Transformation of Yuri Kazakov's Prose translated by Fei Qin into Chinese

Lyu Yun' Ph. D. Student, Department of the History of Modern Russian Literature and Contemporary Literary Process Faculty of Philology, Lomonosov Moscow State University 119421, Россия, Moscow region, Moscow, Leninskie Gory str., 1 liuyun0209@gmail.com

 The impressions of Chinese readers from Russian literature, of course, are determined by the translations, their quality and the very fact of their existence.

Yuri Kazakov's prose was translated into Chinese by Fei Qin (who was born in the same year 1927 as the Russian writer).

Russian Russian literature, both classical and Soviet, dominated the Chinese literary scene. Fei Qin grew up in a period when Russian literature, both classical and Soviet, dominated the Chinese literary scene. Russian Russian began his career as a translator in the 1950s, when he studied at Shanghai Russian College (1953-1955), but he began to study Russian even earlier, independently, listening to the radio (Fei Qin himself told about this in his autobiography "" ("Trace", ^[11]).

The first translation made by Fei Qin was published in 1955, it is a translation of K. G. Paustovsky's "Night Stagecoach", written in the same year. The works of Paustovsky, who began writing back in the 1930s, and in Russia itself attracted readers' attention precisely during the thaw: in the 1950s-1960s, Paustovsky's prose "returns" - in the format of a six-volume (1958), and then an eight-volume collection of works (1967). The enthusiasm with which the Chinese reader meets Paustovsky's prose, the activities of some other — besides Fei Qin — translators of Paustovsky into Chinese have already been noticed by researchers, see: ^[8].

Fei Qin repeatedly turned to Paustovsky's lyrical prose later; note that most of the translations made by Fei Qin were published after 1979, when the publication of translations of foreign works was no longer subject to such strong political pressure as during the Cultural Revolution. Fei Qin translated "The Flight of Time" (1985), "The Tale of Life" (translated in 1985-1987, published in 2001), "Bulgakov and the Theater" (1993), "The Crowd on the Embankment" (1997). Fei Qin said that he especially loves Paustovsky for his ability to notice the beauty of the moment and the special power of emotional impact: "There are no exciting stories or mystical plots in Paustovsky's works. However, to anyone who has read his works, it seems that something is lingering in his heart, which is why it cannot calm down for a long time" (our translation. — L. Yu.) ^{[11, p. 139]}.

The love for Paustovsky's work also explains the attention with which Fei Qin later reads and translates the lyrical prose created by Paustovsky's predecessors and his older contemporaries: in 1994, his translation of Turgenev's "Noble Nest" was published (for more details, see: ^[7]), in the early 1980s, the translation of "The Eye of the Earth" was published" Prishvina.

Looking ahead somewhat, we note here that Fei Qin considered Kazakov's artistic world to be close to Turgenev's work: "Kazakov's works <...> give the reader an impression of goodwill towards the world, similar to that left by Turgenev's prose" (^{[10, p. 263]}, our translation. — L. Yu.). (Many Russian interpreters of Kazakov's prose think the same way; see, for example: ^[1]). For example, Kazakov's story "Night" reminds Fei Qin of "Forest and Steppe" from "Notes of a Hunter".

Paustovsky considered Yu. P. Kazakov to be one of the most interesting writers of the next generation (although Kazakov himself, it is necessary to clarify, did not feel this kinship and said: "I was not a student of Paustovsky in the truest sense of the word, that is, I did not study at his seminar at the Literary Institute, and, in my opinion, I am not close to him. But he talked about me so often with correspondents and writers from different countries that in many articles Paustovsky was called my teacher" ^{[6, p. 293]}). Apparently, Fei Qin also comes to Kazakov through Paustovsky.

The first appeal of Chinese translators to the work of Kazakov occurs, as far as we know, in 1987, when a translation of the story "In a dream you cried bitterly", performed by Wei Xuan, was published in the newspaper "Soviet Literature" (". .....").

In 1990-1991, the literary publishing house "Baihua" is preparing for publication a collection of Kazakov's short stories translated by Fei Qin, published in 1992. The translation of the essay "Song to Man and Nature", apparently the most beloved by the translator or the most successfully transmitted in Chinese in the same 1992 was reprinted in the newspaper "Yilin".

Unfortunately, we could not specify in which years Fei Qin worked on the translation of Kazakov (in the biography of Fei Qin mentioned above, he himself wrote only a part relating to his early youth, before entering Shanghai College, his wife, Li Qingyun, tells about his later life).

It is known that Kazakov's texts were selected for translation by Fei Qin himself: eight stories were translated ("Night", "Quiet Morning", "Teddy", "Autumn in Oak Forests", "Two in December", "Candle", "In a dream you cried bitterly" and "Long Screams") and six articles and lyrical essays ("A Song to man and Nature", "About Lermontov", "About Vladimir Soloukhin", "Villa Belvedere", "Let's Go to Lopshenga" and "F. Polenov and his stories") (In this list there is not, as you can see, one of the most famous stories of Kazakov, "Blue and Green"; in the same 1992, in which Kazakov's collection in Chinese is published, a translation of "Blue and Green", made by Bai Sihun and included in "An anthology of foreign lyrical prose" ("")).

Fei Qin's translations are accompanied by an afterword by the translator. Fei Qin talked about the life of Kazakov, analyzing his works. Kazakov's manner is compared with the manner of classical authors (Bunin, Turgenev, Prishvin); Fei Qin concludes that Kazakov's work is rooted in the Russian literary tradition, primarily because Kazakov raises ethical problems and speaks about the meaning of human life. The genre nature of the works is discussed; the translator notes that the event series is not too important for Kazakov's stories. The definition of Kazakov's prose as lyrical is significant.

The book of translations of Kazakov's works into Chinese in 2018 was republished under the new title "Autumn in Oak Forests", in honor of the famous lyrical story, the translation of which is also present in the collection (^[9]; note that the same name is also the lifetime collection of Kazakov, published in 1969).

Let us analyze in detail, as an illustrative case, the translation of the early story "Night" (1955). In his afterword, Fei Qin speaks separately about the "Night", finding it in common with Turgenev's "Forest and Steppe". For us, this story is especially important because it shows especially directly the significance of music for Kazakov, reflected both in the themes and in the style of his prose. The night is not only the time of the action of the story, but also the theme of the song Seeds. Semyon heard the sounds of nature and wanted to turn them into human music: "I have a dream... To compose one thing to portray such a night... I'm lying by the campfire at night, and now it's playing in my ears, and I'm imagining it" ^{[5, p. 29]}. Music is presented here as a form of harmonious fusion of nature and man, and the harmony of nature and man is the main philosophical idea of Kazakov. (Fei Qin wrote: "One of the main philosophical ideas of Kazakov is the unity of man and nature" ^{[9, p. 266]}.)

As a translator, Fei Qin sought to convey above all the spirit of the original and argued that it was necessary "... to be completely faithful to the original text. True is not only the content ( <that is, the literal meaning>), but also the correctly conveyed meaning ( <the essence of the thing, its essence>) of the original text, and even the form and style should be as true as possible, and no changes can be arbitrarily made" ^{[11, pp. 113, 116]}. However, from the point of view of the modern Western attitude to translation, the versions created by Fei Qin are far from literalism in many respects, which is explained, of course, by the difference between languages and national cultures.

Since in order to translate as accurately as possible (content, meaning, style, etc.), some changes are needed (for foreigners to understand). Only these changes should be carefully thought out (free translation). – "The translator, however, enjoys much less freedom than the author of the original, and must follow the ideas of the author of the original, using the same artistic techniques, the same expressions and the same vocabulary in order to "recreate" the text in the circle defined by the author of the original" ^{[11, p. 120]}.

The most interesting differences between the translation and the original, which we noticed in the story "Night" (he opens a collection of translations of Kazakov into Chinese: ^[9]), are due to the fact that Fei Qin brings some features close to classical Chinese poetry to the modern work.

Firstly, it is related to the image of sounds. As you know, one of the important features of Kazakov's poetics is the description of the world in its material concreteness — in particular, the author notices and transmits the sounds of this world. In Fei Qin's translation, these fragments of Kazakov's prose are noticeably transformed.

So, there are many descriptions of "noise" in Kazakov's stories. The word "rustle" is used to describe rustling; sometimes "rustle" means the sounds of human movement: "Volodya stirred in the hay, fidgeted and rustled there for a long time..." ^{[5, p. 10]}; sometimes it means the sounds of a beating fish "... already at the bottom of the carbine, rustled for a long time ..." ^{[5, p. 281]}. And the word "make noise" is used by Kazakov exclusively to describe the sounds of leaves: "... the wind often came in gusts, and then the forest around the house began to make a sad naked noise..." ^{[5, p. 429]}; "The wind sometimes touched the tops of birches and firs, and they began to make distant noise..." ^{[5, p. 436]}; "The forest was noisy on top..." ^{[5, p. 437]}; "... the wind was blowing and the aspens were chattering, the birch and spruce tops were noisy..." ^{[5, p. 448]}.

Sometimes the translator, offering a correspondence to the word "make noise" in Kazakov, introduces an impersonation that is absent in the original and characteristic of poetry, including classical Chinese. For example, for the phrase "The wind sometimes touched the tops of birches and firs, and they began to make distant noise ..." ^{[5, p. 436]} noise is translated as "" (xuan hua), which means "the noise and din of the crowd" ^{[12, p. 1032, 1033]}. In the fragment "... the wind often blew in gusts, and then the forest around the house began to make a sad naked noise..." ^{[5, p. 429]} "to make noise" is transmitted as "" (xuan xiao): this expression is synonymous with the above "".

In Chinese, the description of sounds is often transmitted by onomatopoeia, unlike in Russian, where this technique is used less often. At the same time, onomatopoeia in Chinese is often expressed by repeating syllables-hieroglyphs (similar to how it happens in Russian and other European languages: knock-knock, bang-bang, meow-meow, etc.).

The above-mentioned "rustle" and "make noise", frequency in the language of Kazakov, Fei Qin, can be translated by onomatopoeia: (su-su) and (sa-sa). For example, "The forest was making noise on top..." ^{[5, p. 437]} Fei Qin translated as " (su-su) ? ?" ^{[9, p. 126]}; "... the piles of maple leaves that were damp by night were making a dull noise..." ^{[5, p. 437]} translated as "... (sa-sa) " ^{[9, p. 79]}; "...spent a long time and rustled there..." ^{[5, p. 10]} translated as "... ( (su-su) " ^{[9, p. 79]}.

Similarly, with the help of onomatopoeia, Fei Qin translates other words denoting sounds. Thus, the phrase "A few seconds passed in silence, then the crunch of a fallen tree was clearly heard" ^{[5, p. 25]} is translated as "?,," ^{[9, p. 7]}, the onomatopoeia "" (kacha-kacha) is used.

Such onomatopoeic doubling is often found in classical Chinese poetry. Thus, imitation of the whistling of the wind blowing leaves is in the expression (xiao-xiao), which is used, for example, by Du Fu: ?, ("Leaves fall endlessly, the Yangtze flows endlessly"; Yu.K. Shutsky tried to convey the phonetic organization of the poem in his translation: "Infinitely, leaves everywhere they fall, / They fly down, rustling and trembling. / The endless river flows calmly / And he goes, lashing his wave"). In "Shijing" there is an imitation of the sounds that ducks make ( guan-guan). Du Fu has an example of onomatopoeia: (ding-ding), these are the sounds of an axe chopping a tree, audible because there is silence in the mountains (V.M. Alekseev translated it this way: "There is no companion for me in the spring mountains, I'm looking for you alone./ There they chop down a tree: knock-knock yes knock-knock, and the mountains are even more deserted").

There are a lot of onomatopoeias in the translation of "Night": "oars creak" translated as " (zhiga-zhiga); "a shot went off" — ( (shot with the sound of "peng"); "the echo went" - (the echo went with the sound of "loon-loon"); "the botalo rang" — (the botalo rang with the sound of "dindin-dandan"), etc.

Together with some other stylistic techniques, the choice of such a doubling gives Kazakov's prose in its Chinese version a special shade of traditional poetry, close to the Chinese reader.

By the way, Kazakov himself also sometimes has onomatopoeia: "Boom! Boom!", "Knock! Knock! Knock!", "yu-yu-yu" ^{[5, pp. 280, 441, 453]}, etc. Fei Qin conveys this in hieroglyphs with similar pronunciations to indicate: "Boom! Boom!" translated as "?, ?!" (peng, peng!); "Knock! Knock! Knock!" as "?,?,?!" (Tu, Tu, Tu!); "Yu-Yu-Yu" as "?-?-?" (Yu-Yu-Yu).

The peculiarity of the description of the sound of human speech in Kazakov is the stretching of vowels: "— Come on, come on, give—ay"; "-You're lying, don't go—eat!"; "-Le—esh!" ^{[5, p. 17]}. Chinese is written in such a different way: with a long dash and interjections "?(ya)", "?(a)", "?(Le)":"—come on, Come on, give-ay" FEI Qin as ,,?—?!"" (La-I La-I La—I!).

Together with some other stylistic techniques, the choice of such a doubling gives Kazakov's prose in its Chinese version a special shade of traditional poetry, close to the Chinese reader.

Secondly, the Chinese translator adds images dating back to ancient Chinese poetry. Words Kazakova "...they sing on the low strings, say, like pine hum..." ^{[5, p. 29]} FEI Qin translates as: ",," ^{[9, p. 14]} In the translation used the phrase , which means pine, buzzing like waves; this occurs, for example, yet Zhao Mapu (the yuan dynasty): "" ("Pine waves all night ring on the pillow"). Wu Tang Shunzhi (Ming Dynasty): "," ("The wind comes with the noise of pine waves, the wind leaves with the noise of pine waves").

Thirdly, the translator, choosing the appropriate words, brings personification where in the original we do not find correspondences for him. Kazakov: "... it will be necessary to add a bell so that it rings evenly" ^{[5, p. 30]}. Fei Qin translated "evenly" as , which means "to be calm and unperturbed in case of an incident, take your time" ^{[13, p. 218]}: that's what they say in Chinese about people. Thus, there is an additional meaning of impersonation, which is absent in the original.

The meaning of the translator's actions, which is not limited to the literal reproduction of the original, but adds something stylistically marked to it, becomes clearer if we pay attention to the semantic losses that are inevitable for a literal translation. Fei Qin also has such a literal translation. Let us turn, for example, to the following phrase of Kazakov: "The fire went out, the coals, cooling down, twitched with reddish ash; there was a dead night silence all around, only a horse was wandering somewhere in the bushes, ringing with a bell" ^{[5, pp. 24-25]}. Here, the words "only at the top", as we assume, can mean not only the location in space (the horse is higher than the bonfire), but also, perhaps, the top note, an overlay of sounds is transmitted, as in an orchestra: the melody of the botal appears against a background of a quiet background sound. Such a reading of this fragment is predetermined by the context of the story. Kazakov's character Semyon says: "...How do I play? I take a melody and add another voice to it, and here the song is by itself, and the voice seems to be by itself" ^{[5, p. 29]}. Two different sounds, melody and voice, combine in a symphonic way, and so the music of nature appears, the music of this quiet night. The translated phrase in Chinese (",,," to ^{[9, p. 7]}), the words "" (only above, only at the top) means only location in space.

So, thanks to Fei Qin's translations, Chinese readers first got acquainted with the writer Yuri Kazakov. The translator not only conveys the peculiarities of the Cossack style, but also gives Kazakov's narrative some features peculiar to traditional Chinese poetry, which makes it easier for Chinese readers to understand the thoughts and emotions of a foreign-language writer.

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