Readers who have read Shakespeare's works should know the name Zhu Shenghao, because he is basically the translator of Shakespeare's translations published in mainland China. His translation was published during the Republic of China. After decades of ups and downs, his translation is still being published and readers still like to read it, which shows its classicity and authority.
Behind Zhu Shenghao’s career in translating Shakespeare, there is one person who cannot but be mentioned, that is, his wife Song Qingru. I'm afraid not many people know this name. I learned some of her stories in the book "The Temperament of the Republic of China".
Song Qingru was born into a wealthy family in the countryside of Changshu. She has shown an independent and stubborn personality since she was a child. When she was five or six years old, her family wanted to bind her feet, but she refused. After several struggles, the family had to give up. At the age of 18, it was already the age for a girl to get married, but she was determined to go to school, and finally her family compromised.
Song Qingru was talented and studious since he was a child. She first attended a private school, then entered a girls' primary school in Changshu County, and then went to Suzhou to study at the Provincial Suzhou Girls' Middle School. During this period, she became interested in new poetry and began to compose it. In 1932, she was admitted to Zhijiang University, located next to the Liuhe Pagoda in Hangzhou.
Zhijiang University was one of the 13 Christian universities in China at that time. It was here that she met Zhu Shenghao.
Out of her love for poetry, she signed up to join the Zhijiang Poetry Society shortly after entering school. The first time she participated in a poetry club activity, she came up with a new poem. But at that time, the poetry club activities were only the exchange of old-style poems, so everyone's response to her was not very good. But when the poem manuscript was passed to a thin and silent young man, he read it carefully and did not speak. He just lowered his head with a smile.
This man is Zhu Shenghao, known as the "Zhijiang Talent". After the poetry club activities ended, he wrote a letter to Song Qingru, explaining the rules of the poetry club's activities. He also said that he was also very interested in new poems, and attached several new poems he had written. From then on, they began to exchange letters.
In this constant communication, they got to know each other, and in Zhu Shenghao's heart, he not only had similar interests in Song Qingru, but also had a deep love for her.
Later, Zhu Shenghao graduated from university and went to World Bookstore in Shanghai. He continued to correspond with Song Qingru and clearly stated his love in his letters. But Song Qingru seemed calm and reserved. The author of this book analyzes the reasons. First, she has a cautious and sensitive attitude towards marriage; second, she still respects and admires Zhu Shenghao more at this time; and third, she is dissatisfied with the ordinary and vulgar behavior of traditional women. Throughout her life, she has longed for success in her career, and at the same time has a clear understanding of women's burden in the family. Therefore, she believes that family is a constraint and fetter for women to realize their self-worth.
But Zhu Shenghao still persisted. In 1935, he began to translate Shakespeare, and he expressed that he would regard the translation as a gift to Song Qingru. From then on, he plunged into Shakespeare's world.
In 1936, Song Qingru graduated from university and went to teach at Huzhou Minde Girls' Middle School. Zhu Shenghao wrote to her, euphemistically expressing his desire to get married, but Song did not respond directly to him. After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident broke out in 1937, they each began their lives in exile. At the end of 1941, Song Qingru moved from Sichuan to Shanghai and reunited with Zhu Shenghao. After experiencing war and exile in the past few years, they have a better understanding of what the other person means to them. In May of the following year, they finally got married, ending their ten-year bitter love.
Newlyweds are wonderful, but in that war-torn era, what they need to face is how to solve the problem of survival. When they got married, they were both unemployed. At that time, they planned to go to Sichuan, but due to the tense war, the plan was interrupted. Finally, they decided to return to Song Qingru's hometown of Changshu. One of the important reasons for this decision was Zhu Shenghao's translation work.
Zhu Shenghao's translation of Shakespeare did not go smoothly. Because it coincided with the Japanese invasion of China, his translation manuscript was destroyed twice, once after the "August 13th" incident and once after the Pearl Harbor incident. After returning to Changshu, they were so poor that they couldn't even buy manuscript paper, so they had to write a letter asking World Book Company for funding. During this period, because Song Qingru took care of all the chores in life, Zhu Shenghao had no worries, so he completed the translation of nine comedies in only half a year.
At the beginning of 1943, they returned to Zhu Shenghao’s old house under the Dongmi shed in Jiaxing, his hometown. At this time, because Zhu's aunt, cousin, and third brother were all here, the five members of the family relied on Zhu's meager royalties. Although for Zhu Shenghao, food can be skipped and Shakespearean plays must be translated, Song Qingru has always grasped one principle, that is, in order to realize her ideal, she must support Zhu Shenghao in real life - other things can be saved, but rice Can't stop eating. So she devoted all her energy to ensure that the family could barely survive.
Soon after returning to Jiaxing, Song Qingru became pregnant. Seeing his wife working hard day and night while pregnant, Zhu Shenghao felt guilty. Several times Song Qingru woke up at night and found that her husband was crying secretly. She quickly comforted him with words. As long as the person she married was right, she didn't care about anything else.
On the Lunar New Year of this year, Song Qingru returned to her parents' home and stayed there for more than 20 days. This was the longest time she and Zhu Shenghao had been apart since their marriage.
Zhu Shenghao lives alone at home waiting for his wife's return. Those days were cloudy and rainy, and the petals of an apricot plum tree in the backyard were knocked off by the rain. Zhu Shenghao picked up a few petals and wrote down a piece of love for his wife on the paper.
On the day when his wife finally came back, he held the withered petals in his hands, like an innocent child, with a look of grievance on his face. From then on, Song Qingru never left him again.
At the beginning of 1944, Zhu Shenghao had translated nearly thirty Shakespeare plays. If progress goes well, they will all be completed by the end of the year. But in April of this year, due to years of fatigue and the lack of necessary nutritional supplements, Zhu Shenghao's body was already very weak, but he still completed the translation of the historical dramas "King John", "Charlie II" and "Henry IV". World". By June, Zhu Shenghao finally fell ill. In the last few days of his life, Zhu Shenghao knew that his end was approaching. He told his wife not to cry in sorrow and let him leave peacefully, and told her that she must be strong after his death.
On the afternoon of December 26, 1944, Zhu Shenghao left this world, his beloved wife, and his Shakespeare. This year, they are both 32 years old, and their child Zhu Shang has just turned 13 months old.
After Zhu Shenghao died, Song Qingru thought of death again and again and wanted to pursue Zhu Shenghao in another world. She once bought poison, but there were two things that she couldn't let go of. One was their child, and the other was the unpublished translation of Shakespeare that had been her husband's lifelong effort. These, coupled with Song Qingru's stubborn character, prevented her from bowing to fate and continued to live a difficult life.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Song Qing saw a glimmer of hope in life. She returned to Changshu with her son and taught at Zhu Shenghao's alma mater, Xiuzhou Middle School. After her life stabilized, she began to contact about the publication of Shakespeare's plays.
In 1947, World Book Company published "The Complete Works of Shakespeare's Plays". After the founding of New China, People's Literature Publishing House published "Shakespeare's Drama Collection" in 1954. Song Qingru basically used the royalties from this publication for public welfare cultural undertakings.
In 1957, during the "anti-rightist" movement, Song Qingru was classified as a "bourgeois intellectual" and was criticized. During the "Cultural Revolution", she was identified as a "landlord" and her home was ransacked. But she maintained a calm, magnanimous and open-minded attitude during all the political movements, which helped her miraculously get through those years.
Later, the son was assigned to Hotan in Xinjiang, and the daughter went to Yilan in Heilongjiang. Song Qingru finally got rid of the hat of "landlord wife" and she was 60 years old again. In order to take care of his newborn grandson, he left Jiangnan and went to the frontier. In his later years, Song Qingru took everything very lightly and "had nothing to do with the world, forgetting the past and self."
In 1978, after nearly thirty years of wandering, 67-year-old Song Qingru finally returned to Zhu’s old house under the Dongmi shed in Jiaxing with her son and family. She arranged for her son's family to live upstairs, and she lived downstairs on the bed where Zhu Shenghao once lived. A charcoal portrait of Zhu Shenghao hung above the bed.
With the publication of Zhu Shenghao's translation of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare", Zhu Shenghao began to become well-known. His translation of Shakespeare was also highly praised and is considered to be the pinnacle of Shakespeare's translations so far. Many people entered Shakespeare's world because of Zhu Shenghao. Yu Erchang, a professor at National Taiwan University, said: "In the autumn of 1947, the three translated volumes of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare's Plays" first published in my country were spread overseas. The European and American literary circles were shocked. Many Shakespeare researchers could not believe that the Chinese could write such high-quality works. Translation." The famous translator Xu Yuanchong believes that there are three famous translations that can be handed down in the Chinese translation industry: Zhu Shenghao's "The Complete Works of Shakespeare", Fu Lei's "Selected Works of Balzac" and Yang Bi's "Vanity Fair".
Dong Qiao wrote in "Zhu Shenghao's Mrs. Song Qingru": "Ask Song Qingru: Is Zhu Shenghao's translation of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" the power of love? Song Qingru said: 'Part of it. We got married, and his heart also It’s decided. There are also other reasons: 1. Zhan Wenhu (the head of the English department of World Book Company) encouraged him; 2. He wanted to make money and get married; 3. He was obsessed with Shakespeare’s drama. "Someone is planning to write a book about Song Qingru." After hearing this, she said: 'What to write? Is it worth it? ' Because of Zhu Shenghao. She answered simply: 'He translated Sha, I cooked.'"
After the storm. The vicissitudes of life Song Qingru left peacefully. On the tombstone where she and Zhu Shenghao were buried together, there was written a longing note written by Zhu Shenghao to her when she returned to her parents' home after their marriage: "If the two of us dreamed together in the sound of rain, how different the realm would be, or how different the realm would be if we were together in the sound of rain. Insomnia, that is also so interesting.
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