As one of the four classical dramas in China, "Peach Blossom Fan" tells the love story of Hou Fangyu, a patriotic celebrity at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and Li Xiangjun, a famous prostitute in Qinhuai. The two men were talented and female, fell in love at first sight, and exchanged gifts to each other for life. Hou Fangyu gave Li Xiangjun a fan pendant, and the fan was inscribed with a poem in praise of the beauty. Later, Wei Zhongxian Yu Dang Ruan Dacheng took advantage of Hou Fangyu's long-distance refuge and forced Xiangjun to remarry, and Xiangjun swore not to obey, bumping his head and spilling blood on the paper fan, which was later painted as a peach blossom, which led to the peach blossom fan. Since then, the peach blossom fan has become a symbol of love for life.
As the finale of Ming and Qing drama, it has become a clear stream, "borrowing things to write about the sense of rise and fall", and will and does not adopt a reunion ending, but puts the tragic color through the beginning and end. He wrote about human feelings and world affairs, wrote about the Feelings of the Confucian Family and the Country, and also wrote about the open-mindedness of seeing through the religions of the world. It arouses the feelings of future generations, the nostalgia for history, the longing for love, and the sentimentality of small people who are uncertain of their fate under the torrent of history.
Its author is Confucius's sixty-fourth generation grandson Kong Shangren, who together with Hong Sheng, the author of the Hall of Eternal Life, is called "Nanhong Beikong", which is the double star of the literary world shining during the Kangxi period. Their works represent the highest achievements of ancient Chinese historical dramas, and can be said to be the treasures of the world's cultural treasures.
The play "Peach Blossom Fan" depicts a true story in history with artistic brushstrokes, with two clues of politics and love, and the plot has ups and downs, before and after. However, the author Kong Shangren focuses more on using love stories to lead to political events, recreating the whole process of the rise and fall of the Southern Ming Dynasty, with rich content and profound connotations. The turbulent displacement of the two lovers reflects the tragedy of the last years of the Ming Dynasty, when the monarch fainted and coveted beauty, and the villain persecuted dissidents in the right way, resulting in internal and external difficulties and the destruction of the country and the family.
At the same time, let this thick historical drama arrangement also be unique. General legends mostly start from the story of the wind and moon, because the war is scattered, and only "Peach Blossom Fan" first hates the changes in mountains and rivers, and then twists and turns to Hou Li's feelings, rising from a small personal private feeling to a grand national righteousness and a sense of family and country. There are 44 plays in the whole book, and only 15 plays in Hou Li's love, which shows the author's intention realm.
The characters and plot structure in "Peach Blossom Fan" are relatively complex, which extremely tests the author's ability to shape characters. In the author's pen, Hou Fangyu is unwilling to disobey his father's orders, does not want to live up to his affection, and is full of youthful spirits and tired of running for his life, outlining his contradictory but truth-seeking complex state of mind.
Although Li Xiangjun is a singer and is in the lower class of society, she has a noble character, she does not collude with the remnants of the Wei Party, but she wears makeup; she does not flatter the traitors and thieves, and boldly scolds; she does not abandon her marital love with Hou Fangyu and breaks the peach blossom noodles... It can be described as a strange woman with a heavy heart!
As a treasure of national culture, "Peach Blossom Fan" has the charm of transcending the times and crossing national boundaries. Xu Yuanchong, a giant translator in China, translated the stage version of "Peach Blossom Fan" into English, so that readers who are familiar with English can also feel the charm of Chinese classical literature through reading.
Mr. Xu Yuanchong is a professor at Peking University, who has translated more than 100 works in Chinese, English and French, forming the methods and theories of rhyming poetry translation, and is known as "the only person who translates poetry into English and France". He was the first Asian translator to receive the "Lifetime Achievement Award for Chinese Translation Culture" in 2010 and the "Northern Lights" Outstanding Literary Translation Award in 2014, one of the highest awards in the international translation industry.
Unfortunately, on June 17 this year, 100-year-old Professor Xu Yuanchong passed away in Beijing. Reading his translation again makes people feel a lot of emotion.
Mr. Xu Yuanchong's translation is fluent and relaxed, in order to facilitate the understanding of readers who do not understand Chinese drama, he deliberately translates Shengdan Jingmu ugly as a name, such as Hou Fangyu as a living, the lyrics are marked with Hou; Liu Jingting is ugly, and the lyrics are marked with Liu; the old bustard Zhenli is Dan, marked with Mother Lee; and Xiangjun is Xiaodan, which is directly translated as Fragrant.
Because Kong Shangren advocated the application of language when writing the script, "it is better not to be popular than to hurt Ya", so the language is elegant, such as When Hou Fangyu and Xiangjun first met and gave a fan pendant, he wrote a poem:
Nanguo Beauty Pei,
Hugh's sleeve is hidden;
Fan shadow with the lang group,
Shake the incense.
The poems may not be very easy to understand, but Mr. Xu's translation in fluent English is not only semantic, but also full of charm. Here's what he wrote:
The beauty of the Southern land
Holds you not in sleeves but in hand.
You follow her as summer fan
Brings her fragrant breeze when you can.
Another example is that when Xiangjun refused to remarry, bumped his head and fell to the ground, and the blood stained the poetry fan, Xiangjun's lyrics beautified the blood:
You see the sparse and dense, thick and faint, the blood is dipped in a mess, not the cuckoo thrown,
It is the peach blossoms on the face that make red rain fly down, and splash on the ice silk little by little.
Xu Lao translates according to the lyrics as:
You see the blood in deep or light red
Densely or sparsely spread.
It is not cuckoo’s tears fallen in showers
But my own blood blent with peach flowers.
It pours out of my heart and from my face,
And leaves on icy silk its trace.
These translations are appropriate, there are literal translations, intentional translations, and also skimmed translations, restoring the connotation of the original work, which is amazing.
Because it is a bilingual version, when reading, it can be interpreted by each other, the words involved in the translation are not particularly strange, the content in the original work is explained in English, and the English in the translation can be further understood with reference to the original work, and the two complement each other and complement each other.
Chinese culture is broad and profound, Professor Xu Yuanchong with his superb translation skills, our cultural treasures spread to the world, this talent, this feeling makes people look up to, miss!