"Life is precious, love is more expensive;
If it is freedom, you can throw both. "
In China, most people with secondary education can recite this poem, and everyone knows that it is a poem by the great Hungarian poet petofi. Hundreds of millions of people know a poem by a foreign poet, which is a great honor for petofi and his motherland. However, how many people know that both poets and translators have sacrificed their young lives for the true meaning of this poem; In the difficult years of China, War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, many warm-blooded men silently recited this poem and went to the battlefield for the independence and freedom of the motherland. ...
Translators in China died heroically.
Every time I go back to Shanghai, I always pay a visit to Lu Xun's tomb and Longhua Martyrs Cemetery to show my deep respect to Mr. Lu Xun, a great writer who recommended Xuanyuan with my blood and a young poet Bai Mang who died heroically for freedom. I also thank them for their works that have influenced my life.
Petofi holds eternal hatred and cannot see the independent liberation of the motherland; However, who would have thought that the Chinese translator of Freedom and Love was even younger than the author?
More than 60 years ago, 193 1 in the middle of the night of February 7, 2008, five famous young writers and members of the left-wing writers, together with other 18 revolutionaries, were divided into several groups, handcuffed and shot dead in a wasteland in garrison headquarters, Longhua, Shanghai. Some people were shot ten times, and one of the victims.
Bai Mang, Yin Fu, 1909 was born in the countryside of Xiangshan County, Zhejiang Province, and lost his father at an early age. He is modest, taciturn and extremely intelligent. He can read novels at the age of nine and write poems at the age of thirteen or fourteen. I entered Tongji University at the age of eighteen, and I learned English and German very well. Drop out of school after two years and concentrate on the youth movement. He has two brothers, but they are very different. They are officials of the Kuomintang government. He was betrayed for taking part in the cotton mill strike, was arrested several times, was beaten black and blue, or was shot several times, but he didn't flinch and was still happy. Mr. Lu Xun has a vivid account: "The third time we met, I remember it was on a hot day when someone knocked at the door." As soon as I opened the door, Bai Mang came, but he was wearing a thick cotton robe and his face was sweaty. We both couldn't help laughing. Then he told me that he was a revolutionary and had just been released, and his clothes and books were confiscated. "
Bai Mang began to write seriously on 1928, especially writing poems. At this time, his thoughts became more profound and his skills gradually improved. At the same time, he wrote many articles about the youth movement. However, I felt the harmonious heartbeat of the sacred unicorn, and Bai Mang deeply admired petofi's poetry and behavior. 1929, he translated a biography of petofi written by an Austrian from Germany. In front of this biography, he wrote: "This text is about a poet and soldier from beautiful Hungary. His life is full of genius struggle, misfortune, frustrated love and brave war. " He once translated the poem "Freedom, Love" into "Love is more precious than life, but it should be thrown away for freedom!" He sent petofi to Run magazine edited by Lu Xun, and Lu Xun wrote to ask for the original text, which was in front of the collection of poems, so it was not convenient to mail it. Bai Mang personally sent the German version of Petofi's Poems to Lu Xun. Until 1933, two years after Bai Mang's sacrifice, Lu Xun commented on Bai Mang when writing a commemorative article: "He once wrote a letter with me, but now he has found nothing. He must have burned it all on the night of 17. At that time, I didn't know that there were still white mans being arrested. However, the book Petofi's Poems is available and has been turned over. There is nothing but a four-line translation written in pen next to the sentence "wahlspruch". "
This is the Chinese translation of petofi's poem Freedom and Love, which we all know today. It is a masterpiece of generosity, heroism and moxibustion. Without a trace of translation, the posture is natural, just like a five-line poem written in Chinese. Bai Mang translated this poem at 1929 or earlier, when he was only twenty years old. This poem just shows the noble spirit and feelings of Bai Mang's dedication to the revolution. He once asked his sister to embroider this poem on the pillow. At the suggestion of Lu Xun, Bai Mang also translated petofi's eight poems, such as Black Bread and Field of Life and Death, and published them in the fifth volume of the second volume of Running. Martyrs such as Bai Mang have been killed for more than 60 years. At this moment, I can't help but think of a famous poem written by Bai Mang:
Let the dead die,
Their blood did not flow in vain,
Let's not be sad or sigh,
The long journey lies ahead.
Mr. Wang's knife is looking for poetry
Mr. Lu Xun is very fond of the author and translator of the poem "Freedom, Love" and speaks highly of their poems and their deeds of dying for the country.
Mr. Lu Xun was the first to introduce petofi's works to China. He personally wrote a biography of petofi, translated petofi's poems, and quoted petofi's words in many places in the article, calling him a "poet and hero". As early as 1907, Lu Xun introduced petofi to readers in China by juxtaposing with great poets such as Byron, Shelley, Pushkin of Russia and Michiko of Poland. Mr. Lu Xun wrote a biography of petofi with thousands of words, which vividly and accurately described the writer's life, and pointed out that these poets were "determined to resist and point to action", "all of them were strong and unyielding, sincere and faithful, did not flatter others, followed the old habits and became heroes, so as to revitalize their own nation and make their country bigger than other places in the world".
When Lu Xun was young, he liked petofi's poems. He specially asked a bookstore to buy German translations of petofi's essays and poems from Germany, intending to translate them into Chinese. After he knew Bai Mang, he gave these two books, which he had treasured for many years, to Bai Mang personally by Rou Shi and to a young man who loved petofi as much as he did when he was young. This is a good book landing. He also said that when he received Bai Mang's translation of Biography of petofi, it aroused his memories of his youth. "Because he was a poet I admired at that time. It is natural that people under the Manchu government are called heroes of the anti-Russian emperor. " Mr. Wang personally translated seven poems by petofi, calling him "an unruly hero" and "a great lyric poet and Hungarian patriot, who died on the spear tip of Cossack soldiers for his motherland." In the past thirty years, petofi was the only foreign poet that Lu Xun often thought of. Only petofi's poems have been translated by him.
As for Bai Mang, the translator, Lu Xun had direct contact with him and submitted the manuscript in the form of letters. Fortunately, Bai Mang left the book "Poems of Petofi" to Lu Xun. He was killed several times and burned the letter, but the poem survived. Moreover, because Lu Xun wrote the famous "Remembrance of Forgetting", we can still read Bai Mang's translation, making Petofi the most familiar Hungarian poet in China.
On the day when Bai Mang and others were arrested, Lu Xun was also hunted by the opposition. That night, he burned the old letters of his friends and took his wife and children to an inn. For this experience, Mr. Wang had a painful and indignant narrative, full of deep mourning for forgotten friends and gnashing his teeth at the enemy: "In the middle of the night, I stood in the courtyard of the inn, surrounded by rags, and people were sleeping, even including my wife and children. I feel with a heavy heart that I have lost a good friend and a good youth in China, and I have calmed down in grief and indignation. However, I have looked up from the silence and made up a few words like this:
Accustomed to the long night in spring, my wife will wrap silk around her temples.
In my dream, I vaguely shed tears for my mother, and the flag of the king on the city head changed.
Endure watching peers become new ghosts, and look for small poems in anger.
Moonlight shines like water without writing.
The cruel and weak reactionaries have been blocking the news since they shot Bai Mang and other revolutionaries. Under extremely difficult conditions, the comrades of the "Left Alliance" published a special issue of Sentinel to commemorate the victims of the war, and Lu Xun wrote the first page of the history of proletarian revolutionary literature in China. Five years later, Lu Xun prefaced Bai Mang's poem "Baby Tower", praising "this is the shimmer of the East, the whistling arrow in the forest, the bud of the end of winter, the first step of marching, the great love for predecessors and the monument of hatred for saboteurs."
Due to the spread of Lu Xun, petofi's poem "Freedom, Love" spread like wildfire and was read by people. During the years of Kuomintang rule, it encouraged many young people to be full of passion, rise up and fight for freedom. It is said that during the Long March of the Red Army, someone wrote this poem on the soldiers' backs and recited it to each other to boost morale.
In addition to Mr. Lu Xun, Mr. Mao Dun (Shen Yanbing), a famous writer in China, has also introduced and translated petofi's deeds and poems. 1923, in order to commemorate the anniversary of petofi's birth 100, Mr. Mao Dun published the article "Commemorating the Hundred Years of the Hungarian Patriotic Poet Pei" in the Novel Monthly published in the year of 65438+ 10. He translated the poem "Freedom, Love" into:
The most precious things in my life: love and freedom.
For love, you can give up your life;
But for freedom, I will gladly give up my love.
Mr. Mao Dun translated from English several years earlier than Bai Mang. After liberation, due to the friendly relations between China and Hungary, petofi's poems spread more widely in China. 1954, The Selected Poems of petofi translated by Sun Yong (1902- 1983) was published by Writers Publishing House and reprinted many times. In 1980s, petofi's poem "I'd like to be a torrent ..." was quoted in the popular movie "Man to Middle Age", which aroused the upsurge of Petofi's love poems among young people. At the end of 1983, the Shanghai People's Art Theatre also staged a drama with the theme of "life, love and freedom" and the theme of Bai Mang's heroic struggle and passionate life in the last four years of his life, which was also adapted from petofi's poems. Since 1980s, the Institute of Foreign Literature and Xin Wansheng, who had studied in Hungary, have continuously translated and published petofi's poems, anthologies, comments and essays, and won the Hungarian Cultural Award from the Hungarian Ministry of Culture. In the mid-1990s, with the support of Mr. Zhang Manxin, Chairman of the Hungarian Chinese Federation, Shanghai Translation Publishing House published six volumes of Selected Works of Petfi translated by Mr. Xin Wansheng, which also made a beneficial contribution to the cultural exchange between China and Hungary. According to statistics, in China, most people with high school education will recite petofi's poem "Love, Freedom", which is regarded as a poem by the great Hungarian poet petofi. Someone once did a test, and one of the questions was to write a foreigner's poem silently. Some people have written Shelley, Heine, Goethe, Pushkin and so on, but many people have written incompletely. More than half of the people wrote this poem by petofi, which cannot but be attributed to the poet, China translator and Mr. Lu Xun. It is a great honor for petofi and his motherland that a poem of a small country can be known to hundreds of millions of foreign readers, and poets and translators should also be gratified under the grave.
Looking for the footprints of our ancestors
In the 1960s, when I was in high school in Zhejiang, a Shaoxing man named Zhou Bao asked to teach us Chinese. White inch, elegant manners, always wearing a navy tweed uniform. At that time, most of our boys worshipped mathematics and physics, and their grades were better than those of liberal arts. But this kind-hearted and gentle teacher, with Shaoxing accent, simple explanation and story-telling class, greatly increased my interest in Chinese and improved my composition. I remember when he showed us an article "In Memory of Forgetting" by Lu Xun, his explanation of love words made me suspect that he and Lu Xun had some kind of blood relationship, because they were both surnamed Zhou and both from Shaoxing. I especially like petofi's poems and Lu Xun's Untitled. I can recite it after reading it several times and never forget it. Since then, I have read Selected Poems of Petofi translated by Mr. Sun Yong and other books on Hungarian literature, history and geography. Maybe this is fate. 196 1 autumn, I was admitted to Beijing Foreign Studies University, majoring in Hungarian. Since then, I have formed an indissoluble bond with Petofi and Hungary. What makes me particularly happy is that I can learn and appreciate Petofi's original works in Hungarian, which greatly increases my interest in learning. 1962 During the summer vacation, by chance, I bought a book "Selected Poems of petofi" in Gong Wei Village near Beiwai, which is a rare treasure. I borrowed Petofi's Hungarian poems from the library, copied them next to the Chinese version and read them together in Chinese and Hungarian. At this time, I became increasingly dissatisfied with some Chinese translations, and began to translate these works myself, translating more than 100 songs back and forth. From 65438 to 0967, after I graduated from university and was assigned to work in Xinhua News Agency, I spent a lot of time and energy translating various Hungarian works as a hobby and writing practice. At that time, my immediate boss Ge Baozhi was the younger brother of the most famous translator Ge Baoquan. I also met Mr. Xing Wansheng, from whom I learned a lot about the ups and downs of the translation industry and increased my interest in literary translation. In the second half of 1970s, with the end of the long Cultural Revolution, I went to Hongxing Hutong in Wangfujing several times to ask Mr. Sun Yong for advice. To my surprise, this self-taught and well-translated old authority is extremely modest and kind. Tall figure, snow-white hair, quite a scholar. He said he was from Hangzhou, and we were fellow villagers. Mr Sun Yong knows Esperanto and has translated many foreign works. He confessed that he didn't know Hungarian. Selected Poems of petofi was translated into Chinese by Hungarian students and Mei, who were studying in Peking University at that time, and he processed and polished it. He also mentioned that when he was young, he got a lot of advice from Mr. Lu Xun, and many letters written by Mr. Lu Xun were extremely precious legacies. We discussed many issues, and I offended to put forward different views on some translations. He was very modest and said that the reprint could be changed.
At the end of this year, I wrote the article "petofi-Hungarian Patriot and Poet" under the pseudonym "Wen Xin" (Xinhua News Agency article) to commemorate the 55th anniversary of petofi's birthday/KLOC-0. The full text was published in Xinhua News Agency. Unexpectedly, People's Daily is almost used on 1978 1. When I was working in Budapest, Mr Sun Yong died in Beijing at the age of 865,438. I am deeply saddened to lose a good teacher, and many of his teachings are engraved in my heart.
Looking for the martyr's handwriting
1977 on a new winter day, the north wind wrapped in snow particles and stuffed it into people's necks. I rode a jingling bicycle and bent down from Xuanwu Gate to Fuchengmen Street. When I arrived at the palace gate, I saw a milky building in the distance. This is the Luxun Museum that I have been looking for.
Stepping into the gate, I walked through a yard full of flowers and trees and came to the exhibition hall. I looked up, Leng Mei looked at the bronze bust of Lu Xun, followed by the glittering words of Chairman Mao praising Lu Xun, and my heartfelt admiration rose in my heart.
In the museum, after several inquiries, I finally found a lady in her 500 s, wearing the ordinary clothes of Beijing women, a blue coat and short hair. If she doesn't wear a pair of white-rimmed eyes, I really doubt whether she can answer my question. From her suspicious eyes, I guess she was surprised how a young man could make such a request, just after the Cultural Revolution.
My request is simple: I want to find the original version of petofi's poem Freedom and Love translated by Bai Mang. She was a little confused. After listening to my story carefully, she agreed to look for it and told me to go again in a few days.
It is not easy to find this book among Mr. Lu Xun's more than 16 thousand books. A few days later, when I found her again, she said awkwardly, no, but there is a little hope. I can go to Lu Xun's research room to have a look. I rode my bike to Xihuangchenggen North Street again. This was repeated several times. One day, a middle-aged man in the laboratory handed me a book without saying a word. I feel my heart pounding.
This is a book on yellow paper, not thick. I don't know German, but I can tell at once from the title that this is Selected Poems of petofi. I looked through this book bought by Bai Mang's brother from Germany, which contained Bai Mang's handwriting and later belonged to Mr. Lu Xun. I seem to feel the weight and preciousness of this book, which contains the blood of martyrs and the sentiments of great men. I still seem to feel their hands warming my heart. Holding a book, my hand trembled slightly. Turn to 18, I am surprised. Next to an epigram, the translation written by four lines of pens on the left side of German jumped into my eyes:
Life is precious,
Love is more expensive;
If it's for freedom,
You can throw both!
The translation has no punctuation, no revision, and it is done in one go; The handwriting is mellow and sophisticated, and it is Bai Mang's handwriting, which is a poem written by Mr. Lu Xun in the article "Remembering Forgetting". This is the first time I have seen it. The research comrade said that the manuscript had not been published, and he didn't want me to circulate it at will. I also saw that German is four lines, but the original Hungarian is six lines. Petofi wrote these poems in Perth on June 1 823 65438+1October1,which was his 24th birthday. Does he take these poems as his motto? The translator Bai Mang was only 22 years old when he was killed by the Kuomintang. He translated this poem when he was about 2 1 year old. The thoughts, fighting, blood and life of two young people of different ages and nationalities have solidified into a swan song! Mr. Lu Xun's articles and fame engraved this poem in the hearts of millions of readers in China.
I am immersed in this series of memories. When he reminded me that I couldn't borrow this book, I finally made a very high request at that time-making a copy. He said that he would ask the leader for instructions. Thanks to his sincere help, I got a copy and kept it with me.
Besides, I also found that some of petofi's ideas and metaphors are strikingly similar to those of China people. For example, 1848 After the Hungarian revolution broke out in late March, he wrote a song "The Sea Roars". . . In the poem, the revolutionary power of the people is compared to the roaring sea, and the ruler at that time is compared to a boat on the water. "A roaring sea can break masts, tear sails and sink ships into hell." He wrote:
An eternal truth, written in the sky with waves:
Even if the ship is on the water field and the water is under it,
However, water is always the master.
This reminds me of a sentence that Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty, warned his son to be powerful when he was in the chastity: "The boat is not as good as people, and the water is not as good as Li Shu. Water can carry a boat or overturn it. "
In the early 1980s, I came to Hungary to work as a reporter for the Budapest Branch of Xinhua News Agency. I have more opportunities to visit petofi's former residence and museums, talk with petofi research experts and read such books. After coming here for a long time, I have met more Hungarians, and they are often interested in why I want to learn Hungarian, a small country language. I talked frankly about my experience. 1June, 984, after talking with me, Shugal Andras, a famous Hungarian TV commentator, was very interested in my idea and said that he would interview me. In this way, I talked about the introduction of petofi's poems by Lu Xun and Bai Mang in Budapest's evening program, so that more Hungarian audiences could understand them. Shugal asked me to write China's poem "Freedom, Love" with a brush, which he also introduced on TV.
1In September 1994, Hungarian President G?nc arpad will visit China soon. I interviewed the significance and purpose of his visit to China and Sino-Hungarian relations in the presidential office of the Capitol. During this period, we also talked about the influence of literature and petofi's poems in China. He also said that we would talk about literature when his business was relaxed. President G?nc is a famous writer. I have read his collection of short stories, Stones on Stones. In the second half of 1980s, he was the chairman of the Hungarian Writers Association. Since then, he has sent a new year card every year, and he has enthusiastically written titles such as "dear friend", which makes me quite moved. I think this is mainly because the ancestors and friendly people of the two countries have made great contributions to the cultural exchanges between China and Hungary. Now whenever someone talks to me about poetry, culture and their experiences in China and Hungary, I think everyone has their own interests. Since we have chosen this road, we must keep going. Love what I love, no regrets.