In his famous book The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, Jean Baudrillard refers to the model of exchange defined by the myth of the pact with the Devil. The things we sell: our reflections in the mirror, our shadows, or the products of our work do not remain safely separate from us, but instead turn against us and take their revenge, sometimes even bringing us to self-destruction. However, the French philosopher claims that, nowadays, the tragedy of the subject haunted by its spectre is no longer relevant as the subject poses a spectrum, and all transcendence is lost in the order of signs. The structure of the myth about the pact with the Devil appears in Murong Xuecun’s novel Most Die of Greed. In post-reform and opening-up China, an average young man meets a mysterious older millionaire and gets involved in a risky game, in which unbridled consumption leads to degeneration and, eventually, gruesome death. As a 70 hou (post-1970, born in the 1970s) writer, Murong Xuecun addresses the transformations in his generation’s attitudes and values caused by rapid changes in both material and ideological spheres of their lives.
The article is an analysis of the description of the garden in Bruno Schulz’s The Cinnamon Shops (Sklepy cynamonowe) and its two translations into Chinese. Wei-Yun Lin-Górecka has translated Schulz’s prose from the original Polish, while Lu Yuan’s translation is primarily based on English versions of his work. The analysis employs methods drawn from cognitive poetics and some elements of cognitive theory of translation, especially Elżbieta Tabakowska’s ideas on imagery and translation equivalence. The study helped characterize a complex conceptual blend found in the description and trace structural changes caused by the translators’ specific decisions. The translations are characterized by a relatively high level of equivalence. The conceptual blends they comprise differ from the one created by Bruno Schulz mostly in terms of the described elements’ positions on the empathy scale, which are mainly dependent upon the translators’ manner of using the devices of animation and anthropomorphism.
The Cultural Revolution left deep scars in the memory of the Chinese and strongly influenced Chinese literature, especially those works written by the generation who lived to experience its excesses. Yu Hua’s novels To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, as well as Su Tong’s Binu and the Great Wall of China, address the problem of the pain and traumas associated with Chinese history. The writers draw upon the traditions of storytelling in an attempt to overcome those traumas by creating new, linear, coherent, and even optimistic, tales about the past experiences of ordinary people, who are given a chance to narrate them against the dominant historical discourse. Walter Ong’s theory of orality and Michel Foucault’s concept of counter-history open up new possibilities of analysis, and help understand these cathartic prose works. A careful reading of Su Tong’s and Yu Hua’s novels also raises the question of the authenticity of the trauma recovery presented, and exposes the risk of complicity with the hegemonic discourse of history in silencing and repressing the traumatic memories that they face.
PL
Odzyskiwanie utraconego głosu: katartyczna proza Su Tonga i Yu Hua Rewolucja kulturalna pozostawiła w pamięci Chińczyków wyraźne blizny i wywarła głęboki wpływ na chińską literaturę, szczególnie na utwory napisane przez przedstawicieli pokolenia, które osobiście doświadczyło jej ekscesów. Yu Hua w powieści Żyć! oraz Kroniki sprzedawcy krwi i Su Tong w powieści Binu zmagają się z cierpieniem i traumami związanymi z chińską historią. Próbując przezwyciężyć traumę, czerpią oni z tradycji literatury oralnej w poszukiwaniu nowych, linearnych, spójnych, a czasem nawet optymistycznych narracji o przeszłych doświadczeniach zwykłych ludzi, którzy otrzymują szansę stworzenia własnych opowieści, przeciwstawiających się dominującemu dyskursowi historiograficznemu. Teoria oralności Waltera Onga oraz pojęcie kontrhistorii ukute przez Michela Foucaulta otwierają nowe możliwości dla badacza usiłującego przeanalizować i zrozumieć te utwory i ich katartyczne działanie. Uważna lektura powieści Su Tonga i Yu Hua każe również postawić pytanie o autentyczność prezentowanego w nich uleczenia z traumy i rozważyć ryzyko ich współudziału w tłumieniu traumatycznych wspomnień.
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