Undoubtedly, Lin Shu was the first person to introduce western modern literature. Zheng Zhenduo (1924.5438+01.1) wrote: "On the one hand, I am naturally very grateful to Mr. Lin Qinnan, because he introduced many important world masterpieces to us, but on the other hand, it is a pity that most of his work was wasted. Only these 60 or 70 kinds are famous, among which there are 27 kinds of second-class novels by Haggard and Conan Doyle, so among these 156 kinds, only one-third are important works, and the others are second-and third-rate works, so there is no need to translate them. " [1] From the perspective of literary history, Zheng Zhenduo's immortal masterpieces include works by Aesop, Shakespeare, Defoe, Fielding, Swift, Scott, Lamb, Dickens, Owen, Montesquieu, Dumas, Balzac, Hugo, Ibsen, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Dev Kenjiro and so on. Hu Shi's "Fifty Years of China Literature" wrote: "Lin Shu's experiment in translating novels with ancient Chinese has finally achieved great results. Classical Chinese has never written a novel. Lin Shu translated 100 kinds of classical Chinese novels, which made many people who studied from him translate many classical Chinese novels. There is nothing funny about ancient Chinese. Lin Shu has actually translated the works of Owen and Dickens into ancient Chinese. Ancient prose is not long enough to write about love. Lin Shu actually translated La Traviata and Jia Yin Biography in ancient Chinese. Since Sima Qian, the application of ancient prose has never been so great. " [2] Lu Xun admitted that the foreign novels translated by Lin Shu in ancient Chinese were really good and very popular; Lu Xun also pointed out that Lin Shu translated "well-known" novels, such as Scott, Dickens, Defoe, Swift, Irving, Telford Lu Hua, Don Quixote by Cervantes and Genganger by Ibsen. Hu Shi, Lu Xun and Zheng Zhenduo all have different names for Lin Shu's translations, and their translations generally have different connotations. They all unanimously denied Haggard and Conan Doyle. [3] Perhaps, I don't need to list here the great differences in the requirement of 1925 Beijing Daily Supplement that "young people must study".
Yilin's Translation of Classic Works
The translated names of overseas masterpieces and translated masterpieces are two concepts that are easily entangled and confused. The concept of a literary masterpiece has been haunting the New School of Literature, but Lin Shu has different views on it, and the Commercial Press is more inclined to the current popular bestseller. Lin Shu's translation experience can be divided into three periods: the late Qing Dynasty (1898- 19 12), the early Republic of China (1912-1965438) and the period of innovation (/). Lin Shu's rich experience in translating western literature (mainly novels) has established his own view of famous works, which is mainly based on the analogy and adaptation of China's view of classical poetry and prose. Lin Shu's "Biography of Saxon Heroes" wrote: "Western languages have existed since ancient times. I knew Dumas and his son in France, and in England and China, but Mr. Hager's and Mr. Shi Si's books are particularly different in painting. Despite the differences between Chinese and Western languages, I can't get what I want even though I want to be private. " For these western masterpieces, Lin Shu's thoughts are often stained with the moralization of China's classics. The Legacy of La Traviata in Paris translated by Lin Shu and Wang Shouchang can be classified as a literary masterpiece, while the Biography of Lv Shulan by Lin Shu wrote: "I once translated the Legacy of La Traviata and cried three times, thinking that women in the world are more temperamental than literati, and those literati must be Pang Long and." The matter is fierce, that is, the matter of Long and Bi is the matter of Jie Li and Zhou. If Valerie and Zhou killed the dragon, Bi and Long, and Bi didn't regret it, then Yameng killed Kyle, did Kyle regret it? So I said: the world will be like a dragon, and competitors are enough to compete for the bid. I also think that although the temperament of women in the world is not as good as that of Mark, there are very few people who oppose Mark. "It should be said that Lin Shu's conservative view of famous works has deviated from the standard of literary history and is far from the cognitive model of western literature. Lin Shu abides by the concept of China's classical poetry and carefully maintains the boundary of China's traditional literature.
From the perspective of genealogy, literary masterpieces must contain a relatively common reading group in time and region. Lin's above-mentioned translations were first of all best-selling works in the late Qing Dynasty. Undoubtedly, Lin Shu's translation of ancient Chinese prose has considerable value and artistic power, and both translators and readers regard it as a serious work, although it deviates from the standard of Europeanization of literary history. 1929-37 Universal Library, Commercial Press, collected six famous works, including Legacy of La Traviata, A Piece of Meat for the Rest of My Life, Introduction to Saxon Heroes after Robbery, Robinson Crusoe and Legend of Chivalrous Men. So after the final victory of new literature, some western classical Chinese novels translated by Lin Shu established the status of China's modern masterpieces.
English poets translated by Lin Shu and Wei Yi include Frontier Chat (1904), History of Thieves (1905), Zhang Zhangji (1907) and The Story of a Piece of Meat for the Rest of My Life (1908). More importantly, these "translated novels by Lin" have been generally accepted and won more favorable comments. It is worth pointing out that misty rain on the salt side and Zhang Zhanglu are prose works, not novels. Scott's historical novel Ivanhoe occupies an important position in the history of English literature. Zhou Zuoren's Lu Xun and the Literary World in the Late Qing Dynasty wrote: "La Traviata translated well, but what we admired after reading it was actually the Biography of Saxon Heroes, which was originally a masterpiece and translated very hard, and said that it implied the confrontation between Saxon adherents and Normans at that time, so [4] Lin Shu wrote in" Introduction to Heroes after Saxon Robbery ":"When it comes to English writers, Gu Si's words are wonderful and I can't understand them. " Then, Lin Shu listed four categories and eight remarkable features of A Brief Introduction to Saxon Heroes after the Robbery, especially the beauty of narrative art (such as foreshadowing, bamboo shoots, tone sandhi and pulse crossing): first, the clever weaving of characters, time and plot in narrative; Second, the character's language behavior properly shows his identity; Third, the characters are diversified and have their own changes; Fourth, suspense techniques (that is, literary fantasy). [5] Lin Shu did not ignore the reading tendency and special sense of time in the late Qing Dynasty, and borrowed the irony consciousness of translated novels, similar to what Zhou Zuoren said. For example, in the first chapter of A Dialogue between Goss and Wang Ba, Lin Shu extended words such as "subjugating the country", "being a slave" and "winning the country and staying old", which highlighted the deep anxiety and sadness about the fate of the nation/country, which was a common ideology in the late Qing Dynasty.