Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition
English translation of Border City
"Shen Congwen Biography" by Jin Jiefu
Shen Congwen is a famous writer in the history of modern literature. His masterpieces such as "Border City" and "Long River" are poetic and romantic, simple and innocent, and have built a fascinating xiangxi world. He also frequently "went out of the circle" because of the love letters he wrote to his wife Zhang Zhaohe, becoming a modern writer known to young readers.
As early as the 1930s, Shen Congwen had already gained fame in the Chinese literary scene. In the 1960s and 1970s, the literary value of Shen Congwen's works was rediscovered overseas, and from 1961, when the American scholar Xia Zhiqing published "History of Modern Chinese Novels" at Yale University and gave high praise to Shen Congwen's works, his works have been continuously translated and read overseas. He is not only loved by overseas readers, but also highly sought after by overseas scholars, who can always find new inspiration in his innocent writings, combined with the latest theories and topics to make new academic discoveries.
Resonate across languages and times
There are four English translations of Shen Congwen's masterpiece Border City, the original of which was translated by the Crescent poet Shao Xunmei and his girlfriend Emily Hahn and serialized in the English publication Tianxia from January to April 1936. Then, in 1947, George AllenandUnwin Publishing House published a collection of Shen Congwen's novels titled The Land of China, which also included Border City, translated by Robert Bain and Jin Sui, under the English translation of The Frontier City. The book "The Land of China" was reprinted by Columbia University Press in 1982. In the 1950s, the translation of Shen Congwen's works at home and abroad was basically at a standstill. Until 1962, the monthly magazine "Chinese Literature" of the Beijing Foreign Language Publishing House published Dai Naidi's translation of "Border City", which was called The BreederTown in English. The latest English translation was translated by Jeffrey C. Kinkley in BorderTown, 2009 in HarperCollins, New York. HarperCollins is a well-known Publishing Company in the United States, and this book is also one of the classics of modern Chinese writers edited by sinologist Ge Haowen, which means that Shen Congwen's works have gradually left the academy overseas and become more ordinary readers.
In addition to the masterpiece "Border City", Shen Congwen's other works have also attracted the attention of overseas readers and scholars. Chinese writer Li Yiyun has repeatedly recommended Shen Congwen's works. She once said in an interview that she had a special love for "The Book of The Scholar" and went to the United States to study, and it was this book that she carried with her. In addition, Simon Schuser Publishing House published Shen Congwen's collection of essays and letters recollection of WestHunan in 2014; Yilin Publishing House published the English edition of Shen Congwen's Letters in 2015, translated by Liu Xin. Liu Xin is a veteran translator who was the executive editor of the English edition of The Street Lamp of People's Literature, and Shen Congwen's Book was her first translation. Andrew Kauffman, a teacher at McAllister College, who was translating a collection of Shen Congwen's early 1930s novels, "A Little Scene Under the Moon," was drawn to the unique aesthetic style of "A Little Scene Under the Moon" in the process of doing his research, but found that both Chinese and Western academics lacked attention to the book.
Shen Congwen calls himself a "countryman", and these three words hide his cognition and love and hatred, and also reflect the aesthetic and moral codes he has constructed. It is precisely because of the yearning for beauty, the resistance to ugliness embodied in his works, and the exploration of the complex, mysterious, accidental but doomed moments of life that his works transcend language and era and evoke universal resonance among readers around the world.
Shen Congwen's "Rediscovery"
After 1949, Shen Congwen was transferred to the History Museum (the Palace Museum) to engage in interpretation and research work, and since then few literary works have appeared, and old works have rarely been asked. The "rediscovery" of the value of his old works first came from a group of Chinese scholars living overseas. Xia Zhiqing, who was a professor at Columbia University at the time, was deeply influenced by the New School of American Criticism and focused on the aesthetics of literary and artistic works. He believes that Shen Congwen's works have a different kind of artistry. Modern writers who were "discovered" by Xia Zhiqing along with Shen Congwen, as well as Zhang Ailing and Qian Zhongshu. Xia Zhiqing's praise for these writers in The History of Modern Chinese Novels has greatly increased their popularity overseas. Since then, overseas academic circles have paid more and more attention to Shen Congwen.
In 1972, the Chinese-American writer Nie Hualing published ShenTs'ung-wen, becoming the first monograph to introduce Shen Congwen to ordinary readers. In 1977, Kim, who was studying for a Doctorate at Harvard University at the time, completed his dissertation on Shen Congwen. Jin Jiefu searched for many historical materials, integrated the excavation of historical materials with text analysis, and also came to China several times to personally interview Shen Congwen. In 1987, Kim completed TheOdysseyof Shen Congwen (TheOdysseyof Shen Congwen) on the basis of his doctoral dissertation, which was published by Stanford University Press. The book immediately became a classic for overseas research on Shen Congwen, and was later translated into Chinese, which also had a major impact on the study of Shen Congwen in China.
When it comes to overseas Shen Congwen's research, it is necessary to mention the scholar Wang Dewei. In 1992, Columbia University Press published Dewei Wang's Fiction in the Realist Novel. He found in Shen Congwen's novels a mixture of pastoral, violent, death and desire. In columbia university press's 2015 book Lyrical Sounds in the Epic Age, he argued that Shen Congwen provided a different lyrical imagination about modern China. In 2015, Wang also hosted the International Symposium on "Shen Congwen and Modern China" at Harvard University. This was the first time that the English academic community held an academic conference on Shen Congwen's writing process and life experience, several overseas Shen Congwen research authorities attended, and Shen Congwen's two sons, Shen Longzhu and Shen Huyan, also came to the scene to recall the life of his father and the compilation process of the Complete Works of Shen Congwen.
Shen Congwen is a special presence in the history of modern Chinese literature. As Wang Zengqi said: "His life is a bizarre story." "His writing journey, reading acceptance and dissemination are all closely linked to the history of China in the 20th century. Under the joint promotion of academic circles at home and abroad, Shen Congwen's works have been read by more overseas readers, and his image has also shone in the hearts of readers.
New perspectives open up multiple research paths
Although Shen Congwen's works have been read and disseminated for more than decades, in overseas Chinese literature research, we can still see academic research using Shen Congwen's works as texts and combining the latest theories. These novel research perspectives include ecocriticism, information technology, and material culture. In his essay "Criticism of Nature and Modernity in Shen Congwen's Novels", Professor Wang Ban of Stanford University analyzed the ecological significance of Shen Congwen's novels, arguing that Shen Congwen rebelled against technological progress, modernity and consumerism through the praise and writing of nature. Anatoly Dietwyler, a Ph.D. professor at Columbia University and now an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, focused her dissertation, "The Aesthetics of Information in Modern Chinese Culture," which focused on Shen Congwen's unnoticed novel Unemployment. Starting from "Unemployment", he discusses Shen Congwen's emphasis and interest in "information exchange" in his novels. Harvard University's doctoral dissertation, "Collection as a Cultural Technology," analyzed Shen Congwen's research on material culture in his later years.
In addition to the innovation of research perspectives and research methods, the addition of young scholars has also injected new strength into the overseas Shen Congwen research. Mark McConaghy, a University of Toronto-based doctoral thesis, "Writing the Countryside: Language, Subject, and Spirituality in the Countryside," analyzed the writing of "reason" and "king law" in The Long River. Andrew Kauffman, a 2020 doctoral student who graduated from Indiana University, analyzed the self-sacrifice triggered by Buddhist consciousness in Shen Congwen's novels in his dissertation", "Imagining and Questioning Martyrdom: Self-Sacrifice in Modern China." These are the new achievements of Shen Congwen's research overseas in the past three or four years, reflecting Shen Congwen's complex life experience and the lasting charm of his fruitful creative achievements. Through the interpretation and research of scholars, people's understanding of their own people and their works is deeper and more diverse.
Jin Jiefu believes that Shen Congwen's works have not been valued for a long time, and his literary reputation is largely promoted by overseas readers, and a large part of the readers come from the academy. Looking at the overseas dissemination history of Shen Congwen's works, it seems that it has also provided enlightenment for the dissemination of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, and the role of academic research in literary criticism, academic research and translation promotion can still not be ignored.