On August 3, 1956, in order to commemorate the 610th anniversary of the completion of Notre Dame de Paris, France and Italy poured out a luxurious cast of actors from both countries, based on Hugo's original co-production film "Notre Dame de Paris", which was completed the following year. This 115-minute-long blockbuster completely reproduces the grandeur of Notre Dame de Paris in Hugo's original book, because it was filmed in The Notre Dame, so it has become the most classic version in the history of film.
This most classic "Notre Dame de Paris" was introduced to China in 1972. Not inferior to the luxurious cast of actors in the film, the older generation of artists in the Shanghai Film Translation Studio also contributed a super luxurious dubbing lineup - Qiu Yuefeng voiced Bishop Claude, Li Zi dubbed Esmeralda, and even the supporting roles inside were "sound legends" such as Shang Hua, Su Xiu, and Liu Guangning.
The poster of the 1956 edition of "Notre Dame de Paris" introduced by the Shanghai Film Translation Factory
After more than 700 years of ups and downs, Notre Dame de Paris has witnessed a major node in modern history, and many Chinese and foreign celebrities have become friends with it: Beethoven and Napoleon are opposed; Hugo's novel of the same name and anecdotes translated by Liang Qichao and Lu Xunjie, etc.
The French Revolution, 231 years ago, brought to the knees of the monarchy that had ruled the French Peninsula for centuries. The rational spirit that began with Kant, coupled with the enlightenment of Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu and other encyclopedic schools, democratic ideas such as natural human rights and separation of powers have long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. The revolutionary fire that ignited in the hearts of the French people also changed the name of Notre Dame de Paris, the symbol of religion, the "Temple of Reason".
The radicals among the revolutionaries regarded the statue of the sages in Notre Dame as a clay puppet of the reactionary forces and "beheaded" them all, and only the "Cassimo Bell" survived. The basement of the "Temple of Reason" became a good cellar for wine. Those aromas brewed from the fruits of the revolution reflect the carnival of the people of Paris.
Yet freedom and equality soon became chaos and disorder. Thus, the French people gave up the fruits of their victory to a strongman who could restore order with an iron fist, who was the electric stone fire of the revolution, who was Napoleon.
Napoleon launched the "Misty Moon Coup" to get the Jacobins out of the "C position". However, after taking over the revolutionary government, Napoleon made overtures to the royalists and Catholics, and he was accused of stealing the fruits of the revolution. Beethoven, Kant's hometown of Kant, who was far away on the rhine to listen to the revolutionary tide, heard the news of Napoleon's coronation as emperor and angrily tore the symphony score originally dedicated to him to pieces.
Of course, we are still lucky enough to hear this symphony that almost died, and this is the Symphony of Heroes. To Beethoven's surprise, the magnificent building, which was called the "Temple of Reason" by the Enlightenment, witnessed the opposite of their eyes - Napoleon chose the place of the coronation ceremony at Notre Dame Cathedral.
Today, beethoven's symphony still flows in the hearts of the people. But for Napoleon, the loneliness and uneasiness after the revolution, only the generous and fraternal stone symphony of Notre Dame de Paris can send comfort.
Liang Qichao (left) and Lu Xun (right)
After the Opium War, China began to degenerate into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, and some awakened Chinese opened their eyes to the world, and the intellectuals who were the first to contact the Enlightenment trend began to vigorously translate the achievements of Western civilization. Among them, there is the work of Victor Hugo, the author of "Notre Dame de Paris".
You may not imagine that the author of one of the four major condemnation novels of the late Qing Dynasty, "The Flower of the Sea of Iniquity", Zeng Pu, whose pen name is "The Sick Man of East Asia", is one of the earliest translators of "Notre Dame de Paris".
The term "Sick Man of East Asia" first appeared in the "Zi Lin Xi Bao" in Shanghai in the late Qing Dynasty, from Liang Qichao's translation: "The sick man of the East is also insensitive and unkind for a long time." As a forerunner of China's modern enlightenment trend, Zeng Pu took Liang Qichao's translated name as his pen name, which has a reason for self-encouragement.
Since the late Qing Dynasty, Zeng Pu has begun to translate Hugo's works in large quantities, and is the earliest translator of Hugo's famous works such as "Ninety-Three Years" and "The Man with the Smiley Face". When he translated Notre Dame de Paris, in the 1920s, his ideas also shifted from reformism to revolution. At that time, the original translation name was taken directly from the male protagonist of the book, Quasimodo, "The Strange Man of the Bell Tower".
In 1927, Zeng Pu founded the "True, Good, and Beauty Bookstore," which was the literary slogan of the French Revolution. "The Strange Man of the Bell Tower", published in the same year, is one of his "first appearances". Quasimodo, a bell ringer with an extremely ugly appearance but an extremely kind heart, was the representative of the oppressed people at the bottom, and Zeng Pu regarded him as a spokesman for truth, goodness and beauty, which embodied the revolutionary imagination of that era from the side.
Zeng Pu's version of "Notre Dame de Paris", translated by the author Hugo as "Hustle Russia", the name is very revolutionary. Unfortunately, this translation name was not the first of the translators who translated Hugo's works the most at that time. "Hustle russia" comes from the handwriting of another famous literary artist -
In 1903, Lu Xun, who was still a student in Tokyo, published China's first translation of Hugo's novel, "Lamenting Dust", which was signed by the author as "Hu Russia". Although "Lamentation" is not "Notre Dame de Paris", it is another of Hugo's masterpieces, "Les Misérables". However, the name "Hu Russia" was printed in the author column of various editions of "Notre Dame de Paris" during the Republic of China period, which is also one of Lu Xun's contributions to the history of translation in China. (Zihua)