Zhu Shenghao

In 1998, fifty-four years after Zhu Shenghao's death at the age of thirty-two, Li Funing, well-known literary critic and translator, began his introduction to the eight volumes of the Complete Works of Shakespeare with the following remarks: 译林出版社筹划出版一套增订本《莎士比亚全集》,前后共用 了近五年时间。这套全集仍以朱生豪先生译本为基础,这是恰 当的,因为朱译本最受读者欢迎... ... 朱先生的译文既能紧扣 原文,把原文的意思准确,充分地表达出来,又能再创造,保 持译文的通畅,自然。尤其它优美,灵动和风格化的语言更是 为人称道。1(The Yilin Press has spent five years preparing the publication of Complete Works of Shakespeare with additional materials. This publication is still based on Zhu Shenghao's translations, which is just as it should be, since his translations have been most popular among readers.... Faithful to the original, Mr. Zhu's translation does not only capture the spirit of the original and express its meaning accurately and fully but also recreates and preserves its natural flow. The elegance and vivacity of his stylistic language have especially been praised.) Why at the end of the last century did the largest publisher of foreign languages and literatures in China choose to publish Shakespeare texts translated by a young man more than half a century ago? From the first publication of Tian Han's translation of Hamlet in 1921, well-known playwrights, such as Tian Han and Cao Yu, poets, such as Bian Zhilin, Dai Wangshu, and Zheng Min, famous scholars with higher degrees from American and English elite universities, such as Liang Shiqiu, Cao Weifeng, and Liu Wuji, professional translators, such as Sun Dayu and Fang Ping, have all published different versions of Shakespeare. Among them, Liang Shiqiu is the only one who translated the complete works, which were published in 1968.2 In comparison with these numerous well-known scholars, poets, and playwrights, Zhu Shenghao had the least favorable conditions, financially, physically, in terms of time and historical circumstances. Why does his translation still stand out seven decades after his death?Despite Liang Shiqiu's achievement, many readers still prefer Zhu's translations, as the English-language expert Xu Guozhang has explained.3 Liang, one of the first Shakespeare translators, started preparing his translation in 1930, when Zhu was only eighteen, and finished the complete works in 1968, twenty-three years after Zhu's death. In other words, while Liang took thirty-eight years to finish his project, Zhu took less than ten years to complete a similar project.In 1930, Hu Shih, the director of the translation board of the Chinese Educational Funding Committee, recommended five well-known literary figures—Wen Yiduo, Xu Zhimou, Chen Xiying, Ye Gongchao, and Liang Shiqiu—to translate Shakespeare in an ambitious five-year project that was to be supported by a budget of fifty thousand silver dollars—a large quantity at that time. For different reasons, none of these writers, except Liang, ended up translating Shakespeare. Liang deemed the job as his responsibility—a burden he had to bear. As he wrote to his daughter Wenqiang, “一星期校对10本莎氏,可把我整惨了,几乎把我累死了!... ... 译书之苦,不下于生孩子” (“I have to revise ten Shakespeare plays within one week; how miserable, I am almost dead of fatigue! ... The pain caused by translation is no less than that of delivering a child”) and he even complained that “真恨莎土比亚为什么要写这么多” (“I truly hate Shakespeare; why did he write so much?”).4 An excellent scholar who possessed admirable determination and an iron will, Liang finished the translation, although his suffering in the process of translation cannot help being somewhat contagious to his readers. In short, his translations resulted more from his heightened sense of duty than from great passion, in contrast to the case of Zhu Shenghao.Instead of suffering, Shakespearean translation brought not only enjoyment but also meaning to Zhu Shenghao's life despite his poverty, sickness, and constant displacement during the Sino-Japanese war. In 1933, the twenty-one-year-old Zhu Shenghao graduated from Zhijiang University and started working at the World Bookstore in Shanghai. Zhu, a solitary and silent young man, initially felt bored, lonely, and depressed in his new urban environment. He expressed his feelings to Song Qingru, his former schoolmate and lifelong love: 做人是那样乏力的事,想我每天回来,就是要读书,也缺少了 精神兴致,心里又是这样那样乱得很,难得有安静的一天。纵 使生活比止水还寂寞,感到的只是莫名的疲倦,更恐惧着日子 将永不会变样。5(To live is so tiring. Imagine that every day after my work, I only want to read, but I don't have enough energy or interest. I feel so confused that I can hardly be at peace with myself—not even during a single day. Even though my life is quieter than dead water, I still feel tired without any plausible reason. What scares me the most is that this life remains forever unchanged.) Translating Shakespeare, however, brought much awaited change to his life. In the spring of 1935, impressed by his remarkable talent in both the Chinese and English languages, Zhan Wenhu, his senior colleague at the World Bookstore, encouraged Zhu to translate Shakespeare.6 After that, instead of wallowing in boredom, Zhu devoted all his free time to researching Shakespeare and translating his works. Once he finished half of his first translation, The Tempest, the life that he had compared to dead water not long before had been transformed into poetry. He became so cheerful that he had the impression that bedbugs had disappeared simply because he slept more soundly, and he even found local mosquitoes virtuous because of their unusual silence.7 Instead of complaining about solitude or boredom as he had done in the past, he tried his best to cheer Song Qingru, whom he now found to be much more solitary than himself. He had Shakespeare as a companion.8In 1942, one year after his marriage, a jobless and penniless Zhu Shenghao was living under his mother-in-law's roof, a living arrangement designed to allow him to concentrate on his translations of Shakespeare day and night. He was so poor that he refused to see a doctor for his badly infected teeth. At the same time, poverty didn't prevent him from enjoying his work. As he said to his wife, “我很贫穷,但我无所不有” (“I am very poor, but I have everything”).9 His wife watched him work ceaselessly at his desk and tried very hard to persuade him to visit the temples on top of the Yu Mountains for a break. But Zhu did not feel grateful to his well-intentioned wife, and he felt indifferent to the nature surrounding him. Once at home, he complained about wasting his day as a “vagabond.”10 One month before his death, he told Song Qingru: “早知一病不起,就是拼着命也得把它译 完” (“If I had known that I would never recover from this sickness, I would have exhausted every possibility in order to finish all translations”).11In comparison with Zhu Shenghao, Liang Shiqiu had an excellent background in English literature, more favorable material and research conditions as a renowned writer and scholar, and much more time at his disposal to complete his endeavor. Further, he was able to use Zhu's texts as a point of departure for his own translations, which were published twenty-four years after Zhu's premature death. Liang Shiqiu was a Shakespearian expert; he even claimed to have corrected mistakes in the original texts of the English playwright. He could not, however, point out any inaccuracy in Zhu's translations after having gone through them word by word, except for certain omissions of obscene language, which Liang found “regrettable.”12 Wasn't this the greatest indirect homage that Liang could ever pay to his much younger but much less fortunate predecessor?We should not forget that Zhu did his work during the Sino-Japanese war using copies of Shakespeare's plays bought from secondhand bookstores in Shanghai. In the last two years of his life, Zhu finished his best work—his translations of Shakespeare's tragedies—with only two dictionaries and without institutional support or financial reward.13 He had made so much progress during these two years that some of his readers, including me, mistakenly believed that Shakespeare was a much better writer of tragedies than comedies. In reality, however, Zhu's favorite Shakespeare plays were comedies and this is why Zhu chose to begin his translations with them.14 My misperception shows the extent to which the quality of Zhu's translations has influenced Shakespeare's reception in China. Through his translations, Zhu communicated his enjoyment to numerous readers, which is one of the reasons why seven decades after his death his works still remain most popular among Shakespeare's readers in China.Unlike most other Shakespeare translators in China, Zhu Shenghao had never had formal schooling in Western literature; he graduated with a degree in Chinese. Nevertheless, his commentaries on world literature are insightful, original, and fearless. Although contemporary editions of Shakespeare have continued to choose his translations, few have republished his preface and other commentaries on Shakespeare because they are so idiosyncratic and do not adhere to scholarly conventions. Zhu declared, “我一点学问也没有,学问是可以求得的,我的毛病是我看不起学问” (“I don't have any scholarly knowledge. I could have learned it; but my weakness is that I look down on scholarly knowledge”).15 On another occasion, he wrote: “研究文学这四个字很可笑,一切的文学理论也全是多事,我 以为能和文学发生关系的,只有两种人,一种是创作者,一种是欣 赏者,无所谓研究” (“The expression ‘literary studies’ is laughable. All the literary theories are also meaningless. I believe that only two kinds of people can relate to literature: authors and admirers; there is no room left for so-called literary studies”).16Despite his erudition in both Western and Chinese literature, Zhu Shenghao deliberately eschewed scholarly conventions. Since he did not respect scholarly authority, it is indeed difficult for scholars to take his commentaries seriously. To accept his commentaries implies a recognition of the subjective nature of scholarship, since Zhu lays bare the subjectivity of his literary criticism. Nevertheless, precisely because of their subjectivity, his criticism radically reveals what personally motivated him to translate Shakespeare.The preface to his translations of Shakespeare is a case in point: ... the of world literature, only of of Shakespeare of and of have and are great and of the But in terms of and Shakespeare by the other Although most by Shakespeare to an of the past, what he tried to was the nature by be they or Chinese or or or after not only are his works by of literature but his plays also to large on the and on the in different his works are and they still can of Zhu instead from the of an of literature without any to literary criticism. What he in this are that Shakespeare to readers and such as and and nature by be they or Chinese or or or In other words, he translated Shakespeare's plays not only because of his as a great in world literature or his among the elite but also and more because they him as who was an but of great literature as as a of on the of Shakespeare that he to Shakespeare's plays a of through his He to as many Chinese people as not only through texts but also through his about the and of great literature to be in a Nevertheless, the of this preface in his life to this of world literature while even of some of Shakespeare's of his Shakespeare has indeed a of Chinese readers the of the years since his translations were first the after which China was under the of the Sino-Japanese war. In the spring of 1935, Zhu Shenghao learned from his Zhu that a writer had claimed that is a without it even have Shakespeare by the of a of the China and motivated by the to this Zhu became more than ever to translate Zhu a because of his determination under these Song Qingru, his lifelong did not the to his from and Zhu of Zhu and it with Song was no the who the change did not was being on Zhu's although how it to most of have been much less As a Zhu Shenghao was original and idiosyncratic to of his within the of any wrote to Song about for in a can choose he or his can him. But as a he to his duty to his is the one who this but he to the as an people his is he a a his is he about some with and any his is not and his best to only there be for this In other words, for Zhu Shenghao, for his claimed to feel in at most a it had it became an In this Song was to the to his in the At the same time, Zhu was influenced by the which with criticism of Chinese most Zhu was of two about his from the China in the of and For Chinese the But most instead of his to the of an Zhu a different of in to the was not an but was by its should not be about their they should look at it because only through a of a can take to In other words, for Zhu, their to the by to the instead by to the through or This in a new instead of to a Zhu's of as a the of as a The of should be in just as in the case of his translation of Shakespeare, which should his more foreign literature was a of the it was as to of the why was the year of translation, because translation, to and many other could to and Chinese One other that Zhu Shenghao from most of his was that he never his with any He chose to translate Shakespeare as his and he continued to translate Shakespeare's work for the of his life with financial and without any or institutional his translations, the only other Zhu left to are a of to Song and published and in a the Chinese and American of the of the in under the of American an both the and the in Shakespeare's The are his not only his life but also his professional as a and a of own and a who refused an and to use to pay for him As a Zhu Shenghao felt no in to his and He had an Zhu Shenghao was very Hu his who recommended him for the job at the World Bookstore, that years of his work at the World Bookstore, Zhu and I All these years I had never more than ten from him. to he by the or His to Song Qingru, however, an and of his are published under the of Shenghao's which based on his of in were as to his that in the Chinese and American his his criticism of and was and he in it was to the in even though the was by its with the was in the After the on the the with the that for the time during the Zhu Shenghao most of his translated his criticism of the in the of and the Zhu still felt that he was to write his because of the of the the of the the was but In other words, Zhu didn't want to his with instead he had that he much than any he had to in his for the because of its Zhu to his and his of in in his translations of Shakespeare much more Zhu was so poor when he in the that he could not even to for his he from in the without even the of an the poverty, he that he to than to a job with the After his in he could also have gone to or to to a job with no to the But the to first with his in and in his of so that he could finish his In the spring of 1942, he up and to his during the last years of his life, he on his translations of and Zhu his translations as of his in said I a I in translating Although Zhu had never been a in the his translations were the he his own in most of his Zhu believed Chinese to be and he radically He even claimed that ... many I am not at all a Chinese. me is all My is to Chinese many in Shakespeare's works, his Chinese his to being the of Chinese Zhu in Chinese so much so that his who was of a of of in his so much that he even to In the Shenghao's talent can only be compared with that of a single in the past, Song Chinese scholars Song to be one of the greatest among of years of Chinese and his are the of this recognition of the young talent in Chinese at Zhijiang University that Zhu as not only for foreign Chinese poets, and were among his was a of the during the and is by Chinese to be a great in the to the of the a of the in and After the of on Zhu wrote a to his for a about China under a foreign by and Zhu's of his with Chinese his talent in and Chinese no to his of Shakespeare, his favorite English to Shenghao's is so with Shakespeare in China that it is not an to that to a large extent the English his Chinese to his young a that almost with the Sino-Japanese Zhu translated and a half of plays into based on a secondhand copies for during the he even his translations, even though they were the first he for he had any time to from the or But he so hard on that he ended up his translations by For the of The remains to the first which had been done years and was in the World Bookstore after the most other Shakespeare translators had spent years in the Zhu never left China. including Shakespeare to his translations not only the spirit of the but also them to Chinese readers to the unusual and of his Zhu has made Shakespeare a of Chinese through his translations, which are not only by scholars but also by of literature, including At the age of I in with Shakespeare's plays because of his they were my during the a difficult time of my despite his to of Chinese readers me, Zhu did not to much about In he in a to Song that reality, told me at my can do in life is to translate what have I would have him to take my life. I became a at the I had never of a But since I started working World I an he do don't as my only were I I Although is even more than translation, at least I them my is not to The young with translation by using he did to his work, as he were of what he was he for translation, even though he devoted his life to translating Shakespeare. it as there is a In his for translation in only that his of Shakespeare was his work no to the of translation because he it through his with Shakespeare. to Song Qingru, he he was so that he there were him and Shakespeare or him and the in the Zhu's greatest at the end of his life, was to their and his translations In this his translations were no his professional duty but an of his as as his wife and Zhu Shenghao started working on Shakespeare in 1935, a of famous including Liang Shiqiu, had published After having at them Zhu readers have of Shakespeare for a long time. also tried to publish their But as I at the different translations I found a few of them to be and although most of them are and of this not only is the original but also the language is so that it almost is to the meaning cannot Shakespeare for this his translators are the for For Zhu Shenghao, translating Shakespeare as most of his had was from He to have the best of Shakespeare in China, and these translations, in his did not do enough to Shakespeare's works. He believed the of Shakespeare's language was a him in world Through his own translations, Zhu to to Chinese readers a similar to the one he as a of the English while the spirit of the original as as his translations, Zhu to be able to not at least in most of the and that prevent Chinese readers from Shakespeare, and he to his with Shakespeare's works in China. his for this was so that it almost But he indeed in not only his Chinese readers with the but also with the of the language as Shakespeare's plays were in Chinese and not translated from an I his translated language almost as much as I The of the my favorite Chinese did Zhu Shenghao what in He that translate these works the following first of I have tried as much as to capture the original I have no other I look for and to the of the But I do not with the of I into with Chinese I and through the original words, no to change in order to the original meaning as as the free from any I finish a I into a to there is Zhu Shenghao he of meaning as he the English the of Chinese In China, most still up to the as the for one of the well-known was why most Shakespeare translators to the original texts even to the of the of the Chinese in it was also difficult to the and of Shakespeare's language to his unusual for both the English and Chinese languages, Zhu Shenghao was able to this among Chinese his he was never to any be they Western or including Shakespeare In the process of translation, he refused to use other translations, such as Liang as because he to his at any The quality of Zhu's translations to his and of the English language and English his of Chinese language and and his in his his Shakespeare translations not only in terms of their literary quality but also in terms of their to be on He was about Shakespeare as a as as a He out Shakespeare among the of world literature he as have plays to large on and on in different Zhu tried his best in his translations to to readers as as to in China the original spirit of the works not only on but on an would also the of an on in order to the was or the was in I was not with one word or one I spent about not only did Zhu Shenghao but he was also a his he even the on one at Zhijiang most who didn't him believed it was a who this He his and talent to his translations of Shakespeare. when his translations on the of a or in a based on Shakespeare's in China, cannot help but the and nature of his short, Zhu Shenghao up his life energy at a young age to a Shakespeare in China, Shakespeare almost as popular and in China as in his the Sino-Japanese and under difficult such as poverty, sickness, of and the of institutional and Zhu was able to his although to his death, he finished only and a half of the His life was a the of world literature in China. he left this world seven decades his still in the of

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