Quan Yongxian regarded translating Yin Dongzhu's poetry as the proudest thing in his writing career. After the may 1st release of Zhang Yimou's film "On the Cliff", the Korean writer was rediscovered by more and more audiences and readers - he won the Best Screenwriter Award for the TV series "Cliff" written by Zhang Yimou, and was selected by director Zhang Yimou to write the film script "On the Cliff", and with the explosion of the film, many of his early novels were noticed by readers.
Before a poetry reading party began, we held an interview in a café next to the theater, and 55-year-old Quan Yongxian sat silently in the corner, looking at the poetry collection "The Night of Counting the Stars: Yin Dongzhu's Poems" translated by him and his sister Quan Minglan. As we begin to talk about poetry and creation begin to gush endlessly, a glint of enthusiasm shines in our eyes. Quan Yongxian liked poetry and also revered poets. In his eyes, poets are kind, compassionate and sincere, and the beauty of poetry is unparalleled. When he was first struck by the poetry of the Korean poet Yoon Dong-joo, he was also surprised by the great poet who was a household name on the Korean Peninsula, who was born in China and buried in China after his death, but was buried and forgotten in this part of China. This was a pity, and Quan Yong felt that he should do something first. Although Quan Yongxian was korean, he had not systematically learned Korean at a Korean school, and his Korean was "stumbling", and he still decided to take his sister to translate Yoon Dong-joo's poetry collection. "What gave me the courage to translate such a poem?" He asked himself.
Yin Dongzhu
Died in human experimentation by the Japanese army
Let's go, let's go
Leave like a man who has been driven out and banished
Hide my white bones
Go to another wonderful hometown
- Yin Dongzhu, "Another Hometown"
Translated by Quan Yongxian and Quan Minglan
"In the early winter of 2020, on a warm afternoon, the sun shone on the mountains and rivers of northern China, shining on everyone. I wondered, what kind of person is Yin Dongzhu who is buried in the tomb, and what kind of soul can write such a moving poem? Quan Yong said first.
In 1995, Chun Yong-hyun's novella "White Sun and Red Sun" won the Changbaishan Literature Prize, and when he went to the magazine to receive the award, he took a North Korean version of the magazine. His mother picked up the magazine and told him about a poet named Yin Dongzhu, who died in a Japanese prison at the age of 27, "My mother said that his poems were very good, and I said, Mom, you can read a few poems to me." ”
Yin Dongzhu was born on December 30, 1917 in Mingdong Village, Yanbian and Longxian County, Jilin Province, China (now Mingdong Village, Zhixin Town, Longjing City), and showed a talent for poetry from an early age. In 1938, he was admitted to the Faculty of Liberal Arts of The Seoul Yeonsei SeoncheOn, and after graduation, he had to study in Japan in 1942 under the name of "Hiranuma Higashijuku", and successively entered Tokyo Rikyo University and Kyoto Doshisha University. In 1943, he was arrested and imprisoned by Japanese police on suspicion of discussing the "independence movement" and imprisoned at Fukuoka Prison in Kyushu, where he was brutally experimented with human beings and died on February 16, 1945, at the age of 27.
His mother read some verses to him, from Yoon Dong-joo's poem "Another Hometown", which attracted him with the full emotion and simple verses characteristic of Korean, and Quan Yongxian was greatly shocked, "It is hard to imagine that in that terrible era, there was such a great poet."
In Quan Yongxian's translation of Yin Dongzhu's poetry collection "The Night of Counting stars", only one sentence is used to describe this young but extremely talented poet: Yin Dongzhu is a poet who is extremely pure, beautiful and sincere, his poetry is restrained and implicitly passionate, naïve and profound, humble and full of personality, which is closely related to the era in which he lived. "At that time, two parts of the North Koreans immigrated to China, some were poor and poor people, and some people were actually not poor, they just couldn't live in the oppressive environment where North Korea fell, such as Yoon Dong-joo." Quan Yongxian said that after the signing of the "Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty" in 1910, the Korean Peninsula had become part of Japanese colonial rule, and at that time, northeast China had not yet been occupied by the Japanese army, the environment was relatively relaxed, and many intellectuals came to China, and Yin Dongzhu was born at that time. Quan Yongxian told this writer that the Yoon Dong-joo family is an intellectual family, and his uncle runs a school, which has trained many famous people, the first generation of North Korean pilots, the first generation of film directors, many of whom graduated from that school, and Yin Dongzhu is a classmate. Quan Yong first visited Yanbian Longjing many times, and many ruins indicate that the town was a very cosmopolitan town at that time. When Quan Yong first visited Yin Dongzhu's former residence, he found that the courtyard was very large, which showed that his family conditions were very good.
Yin Dongzhu's poetry echoes his experience—he was born in China and died in Japan. He was far away from his homeland, lost his surname, but took the pen as a go, and in his short life of 27 years, he wrote in the language of his own nation, with the simplest words, as the most cruel era testimony. Quan Yongxian said that when Yoon Dong-joo was arrested by the Japanese, he was about to go home, and the tickets had been bought: "He was convicted just because he participated in the discussion of the Korean independence movement, and fukuoka Criminal, Japan, sentenced him to two years in prison in the name of violating the public security law." The Japanese fascists became even more mad when they faced the final collapse, and did many cruel live experiments, injecting them with some unknown liquids. ”
"The rusty bronze mirrors, the wild hillsides where his name is buried, the streets without house numbers, the rainy nights in foreign countries and the parting platforms... The poetry in these minds is so specific that it makes me feel as if I have been in a time when I did not live. Quan Yongxian seemed to be able to understand why a poet who had suffered such a misfortune could write a verse such as "Hold your hand and know that they are all good people, all are good people." Yin Dongzhu did not fall into the previous mode of poetry creation, his poems are different from the previous "small love minor key" to write about the farewell of men and women, his poems directly hit life, full of emotion, but also full of deep meaning.
All brave first
Can't accept "translation cavity"
Nothing to fit
That worries me
Empty pockets
In the winter, it bulges
It's two of me
Clenched fists
- Yin Dongzhu in "The Pocket"
Quan Yongxian was born in Jiamusi City, Heilongjiang, and when he was 5 years old, he went to live in his grandmother's house in rural North Korea for more than half a year. Most of the people in Chosuntun didn't know Chinese, including The elders of Jeon Yong-hyun. There he learned basic daily conversations in Korean, "though short, but impressive, half a native speaker." Jeon Yong-hyun's grandmother and grandmother did not speak Chinese all their lives, and Korean was the language he communicated with his loved ones. After that, Quan Yong first returned to Jiamusi to attend primary and secondary schools, and after working, he served as the director of the reporter department of the "Sanjiang Evening News" and wrote novels at the same time, and in 2001 he quit his media job and went to Beijing alone, all of which were devoted to creation. Although he says his Korean language is only at the level of a five-year-old preschooler. But he can understand the Korean way of thinking. This feeling is very subtle, very different from the feeling of learning a foreign language the day after tomorrow, this imprint that goes deep into the bone marrow and the innate cultural feeling does not need to be translated, he watches Korean movies, listens to Korean language completely "does not need to react to the process, does not need to be translated in the brain first, because I can think in Korean."
Korean is a pinyin script, can read the basic can write, the difference between spoken and written language is very small, which is very different from the Chinese, the difference between Chinese spoken and written language is very large, so the most difficult place when Quan Yongxian translates is the fear of translating "the difference between language and language leads to the loss of poetic beauty". Korean has its own unique sense of language, rhythm and rhythm. Many of Yoon Dong-joo's poems are very vivid, rich, depressing, and emotional when they are read in Korean, but some of the children's poems lose a lot of charm when translated into Chinese. Quan Yong first gave an example, the Korean word "why" pronunciation is the same as wokou's "倭", Yoon Dong-joo wrote in a poem "Why rice cake is bitter", but also a pun on "Wokou's rice cake is bitter", so cleverly using homophones to express antipathy to Japanese fascism, such a sentence is difficult to translate. The poem "The Night of Counting the Stars" contains 91 poems and 4 essays, which is not all of Yin Dongzhu's works, and for those that cannot be translated perfectly, Quan Yong first gave up and did not include them in the book.
Quan Yong first asked his sister Quan Minglan to read the verse to him in Korean first, and after he finished listening, the two of them discussed how to translate the charm of the poem in Chinese. "Reading is very important. Yin Dongzhu's poetry is simple and clear, straightforward and lyrical, without overly complex imagery, but it can directly impact people's emotions. Quan Yong said first, but often the more simple the verse, the more difficult it is to translate: "This means that you have to find the soul of his verses, take away what you can't translate, and don't be distressed, because what can't be translated is caused by language differences." He does not accept the "translation cavity" in many translated works, because the person who translates poetry is first and foremost the person who understands poetry, even the person who writes poetry, because "translation" is never just "translation".
Yin Dongzhu himself has a deep understanding of language, he mastered Five languages of Chinese, Korean, English, Japanese, and French, his poetry is also greatly influenced by Western poetry, and he cleverly combines the poetic expression of the East and the West with the emotional and vivid combination of Korean: "Where is the high level of his poetry, he has the shadow of Western poetry like Rilke, Kide, and Yam, but he does not have the kind of artificiality and rigidity generated by deliberate imitation, he wrote "Life and Death" at the age of 17, I still think, How did a 17-year-old boy write such a verse? Many poets at the age of 71 could not write such poems. ”
Why don't contemporary people read poetry?
It is said that life is not easy
Writing a poem can be so easy
What a shameful thing to do
- Yin Dongzhu, "Easy to Write Poems"
Yin Dongzhu's environment was very oppressive, unable to express his thoughts freely, and Japan's reign of terror filled the people of the fallen land with fear and resentment. Quan Yongxian once mentioned in an interview that many of his works are records of the pseudo-Manchukuo period, and many of his works such as "Hate in the Northeast", "Sister", "Single Man", and "Showa Eighteen Years" are written about the past of the Northeast during the War of Resistance Against Japan. That history seemed to have been forgotten by history, and few people talked about it, but the more it happened, the more he wanted to write it out. In the interview, Quan Yongxian also mentioned the anti-Japanese leagues, ethnographers and those who were unwilling to bow to fascism during the fall of Northeast China. When Quan Yongxian was a child, he had the experience of being fostered to the home of his grandmother in Tun, North Korea, and he was familiar with the scenes of The Life of koreans written by Yoon Dong-joo, including the customs and customs of the land. "Everyone was unhappy in the era when Yin Dongzhu lived, but Yin Dongzhu was not pessimistic, not a depressed and depressed person like Dazaiji, who was bent on death. Although his poems prematurely appeared confused and contemplative about life and death, they also exuded a lonely and sad temperament. But he is still positive and loves to learn. In this poem of his, there are very playful things about teenagers who don't care. "Quan Yong first said that goodness and beauty are the forces that transcend the complex world," his poems say, without anger, but with calm goodwill. He has never even been in love in his life, and the 'shun' written in his poems is a general term for young women, not a specific girl, which also shows that he is not a person who is brave enough to pursue feelings. ”
"He was a genius, a man of poetry at heart." Quan Yongxian said that when Yin Dongzhu saw a piece of drying clothes, he would feel that the clothes were "whispering in the breeze" — the most important thing for a poet. Quan Yongxian seems that Yin Dongzhu is a quiet and shy child, very fond of crying, seeing kittens, puppies and rabbits dead are sad to cry, the children gave him the nickname "Crying Bajing", but it is precisely because of his sensitivity and kindness, he will see anything in his heart will be flooded. If one sees that everything inside is numb and the nerves are large, then the details of life will not be captured. The poet is the person who looks up at the starry sky, and Yin Dongzhu is such a person who is deep in the mud but looks up at the starry sky. Quan Yong first chose "The Night of Counting Stars" as the title of the book among more than ninety poems, which must also be the poem that best represents the poet's heart: "But the stars inscribed in the heart, why are they still unclear."
Quan Yongxian seems to see that in the current life, people's pursuit of material things makes people immersed in specific troubles, and the busyness of work makes many people think about how to repay the mortgage and how to do with their children's schooling, which will consume people's poetry. Writing a poem seems too far away and useless. How many people still like poetry? When he went to some publishing houses with translations of his poetry collections, all he received was a tactful refusal. He understood that it was difficult to publish a book of poetry now, many poetry collections were printed in only one or two thousand copies, most of the poetry collections were even published at their own expense, sent to relatives and friends for collection, and few were able to enter the book market and be well known to the public. At first, this collection of poems ran into walls, and there was no hope of publication, and Quan Yongxian was ready to publish it at his own expense.
"Poetry is destined to be niche, but why do I still insist on translating this collection of poems?" It seems like a thankless task. But I think that such a good poem is destined to be recognized, even if no one pays attention to it now, one day, it will be discovered and spread. The name of the buried genius poet will also be revived. The beauty of his poetry will nourish the hearts of future generations. All his sincerity, beauty and kindness to this world will be passed on and continued by people of different nationalities and different languages. This is a source of confidence for me and my sister. Quan Yong said first.
(Original title: Quan Yongxian: The Poet's Star)
Source: Beijing Evening News
Author: Chen Mengxi
Process Edit: L020
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