Press: This article is based on the article submitted to the 3rd Central China Academic Communication Forum in October 2019. I would like to thank Mr. Fan Jun, Professor of the College of Literature of Central China Normal University and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Central China Normal University, for inviting me to attend the meeting and compiling the humble article into the Central China Academic Communication Forum (Third Series) - Exchange, Integration and Innovation: Literary Publishing and Literary Communication. Although the publication of the collection has been postponed due to the epidemic, it has not affected its academic value in the slightest. Two years later, when I read the articles in the collection, I also re-understood the love and persistence of this wave of scholars for academic research, the efforts and dedication to building an academic community, and the recognition and perception of life.
With this article, I would like to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the death of Elder Chen Yuanlao.
Portrait of Mr. Chen Yuan
The analysis of the history of soviet cultural reception by the publisher Chen Yuan (1918-2004) may have a sample meaning.
Chen Yuan was the main witness and witness of the three historical stages of China's use of the Soviet Union as a teacher, an enemy, and a reference in the 20th century. He began to contact Soviet literature by learning Esperanto, began translating Soviet poetry and music in 1938, and then translated Soviet drama, novels, essays, geography, political theory, etc. for more than a decade, and the strong influence of Soviet cultural thought and atmosphere accompanied him almost throughout his life. And from the early full acceptance to the rational de-charm of the later years, he also experienced a painful mental process.
This article sorts out the relevant materials, outlines chen yuan's process of accepting Soviet culture and its transmutation analysis, and discusses the spiritual shaping of Soviet culture on him from the two aspects of social history process and writer's own experience, trying to glimpse the silhouette of the era in which a generation of intellectuals grew up and the history of their spiritual growth.
One
Taking the Soviet Union as a teacher is an important part of Chen Yuan's youthful memory of receiving Soviet literature, which can be divided into two stages: 1938-1948 and 1949-1959. He fully absorbed the nourishment of Soviet culture, not only in translation and creation, but also in spiritual life.
The first stage (1938-1948), seeking new voices in foreign countries, was a path of salvation and enlightenment for intellectual youth who pursued progress.
Chen Yuan was the first to accept foreign cultures, starting with his study of Esperanto in 1931. Esperanto is a language written and written by the Polish Zammenhof, and since its publication in 1887, it has been recognized as the most viable artificial language of our time, the International Auxiliary Language, and tolstoy, Gorky, and Romain Rolland all supported the promotion and use of Esperanto. After Esperanto was introduced to China in the early 20th century, Cai Yuanpei, Lu Xun, and Qian Xuantong all enthusiastically advocated it. Chen Yuan attended the Esperanto correspondence school sponsored by Hu Yuzhi and Ba Jin of the Shanghai Esperanto Society in Guangzhou, and accepted Hu Yuzhi's slogan of "using Esperanto for China's freedom and liberation". After that, he joined the Guangzhou branch of the China Branch of the International Congress of The Anti-Aggression Movement, edited Esperanto publications such as "China Report", "To a New Stage" and "Justice", which publicized the War of Resistance, and devoted himself to the cause of national liberation and progressive culture.
In October 1938, Chen Yuan translated the song "If Tomorrow Goes to War" composed by the Soviet poet and Stalin prize winner Lebetiev Kumachi, which was published in the "Salvation Daily" edited by Xia Yan. After the fall of Guangzhou, he heard this song on his way to exile and further realized that in the era of successive fall of the country, the song became the most powerful spiritual weapon in the national liberation struggle because of its rapid dissemination, and it was the practical need to resist Japan and save the people. He wrote in a lyrical tone: "Russia! Since the 1930s, this name has given people a lot of encouragement, so much excitement, how much longing! ...... The new art in this new land seduces our young people. Since then, Chen Yuan has systematically and comprehensively contacted Soviet literary works and begun the road of literary translation.
In 1940, Chen Yuan participated in the Guangdong Branch of the Sino-Soviet Cultural Association in Qujiang (now Shaoguan), the wartime provincial capital of Guangdong, and wrote a letter to the Soviet Association for Foreign Culture (VOKS) through esperanto relations, requesting music materials. and other Soviet songs, and then compiled and published the "Soviet Famous Songs Collection" and "World Choral Famous Songs".
Chen Yuan's literary translation started at the same time in many aspects and genres. His translations include Seven Poems of Shef and Ko, children's poems of M. Marsack, Baldo and others, collected into a collection of Soviet Children's Poems; the plays translated include Lenin of 1918 and The Character of Moscow; the novels translated include Schedlin's The House of the Landlords (later changed to The Lords of Gorovelyov), Dan Niang, Saloyan's The Daughter of the Sheep watcher, and Ellenborg's The Story of a Traitor.
At the same time, in terms of political theory, he translated Articles such as Fadeyev's "The Czech People in the Fierce Struggle", "The Self-Description of a Soviet Female Aviator", "The Offensive Power of the Soviet Red Army", "Poland after the Signing of the Soviet Union's Demarcation Treaty", "The Improvement of the Quality of the Soviet Air Force"; in terms of biography, he translated "My Musical Life - Correspondence between Tchaikovsky and Madame Meek"; fables and popular science, translated Kryrov's fables, Tolstoy's popular science work "The Dog's Story" (later changed to "Tolstoy's Scientific Essays") ）。
In 1942, Chen Yuan's "Anti-Aggression Library" and "World Literature and Art" series of books were published successively. The series of books is a selection of world-famous writers, such as one of the libraries, "War Not a War: Before and After the Fall of Paris", which selects the political and reportage literature of Ehrenburg, Molloa and Simons, as well as "Gauge Worm" selected from Gorky's "Factory History", Pushkin's "The Bronze Knight", Mayakovsky's poetry collection "Shouting Loudly", Gorky's "Simple Truth" and the epic poem "David of Sassoon". The theme of anti-aggression highlights the significance of China being the main battlefield in the east of the world's anti-fascist struggle.
Magazines such as Sino-Soviet Culture were interested in introducing Soviet culture at that time, and opened up albums one after another, such as special series on tribute to Gorky, special series on the centenary of Pushkin's death, special series on Soviet drama, special series on the sixteenth anniversary of Lenin's death, special series on Sino-Soviet music exchanges, special editions on Soviet children's literature, and special editions on sino-Soviet alliance treaties. Influenced by this, magazines such as "New Army" and "New South China" that Chen Yuan participated in editing also responded to the letter writing campaign advocated by the Sino-Soviet Cultural Association and published works by writers reflecting Soviet society. Chen Yuan wrote the popular reading book "Film Drama and Music of the Soviet Union", which was included in the "Sino-Soviet Cultural Small Series", and also wrote biographical works "Stalin's Boyhood", "Stalin's Youth", and a review of "The First Element of Literature is Language" - Gorky's Thesis on Language" and "Commemorating Gorky". In 1948, when he was in charge of the magazine "Reading and Publishing", he also consciously selected Russian and Soviet cultural classics as cover miscellaneous columns, such as "Illustration of "Russian Story"", "Lermontov's "Shooting"", "Grober's Cartoon" and so on.
It should be pointed out that chen yuan's acceptance and reading scope at this stage was not limited to Soviet literature and art, and his translation vision presented the characteristics of broad and mixed. In addition to Soviet literature, he also translated the British novelist Scott's Heroes after the Disaster, Dickens's The Battle of Life, Hayden's Science and Daily Life, Balzac's Satirical Novels, Foster's New Europe, and The United States and the Postwar World, showing a broad vision of the world.
In the second stage (1949-1959), under the main theme of the era of learning from the Soviet Union for the whole people, they consciously expanded the dimension of thinking and opened a window to the world in addition to the "prescribed actions".
In March 1949, Chen Yuan and a large number of progressive cultural people were stranded in Hong Kong, waiting to go north. At that time, the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee had set up a publishing committee, and all the cultural construction of New China was put on the important agenda. Chen Yuan, under the instructions of Xu Boxin, actively planned the student dictionary used by primary school students in New China (the predecessor of the Xinhua Dictionary) and translated the "Dream of the Jinyuan Cultural Mountain" by the Soviets signed Roman Jin, which is a soviet cultural worker who saw and heard in the form of a "travelogue" from an ideologically closed society to the strange Western world, which actually reflected the cultural struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the form of a "travelogue".
After the founding of New China, the policy of political one-sidedness towards the Soviet Union influenced all fields of culture to start learning from the Soviet model. As far as the publishing industry is concerned, not only the setting of publishing houses and magazines, the professional division of labor, and the Soviet Union, but also the publishing management system and the remuneration system are also modeled on the Soviet Union. In April 1950, the General Administration of Publications of the Central People's Government twice invited Semigin, deputy general manager of the International Bookstore of the USSR, to discuss the publishing system of the USSR. On March 27, 1953, Hu Yuzhi, director of the General Administration of Publishing, said in a conversation with Zimiur, the general manager of the visiting Soviet International Book Company: "We are following the path of the Soviet Union, and we are all learning from the Soviet Union. ”[1]
In order to meet the needs of society, Chen Yuan translated and published "New Moral Education in the Soviet Union" (by Yesipov and Goncharov) and "New Geography of the Soviet Union" (by N. Mikhailov). He keenly realized that "in the course of building a new China, we urgently need true materials on this issue, which are our reference so that we can avoid many unjust roads" and that "the Soviet people have shown new patriotism and new heroism in the construction of socialist society and in the transformation of nature." [2]
The translation and publication of Soviet literary and artistic works has also become the main theme of the times. In order to avoid disputes between several publishing houses over the translation of Soviet literary and art books, the Central Propaganda Department held a symposium on the division of labor in September 1953, stipulating: "After the establishment of stalin's prize (after 1940), the works that won the first prize were published by the People's Literature Publishing House, and the works that won the second prize were jointly published by the People's Literature Publishing House and the Times Publishing House. Those that have not received the prize are jointly published by the Times Publishing House and the China Youth Publishing House. ”[3]
Chen Yuan was immersed in the new era and new environment in which Soviet culture was everywhere, and successively undertook heavy publishing management and organization work in Sanlian Bookstore, World Knowledge Publishing House, People's Publishing House, and International Bookstore. In the case of the International Bookstore, of which Chen was the deputy manager, the store was founded in October 1949 as a "hasty unit founded on the Soviet model",[4] whose original purpose and mission was to import Chinese books and periodicals from the Soviet Union, and in May 1952 it was transferred to the direct leadership of the General Administration of Publications. By June 1953, when Chen Yuan had left, "the store had imported about 40 million books and periodicals, including about 38.75 million in the Soviet Union, about 400,000 in the people's democracies, and about 770,000 in capitalist countries." [5] On July 22, 1953, the Central Propaganda Department held a seminar on the compilation and publication plan of the Complete Works of Stalin in Zhongnanhai, and in consideration of the progress of the compilation, Chen Yuan was officially transferred back to the People's Publishing House from the International Bookstore, and he was full-time the director of the Compilation Room (Second Editorial Office) of The Works of Mannles, responsible for organizing the publication of the Collected Works of Lenin (seven volumes) and the Complete Works of Stalin. Chen Yuan attended the meeting and began the political task of "taking charge of the editing of chinese translations of the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin and the biographies of Marx and Lenin." During this period, he also translated several Soviet geographical works, because in 1940 he compiled the "Basic Course of Chinese Geography" which was reprinted many times in the Guotong District and Yan'an, and at this time he naturally undertook the task of translating geographical readings applicable to New China, such as "Stalin's Plan for the Transformation of Nature", "Asian People's Democratic National Geography (Korea, Vietnam and Mongolia)", "European People's Democratic National Geography", "Geography of the Soviet Union and its Sixteen Member Republics", "Geography Teaching in Soviet Schools" and "Geography", the purpose of which was "" Through the study of geography subjects, patriotic education and political ideological education are achieved". After Mikhailov's "The Great Soviet Union" was published by the People's Publishing House, Chen Yuan wrote an article commenting on it, hoping that Chinese readers would understand the Soviet Union from here and "draw nourishment to cultivate our patriotism and internationalism." [6]
The one-sided situation of Sino-Soviet relations with the Soviet Union as a division did not change until february 1956, when the Twentieth Congress of the CpUSSU was convened. With the emergence of anti-Stalinist trends in the international community, the chinese cultural circles began to revise the Soviet model. In March 1956, Zhou Yang pointed out at the forum on literary and artistic work, "We must learn from capitalist countries. We must learn not only from the Soviet Union, but also from the progressive arts of the capitalist countries", and the publishing world began to oppose the "cult of personality" tendencies and the problems of "hollowness" and "generalization" in popular books. Chen Yuan attended the 41st International Esperanto Congress in July 1956, and after the meeting, he visited Bukarov, deputy director of the Institute of Linguistics of the USSR Academy of Sciences,[7] and breathed some fresh air and learned that the linguistics criticized by Stalin was showing signs of thawing. [8] After that, according to the opinions of the Central Propaganda Department and the Ministry of Culture, he organized the compilation of the "Selected Translation Catalogue of Philosophical and Social Science Works (1956-1967)", which selected 1632 selected books in the selected translation catalogue, taking into account the needs of both research and criticism, but unfortunately failed to achieve it due to the "Great Leap Forward" movement and the struggle against "anti-repair and defense repair". It was not until 1979 that he presided over the Commercial Press, and the large-scale introduction and translation of the world's academic masterpieces planning was truly put into practice, and initial results were achieved.
In early 1960, Chairman Mao Zedong decided to publicly criticize modern revisionism in the Soviet Union. In order to carry out the international anti-revision struggle, the Central Committee instructed the translation and publication of representative works of old opportunists and revisionists such as Bernstein, Kautsky and Trotsky, and the Central Propaganda Department asked the Central Compilation Bureau and the People's Publishing House to organize and implement them, because these books were all gray covers, simple paperback, called "gray books". At the same time, the Sino-Soviet controversy marked by the "Nine Commentaries" from 1963 to 1964, which carried out the anti-revision struggle of "taking the Soviet Union as the enemy" with great fanfare, had actually ended the Sino-Soviet alliance and became "a rehearsal of the 'Cultural Revolution' and a prelude to the 'Cultural Revolution'" [9]. Chen Yuan's plan to revise the film script "Lenin in 1918" at the request of the China Film Publishing House was also interrupted.
Two
The pluralistic orientation and rich diversity of Soviet culture became an important resource for Chen Yuan to broaden his horizons and cultivate his character, and at the same time to construct his ideological foundation.
"What happens to us in our time today must have changed our perspective." Zweig's words may be appropriate to describe the influence of Soviet culture on Chen Yuan.
Chen Yuan graduated from the School of Engineering of Sun Yat-sen University, and entered the Xinzhi Bookstore in Guilin in 1939, and since then the translation and publishing activities have been closely linked to the revolutionary cultural activities, and his translation of Soviet literature has both the needs of the times and its own advantages. Russian and Soviet literary thought, literary spirit, and the emotional expression and writing methods created by writers have become the potential absorption and reference process of his world outlook and outlook on life, and also determine the psychological emotions and cognitive methods to a certain extent. Judging from Chen Yuan's more than sixty years of composition and translation, in addition to the musician Tchaikovsky, who had a profound and lasting influence on him, it was Ehrenburg, Gorky and Simonov. If Tchaikovsky, the "national soul of Russia," gave him notes and rhythms, a warm and optimistic character and an idealistic temperament, then the influence of Ehrenburg, Simonov, and Gorky on Chen Yuan was an enlightenment of life beyond literary significance, a sympathy, inspiration, hope and warmth full of human flavor, a great personality, a noble soul and an indomitable spirit of struggle.
Ehrenburg (1891-1967) was a Soviet writer and social activist who had been living in France for a long time as a journalist, and "The Fall of Paris" was written by him during World War II when he witnessed the fall of France, and won the Stalin Prize in 1942. After Stalin's death, his new changes in thinking took place, and his novella Thawed (Parts 1 and 2) and literary essays from 1954 to 1956 reflected the shift in political positions and literary and artistic views, as well as the idea of opposing the cult of personality. Ehrenburg's influence on Chen Yuan was first reflected in the form of language, chen yuan wrote "memoirs that are not memoirs", often using the Ehrenburg style "not ... "Music that is not music", "Geography that is not geography", "Love letter that is not a love letter", "Newspaper that is not a newspaper", "Magazine that is not a magazine". But this is only the appearance, and the deep hidden influence is Ehrenburg's concern for people and their destiny. Ehrenburg wrote passionately about the situation before and after the fall of Paris that was "neither like war nor like peace", and thus used the ironic title of "War not war". Chen Yuan experienced the October 1938 Guangzhou Great Retreat, but also experienced the Xianggui Great Retreat in 1944, he saw not only the smoke of war, but also the scene of the people's suffering, so in 1945, when Chen Yuan wrote a biography of a character and published "Pioneers of the Civilian Century", he expressed the vision of writing people - trying to reduce the giants in his writing to a person, so that they were "full of human brilliance" and made it a "humanized biography". So the first thing Ehrenburg gave him was humanity.
Simonov (1915-1979), a popular writer among Chinese readers, said that during the war years he was inspired by Simonov's song "Wait for Me" and was also infected by the novel "Day and Night" about the defense of Stalingrad, waiting for the dawn with confidence and hope for victory. Simonov was the darling of the times, won the Stalin Prize for Literature six times, was assigned by Stalin to serve as the "standard-bearer" of the literary and artistic circles, led the Soviet Writers' Association with Fadeyev, and visited China in October 1949. He, along with Ehrenburg and Fadeyev, were both role models for Chen Yuan's generation of intellectuals, who were alienated during the "anti-repair and defense repair" period, but his criticism of the bureaucracy and dogmatism triggered a strong "thawing" trend, and the writer Huang Qiuyun and the essayist Zeng Yanxiu were also deeply influenced by Simonov in their later years, reflecting on history and comparing reality. Chen Yuan believes that Simonov's memoirs, "The Testimony of My Generation —Thoughts on Stalin," "express the conscience of the Russian people" and "not only the power of logic, but also the power of feelings," and their historical value will be passed on for a long time, comparable to Reed's "Ten Days That Shook the World." After the Stalin question was revealed, Simonov made a rational analysis after twenty-three years of painstaking reflection and reflection, leaving credible and valuable first-hand information for future generations, "hoping that we should also have such reflection here." [10]
Gorky's literary works and literary theories had a profound impact on the growth of Chinese revolutionary literature and art. But to Chen Yuan, what he felt from Gorky was the struggle and entanglement of the big self and the small self in the torrent of the times. During the October Revolution, Gorky and the Bolshevik Party had serious differences over a series of issues concerning the October Revolution, and from 1917 to 1918 they founded the Newspaper new life, opened a column entitled "Thoughts Out of Place", wrote straight books, shouted to the conscience of society, published about 80 political treatises, recorded their unique thoughts on the October Revolution, and were repeatedly criticized by Pravda, the organ of the CPSU, so that they were sealed for a full seventy years. Chen Yuan spoke highly of Gorky's "bold, pungent, outspoken, and pin-point statements of 'thoughts,' which illuminated the human world like an electric spark through the repressed thick air mass." If it were not for great wisdom and courage, it would never have been possible." [11]
Chen Yuan regarded Gorky as an intellectual, not just a writer. Therefore, he admired Gorky's definition of intellectuals: "This is the man who is ready to stand up for the truth at the cost of his life every minute of his life." Chen Yuan firmly believes that it has a unique personality strength, and thus forms a mirror of his independent thought. In 1979, when he was the editor-in-chief of the ideological review magazine "Reading", he put forward the proposition that "there is no forbidden area for reading", which was the precursor to emancipating the mind and correcting the chaos in the 1980s. In 1981, Reading magazine successively published articles such as "> Commentary on the Economics of the Transitional Period in bukharin <", "On the > of the < Russian Revolution in Luxembourg", and "> Debate on Freedom for <", introducing figures and works that had long been regarded as heretics by the Soviet theoretical circles and being denied, marking the further liberation of China's ideological and publishing circles. Chen Yuan did not compare himself to the intellectuals defined by Gorky, but praised Chen Hanbo and Shi Ming, who co-founded "Reading", for both "having the courage to spread the truth" and "being worthy of Gorky's definition of the kind of intellectuals." [12] At the same time, Chen Yuan was also concerned with the fate of Gorky in the later years of Roman Roland and Zweig, and he agreed with Zweig that with Gorky it was "as if he saw Russia, but not the Russia of the Bolsheviks, not the Russia of the past, nor the Russia of today, but the Russia of an eternal nation with a deep, strong and deep soul". He believes that Gorky's life of contradictions and entanglements is enough to wake up Chinese intellectuals.
Three
Taking the Soviet Union as a mirror is the result of the historical development of Chinese society and the times, and it is also the inevitable result of Chen Yuan's constant thinking and reflection. The memoirs of Ehrenburg and Simonov are a source of courage and strength that Chen Yuan drew from his reflections in his later years.
The great changes that took place in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1991 caused Chen Yuan's thinking to be strongly shaken, and also produced some confusion and sadness: "Is the end of the tunnel a bright or is the end of the light a tunnel?" He expressed his voice this way:
At the beginning of the century, the magnificent cause that began with the "Ten Days that Shook the World" suddenly disappeared at the end of the century, and a "avalanche" that shook the world was staged. Our generation, from adolescence, has been longing for this so-called "hope for the future" of mankind, and now witnessing this avalanche with our own eyes cannot but feel heavy. [13]
Chen Yuan was keenly aware that "the old era has found the destination of history, and the new era is spreading its wings and taking off", so he firmly believes that "faith will not disappear, ideals will not be annihilated", and the "ghost" wandering in Europe has flown away, "But won't the ghost appear elsewhere in new clothes?" "Although the avalanche has brought sorrow, faith has dispelled the fog of sorrow, and when the era of sorrow gives way to the rekindling of the flame of hope, it is necessary to face history bravely, and it is necessary for later generations to bravely uncover the truth of history." The so-called overthrow of the previous car, the lessons of the latter car, the reflection on the avalanche incident in the Soviet Union, and the avoidance of the recurrence of the "Cultural Revolution" are precisely the historical mission of this generation of intellectuals. Since 1993, "Reading" magazine has successively published articles such as Wang Meng's "Want to Read knot", Lan Yingnian's "Tomb Seeker's Saying" and Zeng Yanxiu's "Reading Simonov's Memoirs", solemnly reflecting on the influence of Soviet culture. As a person who has come over, Chen Yuan stands on the opposite side of himself and the opposite side of Soviet culture, objectively and rationally examines himself with the attitude of learning the lessons of history, looks at the past, writes a series of miscellaneous feelings, and reveals the "social tragedy" caused by the times. Doing so requires a clear mind, but also great courage and boldness.
He first inspired the people to think about the tragic causes of the land: "Stalin's party was born in a Russia where capitalism was underdeveloped and feudal, and this party was in a secret state underground for a long time before it came to power, which naturally gave rise to a primitive social consciousness that regarded the leader as a god." By dissecting the tragic fate of the Soviet generation in the operation of the state and history, he interpreted the historical confusion from the lessons of Soviet blood, and "After the Relaxation" formed a precious and relaxed environment with the attitude of treating the masses equally during Lu's tenure as a Soviet People's Commissar, and compared with the great purge that followed, "Once the threshold of the thirties was crossed, everything changed, the officials were officials, the people were the people, art was subordinate to politics, and politics was only synonymous with class struggle." "Stalin's "Commentary," "Cowardly Intellectual," and "Yes, You Are Wise...", reveal Stalin's arbitrary personality, the harm of personality worship, and the evil consequences of God-making, "Since man has created God, he thinks that God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, so man cannot but worship God infinitely and be infinitely loyal." In that decade of reversing black and white, haven't we become accustomed to what 'three loyalties' and 'four infinities' are? These essays and miscellaneous feelings and articles included in the books "Chen Yuan's Prose", "Twilight People's Language", "Outsider's Language", and "Memoirs Not in Memoirs" can be seen that Chen Yuan was deeply influenced and inspired by Ehrenburg's memoirs in his later years, "Man, Years, and Life", and the words also carry Ehrenburg's intention from passion to "resentment and cold thinking", as well as "understanding the present through the past". From Chen Yuan's bitter trial and examination, we glimpse the true spiritual code of a generation of intellectuals who accepted Soviet culture in their youth, and regarded his prose as the spiritual notes of this generation.
Chen Yuan also pointed the sharp edge of reflection to the depths of history, ruthlessly dissecting the Soviet works he translated in his early years. He said that in the Collected Songs of the USSR "the songs that praise Stalin and other leaders (such as Voroshilov) occupy a large part of the page; especially for Stalin, all the most beautiful, noble, most beautiful, most magical, and even the most fleshy adjectives in the world are used--and at that time people do not think it strange, do not feel ashamed, do not think of it as ugly, even the translator I myself", "terrible tragedy leads to a cult of personality that is absolutely incompatible with socialism; and the cult of personality is in patriotism, Communism and a good rhetoric were carried out under the cover of words." [14]
The film literary script "Lenin in 1918" was the starting point for Chen Yuan to engage in literary translation and enter the cultural publishing world, but more than fifty years later, he comprehensively disclosed the relevant materials and was surprised to find that the original author "made an image description of the forged history" and therefore "appeared worthless (because it distorted life)". "The reason why the Soviet Union continued to 'launch' works in praise of Lenin from 1937 to 1939 was actually to create a god, to create a new god; that is, to celebrate Stalin. Whether the author is subjectively willing or unwilling, whether the author intends it or not, the God-making movement has arisen on the eve of the Soviet-German war", so this script "reveals a great social tragedy in essence, and may be worth mentioning for posterity". [15] In 2000, he admitted in the reprint inscription of "Jin Yuan Cultural Mountain" that he was "shallow", when he translated the book, he was not yet thirty years old, his brain was full of "leftist infantile disease" bacteria, and with the revolutionary enthusiasm of young people, he blindly worshiped the fascinating red sun utopia in the north, which inevitably carried the brand of the era of encirclement and suppression of modernist formalism in the early post-war period of the 1940s. He painfully admitted that the root cause of all this was that he was "ignorant, shallow, worshipful, blindly obedient, and had no independent thought." This is the precipitation of time, self-analysis and self-denial after pulling away the psychological distance and emotional distance, which is rare and valuable.
Cover of oxford university press (Hong Kong) 1995 edition
Chen Yuan once wrote a miscellaneous sentiment "Auction Myself":
I dreamed that I was auctioning myself off. A man dressed like a cadre in the fifties approached and said, "How much do you sell?" I replied: Don't sell for money. The meaning of life is selfless giving. ...... You tell me to do whatever I want, write articles, write documents, draft plans, draw circles and batch documents, clean office buildings, clean toilets, clean kitchens, carry clutter, do anything; go to heaven and earth, do nothing, do not complain, do not tell strange things... But there is one thing I don't sell, I don't sell my soul. The man was furious, punched me, and woke up. Maybe I dreamed, maybe I did auction it off, maybe I sold it for most of my life. Who knows. [16]
Introduced from a meaningful dream, the reader should understand what he said and the "literary eyes" hidden behind it, so it is not difficult to understand why he looks back on the past and feels a lot of emotion. In 1999, he inscribed on the title page of the first edition of the Collected Famous Songs of the SOVIET Union: "Sixty years have passed." Red, white, black, war, revolution, sacrifice, 'knock over, step on one foot'... It's all history. I cherish these sixty extraordinary years, and I find myself sixty years ago— the most precious. I didn't get lost, I was still me. Instead of choosing conscious oblivion, he examines himself and his time and society on a historical and geographical basis to enlighten future generations.
From "auctioning myself" to "finding myself", from obscuring to hiding, Chen Yuan actually found the humanistic spirit that he admired when he was young, the enlightenment spirit lost when the entire ideological and cultural circles in the 1950s and 1960s were allowed to make only one voice, and the ardent pursuit of independent thinking about the ideal society.
Four
Chen Yuan's contact with Soviet culture is so broad, the contact time is so long, and the emotions are so entangled, presenting a complex face and a historical memory worth pondering. The writer Wang Meng believes that Soviet literature has had a huge influence in China, and the strong influence of Soviet literature's thinking, mood and atmosphere has repeatedly blossomed in the writers of his contemporaries, and its influence "may be more long-term than the influence of the Soviet Union." After all, the former is art and an ideal." [17] From this perspective, it also makes sense to take Chen Yuan's acceptance of Soviet cultural history as a sample. However, the purpose of this article is neither to study Soviet literature nor to study translated literature, but to observe his spiritual transmutation and cultural transformation as an intellectual in the process of the times through Chen Yuan's acceptance of Soviet culture from being a teacher to a lesson, to understand the love and pain of that generation of intellectuals, to sober up and reflect, and to explore the dilemmas and explorations in rationality, which may have its own unique historical value for the study of the history of modern Chinese culture and thought, social history and the history of Chinese and foreign cultural influence, after all, as a unique individual. In a certain sense, the true epitome of the generation after the awakening of the mind is revealed. In the face of such a complex and rich individual, it is beyond the author's control, and I have thrown bricks and stones to hope that the researchers will make in-depth discussions.
Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Jinguo
exegesis:
[1] "Summary of the Interview between Zimiur, General Manager of the International Book Company of the USSR, and Director Hu Yuzhi", Publishing History of the People's Republic of China (5), China Book Publishing House, 1999 edition, p. 248.
[2] In 1953, it was renamed "Land and People of the SOVIET Union" and reprinted by the China Youth Publishing House as one of the Soviet Studies Series.
[3] "Minutes of the Meeting of the Central Propaganda Department to Discuss the Improvement of children's book publishing and the division of labor in the publication of Soviet literary and art books", Publishing History of the People's Republic of China (5), China Book Publishing House, 1999 edition, p. 508.
[4] Chen Yuan: "Yihua Yingshen", "Books and People and Me", Life, Reading, and Xinzhi Triptych Bookstore, 1994 edition, p. 215.
[5] "Report of the Party Group of the General Administration of Publications on the Work of International Bookstores", Publishing Historical Materials of the People's Republic of China (5), Edited by China Publishing Science Institute and Central Archives, China Book Publishing House, 1999 edition, p. 542.
[6] Chen Yuan, "Introduction to the < Great Soviet >," People's Daily, December 30, 1952.
[7] Bukharov, also known as Bogarev, was a Esperanto scholar who compiled the Russian Dictionary of Esperanto and the Russian Esperanto Dictionary.
[8] Chen Yuan, "The Academy of Sciences of the USSR Discusses esperanto issues", People's Daily, November 28, 1956, "Academic Dynamics".
[9] Zhang Huiqing, "The Origin and Development of the "Gray Book"", Edited by Zheng Yifan, "The "Gray Book": Memories and Research", Lijiang Publishing House, 2015 edition, p. 28.
[10] Chen Yuan: "Simonov's 'Testimony'", Chen Yuan's Essays, Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, 1997, p. 58.
[11] Chen Yuan, ""Untimely Thoughts", "Outsider Languages", The Commercial Press, 2000, p. 5.
[12] Chen Yuan, "< Reading > The First Few Years...", "Outsider Languages", The Commercial Press, 2000, p. 187.
[13] Chen Yuan, "The End of the Tunnel is the Light or the End of the Light is the Tunnel", a new edition of the Preface, The Commercial Press, 2002.
[14] Chen Yuan, "Behind the Joyful Singing Quietly...", "Is the End of the Tunnel the Light or the End of the Light is the Tunnel," The Commercial Press, 2002, p. 125.
[15] Chen Yuan: "There will be bread, everything will be!" "Is the End of the Tunnel the Light or the End of the Light is the Tunnel," The Commercial Press, 2002, p. 137.
[16] Chen Yuan, "Auction Myself", "Twilight People's Language", Shanghai Far East Publishing House, 1996, p. 114.
[17] Wang Meng, "The Bright Dream of Soviet Literature," Reading, No. 7, 1993.
About the Author
Yu Shumin, Editor, Encyclopedia of China Publishing House. In 1990, he graduated from the Department of Chinese of Henan University and successively engaged in newspaper and periodical editing in Zhengzhou Aviation Institute and Henan Daily. Amateur research on Chinese publishing history and publishing figures, annotated Chen Yuan's Preface (Commercial Press, 2008). In recent years, he has published more than ten articles in newspapers and periodicals such as China Reading Daily, Wenhui Reading Weekly, Publishing Science, Research on Chinese Publishing History, and Publication Historical Materials, and occasionally published prose works.
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