creative society, but also a publishing house, and the combination of the two has greatly promoted Li Jiye's literary translation and literary creation.
After Weiming Society took over the printing of "Weiming Serial", the first translation launched was Lu Xun's "Out of the Ivory Tower", and the second translation was Li Jiye's "To the Stars". For "In the Stars", Lu Xun not only proposed revisions, but also specially commissioned Tao Yuanqing to design the cover.
In 1926, Li Jiye began to translate another play by Andreev, "Black Masked Man", which was also published by Weiming Society after being reviewed by Lu Xun.
In February 1928, Li Jiye's translation of "Literature and Revolution" was intercepted by the Shandong warlord Zhang Zongchang in the process of being first published and sent to Jinan for sale, resulting in the seizure of the Weiming Society, and Li Jiye, Tai Jingnong and Wei Congwu were arrested at the same time. Fifty days later, after Lu Xun and Chang Weijun ran around, several people were finally released.
As a member of the Weiming Society, Li Jiye has become a "lonely discoverer", and in addition to translation, his novels mainly express the estrangement of life and the hidden pain of love, and his prose creations express sincere and simple thoughts and feelings, reflecting his aesthetic pursuit of "depth and detail" in literary creation.
Mr. Zhu Ziqing analyzed the prose creation of the May Fourth period, "There are various styles, all kinds of genres, expressing, criticizing, and interpreting all aspects of life. Migrating to Manyan, changing with each passing day: there are Chinese celebrities, foreign gentlemen, hermits, traitors, and this is the case in thought. It may be descriptive, or sarcastic, or aggrieved, or meticulous, or vigorous, or beautiful, or refined, or fluid, or subtle, and so in expression." Li Jiye's prose has the expression of self-criticism and anatomy, frankly expressing the mood of loneliness and melancholy, and the writing is delicate, "both homely and insightful".
As a student of Mr. Lu Xun, Li Jiye's prose creation will naturally be influenced by Mr. Lu Xun. His "Beautiful Beetle" has the shadow of "Weeds", which belongs to a kind of "spiritual monologue", recording his subconscious struggle with the demons, the huge contrast between the temptation of fantasy and reality, prompting "me" to be angry and pick up a short knife to fight, and the triangular knife marks that appear on the wall are more than an inch deep, indicating that the consequences are only "empty...... This is the true "inward-turned" self-dissection.
The members and "quasi-members" of the Unnamed Society have passed away in different eras:
Born in 1902, Wei Suyuan, died young of tuberculosis in 1932.
Born in 1881, Mr. Lu Xun died in 1936 and admonished to "forget me and take care of your own life".
Born in 1905, translator and writer Wei Congwu died of a heart attack in 1978.
Mr. Cao Jinghua, a famous translator, essayist, educator and professor at Peking University, who was born in 1897, passed away in 1987.
Born in 1903, Mr. Tai Ching-nong, a famous writer, literary critic and calligrapher, died in Taiwan in 1990.
Born in 1904, Mr. Li Jiye was the healthiest and longest, and passed away in 1997.
As an unnamed "quasi-member", Li Helin is a theorist of modern Chinese literature, an educator, and the founder of Lu Xun research, and was also born in 1904. In 1951, Li Jiye became the head of the Department of Foreign Languages at Nankai University; in 1952, Li Helin was transferred from Beijing Normal University to Nankai University as the head of the Department of Chinese. Li Helin passed away due to illness in 1988, and Li Jiye wrote affectionately: "He Lin! You passed away one step ahead of me, and as an old friend of 70 years, I feel very sad. Now I am before your spirit, borrowing verses from English poets, to write a eulogy to you. "Old Man Time is only half a thief, you were stolen by him, but you inspire our spiritual strength, he will never steal it!"
A group photo of Li Helin and Li Jiye during the period of the Weiming Society. The two have the same surname, the same Geng, the same township, classmates, and colleagues, and they are lifelong friends.
C. Li Jiye and Taiwan
Qi Bangyuan's "return to Laixi" is the original meaning of "return", because "Laixi" is just a mood particle, and when it comes to Li Jiye, it has to be split into two parts: "return" + "Laixi".
In 1945, the Anti-Japanese War was won, Taiwan was recovered, and it returned to the motherland. In October of the following year, Li Jiye arrived in Taipei by ship from Shanghai, and thus became one of the important backbones of the reconstruction of Chinese culture in Taiwan. He went to Taiwan a year earlier than Ms. Qi Bangyuan, who had just graduated from university, went to teach at National Taiwan University, and became famous for creating "Mighty River" after reaching the age of eight.
At the invitation of Lu Xun's close friend Xu Shoushang, Li Jiye went to Taiwan to engage in the work of eliminating the influence of Japanese colonialism and rebuilding Chinese culture in Taiwan. People cannot be resurrected after death, and the same is true of culture, which is dying after being destroyed, and must be rescued as soon as possible. At that time, Xu Shoushang served as the director of the Taiwan Provincial Compilation Museum, and hired Li Jiye as the editor of the Compilation Museum (equivalent to a full professor) and the director of the compilation group of famous works.
In a letter to Xu Shoushang, Chen Yi explained the original intention of setting up a compilation group of famous works, which was very far-sighted: "I often feel that there are too few good books in China now, and a college student or middle school teacher must be diligent in seeking knowledge, and must read foreign books...... I have always had the desire to 'translate 500 masterpieces,' and I thought that China should translate 500 or 600 Western classics as it did in the past when translating Buddhist scriptures, so that students studying any subject would have 20 masterpieces to read......
Born in 1883, Xu Shoushang, a famous scholar and biographer, was a native of Shaoxing, Zhejiang, and Lu Xun's fellow countryman and friend, and the two were like brothers. As early as the 1920s, it was through Mr. Lu Xun's introduction that Li Jiye became acquainted with Xu Shoushang.
In 1946, Xu Shoushang was invited by Chen Yi, the first chief executive of Taiwan after the liberation, to preside over the Taiwan Provincial Compilation Museum. Chen Yi is also a native of Shaoxing. Later, due to the withdrawal and merger of the Compilation Museum, Xu Shoushang was hired by Lu Zhihong, president of National Taiwan University, to serve as the head of the Department of Chinese Literature of the Faculty of Arts. He often could not hold back his criticism of the Kuomintang's "fascist educational reform", and was assassinated in the dormitory of National Taiwan University on February 18, 1948.
Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Kuomintang was an authoritarian dictatorship and a corruption affair like any other dictatorship in human history. The Kuomintang is a "century-old shop", from the revolutionary party of Sun Yat-sen, to the ruling party of Chiang Kai-shek, to the election party after the death of Chiang Ching-kuo, and finally to the opposition party after the election defeat. It was precisely the autocracy of the Kuomintang that created Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party.
At that time, Li Jiye also transferred to National Taiwan University to teach with Xu Shoushang. Li Jiye became Qi Bangyuan's colleague, but there was not much intersection.
After Xu Shoushang was killed, Li Jiye denounced the despicable deeds of the enemy at the memorial service. In the "Li Jiye Memorial Collection", there is an article by Huang You "There is a trace of history on his body", Huang You was a student at National Taiwan University at the time, and his real identity was a special commissioner of the Minjiang Working Committee and the Taiwan Working Committee of the Communist Party of China. Huang You recalled that at Mr. Xu's memorial service, Li Jiye went against the normal state of gentleness and elegance and took the case: "Mr. Li Jiye was angry, and in his speech, he denounced all kinds of gossip made up by the enemy, and asked people with ulterior motives to stand up, and he wanted to slap them in public." He was the only one at the meeting who stood up and challenged the enemy. ”
As a professor, Li Jiye rarely participated in political activities, but he was still blacklisted by the Kuomintang government. In May 1949, with the assistance of the underground party cadres of the Communist Party of China in Taiwan, Li Jiye and his family secretly left Taiwan by boat to Hong Kong, and in Hong Kong, they received help from the underground party of the Communist Party of China, and arrived in Tianjin by boat in the autumn of the same year.
Li Jiye has only been working in Taiwan for two and a half years. Under the leadership of Hsu Shou-shang, he and his colleagues in the compilation hall carried forward the "spirit of the Han and Tang dynasties" and practiced the "take-it-or-leave-it" doctrine, compiling and publishing the first batch of world masterpieces after Taiwan's liberation, in order to break the monopoly of Japanese colonial culture; in January 1947, his translation of the "Essays on the Four Seasons" by the British writer George Gissing was printed by the Taiwan Provincial Compilation Museum, becoming the first world masterpiece printed after Taiwan's liberation. He has educated and trained many outstanding students, including Ye Jiaying, a famous expert in classical Chinese poetry and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
"Coming" + "returning", Li Jiye's experience is more complicated than the general "south" or "north".
After that, the Taiwan authorities regarded Li Jiye as a "pro-communist element," and the translator of "Essays on the Four Seasons" could no longer sign his name, so he had to sign it "Yu Beipei." This is actually what Li Jiye wrote in the afterword of the translation: "On February 16, 1944, the translator was in Beipei, and on December 5, 1946, the proofreading was completed in Taipei. ”
Title page of "Essays on the Four Seasons".
After returning to the mainland after returning to the mainland, Li Jiye continued to devote himself to the cultural integration of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, making the cultural ties between Taiwan and the mainland more tenacious, and Li Jiye made great contributions. One detail is that Li Jiye once entrusted a friend in Taiwan to return to National Taiwan University the borrowed books that could not be returned when he left Taiwan decades ago and apologize, which has become a good story in the literary circles on both sides of the strait.
After the mainland's reform and opening up, Li Jiye actively contacted friends in Taiwan and unswervingly called for the reunification of the motherland.
Chen Shuyu, former deputy director of the Beijing Lu Xun Museum, said in his reminiscences: "Mr. Li Jiye, director of the Department of Foreign Languages of Nankai University, is my old mentor. Since the two sides of the strait were isolated and unable to get together, Mr. Li entrusted me to visit Tai Jingnong five times from September to October 1989. The next year, I went to Taiwan again, and Mr. Tai Jingnong actually drove to the west of the ......"
Mr. Tai Ching-nong, who has been teaching at National Taiwan University for a long time.
Tai Jingnong was born in 1902, two years older than Li Jiye, who was born in 1904, and was a native of Huoqiu County, Anhui Province, and lived on the same street as Yeji Town. The two were not only fellow villagers and classmates, but also studied under Lu Xun, ran the Weiming Society, sat in the same reactionary prison, and taught at National Taiwan University.
In 1946, Tai Ching-nong was recommended by Mr. Wei Chien-gong to teach at National Taiwan University. He arrived in Taipei in October and experienced the White Terror that followed the "228" incident in 1947. Tai Ching-nong stayed in Taiwan for 44 years, served as the head of the Chinese Department of National Taiwan University for a long time, and was known as Taiwan's "lamplighter of new literature". He lives at No. 6, Lane 18, Wenzhou Street, Taipei City.
During the period of isolation between the two sides of the strait, Li Jiye and Tai Jingnong exchanged correspondence through Ye Jiaying and other international friends, and complained to each other. Li Jiye wrote poems to express his thoughts about Tai Jingnong, and there is a poem of seven uniques written: "The north and south are divided into two places, and it is difficult to help but feel hurt and white. He Dangdu Gorge visited Jun and celebrated that the sky was clear. ”
The books of the north and the south are far from ending. Due to age and political reasons, Li Jiye was unable to cross the strait and crossed south to Taiwan. On November 9, 1990, Mr. Tai Jingnong died of illness and was buried with his wife Yu Yunxian in Taipei Jinbaoshan Cemetery.
Tai Jingnong is a master of calligraphy, and under the promotion of Li Jiye, Tianjin City engraved his ink on the "Hundred Stele Forest" of the Great Wall of Huangyaguan.
"Time hurts and the old goes one after another", ruthlessness is the most time, and affection is also time. After Xu Shoushang, Tai Jingnong, and Li Jiye arrived in Taiwan, they promoted decolonization and de-Japaneseization, revived Chinese culture, promoted the Chinese language, carried forward the May Fourth tradition, spread the spirit of Lu Xun, and made merits.
Li Jiye sent a message to his old friend Jing Nong's manuscript.
D. Li Jiye and translating
Li Jiye is first and foremost an outstanding literary translator. The translation of the "May Fourth" new literature is another peak of translation after the upsurge of Western translation. Under the guidance of Lu Xun, Li Jiye started from the translation of "To the Stars" and made pioneering contributions in the translation industry. Because of the influence of Lu Xun's translation thoughts, he is a representative of the "literal translation school" and has a decisive influence on modern Chinese translation.
The choice of "To the Stars" shows the extraordinary vision of the young Li Jiye. The four-act play, "Into the Stars," tells the story of an observatory on a high mountain, a secluded place, with an inscription at the entrance: "Stay away from useless worries, and the world below is being trampled." From here people go to the stars. At the foot of the mountain, the revolution of the astronomer's son is raging, and one can only speculate that "perhaps there has been a great victory, or that a new world has been built on the ruins of the old world", or that "are the people there still alive, as if there were any wailing, as if everything on the earth was dead, and we were the last of them"......
Li Jiye later recalled the impact of this script: I once had the illusion of not living in a "limited world", but "living in an infinite universe".
Today, this is inevitably reminiscent of Musk's "Mars Immigration Plan". So the question is: is immigration to Mars the end of humanity or the way out for mankind?
Since then, he has translated a large number of Russian and Soviet literary works, such as Andreev's The Black Masked Man (1926), Trotsky's Literature and Revolution (1928), Dostoevsky's The Insulted and Damaged (1934), Aksakov's My Family (1936), Stories of Patriotic Heroes (1944), Nekrasov's Staringrad (1949), Vishnevsky's "Unforgettable 1919" (1951) and many more.
After the outbreak of the all-out Anti-Japanese War, in the autumn of 1938, Li Jiye transferred to Beiping Furen University to teach, and he still translated books while teaching, and it took more than four years to complete the translation of 1.2 million words of "War and Peace". Sadly, the manuscript was lost in the mail. After several twists and turns, a small part was recovered, which was an unexpected luck.
Li Jiye also translated many British and American literary masterpieces: the most famous is Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, originally titled Jane Eyre, which was included in the World Library edited by Zheng Zhenduo in 1935 and published by Shanghai Life Bookstore, which was the first complete Chinese translation of Jane Eyre, and was welcomed by a wide range of readers as soon as it was published. In addition, he has also translated "Essays on the Four Seasons", 200 English lyric poems "Wonderful Songs", as well as "Tiger Skin Warrior", "Doctor Incarnate" and "Rubai Collection".
Title page of The Autobiography of Jane Eyre.
Li Jiye's translation career lasted for more than half a century, and he later became the core figure of the second generation of the "Nankai School of Translation", which belongs to the branch of the "Southwest Associated University School of Translation" and is one of the main schools of translation in China.
The translator is the subject of translation, both the reader and the creator. Li Jiye's masterpiece translated is "Jane Eyre", and among many translations, I think Li Jiye's is the best, but it is a pity that his version is "not popular" today.
Taking the opening paragraph of the first chapter of Jane Eyre as an example, let's do a simple comparative analysis.
Li Jiye's translation at the beginning is: "There was no possibility of walking that day." Yes, we had already roamed the leafless bush at one o'clock in the morning, but after lunch—Mrs. Reed had eaten early when there were no guests—the cold winter wind blew gloomy clouds and invading rain, and it was impossible to do any more outdoor exercise. ”
The cover of "Jane Eyre" was printed in 1956 and the third printing in 1958.
Li Jiye's translation of Jane Eyre is a book on the first page of the first chapter.
The translation by Li Jihong of the Tianjin People's Publishing House, recommended by scholar Yi Zhongtian and others, begins: "It is impossible to go out for a walk that day." In fact, we had been walking for an hour in the garden where the leaves had fallen in the morning, but after dinner—Mrs. Rhett had eaten early when there were no guests—the cold winter winds brought melancholy clouds and bitter cold rain, so there was no need to ask if we were going out for any other activities. ”
The "word-of-mouth version" of the People's Literature Publishing House was translated by Wu Junxie, and it belongs to the "Chinese Reading Recommendation Series", which begins: "I couldn't go out for a walk that day." Although we had been wandering through the bare bush for an hour in the morning, from the time we had lunch (Mrs. Reed had no guests, Mrs. Reed's lunch was always early), the cold winter wind and bitter rain had fallen, and it was impossible to go outside. ”
When I was young, I read the version translated by Zhu Qingying of the Shanghai Translation Publishing House, and the level of translation was really average: "It was impossible to go for a walk that day. Yes, we had been wandering through the foliage for an hour in the morning, but since lunchtime (Mrs. Reed had no guests, Mrs. Reed had an early lunch), the cold winter wind had brought with such gloomy clouds and so penetrating rain that it was impossible to be outdoors any longer. ”
The most popular version today seems to be Song Zhaolin's translation, which he translates like this: "On that day, it was impossible to go out for a walk again. Yes, we had been walking through the bare bush for an hour in the morning, but from the time we had lunch (Mrs. Reed always had an early lunch, as long as there were no guests), the cold winter wind blew, followed by gloomy clouds and bone-chilling rain, and it was impossible to go outdoors again. ”
In contrast, there is no doubt that Li Jiye's translator is the most comfortable to read, and can recite in a subdued tone. Li Jihong is the translator of Khaled Hosseini's famous novel The Kite Runner, whose translation is more colloquial. The other languages are a lot more verbose, and the sense of rhythm is really not so good.
E. Li Jiye and Poetry
Li Jiye is essentially a poet, and the language of poet translators is better than that of ordinary translators.
He loved poetry, and he loved it when he was a student. He once praised poetry and said, "Reading poetry is the greatest pleasure of all, and the charm of poetry is greater than that of the bow of Eros." "His achievements in poetry are outstanding, and he is good at both old and new styles and poetry translations, and all three have been published.
When Li Jiye started a new life of "new youth" in Anqing, Anhui Province, he had already written "the first five-character ancient poem in his life", ending with "No plan to break the cage, where to find Penglai".
His translation of the English collection of poems "Wonderful Songs" looks like a "poet's translation". In the preface to "Wonderful Song", Li Jiye said at the beginning:
Soon after the May Fourth Movement began, I had just entered the age of 15 and was studying at the No. 3 Normal School in Fuyang, and although I had a slight understanding of the meaning of anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, I was deeply influenced by the idea of emancipation of individuality, and I was very opposed to the feudal marriage system and moral views, and longed for the so-called freedom of love. In the early days of sexual awakening, this was a natural occurrence.
When I went to Beijing in 1923 to study, I was first introduced to lyric poetry written in English on the theme of love, and William Sharp's "Irish Ballads" gave me great joy, and I still feel very happy in retrospect......
Some scholars believe that Li Jiye's poetic aesthetic style presents a multi-dimensional fit, with three poetic aesthetics: natural and simple, agitated and generous, and depressed and vigorous. The poetry translation of "Wonderful Songs" highlights the translation strategy of "adaptive choice transformation" in terms of language, culture, and communication, and contributes to a certain aesthetic paradigm.
The famous poem "Life and Death" by the British poet Walter Rand is loved and translated by many famous translators in mainland China, including Li Jiye.
The first two lines of the poem, "I strove with none, or none was worth my strife," are translated by Li Jiye as: "I don't fight with others, because no one is worth fighting with me"; Yang Jiang, a famous writer and literary translator, translates as: "I don't fight with anyone, and I don't disdain to fight with anyone"; and the famous poet and literary translator Lu Yuan translates as: "I don't fight with others, and it is not worth winning or losing."
Judging from the translation, Li Jiye thinks that no one is worth fighting for, Yang Jiang disdains to fight, and Green Principle thinks that the result of the fight is meaningless. Yang Jiang's translation was widely disseminated, and many people thought it was Yang Jiang's own "heartfelt words". Li Jiye's translation is relatively long, which is also in line with his style of emphasizing Europeanized literal translation.
I tried to translate with a large AI model, and the result was, "I don't have anyone to compete with, or no one worthy of me to compete with." ”
It is necessary to say here that Li Jiye had two very interesting "little books for everyone" in his later years - "The Enlightenment of Tang People's Quatrains" and "The Enlightenment of Tang and Song Words". Mr. Li not only loves to create ancient poems, but also likes to explain ancient poems, in order to explain Tang poetry and Song poetry to his grandchildren, he wrote "Tang People's Quatrain Enlightenment" and "Tang and Song Dynasty Enlightenment" at the age of nearly 90. Yes, this belongs to "gracious enlightenment".
Li Jiye's book shadow on the cover of "The Enlightenment of Tang People's Quatrains".
Li Jiye believes that the quatrain of the Tang Dynasty is the most wonderful technique and exquisite writing, which expresses noble sentiments, lofty thoughts, rich imagination, and the atmosphere of the times, and has a unique national form.
"Sun Er Zhenghui wrote two lines of Mr. Lu Xun's poem 'Hengmei cold finger to the thousand husbands, bow your head and be willing to be a cow for your children' as a motto, we hope that through the edification of good poetry and beautiful words, you can be cold to all the false, evil and ugly in the world, and bow down to all the truth, goodness and beauty in the world!"
He selected the representative lyrics of more than 100 lyricists in the Tang and Song dynasties, explained them one by one, and talked about the development process of words, the artistic characteristics of words, and the mood and feelings of lyricists.
In "The Enlightenment of Tang People's Quatrains", he explained Yuan Zhen's "Jialing River": "The sound of the water of the Jialing River for thousands of miles, when will you recircle this river? He said: "The words are simple, and it is easy for you to understand, but the feelings, I am afraid that it is not easy for you to understand." Then tell me about my own experience:
"After I escaped from the fallen Beiping, I first went to teach at Fudan University in Beibei on the bank of the Jialing River, and slowly resumed the habit of walking. When I returned to my hometown after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, I took a long-distance bus along the bank of the Jialing River and bumped forward, and the passengers were afraid of overturning and falling into the river, but I 'laughed at the Jialing wave splashing beads'. I always wanted to revisit the old place, but it never came to pass. I read this poem very intimately, and it has a lot to do with this experience. ”
In "The Enlightenment of Tang and Song Songs", the old gentleman explained the five poems of He Zhu, and when he quoted Li Shangyin's poem "Plantains do not show clove knots" in "Shizhou Yin: Thin Rain and Early Cold", he suddenly inserted such a paragraph:
"Why are you a little worried? This is easy for you to understand, because the school homework is too difficult, you can't see the meaning of the exam, you can't answer it, you will all be worried. ”
"Everyone's Little Book" is a book that everyone writes for everyone to read. Among them, there are 22 volumes of "Classical Poetry", and the authors are Gu Sui, Ye Jiaying, etc. This series of books, published by Beijing Publishing House, has been included in the "First Recommendation to the Whole Country Excellent Traditional Chinese Culture Popularization Books". Hardcover books are small and comfortable to hold in your hand.
F. Li Jiye and the Times
"All straightness is a lie, and all truth is crooked. "Time also bends forward.
Zhang Xinxin, a professor at Fudan University, is the author of the book "Nine People", which tells the fate of nine intellectuals, including Wu Ningkun, Mu Dan, Shen Congwen, and Huang Yongyu. Wu Ningkun, a well-known translator and expert in English and American literature, published his memoir "A Tear" in Taiwan, in which he summed up the first half of his life as "I returned, I suffered, and I survived", and his story is the most interesting.
Wu Ningkun was born in September 1920 and died in the United States in August 2019. From 1939 to 1941, he studied at the Department of Foreign Languages of Southwest Associated University, and later studied in the United States. In 1952, the national colleges and universities were adjusted, Yenching University was split, and Wu Ningkun went to Nankai University. At the end of the year, Mu Dan (Zha Liangzheng) and his wife Zhou Youliang left Chicago to return to China, and Wu Ningkun instigated them to go to Nankai to teach in the Department of Foreign Languages and the Department of Biology respectively.
Wu Ningkun and Mu Dan, young teachers who returned to China, were not so harmonious with the head of the department, Li Jiye, and may have looked down on him a little, but more importantly, the times began to distort.
According to the book "Nine People", one afternoon in the spring of 1954, "during the usual political study time, Li Jiye, the head of the department, announced the agenda of the meeting: 'Help Comrade Wu Ningkun understand the mistakes he has made ideologically and otherwise in the year and a half since he came to teach in the Department of Foreign Languages' -- a sudden attack, and everyone fell into the ground." Professor Yang, head of the English Department, took the lead in "helping" Wu Ningkun......
In fact, in "A Tear", Wu Ningkun only said "Professor Li, the head of the department", and did not say a specific name. Since the early 50s of the 20th century, Wu Ningkun and Mu Dan have been frequently hit by political movements. In the 1955 "Anti-Rebellion Movement", the conference of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Nankai University announced that Wu Ningkun was not only the number one "hidden counter-revolutionary" in Nankai, but also the leader of a "counter-revolutionary group", including Mu Dan, who had participated in the "Chinese Expeditionary Force".
Due to the closure of the Department of Foreign Languages of Nankai University, Wu Ningkun and his wife were transferred to the Central Foreign Affairs Cadre School in Beijing (later renamed the School of International Relations) in the early summer of 1956. In 1957, Wu Ningkun was convicted of an "ultra-rightist," in 1958 he was sent to a labor camp, and in 1958 he was soon exiled to a labor camp in Xiaoxingkaihu, Heilongjiang......
Later, the "Cultural Revolution" came. In 1969, Mu Dan and his wife became "cows, ghosts, snakes, and gods" and were sent to the countryside for labor reform. Li Jiye was also affected in the "Cultural Revolution", and some people even criticized Li Jiye as "not a student of Lu Xun".
In Zhou Haiying's memoirs "Lu Xun and Me for 70 Years," there is a section entitled "The Lu Xun Manuscript Incident and the Death of His Mother," which tells the story of Mr. Xu Guangping's dedication to protecting Mr. Lu Xun's manuscript and his unfortunate death from a heart attack.
If you read "Lu Xun and Me for Seventy Years", you will be shocked by the famous answer in 1957 disclosed in the section "A Few More Words" at the end of the book: "In my estimation, (Lu Xun) will either be locked up in prison or still write, or he will not be silent." ”
In the Rakshasa Kingdom, who is immune? A good institutional environment shapes people, and a bad institutional environment distorts people. Behind "people are sick, God knows if they are sick", it should be "Quan is sick, God knows if they are not".
The fate of university culture also shows the fate of all intellectuals. It is of the utmost importance to deeply reflect on the institutional arrangements on which historical events are based, to check and balance the wrongdoing of those who restrain power to the greatest extent possible, and to expand the free space for tolerating dissent, so as to prevent the paradoxical and tragic history from repeating itself.
The old Nankai University led by Zhang Boling, in the extremely difficult years of the Anti-Japanese War, formed the Southwest Associated University with Peking University and Tsinghua University, creating a miracle in the history of education that is difficult for future generations to achieve. Later, due to well-known reasons, it was chaotic for so many years, until the end of the "Cultural Revolution" and the beginning of reform, Nankai University finally put things in order. In the 1980s, Nankai University entered a glorious period, with the establishment of Fei Xiaotong's sociology class, the establishment of the Institute of Mathematics led by Chern Shiingshen, and the joining of Professor Ye Jiaying, all of which were symbolic.
In his later years, Li Jiye.
After the end of the "Cultural Revolution", Li Jiye presided over the reconstruction of Nankai's foreign language department. In 1979, "Ye Jiaying's return" relied on the strong recommendation of Mr. Li Jiye.
Ye Jiaying was born in Beijing in 1924, 20 years younger than Li Jiye. She called Mr. Li Jiye "a senior scholar who influenced the rest of my teaching career". In the reminiscence, Ye Jiaying said that Mr. Li Jiye was a good friend of her teacher, Mr. Gu Sui. In the winter of 1948, Ye Jiaying went to Taiwan in a hurry with her husband, and Mr. Gu Sui informed her that Li Jiye and other friends had gone to Taiwan. In March 1949, Ye Jiaying came to Taipei from Zuoying, Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, and met Mr. Li Jiye, Tai Jingnong, Dai Junren and other gentlemen in the office of the Chinese Department of National Taiwan University.
"I was pregnant at the time, and I had already found a teaching job at Changhua Girls' High School in central Taiwan, so I didn't stay in Taipei for long. Who knew that not long after meeting Mr. Li this time, the white terror in Taiwan intensified. Mr. Lee left Taiwan in a hurry and returned to the mainland......"
Ye Jiaying, who experienced various ups and downs in Taiwan, settled in Canada in 1969 and taught at the University of British Columbia. In 1974, Ye Jiaying returned to the mainland to visit relatives, and was subsequently listed as "persona non grata" by the Taiwan authorities, and even her manuscripts were banned from being published in Taiwan's books and newspapers.
"If he returns to his hometown in his youth, Ji Lao still has a heart. In 1979, "I read in the press that Mr. Li Jiye had returned after the Cultural Revolution and was currently serving as the head of the Department of Foreign Languages at Nankai University," and the two finally established a relationship. Times have changed dramatically, and the earth has been turned upside down. Mr. Li Jiye enthusiastically wrote to Ye Jiaying, inviting her to give a lecture at Nankai University, "Mr. Li is not only my teacher, but also has various causes and conditions at Fu Jen University in Peking and later at National Taiwan University in Taipei, so I accepted Mr. Li's invitation without hesitation."
"The white head is not full of vicissitudes, and the clouds in the Taiwan Strait miss the old people. When Ye Jiaying first arrived at Nankai University, Mr. Li Jiye carefully arranged her daily life, schoolwork and transportation, etc., and Ye Jiaying spontaneously had "an extremely cordial feeling like a wanderer returning home". This is really "what a scholar's plan to serve the country, unforgettable poetry Li Du's soul".
……
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, introduced by Xu Guangping, one of the founders of the China Association for the Promotion of Democracy, Li Jiye joined the Association for Promoting Democracy and was re-elected as a member of the Fifth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. In 1956, Li Jiye joined the Communist Party of China. In the 80s of the last century, together with the older generation of leaders of the Central Committee of the Democratic Progressive Party, Ye Shengtao, Bingxin, Lei Jieqiong, Ye Zhishan, Ke Ling, Fang Ming, etc., he jointly proposed the establishment of a teacher's day and the formulation of a teacher law, which was finally passed.
Li Jiye has served as the chairman and honorary chairman of the Tianjin Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and the honorary vice chairman of the Chinese Writers Association.
In the winter of 1980, Li Jiye and his wife Liu Wenzhen were at home in Tianjin.
On May 4, 1997, Mr. Li Jiye passed away in Tianjin. This day coincides with the anniversary of the "May Fourth Youth Day", and as a writer of the "May Fourth" generation, what a meaningful coincidence. At this time, 78 years had passed since the May Fourth Movement on May 4, 1919.
Li Jiye's wife, Liu Wenzhen, was born in Tianjin in 1910, and in 1935, she was a student in the English Department of Hebei Women's Normal College, where she met her teacher, Li Jiye. In 1937, Li Jiye and Liu Wenzhen married in Beiping. Liu Wenzhen died in 1994. The ashes of Li Jiye and Liu Wenzhen were later buried in their hometown of Huoqiu Yeji in Anhui Province.
In March 2004, Tianjin Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House published a nine-volume "Li Jiye's Collected Works", but it was incomplete. Li Jiye's creative career started early, he began to publish works in 1922, and joined the Chinese Writers Association in 1952. In addition to translations, he is the author of the novels "Shadow" and "The Unfortunate Group", the essay collections "Busy and Leisurely", "Memories of Mr. Lu Xun", "To Boys and Girls", "A Visit to Italy", "Mr. Lu Xun and the Unnamed Society", poetry collections "Haihe Collection", "Past and Present Collection", "Wonderful Song", essay collection "Lu Xun Spirit", monograph "Fragments of Modern Literary Criticism", etc.
The nine-volume "Collected Works of Li Jiye" Confucius is available for sale on the old book network of Confucius.
The first part of Li Jiye's Selected Works, published by the Social Sciences Academic Press in 2020, is a novel, followed by essays on experiences and memories, and the second part can be seen as a concise "autobiography": "May Fourth" Feng Lei was in Fuyang No. 3 Normal School, living in Anqing for a year, the rolling Yangtze River sent me to Beijing, in Tianjin Hebei Women's Normal College, stranded in the fallen Tianjin, in the enemy's fallen Beiping, escaped from the enemy's occupied area, into Sichuan, in Chongqing and Beibei, in Baisha Women's Normal College, in Taipei Taiwan Provincial Compilation Hall and National Taiwan University, and ran away, returning to his second hometown Tianjin...... The third part is to recall Mr. Lu Xun, the fourth part is to recall the Weiming Society, and so on.
Looking back at the literary world, there is still no set of "The Complete Works of Li Jiye" that includes all the original works, translations, and letters, and this should also be learned from the "Complete Works of Lu Xun"; at the same time, there is no "Li Jiye's Commentary", which is a bit unreasonable. Is this the need for a new "unnamed society"?
(The author is a columnist for this newspaper and a special commentator for the Japan branch of the Hong Kong News Service)