The work itself didn't bother Vince. She is proficient in Lithuanian and English and has been engaged in translation for nearly 30 years. As a poet, she found it difficult to match the rhythm and musicality of the original.
But this task is emotionally different from any task she has undertaken before. Recently, Vince told me on the phone in Lithuania that translating poetry requires "going deep into one's heart". In this case, it means entering the thoughts of Mathilda holguin, a Lithuanian Jewish woman aged 65,438+09. As Matthew Shore said in the Smithsonian Magazine published in 65,438+065,438+0, she was married with her family in 65,438+09,465,438+0.
"I tried to understand Matilda's spirit and her story," Vince said. "I will ask Mathilde,' What do you want me to say now?
Because holguin was killed by Lithuanians, Vince felt that her death marked betrayal. Vince was shocked by "thinking of this fragile, sensitive and beautiful soul and dying in such a cruel way". She went on to say, "Matilda thinks she is Jewish and Lithuanian, and she also feels betrayed by her own land.
That land is the land that fascinated Vince. She is the granddaughter of a Lithuanian diplomat. She was stationed in new york in 1936, and the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in 1940. After decades of war, she can't go home. Vince herself grew up in New Jersey, but her family kept in touch with her country of origin: she spoke Lithuanian at home, studied Lithuanian in a high school in Germany, and visited the small Baltic country for the first time at the age of 1983.
She returned on 1988 and stayed longer this time. She said, "I have an idea in my head. I want to experience life behind the iron curtain and see what life is like in the Soviet Union. " . Through a Gorbachev-era project, Vince studied literary translation at Vilnius University, where she participated in Lithuania's growing independence movement as a translator and translator. 1990 In March, this country became the first country to vote to leave the Soviet Union, although the Soviet Union did not recognize independence until September 199 1.
Participating in this movement was a decisive experience for Vince: she realized that her language skills could "make the silenced voice heard"
Since then, Vince has translated various Lithuanian works into English, and edited several anthologies, including Primitive Amber: Selected Works of Lithuanian Contemporary Poetry and Earth Relics: Selected Works of Lithuanian Contemporary Prose. Vince wrote a novel, a drama and several non-fiction books set in or related to China. From 2007 to 20 1 1, Fulbright Scholarship enabled Vince to visit all parts of Lithuania, interviewing mostly female survivors of the Holocaust or those sentenced to hard labor for resisting the Soviet Union. The project created an oral history called "Journey to the Heart Pool: Stories of Surviving Women of Hitler and Stalin". She said:
Nearly 30 years after leaving the Soviet Union, Lithuania is still recovering from decades of occupation, and Vince is still attracted to talk about the country's past in an "open dialogue" way. Although she is not a Jew herself, one of her concerns is how the country faces the lost Jewish heritage. About 95% of pre-war Jews were killed by Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators in the Holocaust. In some cases, Lithuanians incited violence against Jews before German occupation, which is a history of Lithuanian society. Last year, during his visit to Lithuania in June+10, 5438, Vince saw a new play "The Silent Muse" about the murder of the Olkins. She felt a direct connection with Mathilda: "Lithuanians, we speak the same language, and I understand her ideology, the hopeless cruelty of her time, and her endless hopes and beliefs in human nature." After returning to Beijing, Vince kept in touch with playwright Nilinga Tanning and decided to bring halkin's works to the audience in English-speaking countries for the first time. These works have never been translated. Last spring, after studying holguin's life and translating most of her works, Vince published an article about holguin and her poems on the website Deep in the Baltic Sea. When 19-year-old halkin was killed, her poems won a regional reputation to some extent and were published in various literary journals. Vince was shocked that the poet used her national and religious identity to promote her works. Vince said that several poems were influenced by Lithuanian traditional poems, which followed the structure and rhythm of folk songs and advocated spirituality in nature. In her works, holguin mentioned Lithuanian folk symbols, especially the Lithuanian sun goddess riding in the sky.
However, Vince also mentioned the Jewish allusion in holguin: she used black eyes to symbolize Jews; The star may refer to the star of David; A stone representing her faith and strength. In several poems, Vince also observed a recurring theme: deep-rooted national trauma. 1938, a poem entitled "My People" ominously concluded:
Oh, goodbye, goodbye.
We'll never come back.
Flowers will open in the morning.
Bloom in the morning
We'll never come back.
Vince interpreted these lines as a prediction that Jews would disappear from Lithuania. She said it seemed that holguin had a "profound understanding" of the tragedy that Jews were about to experience. Holguin's
This sentence is indeed prophetic: a country that was a vibrant Jewish community in the14th century has almost no Jews today. Vince believes that her work will contribute to greater efforts to restore the Jewish voice to the national canon and begin to honestly face Lithuania's past and its role in the Jewish Holocaust. She believes that holguin's poems are a way for young readers to "handle and understand the tragedy of the Holocaust".
In 20 16, holguin's poems were adopted by the Ministry of Education, and excerpts were included in a textbook of Lithuanian Institute of Literature and Folklore. Next year, the institute plans to publish Lithuanian and English translations of all Vince's holguin works.
"Matilda hopes to publish her poems in an impossible time," Vince said. "If I can realize this wish for her, I think it is a small matter. I can be a very talented and creative young woman, but I died young. "