Дикі трави / Переклад з китайської, вступна стаття та коментарі Н. О. Черниш

Abstract

We offer the reader the first Ukrainian translation of Lu Xun’s collection Wild Grass (“野草”), which includes twenty-four short lyrical miniatures, written in the period from 1924 to 1926. Wild Grass is a response to various events in Chinese life, a search for an answer to the challenges of time. It is experimentation with syntactic construction of phrases, violation of grammatical norms, repetitions, unexpected endings, through which one reads the intense inner life of the writer. The translator’s aim is not only to convey the external events of the work, but also to preserve, as far as possible, the text’s intonation, through which the author’s mood is conveyed: from sombre pessimism, from a direct look at ugliness, from ironic and funny, to a tender, sensitive and subtle look at nature and man. Therefore, it is important for the translator to preserve the peculiarities of syntax, repetition, key words of the text, so as not to lose the author’s individual style.

In Chinese schools and universities, Lu Xun’s works are read, studied, commented, learned by heart, and essays are written on different themes. But he remains perhaps the most unread author of modern Chinese and world literature who, according to the famous writer Yu Hua, is perceived by many as a nickname – “luxun”: one that everyone has heard of, is considered an authority, but is not read. Lu Xun’s texts are perceived differently at different ages. What at first appears to be convoluted is later a brilliant epiphany. The psychological age of the reader can be determined by Lu Xun.

Lu Xun is a modernist, not only working with the new literary language Baihua, but also experimenting with the artistic form, using unusual syntactic turns, which will later become part of the modern standard Chinese language. All the texts are very different: the shortest has just over 280 characters, the longest has 2,533 characters. The text is rich in imagery. The poles collide, the sublime and the inferior, courage and cowardice, light and darkness, truth and lies, life and death, involvement and indifference, the beautiful and the ugly. Between one and the other his wild grass grows.