Lu Xun and N. V. Gogol: the unexplored field of poetry

Russian literature has had a massive impact upon the creative path of Lu Xun. The researchers of his prose (including sinologist and translator L. Z. Ėĭdlin, literary scholar L. D. Pozdneeva, writer and literary scholar Feng Xue Feng, and others.) oftentimes compared his texts with the works of Russian writers. Despite the fact that Lu Xun wrote poetry throughout his life, his poetic legacy is poorly studied. Comparative analysis is conducted on the poetry of Lu Xun and N. V. Gogol. It is noted that the poetry of both authors reflects their philosophical and cultural views. The similarity of the authors lies in the fact that each used the versification that is traditional for their culture. The content and shape of Gogol’s poetry is based on the Slavic folklore and Orthodox faith, while Lu Xun is one of the initiators of the “New Culture Movement” and is considered an innovator in the Chinese literature. He wrote prose and poetry not in Wenyan (classical Chinese), which was understood by the elite of Chinese society alone, but in Baihua (written vernacular Chinese), the new Chinese literary language. Therefore, Lu Xun made a considerable contribution to the creation of new poetry, and many Chinese literary scholars (Chang Tsao, 1962-2010, Zhu Ziqing, 1898-1948) consider him the founder of the modern versification in China. The article establishes the similarities and differences between the Russian syllabic-accentual verse poems and Chinese new poetry.

Sinophonic Detours in Colonial Burma

Following his 1925–1931 overland trek across southwestern China to colonial Burma, Ai Wu's 1935 Travels in the South (the author's canonical collection of autobiographical travelogue fiction) represents a Sinophonic detouring of the key literary impulses of the author's May Fourth forebears and his left-wing literary contemporaries, especially with its social realist expressions of gendered frontier primitivism, interethnic romantic desire, and international leftist solidarity. Ai Wu's southbound transborder itinerary and “street education”—marked by a repetition of trespasses and evictions—develop a “counterpoetics of trespass” blurring boundaries between social realist fiction and autobiographical travelogue while intertextually rerouting romantic primitivism in depictions of indigenous women through counterpoetically anemic prose. Initially taking his cue from Lu Xun, Ai Wu similarly inscribes his literary mission as one of national redemption but in a way that conforms to the leftist internationalist ideals of the League of Left-Wing Writers, which Ai Wu joined after he was forcibly repatriated to China by British colonial authorities in 1931. Ai Wu's Sinophone transborder counterpoetics activate latent self-reflections on the narrator's own male Han-centric exoticism toward indigenous Shan and Burman women and on his unfulfilled desire to forge meaningful relationships with them. Rather than assimilating or subordinating his depictions of these women into a projection of a Chinese leftist national cause, Ai Wu ultimately sublimates his romantic desires into an allegory for Burma's anticolonial resistance movement.

Claustrophobia: Totalitarianism and the Great Depression, 1920–1936

This chapter focuses on two of the three-tiered political identities, specifically the power of individual control (localism) and the force of nationalism. After the Great War, the 1920s roared with the possibilities of wealth, pleasure, the good life. Women seemed to be at the center of things: the “flapper,” homemaker, and female suffrage worlds. Yet national ambitions of Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union were put on the fast track of totalitarianism working by way of fascism, monarchical dictatorship, and communism. The policies of those four placed thousands of people in “iron houses” to be suffocated, or, more likely, executed. To deal with these tragedies, the long shot seemed perhaps to be the wide-ranging individualism of Lu Xun, the “duende” of Garcia Lorca, and the initiative of countless others to try to exorcise nationalism run amok.

Literary Transfers between „Peripheries”: Henryk Sienkiewicz’s The Lighthouse Keeper and the Mediating Role of the Center in the Circulation of Literary Works

The article considers literary transfers between peripheral regions of the world literary map via analysis of the translations into classical Chinese of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s short story The Lighthouse Keeper and Adam Mickiewicz’s Invocation from his epic poem Master Thaddeus by the brothers Zhou Zuoren and Zhou Shuren, best known by his pen name Lu Xun. The description of the plot of Sienkiewicz’s story, with its mapping of the trajectory of Mickiewicz’s poem from its nostalgic Polish setting to a remote island in Central America, turns out to mirror the literary transfers between peripheries that the short story itself took from Poland to the Far East. In considering this circulation of literary works and the poetic transfer between peripheries, the mediating role of the center as conceived of by P. Casanova and F. Moretti is reassessed.

Narasi-narasi Kecil (Mikronarasi) dalam genre Fiksi Pedesaan Pendekatan Posmodernisme terhadap Cerpen Menghilang Bersama Angin karya Xing Qingjie

The short story text Disappearing with the Wind by Xing Qingjie as a representation of the rural fiction genre in Chinese Literature attempts to refute the grand narratives of modern fiction. For the author of the text, the power of modernity is not eternal, but can be subverted or deconstructed by giving acknowledgment to the small voices represented by Mr Zou, Sha Xiaobao, and the idiot woman in Disappearing with the Wind. This study uses a postmodernism approach to map the elements of disorientation, abnormality and small voices in that short story. Affirmation of the micronarrative is a way of working of postmodern fiction in challenging the power of modernity with the grand narrative as its main basis. For Xing Qingjie, reality does not always depend on big people, famous people, but can also be celebrated by village people, unusual people, including people who are marginalized in modern life. In his lawsuit, the presence of this text will emphasize that there is no central, no peripheral. All can be the center, and all can also be the periphery. Rural fiction pioneered by Lu Xun proves that denial of the power of grand narratives is possible in the same way that Xing Qingjie has done in a number of his works, including the short story Disappearing with the Wind.

A Study of Translation Methods Adopted in the Yangs’ Version of “Master Gao” from the Perspective of Manipulation Theory

Soon after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, foreign translation of Chinese culture was put on the agenda. Lu Xun’s short stories were selected as representative works and translated into English by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang (hereinafter referred to as “the Yangs”) in the 1950s and 1960s under the special international and domestic environment, and they have played an important role in spreading Chinese culture to the world. Based on André Lefevere’s Manipulation Theory, especially its three elements, namely, poetics, ideology and patronage, this paper examines the translation methods adopted by the Yangs in their translation of Lu Xun’s short story “Master Gao”. Through example analysis, the article concludes that the Yangs mainly adopted literal translation under the influence of poetics, ideology and patronage in the then special social background. It is hoped that the research aims to provide a theoretical and practical reference for future translation and dissemination of Chinese literary works to the world.