Mr. Zou Dai Centennial Festival
Jiang Dengke
Time flies so fast. Mr. Zou Dai, who was born on March 20, 1922, celebrated his 100th anniversary and has been away from us on January 9, 1996, more than 26 years ago.
Mr. Zou Dai was my teacher and met him in 1986, when he was already over the age of Hua Jia. Before that, I had read many of his translated works, and the Selected Poems of Neruda, signed "Translated by Zou Dai and Others", was an important book for me to understand Neruda's poetry; his compilation of "Selected Poems of Modern Chinese Gelug" gave me a more comprehensive and systematic understanding of this poetic style from theory to text. There were no translators or editors in these two books, and I really didn't know that Mr. Zou Dai was teaching in the Department of Foreign Languages of the Western Normal School where I was studying. I met Mr. Zou Dai for the first time in October 1986, after the establishment of the China New Poetry Research Institute, as a service member of the New Period Poetry Seminar. During the meeting, almost everyone who saw him greeted him cordially. He doesn't speak much and speaks slowly, but from his words, people can get a sense of trust, equality, and respect.
More interaction with Mr. Zou Dai began in the fall of 1987 when he entered the China New Poetry Research Institute to pursue a master's degree. We had three mentors at that time: Fang Jing, Lü Jin, and Zou Dai. Born in 1914, Fang Lao only gave occasional classes, mainly through lectures and seminars. Teacher Zou Dai's class is mostly in his home, we are very happy, on the one hand, his lectures are more casual, mainly in the way of discussion, people are very gentle, basically will not criticize us positively; second, Teacher Zou smokes, I and Li Zhen, Wu Xiangyang also have this hobby, you can talk about poetry with the teacher in the smoke. Teacher Lu Jin is the director, good at talking, and much younger, and we have more opportunities to meet him.
In addition to her classes, Ms. Zou Dai also served as the editor-in-chief of Chinese and Foreign Poetry Studies (formerly known as "Chinese and Foreign Poetry Exchange and Research"). Since its inception, I have been the editor of the journal, participating in editing, proofreading and other work. At that time, it was still lead typesetting, and running the printing factory and running the post office was mainly a matter for me and Teacher Fu Zhongrong. When each periodical was published, Mr. Zou handed me the selected manuscript, and I sent it to the printing house for typesetting and proofreading repeatedly. Through those manuscripts, I became familiar with many names that I could only see in books and newspapers in the past, and I also knew many young scholars, poets, and translators. Some of my poetic predecessors and friends, who still maintain contact with me, met and interacted with them at that time. It was also under the encouragement of Teacher Zou that I began to translate some articles and research articles on poetry and introduce Chinese poetry by foreign poets, which were reviewed and published in journals, which played a great role in expanding my reading breadth and academic vision.
Ms. Zou Dai is a senior editor. In the 1950s, he served as the poetry editor of Southwest Literature and Art and Red Rock, and was very familiar with the poets and writers in Chongqing. After the Southwest Literary Association moved to Chengdu, he also served as the editor of the poetry journal "Stars".
He was a down-to-earth, serious man. The manuscripts I got from him had traces of his repeated revisions, and some of them were even revised paragraph by paragraph. At that time, communication was not as convenient as it is now, the communication time was very long, if all the manuscripts were returned to let the author revise, it would delay a lot of time, so it was the basic skill of the editor to process the manuscript on the basis of respecting the author's style and views. Moreover, when the manuscript is dispatched, it is necessary to achieve "finalization", and the font size and font must be marked clearly, because it is very difficult to adjust the layout of the lead type layout, even if it is a change in a word, it is often necessary to adjust the entire paragraph or even a whole page. I still remember The words of Juan Xiu written by Teacher Zou on those manuscripts, one stroke at a time, very serious, some of which were corrective texts, and some of which were problems in common sense, grammar, and expression.
In poetry creation, research, and translation, Mr. Zou Dai has always adhered to the proposition of modern Gelug poetry, and when he was an editor, he also had more interest in such manuscripts, but he never used his own views and preferences as the criteria for selecting articles. Some young authors' articles, even if there are some deficiencies, biases, or even inconsistencies with his views, as long as they have novelty, Mr. Zou will pay attention to it. Some good articles from foreign publications were reprinted and promoted by him at the expense of the page. He once read a long dialogue between Ip Wai Lien and Xin Di on poetic tradition and modernity in a Hong Kong journal, but he felt that the content was rich and the viewpoints were novel, so he reprinted it in two times, which had a good impact on readers. Later, when I was studying for a doctorate at Soochow University, I chose to study the Jiuye Poetry School, in addition to The Suggestion of Professor Lü Jin, it was not unrelated to the influence of that long article.
Teacher Zou not only edits publications, he also compiles and publishes many selected poems, and is a selector with great characteristics and achievements. In those days, unlike now, resources could be found through the Internet and databases, but only from the vast sea of books, publications, and newspapers to page by page, query, and transcribe. For some information that existed in memory but could not be found, he also wrote to authors, editors, and friends for support. The "Selected Poems of Modern Chinese Gelu", the "Selected Poems of Foreign Famous Artists" series, and the "Selected Poems of Foreign Famous Poets" were all completed in this way. Ms. Zou Is proficient in English and Russian and has translated many related works. When compiling foreign poetry selections, even if the selected works have been published, Teacher Zou should try his best to find the original text for proofreading, eliminate the mistranslation, mistranslation and missed translation, so that the translation is closer to the original text, more in line with the characteristics of the poem and the Chinese expression habits. In addition to English and Russian, the poetry selection will also involve many other languages, and Mr. Zou found the English version of the relevant dictionaries and related works, and translated and proofread through several versions according to some laws of foreign Chinese. In my impression, Ms. Zou Dai used multilingual poetry texts to translate and proofread poetry translations in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and other languages. This kind of translation work is sometimes more energy-intensive than his own translation, respecting both the original text and the translator's language habits and translation style, but he has never cried bitterness. Providing readers with excellent and even perfect translations of poetry is the pursuit of Teacher Zou Dai's life.
Teacher Zou is a poet. In the creation of poetry, he has his own persistence, especially the form and rhythm of poetry. I have participated in some activities around Chongqing with him, such as climbing Jinyun Mountain, boating on Shuanglong Lake in Hechuan, and he creates some works every time. When it was done, he would show it to us and even ask us for comments and suggestions. Teacher Zou's poems are clean, the font is juanxiu, and occasionally some words are circled, and the modification content is marked next to the manuscript paper with modification marks. On the surface, Teacher Zou's poems are not talented, but they are simple and introverted, and after repeated reading, they can often get in-depth thinking about life and reality. His writing and translation began in the 1940s, but it was not until his later years that he compiled and printed a collection of his own poems, Selected Poems of modern Gelu. After his death, the China New Poetry Research Institute arranged for Duan Congxue, a graduate student at the time, to select his posthumous works.
Because of his work in translation, research, reading and editing, Mr. Zou has established good relations with many poets, critics and translators. Professor Yang Wuneng was the dean of The Sichuan Institute of Foreign Languages at that time, and because of Mr. Zou's invitation, he often made a special trip to Beibei to give us lectures, lecture on German literature, Goethe, and Feng Zhi, which benefited us a lot. When I chatted with Mr. Yang's daughter, Ms. Yang Yue, I also talked to her about this unforgettable experience. Teacher Zou usually works in Beibei, and her family lives in Guanyinyan in Yuzhong District, and only returns home once a week or half a month. He sometimes used the opportunity to go home to party with some old friends, including Zhang Tianzhi, Yang Benquan, Yang Shan, and so on. When communicating with us, he shared some useful information with us, so that we could have a better understanding of the literary world and the publishing world.
When compiling the "Selected Modern Chinese Gelug Poems", Teacher Zou vaguely remembered that in the 1950s, he seemed to have read the modern Gelug poems published by the Shandong poet Kong Fu in the journal, but he did not know his later units, and even whether Kong Fu was still alive, so he tried to send the letter to the Shandong Provincial Federation of Literature and Literature. Mr. Kong Fu, who teaches at Shandong Normal University, was very touched after receiving the letter, and while mailing the poem manuscript, he poured out to Mr. Zou Dai about a thing hidden in his heart. The Shandong publishing industry published poetry collections for many young poets at that time, but their first poetry collection had to be a collection of two people. Mr. Kong Fu was reluctant because he was not young, and he was composing landscape poetry, which was very different from the works of other poets and was inappropriate when combined. Mr. Zou Dai took advantage of the weekend to return home and relay this information to the poet Yang Benquan (Mu Ren). Mr. Yang was the deputy editor-in-chief of Chongqing Publishing House at that time, and made great contributions to the publication of poetry, so he asked Mr. Zou to ask Mr. Kong Fu to send the manuscript of the poetry collection to him first. After Yang Benquan saw the manuscript, his eyes lit up, and he thought that it was a very unique and excellent poetry collection, and decided to publish it. As a result, the first collection of contemporary Chinese landscape poems, "Shanshui Qingyin", came out in Chongqing in 1984 and received attention from the poetry world. Mr. Kong Fu is grateful to Zou Dai, Yang Benquan and other poetry fans.
In retrospect, I have always adhered to the field of new poetry research, and later served as the editor-in-chief of "Chinese and Foreign Poetry Research", and then worked in the school's periodicals and publishing houses, which was largely due to the care and help of Mr. Lü Jin, and also influenced by Mr. Zou's quiet, serious, professional and dedicated attitude towards life and work. What Teacher Zou left behind was the spirit of hard work, dedication and detachment that each of us needed, and I just accepted Mr. Zou's words and deeds, and felt Mr. Zou's vision, feelings and mind. It's my luck.
Teacher Zou's life is very simple, except for smoking, there is no other hobby. At that time, I didn't know much about getting old, and I always felt that his body had always been very good, and his mentality was peaceful, and there were almost no emotional fluctuations of great joy and great sorrow. He fell ill and was hospitalized very suddenly, and we all thought he would be back in school soon. On the afternoon before his death, he also commissioned the teacher who visited his office to bring the final exam questions back to school, not realizing that it was the last words he had left for the world. When Teacher Zou was alive, he did not put forward any lofty slogans, and few people wrote articles to promote him. However, I can feel that his status in the eyes of family, friends, and students is very high. He just silently insisted on the cause he loved all his life, not ostentatious, not stopping, not giving up, until the last moment of his life. Teacher Zou is a pure person, and Teacher Lu Jin uses "people to seek no quality and self-esteem" to summarize Teacher Zou's life, which is very accurate. He does not seek a sense of existence through declarations and propaganda, but he has always lived in people's hearts. Even after 26 years of death, whenever I think of Teacher Zou's bits and pieces, I still feel kind, as if it happened yesterday, constantly inspiring me, leading me, and correcting me. After Mr. Zou's death, I wrote several articles and published them in newspapers and periodicals such as Poetry Journal, Chongqing Evening News, and Chinese and Foreign Poetry Studies, mainly to remember my teacher's teachings and to remind myself of my own behavior.
When Teacher Zou Dai was alive, he did not consider his own material enjoyment, did not consider what he could get, but left the beauty to the world and to future generations, which naturally made it easy for those of us who felt this beauty to remember him. Because of this, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Institute of New Poetry compiled the "Collected Poems of Zou Dai", and everyone was willing to get together to recall The life and achievements of Teacher Zou and express their remembrance of him.
Because of nostalgia, 100-year-old Mr. Zou Dai is still young. His career, character, and achievements are constantly spoken and passed on by those who come after him, and they affect the people he cares about and the world he cares about in a spiritual way.
(The author is a professor at Southwest University, vice president of Southwest University Press, and vice chairman of Chongqing Writers Association)
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