The Paper's reporter Gao Dan intern Dai Fangying
The Stone of His Mountain: Hundreds of Foreign Works Read by Lu Xun.
October 19, 2021 marks the 85th anniversary of Mr. Lu Xun's death. A few days ago, a work written and arranged by Chen Shuyu, former director of the Beijing Lu Xun Museum, and Jiang Yixin, director of the Research Office of the Beijing Lu Xun Museum, was published. The book is divided into four parts, namely: "Bound Edition of Russian Novels translated from Japan", "Book I of the Collection of Novels Outside the Territory", "Book II of the Collection of Novels from outside the Territory", and others. It includes thirty-eight works by Gogol, Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Chekhov, Maupassant, Allan Poe, Hugo, Natsume Shushi, Kierkegaard, Wilde, and others that Lu Xun had read.
Lu Xun's classic works are not water without a source and wood without a root. Lu Xun clearly said that he "relied on all the hundred or so foreign works he had read before and a little medical knowledge", so what hundred foreign works did he see before creating "Diary of a Madman", which laid the foundation for Chinese new literature? At a recent offline press conference, Chen Shuyu and Jiang Yixin, two scholars of "The Stone of His Mountain", shared it.
The scene of the press conference.
Thirty years of long-cherished wishes and twists and turns
Chen Shuyu introduced that Lu Xun said in the article "How Do I Start a Novel" that he had not read theoretical books such as "Novel Practice" before creating a novel. Lu Xun, who studied medicine at the Sendai Medical College in Japan, relied on some neurology knowledge to create the image of the "persecution maniac" in "Diary of a Madman". As for the hundred or so foreign novels he had read before, everyone originally thought it was a mystery that could never be solved.
From 1989 onwards, Chen Shuyu began to study Lu Xun's collection of books and published some short articles. In the early 1990s, he applied for a collective scientific research project called "Lu Xun Collection Research". When his colleague and sister Yao Xipei was looking for newspaper clippings in Lu Xun's collection, he found a bound volume of Japanese-translated foreign short stories, a total of eight, which was the physical evidence of Lu Xun's reading of Japanese-translated foreign short stories during his stay in Japan. This discovery enhanced Chen Shuyu's keen interest in exploring the hundreds of foreign novels that Lu Xun had been exposed to before 1918. It's been almost thirty years since then. Publishing a book like "The Stone of His Mountain" is a long-cherished wish of Chen Shuyu in the past thirty years.
But for thirty years, the research didn't go well. Chen Shuyu said that during Lu Xun's study in Japan, the newspaper clippings bound a total of ten Russian literary works, involving four writers, Gogol, Lermontov, Turgenev, and Pushkin. However, Lu Xun did not have the ability to read the original Russian works, and the novels he came into contact with were all translated into Japanese. In japan, the Meiji era was eager to introduce foreign literature on the one hand, and on the other hand, it was too informal in its translation, with additions, deletions, and rewrites, and even the author's name and nationality were mistaken. This style of translation is known as "Haojie translation". This "Haojie" approach of Japanese translators has made Chen Shuyu and others suffer a lot. In addition, there is no Russian version of Turgenev's Complete Works in general.
Later, Liang Zhan, deputy director of the Institute of Foreign Languages of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Chen Shuyu that the Russian version of Tolstoy's Complete Works in China had previously only been collected by the translator Ge Baoquan, and the collection of the National Library was also mutilated. Finding the entire Original Russian of Turgenev is even more difficult. One is that I can't understand it, and the other is that I can't find it, and if I want to continue research, I will get stuck. Not only that, the Zhou brothers were influenced by the karma master Zhang Taiyan, with a retro style, and the words were ancient, and today's readers have more difficulty in directly reading the translation of the "Collection of Novels Outside the Territory" than the general ancient text. The "Collection of Novels Outside the Territory" is also the physical evidence of Lu Xun's early reading of foreign short stories, so Chen Shuyu and others asked scholars to seriously rewrite the Zhou brothers' literary translations into modern vernacular. In the process of research, Dr. Jiang Yixin organized his forces to complete the compilation of this book, and made great contributions to the publication of the book "The Stone of His Mountain".
Why did "Zhou Shuren" become "Lu Xun"
Another editor of the book, Jiang Yixin, wrote a lengthy preface to the book, in which she shared: "Lu Xun wrote China's first epoch-making modern novel, The Diary of a Madman, at the age of 36. Lu Xun, who may have taken the lead in entering everyone's field of vision, is such a novelist. In fact, at that time, his real name was Zhou Shuren, and he was a servant of the Ministry of Education of the Beiyang Government, and he had the identity of the director and audit officer of the Novel Unit of the Popular Education Committee. At that time, all the novels created, translated novels, and even magazines that published novels in the country had to be sent to Zhou Shuren for review. Well-written novels should be praised, and those with low style should be banned. In his spare time, Zhou Shuren also copied ancient books, did "Ancient Novel Hook Sinking", compiled "Legends of the Tang and Song Dynasties", etc., wrote the first history of Chinese novels, and taught this course in various colleges and universities such as Peking University. From this point of view, before the publication of "Diary of a Madman" in 1918, that is, before Zhou Shuren became Lu Xun, this person had read too many ancient and modern Chinese and foreign novels, too many to count. ”
Therefore, Jiang Yixin and others have done a lot of research on the definition of "hundreds of foreign works" that Lu Xun said that "all that are relied upon are in the hundred or so foreign works that I have seen before". They seek, explore and speculate mainly from five aspects. To put it simply: the first is newspaper clippings; the second is Lu Xun's translated works, especially the published "Collection of Novels Outside the Territory", and the publication preview intended for translation; the third is the zhou brothers' reminiscence text; the fourth is the literary textbook; and the fifth is the classic peripheral and potential reading under the perspective of bibliography. Through exploration, Jiang Yixin found that at least 140 foreign works can be associated with foreign works that Lu Xun read in foreign languages during his stay in Japan:
The first part of the newspaper clippings, which is solid physical evidence, is a bound edition of ten Japanese translations of Russian novels that Lu Xun brought back from Japan, including works by Turgenev, Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov and other writers. But Jiang Yixin did not see it merely as a newspaper clipping, he felt that this was a collection of Russian works compiled and compiled by Lu Xun with his own aesthetic vision, and it was also a new book that Lu Xun himself bound into a book. The editors abbreviated the ten works.
The second is Lu Xun's translated novels, which must have been Lu Xun's repeated chewing works, for example, although Lu Xun only translated three of them, all 16 of them have been repeatedly reviewed, polished and revised by him, and must have been read in full.
Another is the literature textbook, again in the past three years in Tokyo, although Zhou Shuren did not go to the full-time school for classes, but hung the school books in the Duyi Language School, Japanese scholars examined the school's literature textbooks and summer reading literature bibliography, Jiang Yixin also compared the library's Lu Xun collection of books, screening out some foreign works that indirectly proved that Lu Xun might have read at that time.
Finally, the works deduced from the Zhou brothers' reminiscences and other clues are set as "other" series, and the editors have selected some representative writers' works for abbreviation. For example, Lu Xun's favorite Natsume Shushi, Xianke Micro Branch, and kierkegaard, which are not so well known, and so on.
"Reading the stories that Lu Xun read when he studied abroad again, it is actually easy to find his personalized aesthetic tendencies, those works that penetrate the darkness of human nature, the expression techniques of lifting weights and making people smile with tears, the stream of consciousness of modernism, the heroic parody of postmodernism, the realistic care for the small people who are damaged and insulted, and so on, obviously this is a multi-dimensional complex artistic synthesis, and Lu Xun accepted it all at that time." Jiang Yixin said, "Before compiling this book, he would feel that Lu Xun was really a genius, and it could not be copied, and he could tell the story so vividly, profoundly, and directly to the soul in the shortest possible way that the ancient Chinese literati and even writers in modern times did not expect, and after reading the novels that Lu Xun had read, he had a feeling of sudden enlightenment, as if he was in the network of the spiritual genealogy that Lu Xun was in that year, feeling empathy, moving with Lu Xun, happy together, growing together with aesthetic ability, and resonating with the same frequency." ”
What did Lu Xun learn from foreign literature?
If you count from the 508th issue of the magazine "Japan and the Japanese" published in Tokyo, Japan in 1909 to report on the translation activities of the Zhou brothers, Lu Xun's research has a history of 112 years. Through the joint efforts of generations of Lu Xun research scholars, Lu Xun research has become a relatively mature comprehensive discipline, which can also be referred to as "Lu Xun Studies".
The historical materials of this discipline are basically complete, and it is difficult to have any sensational discoveries in the future. The evaluation of Lu Xun is also basically correct, it is difficult to produce subversive views and can occupy the mainstream in the Lu research community. Of course, the space for the interpretation of Lu Xun's works is infinitely broad, but Lu Xun has self-evaluated many of his masterpieces, and it is difficult for researchers to understand these works beyond Lu Xun's own self-perception. Therefore, the improvement of Lu Xun's research discipline level can be said to have encountered a bottleneck, resulting in some scholars retreating from difficulties.
"The Stone of His Mountain" may point out a new direction for readers to read Lu Xun. Chen Shuyu believes that readers should not only focus on which of Lu Xun's novels were specifically influenced by which writer, but should further study Lu Xun's bold stylistic explorations in the creation of modern Chinese novels through reading this book, such as "Diary of a Madman", "A Q Zheng biography", "A small thing", "The Story of hair" These articles have different forms, and for example, in the article "New Compilation of Stories", Lu Xun adopts the method of crossing ancient and modern times. Lu Xun's spiritual inheritance and development of these foreign novels is more worthy of attention: what he seeks in foreign literature is the voice of resistance and shouting. He understood from Russian literature that there are two kinds of people in the world: the oppressor and the oppressed. Therefore, what we should learn from Lu Xun's cultural orientation of reading and translating is first of all Lu Xun's civilian stance and the spirit of struggle against evil forces. This is a basic quality in any era.
Chen Shuyu said frankly that of course, this book still leaves a lot of regrets. This regret was first caused by some translators of the Meiji era in Japan. Their "Haojie translation" did not enable Lu Xun to taste the original taste of the original Works in Russian, and the current readers certainly could not fully feel the artistic charm of these classic works from this book. Therefore, we can only use this book as a medium to read better complete translations of these works in the future, or directly draw richer nourishment from foreign original works.
Jiang Yixin mentioned in the sharing that "The Stone of His Mountain" plays more of the role of a reference book, reflecting the purpose of reading: leading everyone to follow Lu Xun's gaze to continue to explore and deeply read the original original novel.
At the offline event, Liu Chunyong, professor of the School of Humanities of communication university of China, and Song Quansheng, associate professor of the school of literature of Chinese min University, also shared. Liu Chunyong believes that we are now a very era of great changes, the environment is rapidly changing, for the past, very important novels, especially traditional novels, or novels of great significance to the family and the country, in today's reading volume is getting smaller and smaller. But Lu Xun has a great influence on us, becoming a cultural benchmark in our history, shaping the character of our nation, and shaping the character of each of our cultures.
Lu Xun once said that his original intention in the novel career was not to create so-called works of art, but because he was oppressed, to let the world see the depressed voice of the oppressed people at the bottom, so the earliest was a novel translator, before becoming a novelist, he was an outstanding translator, and when he stopped writing novels at the end of his life, he was still translating. The reason why he wrote novels in the middle was also the origin of this book ("The Stone of His Mountain"), and with the reliance of more than a hundred novels, Lu Xun began to write novels. But the deeper question is, why did Lu Xun write novels? It was because I wanted to discuss social issues with the group of people from "New Youth". "Diary of a Madman" was published in the fifth issue of "New Youth" in 1918, all articles are argumentative and essayistic, only one of Lu Xun's novels is very abrupt, and later it slowly shows its significance———— Lu Xun uses novels to participate in social controversies. Liu Chunyong said.
Liu Chunyong also mentioned that many things translated by Lu Xun are second-rate or third-rate according to current standards, but for Lu Xun, they are electric shocks. The sensitivity of writers and their understanding of the world are different from those of ordinary people and even scholars.
Song Shengquan understood the triple meaning of "leading reading", saying that the first was The reading of Zhou Shuren. In the late Qing Dynasty Chinese faced the world, how to start reading, how to read the world? Zhou Shuren took us to a reading, and with his advanced vision, he selected the "Collection of Novels Outside the Territory" but it was too avant-garde, and the words were too ancient, and finally failed. Without this failure of Zhou Shuren, there would be no later "Lu Xun". Lu Xun said that he once dreamed of becoming a hero with a raised arm, and later found out that he was not a hero, and then there was "Diary of a Madman". If Lu Xun's reading was a great success in the market in 1909, it would not be Lu Xun, which means that he was a layman. And that failure also made him realize that enlightenment was a problem, that the "iron house" was a problem, and that his thoughts had precipitated into such a hard existence in the back, thanks to his failure.
The second reading, the book "The Stone of His Mountain", is the "Mystery of the Sphinx" studied by Lu Xun, and Song Shengquan calls it the "Da Vinci Code" of Lu Xun's creative origin. Before Lu Xun wrote "Diary of a Madman", he had not written a single vernacular article, and in the public's vision today, it is impossible to understand how "Diary of a Madman" came out of nowhere. This kind of emergence is revealed in part of the book "The Stone of His Mountain".
The third reading is Jiang Yixin's introduction. Previously, studying or discussing Lu Xun was a "model of influence research." It can be summarized as "Lu Xun and Foreign Literature". However, this book and Jiang Yixin's research guide explore not "Lu Xun and foreign literature", but "Lu Xun in the history of world literature". Putting Lu Xun into the great circulation of world literature, so that the different spaces of literature in different countries are compressed at a point in time, after compression, Lu Xun made a choice and trade-off for the world literature he read. From another perspective, "The Stone of His Mountain" shows us a Lu Xun in the circulation of world literature.
Song Shengquan put forward a research perspective of "Lu Xun in Sendai" and sighed, "Lu Xun said: 'When I paid attention to literature, it was a time when I couldn't speak, but when it came to 'Diary of a Madman', I didn't want to talk anymore.' What a painful realization. What are the characteristics of Lu Xun? Lu Xun is characterized by his sensitivity to pain, that is, will you be in pain, do you want to feel pain, can you taste pain? When a considerable number of people today identify with the spirit of Ah Q, they feel that Ah Q is very happy to live, and when sitting under the sun, when he is idle, lying flat, avoiding pain and rejecting pain, can we read Lu Xun? ”
Editor-in-Charge: Liang Jia
Proofreader: Zhang Liangliang