Chapter 85 Section 1 Entering the World Literary World——English Translation of "Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature"

From many years of teaching life, I suddenly entered a government agency as a civil servant, as if I was exiled from a peaceful and comfortable dreamland.Even in the era when "career planning" was not talked about, it was a big break.Apart from practical considerations, there is only one definite comfort in my heart: I can really introduce Taiwanese literature to the Western world in English.I have always hoped that someone with expertise will do it, but now unexpectedly it is my turn to accept the challenge, and it is even more difficult to establish the ZTE Department of Foreign Languages.

When I first came to work at the National Institute of Compilation and Compilation on Zhoushan Road, Taipei, I became very vulnerable. I sat in the office with the hanging "Director's Office of the Humanities and Social Affairs Group". Sometimes people from Chung Hsing University came to visit the former Dean Director Wang Tianmin will also come to see me. After all, I have been there for 13 years! Even when someone I didn’t know well walks in, tears will fill my eyes, and I always have to work hard to prevent others from seeing me. tears.I miss the simple streets and alleys of Taichung, the friendly teachers and students in the spacious campus, the rice fields stretching from the front of the dormitory to the side of the mountain, when the wind blows, the waves of rice rise and fall like sea waves...

Facing a new living environment.The only way is to settle down and start learning about the new job. The first thing is to draw up an English translation plan, first of all to find a cooperator.Fortunately, Yu Guangzhong, a famous poet and Chinese-English translator, Wu Xizhen, a professor at Normal University, He Xin, a professor at National Chengchi University, and John J. Deeney, a professor at the Department of Foreign Languages ​​at National Taiwan University, were invited to form a five-member compilation team.Wu and He were the main editors of "Time and Tide" in Chongqing. Li Dasan was the first to study comparative literature among American professors. He also had in-depth research on Chinese literature and taught the history of English literature at National Taiwan University.They are all very interested in this English translation anthology project and are very happy to cooperate and contribute.

Since February 1973, the five of us met every Tuesday afternoon.First set the three fields of poetry, prose, and novels, and then select texts and translators.Long review discussions, countless reviews, until the final draft, nearly two years.Every word of each article is carefully considered and then decided.After countless afternoons of serious and harmonious discussions, I finally completed the final draft of the first edition of "An Anthology of Contemrpory Chinese Literature" (An Anthology of Contemrpory Chinese Literature), which was published by the University of Washington Press in Seattle in 1975.For European and American sinologists, this is the first English translation that provides a complete and substantial introduction to modern Chinese literature.Since they moved to Taiwan in 1949, Taiwanese literary writers have been able to continue the Chinese literary tradition outside the iron curtain of the mainland's political culture and create works worth reciting, which seems to have opened a window.

The works span the years from 1949 to 1974, and include modern poems, essays and short stories published in Taiwan, with about 700,000 words.In "Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature Preface", I explained the general situation of literature in the past twenty-five years: Since the recovery of Taiwan, due to the wisdom and diligence of the Chinese nation, the achievements in various fields have been recognized by the whole world under the eyes of the whole world.The post-World War II world was a world of deep trauma and pain. All kinds of ups and downs have deeply affected the thoughts and lifestyles of more than 10 million people in Taiwan.Our parting, nostalgia, setbacks, struggles, and achievements are inexhaustible themes for literary creation, enabling it to continuously expand its scope and deepen its connotations, and future generations who study Chinese history will make a fair judgment.The literature of the second half of the 20th century not only continued here, but also made the mainstream of Chinese literature more magnificent due to the ideological depth and technical efforts of Taiwanese writers in an open society.

In my opinion, there are many reasons for the vigorous development of literary creation in Taiwan, the most important of which is the popularization and improvement of education.Followed by a strong sense of cultural mission.Due to the impact of politics and economy, writers have a wider field of vision and deeper strokes, and have a more rational balance between literary ideals and real life.Another important driving force is the competition between newspaper supplements and literary magazines.Their demand for literary works is not only increasing in quantity, but also increasing in quality. The accumulated achievements over the past thirty years are naturally considerable.In addition to the various awards that the government has established for many years, the "United Daily News" and "China Times" Literary Awards and the Wu Sanlian Award have been established successively in the past eight years. The applicants are enthusiastic and the evaluation is open. They have established authority and even have a long-term impact on writing. Impact.Sixty years after the Republic of China, in the face of diplomatic adversity, Taiwan created an economic miracle through its own efforts, and was able to hold its own in the world.But in the international literary world, we are almost silent! Some people ridicule Taiwan as a cultural desert, but we have no way to defend ourselves! In fact, in the past 30 years, the literary world in mainland China has only protested against literature and obscure poems that have been attacked. , it can be said that the world is chilling; while Taiwan's literary creation, due to the diversity of themes and content forms, has a natural growth. Whether it is realistic or purely artistic works, it reflects a realistic life that does not put politics in command.

Since this set of anthologies is compiled for entering the world literary world, the principle of selecting manuscripts is slightly different from that of domestic anthologies.The themes and vocabulary of the works should be influenced as little as possible by the West, so as to present the ideological outlook of the Taiwanese people themselves.Excessive negativity and decadence are also not applicable, because they are not the main theme of Taiwan's struggle for many years.Due to space limitations, works with similar themes and styles should not be repeated as much as possible.The order of the works is arranged according to the age of the author. This arrangement, with very few exceptions, naturally divides the various stages of creative development during this period.

Among the three genres selected, modern poetry has the most stable development and the most remarkable achievements.The important poetry clubs formed by early poets include Modern School, Blue Star Society, Genesis, Li, Dragon Race, Dadi, Mainstream, etc. These poets wrote new poems with rich images and feelings of worrying about the country with extremely high talents, singing, debating, competing, They have become mutual encouragement and have jointly created a prosperous scene of Chinese new poetry: themes and techniques are in and out between Western poetry schools and Chinese traditions, and have had a huge impact so far.

Seems like a coincidence.Not long after I first arrived in Taiwan, I read Tan Zihao's "Golden Mask", one line: "Life is so pleasant, so distressed, so strange", this line of verse is unforgettable for me, and it has become my mood for decades.It is the first poem in the new anthology.Many of the poet's most famous poems have become famous lines that have been recited by everyone in the past fifty years, such as Ji Xian's "Wolf's Alone", Zhou Mengdie's "Resurrection Grass", Rongzi's "Lantern Festival", Luo Fu's "Death in the Stone Chamber", Yu Guangzhong's "Legend of Lotus" "Wait.The last two lines of Yang Huan's "Nostalgia": "Standing on the street of insanity / I don't know where to go", actually predicted that he would die under the wheel.Zheng Chouyu's famous sentence: "My Dada's horseshoe is a beautiful mistake / I am not a returnee, but a passerby".Yi Xian's "Andante Like a Cantabile" begins with "necessity of tenderness/necessity of affirmation", and "necessity" is still used to open the way for verbal maneuvers everywhere.Negative Hong's "White Bird is the Beginning" and "Water Stack" use the purest language to describe far-reaching situations.The youngest poet in the anthology is Yang Mu, who just gave up the pen name "Ye Shan" that has become popular among young people. He followed the path of a scholar, started from research, looked back at his hometown of Taiwan across the Pacific Ocean, and wrote more calm prose and " Ten collections of poems including "Coastal Seven Folds".

Although novels can explore established themes in a more complete and profound way, due to space and manpower limitations, no selection of novels can be translated.We first translate 25 short stories, hoping that short stories with different themes and covering a wide range can present Taiwan's kaleidoscopic era from more angles.The author of the first ten years, who had just encountered great changes in his family and country after crossing the sea and came to Taiwan, was still panting. His works were full of sorrow and nostalgia of parting, such as Lin Haiyin's "Golden Carp's Hundred Palm Skirt" and "Candle", Meng Yao (Yang Zongzhen) "The Way Back" ) and "Returning Wild Goose", Pan Renmu (Pan Fobin) "A Little World of Sorrow and Joy", Peng Ge's "Lataier", etc., use the stories of small people to describe the conflict between the old and new systems, the nostalgia for the hometown and the past, and the mood to accept reality resolutely, Of course, the sense of urgency deeply rooted in their era was different from that of their successors.Ten years later, a group of young writers who came to Taiwan with the army and strong pens like swords had a stronger nostalgia and enthusiasm for the country and country they had defended, such as Zhu Xining's "Dawn" and "Wolf", Sima Zhongyuan's "Red Silk Phoenix" and "Mountain", Duan Caihua's "Hua Diao Banquet", etc., describe the rural stories of the mainland with a heroic, shocking, and moving power.

Short stories such as Huang Chunming's "Son's Big Doll", Shi Shuqing's "Job's Descendants", and Lin Huaimin's "Farewell to the Hometown" were published in the early 1960s.It has opened up another style and realm for novel creation.They keenly observed the rapid changes in rural life in the province when tradition and industrialization collided, and the characters they created often seemed to have just come out of a machine room where the wheels were spinning.Immediately plunge into the traditional festival, or return to the narrow alleys of the ancient city, and pass by the slow years.These young writers born after the war calmly and objectively criticize the ancestral lifestyle, while expressing their nostalgia for their rural roots in their words.Another important feature of their works is the use of some Taiwanese dialects, which makes the scenery and dialogue more vivid and increases the sense of reality. As far as the editor-in-chief of a literary anthology is concerned, fiction is the most costly business, poetry requires talent, and prose is the most appropriate to the soul. It is still the mainstream of Taiwan's creation.At the time of compilation, Lin Yutang had just come to Taiwan from abroad to settle down, and Liang Shiqiu established his status as a master through "Elegant House Essays", and was a common figure in Taiwan's literary circle at that time.Their works are selected not only because of their fame, but because they really live among us.The literary talent of that generation, from Lin Yutang, Liang Shiqiu, and Qi Jun, to Yang Mu, Xiaofeng, etc. in the Mesozoic Era, to the youngest Hei Ye, the writing is refined and refined, and the content is appropriate to life and thoughts.Perhaps because it is the first large-scale English translation anthology, after publication, Washington University Press transferred 16 review articles, almost all of which were positive praise.The most gratifying thing for us is A. R. Crouch’s book review (ChinaNotes, Summer, 1976), in which there is a paragraph saying: “The translation is fluent and good English. The selected authors are all in the Republic of China in Taiwan. Some people may think that this is a shortcoming of being limited to one place (limitatiOn) , but these authors were not pressured by the government to write propaganda articles. This is their strength. Except for two or three poems on the National Revolution of 192 and the Vietnam War as themes, there are very few works expressing political consciousness in the anthology. It is a welcome relief (a Welcome relief) in marked contrast to the monotonous propaganda in current mainland Chinese literature.” For us non-native English translators, this review brings us extra joy (Special, delight)! In that era without computers, I was fortunate to have a reliable assistant, Secretary Zhuang Wanling.When I decided to go to the translation hall, I chose her among the first class of graduates from the Department of Foreign Languages ​​and Languages ​​of Chung Hsing University, because she is beautiful in writing, gentle in temperament, stable and pleasant.She helped me establish a good working relationship with my colleagues in the library through her employment as a secretary. I rely on her deeply both in work and in spirit.At that time, the serial comic "What is a Safety Bar?" was published one day: "A safety bar is what I say and what you listen to." I showed it to her, and the two looked at each other and smiled.She was my great comfort in dire circumstances.After the anthology was completed, she married and settled in the United States with her husband.Two years later, I myself resigned, and the vacant seat that she could not fill after she left made me miss the days when teachers and students worked together. The first year of compiling this anthology was really the happiest time in my five years at the National Institute of Compilation and Translation...With the guidance and support of Director Wang, I can handle the routine work of the Humanities and Social Affairs Group stably.My thoughts and mind can be fully used in the anthology, large and small, and I am especially happy to have direct and peer-to-peer dialogues with authors, translators, and editors.The content and style of the work, the precise scrutiny of the text, and the layout of the whole book are all carefully considered by the five-person team, so that their own evaluation and selection of literary works have reached the level of thinking they deserve.Thirty years later, I reread the English translation anthology that I poured my heart and soul into, and I feel that I have no regrets.If I hadn't been "exiled" here back then, I might not have been able to fulfill my long-cherished wish to teach on campus!