Happy, deputy editor-in-chief of World Literature, is definitely a person who pursues a complete literary puzzle. In recent years, the literary translation field has been drenched by the beautiful Europe, and the porch has been dripping. Blue Eastern Europe, a large-scale Eastern European literature series edited by Happy, is like a tidal wave rushing to our hearts from Adriatic Sea, Baltic Sea and Danube River.
The first series of Blue Eastern Europe blindfolded me with three novels by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, novels by Romanian writer Gabriel Keefe, lyric poems by Polish writer Tadushi borowski and lyric poems by Romanian poet Lucian Braga. These writers are all writers I haven't read and understood, so apart from poetry and borowski's novels, the rest of the novels have shocked me far beyond my superficial expectations, and lightning arcs have swept my mind from time to time during the reading experience.
Judging from several contemporary novels in the first series, I found that the imagination of Eastern European literature is very deep. In the past, the magical atmosphere that pervaded Latin American literature and the ancient jungle world came down in one continuous line, while in Eastern European literature, with another spiritual vein of its own origin, it shone with strange brilliance. Interestingly, both Albanian Ismail Cadal and Romanian Gabrielle Keefe's novels echoed with the sounds of distant magical stories. According to Frye, a prototype critic, and propp, a world-famous folktale researcher, European legends are closely related to ancient Greek legends, 1 1 century knight legends and Gothic romantic novels. The real magic stories are winged horses, fire-breathing snakes, imaginary kings and princesses, etc. This is obviously not produced by capitalism, and it is obviously older than capitalism.
Kadalai and Keefe extended the tentacles of the novel to a broader and far-reaching world. Cardale's novel Who Brought Durentina Back is based on a legendary story in the Balkans: Constantine, who died for three years, came out of the grave, fulfilled his promise and brought his sister who had married to another country back to his mother. This novel framework, which is related to the resurrection of the gods, suddenly makes the narrative style of the whole novel into a ghostly style. There is a great suspense at the beginning of the novel: Durentina, who married abroad, will return to her hometown one day to soothe her mother's endless thoughts. Captain stearns, who was in charge of the investigation, then launched a detective again and again. The beautiful and charming Durentina told everyone that it was her brother Constantine who kept his promise and crossed the European plain on a dusty night. Everyone, including Captain Stuart, was once in doubt, panic and fear, because everyone knew that her brother Constantine had been buried three years ago. "Who on earth brought Durentina back?" This long problem is not only the problem of Captain Stokes and his hometown people, but also the problem of readers. As Zou Yan, the translator of this book, said: We guessed the beginning of Kadalai's story, but we couldn't guess the end. Captain Stokes, who resisted ghost stories at first, finally became the defender of ghost stories. It was the ghost of Constantine who brought the message of integration with this world to Albania and other parts of the world. The ideal that the novel tries to approach is a dream of Constantine before his death: to establish and promise a lofty system from the deepest part of his heart. It is not a pure spiritual rule, nor a utopia of consciousness, but a spiritual seed scattered in Albanian life, a new modern individualism based on personal commitment and the subject's desire for self-reliance. Obviously, in the era of consumerism and materialism, faced with the increasing privatization, the erosion of social identity, the weakening and alienation of politics and ideology, novelists have new life logic and new survival ethics.
The painter of Map of Thrones (by Gabriel Gifford), when he first saw such a title, would regard it as a novel about tyrants and dictators and the legend of Alexander the Great and Nebuchadnezzar II's territorial expansion. In fact, the plot is that Matthew Pavel, a government official, suddenly received a notice of inheritance from heaven one day, and then Pavel embarked on a long journey to find the mysterious uncle whose heritage donor was far away in other countries.
A legacy letter magically divides reality into two parts: one is the familiar life, which follows its own laws; And the other half, out of the time and space of normal life. In the process of searching, Pavel met the lame old man Satan with many names. Satan admits that he directed everything. Pavel and Blaineau, the painter who was also teased, fought hard and were filled with indignation. Finally, they decided to join forces against Satan. In this process, Pavel not only found that everyone may be teased by Satan, but also found that everyone has his own Satan. With this revelation, Pavel gained a new ability: they can sharpen pencils, bend pipes, change the color of cars in the street, knock down a tree and stop a snow with their eyes without touching pencils. Satan's magic can also make them fly and travel. After the space travel, Pavel also made a time travel alone, and he was put on a night train that galloped like lightning on the Yuan Ye. He began to retrograde from the aisle of the first car to the back car, and entered his childhood in just two minutes. After his success, Pavel's new wish is to explore his future life. He chose the right time to enter the new millennium. But he didn't succeed until dawn. The final ending of the novel is the awakened Pavel, who does not want to live by Satan's magic. He wants to end the life that makes his soul restless. So he went to the church's new energy source. With the support of faith, he finally got rid of his inner fear and defeated the demon Matthew Pavel. He felt that he was getting back to his original state. He felt cold and painful, and his memory came back: the scenes of his old life flooded into his mind. He is still the same, but without that organ called "fear"
When I closed the book, these novels brought me fresh experiences. Wave after wave, the distant places with poor eyesight and even the wider blue all implied strange calmness, loyalty, longing and fantasy, which stirred up like Van Gogh's starry sky.
Remember to adopt!