As far as I know, there are three Chinese versions of yehuda Amichai's poems. The first two are selected works translated by Fu Hao, namely "Song of Jerusalem: Poems of yehuda Amichai" published by China Social Publishing House 1993 and "Poems of yehuda Amichai" published by Hebei Education Publishing House in 2002. The latest book is "Open, Close and Open" translated by Huang Fuhai and published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House, which can be regarded as the first fully translated album.
1993 In March, when Song of Jerusalem: Selected Poems of yehuda Amichai was published, Amihai himself made a special trip to Beijing to attend the launching ceremony of the book.
The above three books are all translated from English. Amihai himself knows English, and together with ted hughes, the English Poet Laureate, translated Amen into English-Amihai translated the first draft, and Hughes helped him proofread and polish the suffix. Among other English translators, Chana Bloch and Chana Cronfeld, as well as glenda abramson, are the most praised. They are not only translators, but also experts in the study of Amihai.
However, in 1994, on the occasion of Amihai's seventieth birthday, Robert Oort wrote an article in Modern Hebrew Literature entitled Untranslatable Amihai. It is pointed out that Amihai's innovative contribution to Hebrew was obviously filtered out by another language in the process of translation. Similarly, the language itself has been destroyed, especially when translated into English, a younger language. For example, in some modern idioms, Amihai deliberately uses words in the Bible instead of synonyms in modern Hebrew to express a special meaning.
Oort gave an example. There is a sentence in Amihai's love poem "In the Middle of this Century", which is translated into English as "Linxi-woolsey Together"-a linen-wool blended fabric literally translated as "Let's * * *", which is ridiculous for both English and Chinese readers. But the Hebrew word "sha'atnez" means a taboo in biblical times, that is, hemp and wool cannot be blended. Fu Yi translated and wrote: "In our blasphemy", although it was necessary, it turned a straightforward sentence with hidden meaning into a straightforward metaphor, leaving the space for readers squeezed out, and the most direct consequence was the loss of poetry. However, Hebrew readers can immediately understand the moral of Amihai, that is, the combination of two completely different things clearly violates taboos, just like Romeo and Juliet.
How dangerous it is to translate poetry, even with a good translator, even a poet like Amihai who is famous for his precise, concise and transparent daily language.
I have no right to evaluate the quality of the Chinese version, but I am glad to see that both translators claim to put "accuracy" first. However, appropriate annotations are necessary in translation, which is also for the accuracy of the translation and to make up for the inevitable losses in the translation process as much as possible. But there are no valuable notes in Fu Hao's translation. Huang Fuhai's translation, on the other hand, mixes the comments of English translators and Chinese translators without noting them separately, which seems inappropriate, because the comments themselves reflect the research results and translation efforts.
Amihai's poems
Open the closed, look for the lost, and sing silence.
No poet has ever described the colorful daily life in Jerusalem in such detail as Amihai.
Open, Close and Open is the last book of poetry published by yehuda Amiguess before his death in September 2000. It has won almost unanimous praise from critics and is regarded as the best work in Hebrew poetry. The cover of the English hardcover edition (2000) of this book is a triangular fragment from an ancient Jewish tombstone. On Amihai's desk, the word "Amen" is engraved on it, which runs through the book and appears in five poems, like fragments of memory, vaguely linking his life with the life of Jews from generation to generation.
On, off, on. Before we were born, everything
Is open in the universe without us. When we are alive, everything
We are all closed inside. When we die, everything will be reopened.
Open, close, open, this is us.
-"I am not one of the six million people: how long will I live" (translated by Huang Fuhai)
The Chinese translation includes 24 groups of poems, which express his eternal themes: love, love for calves, war and its consequences, God/father, childhood, time, land and all aspects of daily life in Jerusalem, which may be extremely fragmented. No poet has ever described the colorful daily life in Jerusalem in such detail as Amihai. In traditional Hebrew literature, there is only one image of the holy city, that is, the image of the holy home described by the Bible and rabbis. The New York Times's comment on this book is titled "The God of Small Things" (a novel by Indian woman writer Ahrend Hattie Roy, 1997 won the Booker Prize), which is what I said. Amos oz, the most famous Israeli novelist, also said: "When reading Amihai, we will feel that the place where he writes poems seems to be in our kitchen, our living room and our bedroom."
Amihai once commented on the city: "The most amazing thing about Jerusalem is that I can always find a small corner that is unknown. This is the largest and smallest city in the world. " After his death, Israel's Ha 'aretz reported that Jerusalem had lost its "tenderest lover".
"In Jerusalem, everything is a symbol." He saw the past of Jerusalem: "Jerusalem sat in mourning, she sat in mourning,/those who came to visit and comfort her,/they didn't give her peace day or night." He described the city like this: "Sometimes, Jerusalem is a sword city. Even the hope of peace will penetrate the harsh reality. Soon, they become dull or fragile. " He vaguely saw the future: "In Jerusalem, hope is an eternal beating. I hope to be like a faithful dog. /Sometimes she runs in front of me to spy on the future and sniff it out ... "(translated by Huang Fuhai)
In his poems, personal happiness is also the criterion of everything, and family ties are higher than national, social and religious laws and regulations. In a war-torn world, love-not God-is the only refuge, although it is very fragile. War is also written in his poems, but there is no sense of heroism and glory. God is responsible for the lack of love. He is solemn and humorous, warm and calm, secular and god-fearing, metaphorical and concrete, rich in meaning but not obscure. Amihai once said, "We are always writing what we have lost." He mentioned Ruth many times in his poems (translated by Huang Fuhai as "Ruth"). She was his childhood sweetheart, who stayed in Germany that year and died in the Holocaust. The name of the lute has become a symbol of childhood, peace, youth and love;
Ruth, Ruth, Ruth, my little girl in childhood—
Now she is his body double.
The other is dead, and death is the other.
Will you come back to me like a dead man?
Sometimes they come back to earth, just like being born again?
-"Name, Name, On Another Day, Now" (translated by Huang Fuhai)
Another recurring image is his father, who symbolizes tradition, history, discipline, even God and, of course, love. Previously, there was a short poem called "My Father", which wrote:
My memory of my father is wrapped in
White paper is like a sandwich that you take to work during the day.
Like a magician taking it out of a hat.
Pagoda and rabbit, he took love away from his little body,
The river is in his hands.
Run with good deeds.
-Kang Ci translated from the English version of Azila Talit Reisenberger.
Duo Long Rosenbloom once pointed out in Ha 'aretz, "When reading Amihai, people can hardly feel the transition from words to poetry, from secular to solemn. He condensed our hard life with kindness and a little peace. "
Ami Sea combines modernity and tradition, with strong personal color and profound universal significance, which reproduces the living situation of the whole human race, the Jewish nation and everyone.
Ted hughes, the late British poet laureate, was also a fan. Hughes once wrote in the English magazine Jerusalem Report: "The influence of his poems is to put my own life in front of me-I don't know how to open it, let's go over it again, show all the richness of every moment and free me from my own ideological cage."
His language is concise, but it embodies a high degree of skill; His experience is personal, but it contains collective memory; His feelings are simple on the surface, but complex and profound on the inside. Maybe we can say that he is "pseudo-simple" in order to "lure" us into it and read it repeatedly involuntarily. Until that moment, maybe one day in the future, the feelings hidden in our hearts burst out, making us feel sorry for ourselves, because all our lives have been lost, because all the beautiful "things" around us.
Read Amihai, quietly.