A week from today at City University of Hong Kong.
Date: 1 November, 2012 (Thursday)
Time: 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
Venue: G4302, Green Zone, 4/F, Academic 1, City University of Hong Kong
Mo Yan and the World: Another Roundup
Mo Yan 莫言, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature, continues to be a topic of conversation. Following yesterday’s posting of “A Westerner’s Reflection on Mo Yan,” here are three other links to the relationship between Mo Yan–and by extension, Chinese literature, if not China–and the world.
First, Mo’s longtime translator into English Howard Goldblatt gives a brief take on the relationship between translator and writer, in “My Hero: Mo Yan.”
Then Julia Lovell, translator and author of The Politics of Cultural Capital: China’s Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature, weighs in on the political responses in China and the “intellectually lazy … Western observers” in “Mo Yan’s Creative Space.”
Then, looking at Yang Mu 楊牧 winning the Newman Prize, Liao Yiwu 廖亦武 winning the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and Mo Yan winning the Nobel–all in the space of a few days–Didi Kirsten Tatlow looks at “In 3 Awards, 3 Ways of Seeing China,” quoting observations from P K Leung and Michelle Yeh.
Three Poems by Yang Mu
Asymptote has published three poems by 2012 Newman Prize-winner Yang Mu 楊牧, translated by Michelle Yeh & Arthur Sze. The sequence begins:
In the zone of rain shadows, at the moment of losing
My winding way, the star is the only guideYour contemplation is an ocean, you are endless brooding
At night, in the morning, at the moment when mountain shadows
Retreat from my side table, we recall the time before exile
Click here to read all three.
A Westerner’s Reflection on Mo Yan
At the “International Conference on Chinese Literature in Global Contexts” at Beijing Normal University 北师大, World Literature Today editor Robert Con Davis-Undiano read his “Westerner’s Reflection on Mo Yan [莫言].” With Mo Yan winning the Nobel, WLT has posted it online. He writes,
Given Mo Yan’s stature and productivity, I propose that we view him as a possible test case to gauge the depth and quality of Western engagement with Chinese literature. He is only one writer, but Western critics have responded strongly to his work, and how critics and readers react to a major writer is always revealing … I will argue that the Western active appreciation of Mo Yan signals a Western openness to Chinese literature and a deepening engagement with Chinese culture.
I will also argue that Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum (1986) is especially valuable for probing the Western response to his work and Chinese literature, owing to the significance of this novel in his production overall, the book’s grand scope, and the Western attention that the film Red Sorghum has already brought to the novel.
Read the whole piece here.
Found in Translation: Five Chinese Books You Should Read
In yesterday’s post on the review of Bei Dao’s The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poems (New Directions, edited by Eliot Weinberger), I also mentioned the short collection of Bei Dao’s poetry Endure (Black Widow Press), which I translated with Clayton Eshleman. That collection earned a gracious mention–along with books by Yan Lianke 阎连科, Han Shaogong 韩少功, Yu Hua 余华, and Nobel Prize-winner Mo Yan 莫言–from the editors of Path Light on their Wall St. Journal blog post, “Found in Translation: Five Chinese Books You Should Read.”
Take a look at the full listing!
Review of Bei Dao’s The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poems
Jonathan Hart reviews Bei Dao‘s 北島 The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poems (New Directions), edited by Eliot Weinberger, speaking “about these translations as if they were poems in English on which the reputation of the poet stands in the English-speaking world.”
He concludes that “Bei Dao’s poetry translates well in its bold imagery and implicit and oblique politics, using nature in a symbolism of indirection that is as subtle as it is apparent,” but he only mentions poems translated by Bonnie McDougall (Bei Dao’s early work) and by Weinberger (Bei Dao’s more recent work), not mentioning the poems translated by David Hinton.
For another recent collection of Bei Dao’s poetry in English, see also Endure (Black Widow Press), translated by Clayton Eshleman and me.
Duo Duo at 2012 Prague Writers’ Festival
Duo Duo 多多 at the Prague Writers’ Festival earlier this year, with readings in Chinese & Czech with English voice-over:
More Views on Mo Yan
New Nobel Prize-winner for Literature Mo Yan 莫言 has, for obvious reasons, become a hot topic of discussion. I’ve assembled some of the analysis that’s recently appeared online in various forms.
First, my highschool classmate & translator from Swedish B J Epstein has written about the Nobel from an outsider’s perspective, bringing a discussion she and I had recently into her report.
Next, poet & translator Eleanor Goodman talks about the different reactions to the Nobel from within China and without.
Then, translator Bruce Humes covers the other side of the issue, demonstrating how “references deemed unbecoming to China’s image are often ‘airbrushed'” from a published Chinese translation of the NYTimes report of Mo Yan’s prize. And Brendan O’Kane asks “Is Mo Yan a Stooge for the Chinese Government?” (Brendan sez the short answer is ‘no’).
Earlier, Granta‘s John Freeman interviewed Mo Yan (from Silliman’s blog):
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And PBS‘s Jeffrey Brown talks to Charles Laughlin (University of Virginia) and Xiao Qiang (University of California, Berkeley) about Mo Yan:
Asian American Writers’ Workshop Translation Night
October 17, at 7:00 PM at 110-112 West 27th Street, Manhattan, AAWW and Archipelago Books are hosting Fady Joudah, Sinan Antoon, Susan Bernofsky, Jeffrey Yang, and Ghassan Zaqtan for Translation Night, to “read literature spanning China and Japan to new innovations in Palestinian poetry, including work by Mahmoud Darwish and Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo [刘晓波].”
Click the images for more details.
Mo Yan wins 2012 Nobel Prize
Mo Yan 莫言 has won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature–a victory for those who support global pluralism in literature prizes, for those who believe in the legacy of Faulkner and García Márquez in contemporary international fiction, and for those who believe in giving a Nobel to a Chinese writer the Chinese government doesn’t oppose (belonging to one of these categories does not necessarily indicate belonging to either of the others). Congratulations also to Mo Yan’s translators in all languages, particularly Anna Gustafsson Chen in Swedish and Howard Goldblatt in English.
For readers looking for more, here is the press release for the Nobel Prize, the BBC’s beginner’s guide to Mo Yan, a good summary from 3% of Mo Yan’s writings available in English, and a section of an interview Howard Goldblatt did with himself for Chinese Literature Today. Still more? Here’s an article on the reaction in China, advanced ordering information for his forthcoming Pow!, an excerpt from another forthcoming work Change, and yet another excerpt from another forthcoming work, Sandalwood Death (pre-order Sandalwood Death here).