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Chinese Literature: essays, articles, reviews (CLEAR)

Review
Author(s): Kirk A. Denton
Review by: Kirk A. Denton
Source: Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), Vol. 15 (Dec., 1993), pp. 174-176
Published by: Chinese Literature: essays, articles, reviews (CLEAR)
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174 ChineseLiterature:
Essays,Articles,Reviews15 (1993)
Lu Xun, Diary of a Madman and Other Stories, trans. William Lyell. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1990. Pp. 389. $40.00; $18.95 (paper).

The long-time translator of modem Chinese fiction, W.J.F. Jenner, has assigned
partial responsibility for the general disinterest of the West in modem Chinese
literature to the deplorable state of translation in the field. Translations of modem
Chinese literature have suffered, writes Jenner, from a 'tyranny of literalism' which
renders the original Chinese into a stilted and unwieldy prose bearing little resem-
blance to a literary English of any discernible style. Jenner wonders how we who
teach and write about these texts can expect modem Chinese literature to be accepted
by the general Western reader when such weak translations are the rule.' This
polemical assessment of the state of translation in the field is most welcome. Yet even
with good translation, Jenner, like C.T. Hsia before him, is pessimistic about the
appeal of much of modem Chinese literature, so burdened with the parochial
concerns of China's historical specificity, to a Western audience reared on the
aesthetics of modernism. This burden is heaviest in the early stories of modem
China's recognized master, Lu Xun, and Jenner sees no imperative to shove them
down the throats of a grudging audience. But if modem Chinese literature is to
expand meaningfully, rather than simply be swallowed up into, the canon of world
literature, it must do so with Lu Xun. In this light, the recent publication of William
Lyell's translations of Lu Xun's short stories is charged with great significance for the
fate of modem Chinese literature in the West.
The twenty-seven short stories which comprise this volume were written, with
one exception, between 1918 and 1925 and correspond with the very inception of
Chinese literary modernity. Their sophisticated blending of cultural iconoclasm,
profound social and moral inquiry, and incisive self-introspection have made this
handful of stories stand high above the relative mediocrity of modem Chinese litera-
ture. Lu Xun's stories are, as Mao Dun first noted, also novel experiments in style
and technique, in many ways prototypes for various fictional genres which evolved
throughout the modem period. Lu Xun is the quintessence of modem Chinese litera-
ture and a new translation of his stories for an American readership indifferent to the
texts of modem China necessarily carries with it the heavy burden of the cross-
cultural project.
Another translation of these stories is clearly justified. Readers of Yang Xianyi
and Gladys Yang's translations have long lamented the stiff and formal feel of the
language. The British renderings of their translations have, moreover, further
alienated American readers from an already foreign text. Lyell's use of a highly
Americanized English marks an important tactic in making these stories more acces-
sible to the North American reader. As George Steiner suggests, translation is the
essence of the hermeneutic act for it seeks common ground for the fusion of cultur-
ally and historically disparate horizons. The dilemma of the translator is to make the
foreign text familiar and palpable, by enveloping it in a recognizable language and
style, without destroying within the text what is culturally 'other." That the transla-
tor can fully recreate the reading experience of readers in the original language is of
course illusory, but this does not mean that the ideal should b abandoned. Some
1
W.J.F. Jenner, "Insuperable Barriers? Some Thoughts on the Reception of Chinese Writing in English
Translation," in Howard Goldblatt, ed., Worlds Apart: Recent Chinese Writing and its Audience (Armonk,
N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1990), pp. 177-97.

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BOOK REVIEWS 175

translations come closer to it than others. The Yangs' translations are generally
admired for their precision and fluidity. But Lyell attempts to go a step deeper in his
translation, to creatively reproduce Lu Xun's style with English literary equivalents,
willing to risk the loss of literalness in the process.
Most outstanding among Lyell's efforts in this regard is the meticulous care he
takes in rendering the many layers of classical and colloquial diction which character-
ize Lu Xun's writing. While the reader of Yang's version of the Diary of a Madman,
for example, has little or no idea that the story's brief introduction is written in a
classical language and the diary proper is highly colloquial, Lyell makes use of an
elevated Victorian diction for the former and a vulgar conversational American
English for the latter, thereby recreating the stark contrast of languages wherein lies
much of the ideological meaning of the story. To use the language of 'cart pullers
and street hawkers' for a high genre like the diary was jarring and novel to the elite
reading public of May Fourth China, and Lyell is able to translate some of this effect.
Lu Xun's stories jump around through a wide register of dictions (from parody
of classical language to street vernacular) and styles (satire, lyricism, irony); Lyell
tries valiantly to capture them. Typical is an example from 'Kong Yiji,' who "always
larded whatever he had to say with lo, forsooth, verily, nay" (43). In 'Village Opera'
the narrator reflects: "That village was my paradise: not only was I treated as a privi-
leged character, but-better yet-while I was there, I wasn't forced to read all that
percolate,percolatethe rill/Distant,distantlieth the hill stuff" (206). The Yangs obviate
the difficult problem of rendering this classical citation by translating it as "but here I
could skip reading the Book of Songs." Lyell's rendering feels much closer to the
original.
Lyell's decision to put three of Lu Xun's stories in the present tense is a stroke of
genius. Critics have commented on the cinematographic quality of these stories
('Medicine,' 'A Warning to the People,' and 'The Eternal Lamp') and the present
tense captures this quality beautifully and reinforces the 'ironic detachment' of their
narrators. This is especially true of 'A Warning to the People," which is a rather
hollow story in the Yangs' version, but which comes alive in the present tense with a
kind of 'disorienting' feel central to the story's meaning.'
Though for the most part faithful to his stated aim of recreating the 'experience'
of the Chinese reader (xl), Lyell's inclusion of copious footnotes tends to undermine
that aim. Indeed, they fill in valuable information which the native reader brings to
his/her reading experience, but footnotes also radically change that experience. The
notes divert the reader's attention away from the text and disrupt the flow of the
reading process. They give these literary texts a scholarly aura. Whether or not to
supplement a text with external information assumed by the native reader is a peren-
nial translation problem and one with important repercussions for the reception of
foreign texts by the Western reader. Not enough information and the reader is baf-
fled; too much information and a literary text is transformed into a socio-historical
document. Lyell obviously does not feel these stories can stand on their own, and he
may not be wrong. Still, would it not have been possible, in some cases, to incorpo-
rate the information smoothly into the body of the translation without having to rely

'See Patrick Hanan, "The Technique of Lu Hsiin's Fiction," HarvardJournalof Asiatic Studies 34 (1974),
p. 89; and Marston Anderson, The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1990), p. 80.

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176 ChineseLiterature:
Essays,Articles,Reviews15 (1993)
on the footnote? At the very least, notes could have been put in the back of the vol-
ume in order to reduce the reader's temptation to seek help outside the text.
By the standards of the field, Lyell's translation may be described as liberal, but
in fact he rarely departs very far from the original. Curiously, though, Lyell omits
the final line of the classical preface to Diary of a Madmanwhich in the Yangs' transla-
tion reads: "As for the title, it was chosen by the diarist himself after his recovery, and
I did not change it." To leave out any sentence in a translation of such well crafted
and concise stories is regrettable, but this particular sentence is crucial to understand-
ing the double irony of the story: the madman, ironic seer of truth in a world of bar-
barism and deceit, joins the insanely oppressive society and in his recovery
recognizes his former madness.
Good translation is a very difficult and painstaking art, one that is not received
with much appreciation in North America. Lyell does it with the kind of care and
feel for language that is lacking in much English translation of modem Chinese fic-
tion. As a whole, these translations of two of the most important collections of stories
from twentieth-century China take a huge step away from the literalism that has
plagued translations in our field. These are really wonderful translations that will
help to bring the joys of Lu Xun to a broader audience. It is a pity that this book was
not published by a commercial press, which would make it more readily accessible to
just such an audience.

Kirk A. Denton
The Ohio State University

TheMoonand the Zither:TheStoryof the WesternWingby WangShifu.Trans.Stephen


H. West and Wilt L. Idema. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California
Press, 1991. xiv + 516 pp. 80 illustrations. $34.95.

At long last, and how astonishingly overdue for the non-Sinologue's understand-
ing of China, we have an attractively published and faithful English translation of the
most famous of all of the dramas from a society that for centuries has been permeated
with theatre at all levels of it. By far the most celebrated of all Chinese plays, and by
far the most banned, it was named by Jin Shengtan (1610-1661), China's outstanding
literary critic, as one of his Six Books Of Genius. Attributed to Wang Shifu, a play-
wright of the thirteenth and perhaps early fourteenth century A.D., this could be a
work or considerable expansion of the mid-or late fourteenth century or even the
fifteenth century. It has spawned a great number of other plays, films, stories, poems
and allusions. Its effect on Chinese life and attitudes has been incalculably great, and
there are signs that it may be in for a renewed surge of influence both East and West.
How slow the civilisations are to really communicate!
There may be other barriers to understanding than those of translation, though.
The reason for the play's popularity and for its banning have been identical to each
other: It portrays romantic free-choice in the matter of Love. To fully understand the
impact of this in Chinese society, one needs to read oneself into the sacrosanct and
awesomely powerful control that the traditional family exerted over the lives of its

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