12.18
I had little time to read this week for I have to prepare for various exams and write all kinds of papers. But I still manage to read a little.
I read some Lolita. I said that the Chinese version I read didn’t impress me a lot and that I would read the original version someday, so this week I began that journey. When I read the first line of the book (after John Ray’s foreword), I begin to understand why the Chinese version can’t satisfy serious readers. “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap. At three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” All the words seem to convey us its sound faster than its sense, though the two have a tight in-bound relation. I feel my tongue being flirted and dancing around. How can a Chinese translator possibly translate such a pure and accurate combination of sound and sense? I remember Zhu Shenghao, a famous Chinese academic who is known for his translating Shakespeare. He is sometimes criticized for adding to much individual interpretations into his translation in order to keep the rhymes. Now, translation is trapped in a confusing dilemma, and some people even say: translation is impoissible.
To be frank, I am not obsessed with Nabokov’s works that much. Like Wilde, he thinks that arts is solely for the sake of arts. He advocates very much in details. You see in his book every trivial thing is stated with great labor. Sometimes, I even think that if I am to write what Nabokov writes in one paragraph, I can only write one sentence. His possessive imagination on perception and experience trigger me to feel the aesthetic glamour, but I am not much moved. Maybe it is only a matter of individual taste. I hope to encounter something more of metaphorical meanings or social-political orientations. Aesthetics itself won’t appeal to me much.
I would like to retreat what I said about how boringly-similar Don Delillo and Philip Roth are. This week, I read a short story of Don Delillo and I read some more The Human Stain. And my old notion is completely overthrown. Compared to Philip Roth, Delillo is more lost and obscure imploring you to think and feel, but Roth is delicate and sharp pinpointing your inner heart. They are of very different styles, and I can’t say which one I prefer because both of them contain so much. The short story I read is Looking at Meinhof. It is very short, only 12 pages long, and it’s about forgiveness and human sight. It talks mainly about two things: do terrorists deserve redemption and how limited human sights are. One thing I love about literature is that it pushes you into a question that’s very related to your being and let you struggle in it contently. And that’s maybe why I am not very fond of aesthetics since it doesn’t stimulate my reason much. I know it’s a prejudice. Maybe someday I will change.
So much for today.
I read some Lolita. I said that the Chinese version I read didn’t impress me a lot and that I would read the original version someday, so this week I began that journey. When I read the first line of the book (after John Ray’s foreword), I begin to understand why the Chinese version can’t satisfy serious readers. “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap. At three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” All the words seem to convey us its sound faster than its sense, though the two have a tight in-bound relation. I feel my tongue being flirted and dancing around. How can a Chinese translator possibly translate such a pure and accurate combination of sound and sense? I remember Zhu Shenghao, a famous Chinese academic who is known for his translating Shakespeare. He is sometimes criticized for adding to much individual interpretations into his translation in order to keep the rhymes. Now, translation is trapped in a confusing dilemma, and some people even say: translation is impoissible.
To be frank, I am not obsessed with Nabokov’s works that much. Like Wilde, he thinks that arts is solely for the sake of arts. He advocates very much in details. You see in his book every trivial thing is stated with great labor. Sometimes, I even think that if I am to write what Nabokov writes in one paragraph, I can only write one sentence. His possessive imagination on perception and experience trigger me to feel the aesthetic glamour, but I am not much moved. Maybe it is only a matter of individual taste. I hope to encounter something more of metaphorical meanings or social-political orientations. Aesthetics itself won’t appeal to me much.
I would like to retreat what I said about how boringly-similar Don Delillo and Philip Roth are. This week, I read a short story of Don Delillo and I read some more The Human Stain. And my old notion is completely overthrown. Compared to Philip Roth, Delillo is more lost and obscure imploring you to think and feel, but Roth is delicate and sharp pinpointing your inner heart. They are of very different styles, and I can’t say which one I prefer because both of them contain so much. The short story I read is Looking at Meinhof. It is very short, only 12 pages long, and it’s about forgiveness and human sight. It talks mainly about two things: do terrorists deserve redemption and how limited human sights are. One thing I love about literature is that it pushes you into a question that’s very related to your being and let you struggle in it contently. And that’s maybe why I am not very fond of aesthetics since it doesn’t stimulate my reason much. I know it’s a prejudice. Maybe someday I will change.
So much for today.