찬쉐
 残雪 | |
|---|---|
작가 정보 | |
| 출생 | 1953년 5월 30일 (70세) 후난성 창사시 |
| 국적 | 중국 |
| 언어 | 중국어 |
| 직업 | 소설가 |
| 활동기간 | 1985년 - 현재 |
| 장르 | 아방가르드 |
찬쉐(중국어: 残雪, 병음: Cánxuě, 한자음: 잔설, 1953년 5월 30일 ~ )는 중국의 소설가이다. '찬쉐'는 필명으로 본명은 덩샤오화(邓小华)이다. 중국 아방가르드 문학의 대표 작가이자, 사실적인 인물과 감정 묘사로 '중국의 카프카'로도 불린다. 대표작으로 《산 위의 작은 집》, 《황니제》, 《오향 거리》 등이 있다.[1]
각주[편집]
- ↑ 정산호 (2019년 10월 7일). “[인물] 노벨 문학상 후보 거론 ‘중국의 카프카’ 찬쉐”. 《뉴스핌》 (서울). 2022년 2월 8일에 확인함.
===
일어한역
==
잔설 (작가)
| 잔설 | |
|---|---|
| 프로필 | |
| 출생: | 1953년 5월 30일 [1] |
| 출신지: |  중국 후난 성 창사시 [1] |
| 직업: | 작가 |
| 각종 표기 | |
| 번체 : | 殘雪 |
| 간체 : | 잔설 |
| 늑대 소리 : | Cán Xuĕ |
| 화명 표기: | 잔 세츠 |
| 발음 전기: | 차안 슈에 |
잔설 (잔설)은 중화인민공화국 의 작가 . 본명은鄧小華(토쇼카). 중국 작가 협회 후난 분회 회원 [2] .
경력 [ 편집 ]
1953년 5월 30일 현지 신문 '신호 남보' 사장의 홍홍어와 이 회사의 인사부에 근무하는 이경 사이의 여섯 번째 자식으로 중국 후난성 창사시에서 태어난다. 출생명은鄧則梅. 아래에 동생이 두 명 있다 [3] . 아버지가 1957년에 「우파」로서 추방되어, 어머니는 노동 개조에 보내져 [2] , 20년에 걸쳐 일가는 다양한 박해를 받는다. 문화대혁명 때에는 아버지가 수감된 감옥 근처 오두막에서 혼자 생활을 강요당했다. 맨발의 의사, 공장근무, 대리교사 등의 일 [2] 이나 결혼을 거쳐 남편과 재봉을 독습하고 그에 따라 생계를 세웠다 [2] . 1980년대에 창작을 개시하고, 1985년부터 작품을 발표하기 시작한다 [2] . 그 작품은 각국어로 번역되어 세계적인 평가를 얻었다.
2015년 '마지막 연인'이 북 엑스포·미국의 최우수 번역 문학상을 수상했다 [4] . 2016년에는 노이슈타트 문학상에 노미네이트되어 [5] , 2019년에는 "Love in the New Millennium"(방역 없음)이 부커 국제 상에 노미네이트되었다 [6] . 2021년, "I Live in the Slums(번역:Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping)"가 부커 국제상에 후보된다 [7] .
작풍 [ 편집 ]
가사 옆, 하루에 한 시간씩 시간을 들여 작품을 쓴다고 한다. 그로테스크한 묘사와 이미지로 가득 찬 그 작품 세계는 카프카 등에 비해 있지만, 오히려 그것은 고참 혁명가의 부모에 의한 「억압」과 「우파」의 가족에 대한 사회의 백안시 속에서 자란 잔설의 자질 이다 [2] .
일본어 번역 작품 [ 편집 ]
- 『창로 타루 부운』( 가와데 서방 신사 , 1989년)
- 「뻐꾸기가 울리는 그 순간」(가와데 서방 신사, 1991년)
- 「뻐꾸기가 울리는 그 순간」(시라미즈샤, 2019년)
- 『황 진가』(가와데 서방 신사, 1992년)
- 『황진가』(시라미즈샤, 2018년)
- 『복도에 심은 숲의 나무』(가와데 서방 신사, 1995년)
- 『돌위 표연』( 문예춘추 , 1997년 / 나카가와 출문고)
- 『암밤』(『이케자와 나츠키=개인 편집 세계문학 전집』 카와데 서방 신사, 2008년)
- 『한때 그려진 적이 없는 경지』 (평범사, 2013년)
- 『마지막 연인』 （평범사, 2014년）
- 『혼의 성 카프카 해독』( 평범사 , 2005년)
- 『한때 그려진 적이 없는 경지』(『세계 문학의 프론티어 3』 이와 나미 서점 , 1997년)
- 「계간 중국 현대 소설」( 창창사 )에 몇개의 단·중편.
저작 [ 편집 ]
원문 단행본 소설 [3] [ 편집 ]
- 『黃泥街』（台湾圓神出版社、1987년）
- 『천당리적 대화』(작가 출판사, 1988)
- 『돌위 표연』(홍콩 청문서점, 1990년)
- 『돌위 표연』(상하이 문예 출판사, 1990년)
- 『종재 주랑 복적 萍果樹』(대만 원경 출판사, 1990년)
- 『사상유보』(호남문예출판사, 1994년)
- 『휘황적 일자』(허베이 교육 출판사, 1995년)
- 『황니가』(나가에 문예 출판사, 1996년)
- 「잔설 자선집」(하이난 출판사, 2004년)
- 『말세 애정』(문효 출판사, 2006년)
- 「암밤」(화문 출판사, 2006년)
원문 단행본 평론·인터뷰집 [3] [ 편집 ]
- 『영혼적 성보-이해 卡夫卡』(상하이 문예 출판사, 1999년)
- 『해독 博爾赫斯』(인민문학 출판사, 2000년)
- 『위양보단-잔설방담록』(호남문예출판사, 2003)
- 『지옥 중적 단독자』(생활·독서·신치 미사토 서점, 2003년)
- 『영생적 조련-해독《신곡》」(베이징 10월 문예 출판사, 2004년)
- 『예술복당-잔설문학필기』(광서사범대학 출판사, 2004년)
- 「잔설 문학관」(히로사이 사범대학 출판사, 2007년)
일본어 번역 [ 편집 ]
- Frontier, translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (2017)
- Love in the New Millennium, translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen (2018)
- I Live in the Slums, trans. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (Yale, 2020).
- Purple Perilla, trans. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (ISOLARII, 2021).
참고 문헌 [ 편집 ]
- 잔설연구(1호~8호)
관련 항목 [ 편집 ]
残雪 (作家)
| 残雪 | |
|---|---|
| プロフィール | |
| 出生： | 1953年5月30日[1] |
| 出身地： | 中国湖南省長沙市[1] |
| 職業： | 作家 |
| 各種表記 | |
| 繁体字： | 殘雪 |
| 簡体字： | 残雪 |
| 拼音： | Cán Xuĕ |
| 和名表記： | ざん せつ |
| 発音転記： | ツァン シュエ |
残 雪（ざん せつ）は中華人民共和国の作家。本名は鄧小華（とう しょうか）。中国作家協会湖南分会会員[2]。
経歴[編集]
1953年5月30日、地元の新聞『新湖南報』社長の鄧洪釣と、同社の人事部に勤める李茵との間の第六子として、中国湖南省長沙市に生まれる。出生名は鄧則梅。下に弟が二人いる[3]。父親が1957年に「右派」として追放され、母親は労働改造に送られ[2]、20年に渡り一家は様々な迫害を受ける。文化大革命時には、父が収監された監獄近くの小屋で一人暮らしを強いられた。裸足の医者、工場勤務、代理教師などの仕事[2]や結婚を経て、夫と裁縫を独習し、それによって生計を立てた[2]。1980年代に創作を開始し、1985年から作品を発表し始める[2]。その作品は各国語に翻訳され、世界的な評価を得た。
2015年、『最後の恋人』がブックエキスポ・アメリカの最優秀翻訳文学賞を受賞した[4]。2016年にはノイシュタット文学賞にノミネートされ[5]、2019年には"Love in the New Millennium"（邦訳なし）がブッカー国際賞にノミネートされた[6]。2021年、"I Live in the Slums(翻訳:Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping)"がブッカー国際賞にノミネートされる[7]。
作風[編集]
家事の傍ら、1日に一時間ずつ時間をとって作品を書くという。グロテスクな描写とイメージに満ちたその作品世界は、カフカ等に比せられるが、むしろそれは古参革命家の両親による「抑圧」と「右派」の家族に対する社会の白眼視の中で育った残雪の資質である[2]。
日本語訳作品[編集]
- 『蒼老たる浮雲』（河出書房新社、1989年）
- 『カッコウが鳴くあの一瞬』（河出書房新社、1991年）
- 『カッコウが鳴くあの一瞬』（白水社、2019年）
- 『黄泥街』（河出書房新社、1992年）
- 『黄泥街』（白水社、2018年）
- 『廊下に植えた林檎の木』（河出書房新社、1995年）
- 『突囲表演』（文藝春秋、1997年 / のち河出文庫）
- 『暗夜』（『池澤夏樹=個人編集 世界文学全集』河出書房新社、2008年）
- 『かつて描かれたことのない境地』 （平凡社、2013年）
- 『最後の恋人』 （平凡社、2014年）
- 『魂の城 カフカ解読』（平凡社、2005年）
- 『かつて描かれたことのない境地』（『世界文学のフロンティア3』岩波書店、1997年）
- 『季刊 中国現代小説』（蒼蒼社）に幾つかの短・中編。
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중국어 한역
Can Xue [ 편집 ]
| 칸 슈에 | |
|---|---|
| 태어나다 | 덩쩌메이(鄧澤美), 1953년 5월 30일, 중화 인민공화국 후난성 창사  |
| 필명 | 칸 슈에 |
| 직업 | 소설가, 문학평론가 |
| 국적 | 중국 |
| 대표작 | "Breakout Performance"("Five Spice Street"로 개칭) "The Last Lover" "Frontier" "New Century Love Story" "Conversation in Paradise" "Apocalyptic Love" "Artistic Revenge - Can Xue's Literary Notes" |
| 친척 | 덩준홍 (아버지) 리인(어머니) 덩샤오망 (형) |
| 영향을 받음 | 카프카 , 보르헤스 , 칼비노 , 루쉰 , 단테 , 셰익스피어 , 도스토예프스키 , 괴테 , 톨스토이 |
칸설 (Can Xue, 1953년 5월 30일 ~ ) 본명은 덩샤오화 (鄧徐周), 여성, 후난성 레이 양 출신으로 중국 현대 작가 창사 에서 태어나 아방가르드 문학 의 대표적인 인물 로 알려져 있다. . 스웨덴 한림원 학자 마 위에란(Ma Yueran)은 그녀 를 "중국의 카프카 " 라고 부르지 만 그녀는 이 제목이 마음에 들지 않으며 "카프카를 능가할 수 있다"고 믿습니다. [2] 그의 작품은 일본 에서 번역된 수가 많고 일본에서의 높은 평판으로 인해 2009년 일본 도쿄에서 "Can Xue Research" 저널이 창간되었습니다. Can Xue의 형은 중국 철학자 Deng Xiaomang 입니다 . 최근 몇 년 동안 Can Xue의 작품은 전 세계적으로 점점 더 많은 독자들의 인정을 받고 높은 평가를 받았으며 한때 노벨 문학상의 유력한 후보가 되었습니다.
인생 [ 편집 ]
Can Xue의 부모는 중국 공산당원 이었으며 1949년 이후 신문사에서 일했습니다. 그의 아버지 Deng Junhong 은 New Hunan Newspaper의 사장 이었고 그의 어머니 Li Yin 은 "Yongzhou의 Old Things"를 썼습니다. 1953년 5월 30일, Can Xue는 신후난 신문사 기숙사에서 태어났습니다. Deng Junhong은 그에게 Deng Zemei라는 이름을 붙였고 나중에 Can Xue는 그의 이름을 Deng Xiaohua로 바꾸었습니다. "Can Xue"는 Deng Xiaohua가 문학의 길을 떠난 후의 필명 입니다 [3] . 1957년, 그녀의 부모는 우파 로 분류되어 직장에 파견되었고, Can Xue는 그녀의 할머니 밑에서 자랐습니다. 노인의 약간 이상한 행동은 칸설의 성격 형성과 이후의 글쓰기에 큰 영향을 미쳤다. [4] : 79, 130 .
1970년 Can Xue는 거리 공장에 입사하여 제분업자, 조립공, 선반공으로 일했습니다. 1978년에 그녀는 도시로 돌아온 교육받은 청년 남편과 결혼했습니다 . 1980년 Can Xue는 거리 공장을 그만두고 목수였던 남편과 함께 양복점을 열었습니다. [4] : 290-291 .
1985년 다른 작가 친구들과 Ding Ling 의 도움으로 Can Xue는 그녀 의 첫 소설 " 황니 거리 "(원래 제목은 "Breakout Performance")를 출판했습니다. 1988년 Can Xue는 호남 작가 협회에 가입했습니다 . [5] :59-62 .
영향 [ 편집 ]
Can Xue에 따르면 그녀는 어렸을 때부터 독서를 좋아했습니다. 그녀는 많은 고전을 읽었지만 1970년대 후반이 되어서야 모더니스트 작품을 읽을 기회를 갖게 되었습니다. [4] :6 . 그때부터 Can Xue는 Kafka, Borges, Calvino 및 Dante의 작품을 읽기 시작했습니다. 그녀는 또한 Lu Xun을 매우 좋아하며 특히 "Weeds"와 "New Story"를 좋아 합니다 . 그녀는 특히 Kafka의 영향을 많이 받았습니다. [5] :71-72 이 작가들을 위해 수십만 단어의 비평 기사를 썼습니다.
Can Xue의 어린 시절 경험도 그녀의 글에 영향을 미쳤습니다. 작은 뱀, 곤충, 할머니, 아버지 등 그녀의 작품에 등장하는 많은 이미지는 어린 시절의 경험에서 비롯된다 [4] :280-290 . 후난의 "주술" 문화도 그녀의 글쓰기에 어느 정도 영향을 미쳤습니다. [5] :86-96 .
평가 [ 편집 ]
Can Xue는 현대 중국에서 가장 예리한 페미니즘 의식을 지닌 작가로 그녀의 독특한 기질은 분류하기 어렵다는 것이 주류의 견해이다. 동떨어진 여성성과 이상하고 예리한 감정을 지닌 Can Xue는 이전 중국 여성 작가들의 글쓰기와 완전히 다를 뿐만 아니라 그녀 세대의 남성 작가들과도 경쟁할 수 있습니다. [7] 쉬에의 소설은 돌연변이 감각을 이용해 터무니없고 기형적이며 악몽 같은 세계, 우울하고 모호하고 두렵고 불안하고 관음증적이며 변태적인 성격 심리학과 인간 본성의 추악한 상호 증오와 갈등을 보여줄 수 있습니까? 그녀의 작품은 인간 존재의 비극을 묘사할 뿐만 아니라 인간 존재의 본질적이고 추악한 특성을 묘사합니다. [8]
그러나 놀라운 점은 Can Xue의 작품 중 일부를 깊이 읽을 때 인류의 영적 합의에 기초한 심오한 영적 경험에 들어선다는 것입니다. 이 경험에서 당신은 근원으로부터 끊임없이 흘러나오는 것처럼 보이는 생명력의 급증을 발견할 수 있습니다. " 황니 거리 "의 Can Xue "모든 것이 평범한 현실 아래에서 삶의 격류가 항상 솟구칩니다."라고 말했습니다. 이 끊임없는 삶의 경험 추구와 정신 세계에 대한 끊임없는 탐구가 바로 이 세상을 형성했습니다. Can Xue 작품의 정신적인 핵심이자 세계적 관점에서 중국 문학의 독특한 기념물로 자리매김했습니다.
Can Xue의 단편 소설 "이중생활"은 오페라 "분수"로 각색되어 재창조되었으며, 2010년 제11회 뮌헨 음악제 에서 성공적으로 초연되었습니다 . "Fountain"은 뮌헨 뮤직 페스티벌의 의뢰로 중국 작곡가 Wang Lin (왕잉차오라고도 함)에게 의뢰되었으며, 대본은 Wang Lin과 Can Xue가 썼습니다.
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Chinese author Can Xue favourite to win 2023 Nobel prize in literature | Books | The GuardianBooks
Chinese author Can Xue favourite to win 2023 Nobel prize in literature
Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie are also among those highly tipped for the prize, announced on Thursday
Ella CreamerThu 5 Oct 2023 00.08 AEDT
Can Xue, Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie are among the most likely authors to win this year’s Nobel prize in literature, according to bookies.
Chinese avant garde author Xue, 70, is leading the pack with Ladbrokes giving 8/1 odds of her winning the prestigious literary award.
The winner is due to be announced on Thursday at noon BST. “It’s a wide-open field as far as the odds are concerned, but the latest figures suggest punters are fast-growing convinced by Can Xue’s chances,” said Alex Apati of Ladbrokes.
Xue, whose real name is Deng Xiaohua, was previously longlisted for the international Booker prize for her novel Love in the New Millennium, translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen, and her short story collection I Live in the Slums, translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping.
The prize is awarded to “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”, according to the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel. This year, the prize money will rise to 11m Swedish kronor (£822,000), from 10m SEK.
Following Xue at 12/1 odds is Japanese writer Murakami, 74, whose novels include Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84. He has long been floated as a possible winner, and in 2013 he was the bookies’ favourite with 3-1 odds, though Alice Munro ended up winning.
After Murakami at 14/1 is Gerald Murnane, 84, the Australian author of novels including The Plains and Inland. His work is often self-referential. In a June essay in the Guardian, Emmett Stinson wrote that “Murnane’s international recognition has been belated”.
Also given 14/1 odds is 69-year-old László Krasznahorkai, a Hungarian novelist and screenwriter. His novels include Sátántangó and The Melancholy of Resistance, and he won the international Booker prize in 2015.
Seven writers have been given 16/1 odds: Lyudmila Ulitskaya (Russian), Atwood (Canadian), Mircea Cărtărescu (Romanian), Pierre Michon (French), Rushdie (Indian-British-American) and Thomas Pynchon (American).
Last year’s prize was awarded to French author Annie Ernaux, whose work is mostly autobiographical. She was the bookies’ favourite to win in 2021.
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A total of 115 people have been awarded the Nobel prize in literature since 1901. If Xue wins, she will be the 18th woman to win the prize and the second Chinese resident, after Mo Yan was honoured in 2012. Chinese-born Gao Xingjian won the prize in 2000, but he is a French citizen.
This article was amended on 4 October 2023. An earlier version mistakely referred to the Nobel prize “for” literature rather than “in”, and gave the announcement time in GMT rather than BST.
Can Xue From Wikipedia
In this Chinese name, the family name is Deng.
Deng Xiaohua (Chinese: 邓小华; pinyin: Dèng Xiǎohuá; born May 30, 1953), better known by her pen name Can Xue (Chinese: 残雪; pinyin: Cán Xuě; lit: lingering snow), is a Chinese avant-garde fiction writer and literary critic. Her family was severely persecuted following her father being labeled a rightist in the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957.[1] Her writing, which consists mostly of short fiction, breaks with the realism of earlier modern Chinese writers. She has also written novels, novellas, and literary criticism of Dante, Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka. Can Xue has been described as "China’s most prominent author of experimental fiction,"[2] and most of her fiction has been translated and published in English.
Life[edit]
Deng Xiaohua was born in 1953, in Changsha, Hunan, China. Her early life was marked by a series of tragic hardships which influenced the direction of her work. She was one of six children born to a man who was once the editor-in-chief of the New Hunan Daily (Chinese: 新湖南日报; pinyin: Xīn Húnán Rìbào). Her parents, like many intellectuals at the time, were denounced as rightists in the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957, despite being Communist Party members themselves. Her father was sent to the countryside for two years in retribution for allegedly leading an anti-Communist Party group at the paper. Two years later, the entire family was evicted from the company housing at the newspaper and moved to a tiny hut below the Yuelu Mountain, on the rural outskirts of Changsha. In the years that followed, the family suffered greatly under further persecution. Her father was jailed, and her mother was sent along with her two brothers to the countryside for re-education through labor. Deng was allowed to remain in the city because of her poor health. After being forced to leave the small hut, she lived alone in a small, dark room under a staircase. By the time of the Cultural Revolution, Deng was thirteen years old. Her formal education was permanently disrupted after completing primary school.[1][3]
Can Xue describes the horrors of her youth in detail in her memoirs titled "A Summer Day in the Beautiful South" which is included as the foreword to her short story collection Dialogues in Paradise. Throughout this period, her entire family "struggled along on the verge of death". Her grandmother, who raised her while her parents were gone, soon succumbed to hunger and fatigue, dying with severe edema, a grotesque swelling condition. While the family was forced to scavenge food, eventually eating all of the wool clothes in the house, Can Xue contracted a severe case of tuberculosis.[4] Later, she was able to find work as a metalworker. Ten years later, in 1980, after giving birth to her first son, she quit work at the factory. She and her husband then started a small tailoring business at home after teaching themselves to sew.
She began writing in 1983, and published her first short story "Soap Bubbles in Dirty Water" (污水上的肥皂泡) in January 1985. Two other short stories followed that year, "The Bull" (公牛) and "The Hut on the Hill",[1][5] at which point she chose the pen name Can Xue. This name can be interpreted either as the stubborn, dirty snow left at the end of winter or the remaining snow at the peak of a mountain after the rest has melted. Publishing under a pen name allowed Can Xue to write without revealing her gender. According to Tonglin Lu, a professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Montreal, once critics found out she was a woman, her "subversive voice within the supposedly subversive order [of avant-garde fiction]"[6] made them uncomfortable. Tonglin Lu called this "double subversion".[6]) Not only was she writing avant-garde fiction, but she was also a woman; male writers and critics attempted to analyze her works by psychoanalysis of the author, and some even suggested she was certifiably insane.[6] In 2002, she said, "Lots of [the critics] hate me, or at least they just keep silent, hoping I'll disappear. No one discusses my works, either because they disagree or don't understand.”[7]
More recently, however, many critics have paid tribute to her work,[6] drawn to the careful precision she uses to create such a strange, unsettling effect on the reader.
Work[edit]
Can Xue's abstract style and unconventional narrative form attracted a lot of attention from critics in the 1990s. A variety of interpretations of her work have been published, but political allegory has been the most popular way of understanding her early short stories. Many of the images in her stories have been linked to the Cultural Revolution, the Anti-Rightist Movement and other turbulent political movements of the early People's Republic of China. However, direct references to these events are uncommon.[8] The author herself explicitly denies most forms of political commentary others claim to have found in her work, stating once in an interview, "There is no political cause in my work."[9]
On the contrary, Can Xue says she treats each story as a kind of life experiment in which she is the subject.[10] “In very deep layers,” she says, “all of my works are autobiographical.”[7] As for those who struggle to find meaning in her stories, Can Xue says, "If a reader feels that this book is unreadable, then it's quite clear that he's not one of my readers."[11]
Can Xue has also written part of the libretto for at least one opera. In 2010, Can Xue and Lin Wang (web) co-wrote the libretto for a contemporary chamber opera Die Quelle (The Source) commissioned to Lin Wang by Münchener Biennale. The opera is based on Can Xue's published short story "The Double Life". In this opera, a young artist named Jian Yi is deconstructed into different aspects played by different roles. They crosstalk to each other on stage; drying and bubbling-up of the spring symbolize loss and regain of one's own identity. Lin Wang composed the music for Die Quelle (85 minutes in length). Chinese instruments such as the sheng, guzheng and sanxian were used. An unusual feature of the opera is its combination of English pronunciation and Chinese intonation. Die Quelle was premiered on May 9, 2010, in Munich Biennale and broadcast live.[12]
Reception[edit]
Amanda DeMarco stated that the extent to which Can Xue's work is radical is overstated. DeMarco also claims the animals in her novel Frontier "appear in such wild profusion that it would be impossible to assign them a symbology. Can Xue’s writing is not metaphorical in this sense. There is no organized system of correspondence or meaning within it that would allow individual elements to be explained back into the realm of the logical. Often her works are compared to performances, to dance, or to visual art." However, the reviewer still described the experience of reading the author's books as rewarding, explaining that the tools of literature used in experimental writing to chart the human being extend beyond the capacities of language as logic. DeMarco said that at "the sentence level, [Frontier] is a wonderful, carefully hewn thing, lucid and pure".[2]
American novelist and editor Bradford Morrow has described her as one of the most "innovative and important" authors in contemporary world literature.[13]
Can Xue won the 2015 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction and, according to Words Without Borders, "is frequently mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature."[14]
Selected bibliography[edit]
Can Xue has published a large number of novels, novellas, short stories, and book-length commentaries, many of which have been translated into English.[15]
Novels《突围表演》 (1988); later published as 五香街 (2002). Five Spice Street, trans. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (Yale, 2009).
《最后的情人》 (2005). The Last Lover, trans. Annelise Finegan Wasmoen (Yale, 2014).
《边疆》 (2008). Frontier, trans. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (Open Letter, 2017).
《新世纪爱情故事》 (2013). Love in the New Millennium, trans. Annelise Finegan Wasmoen (Yale, 2018).
《赤腳醫生》 (2019). Barefoot Doctor, trans. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (Yale, 2022).
Novellas《苍老的浮云》 (1986). Old Floating Cloud.
《黄泥街》 (1987). Yellow Mud Street.
《种在走廊上的苹果树》 (1987). Apple Tree in the Corridor.
《神秘列车之旅》 (published in 2016 in the collection of the same name). Mystery Train, trans. Natascha Bruce (Sublunary Editions, 2022).
Short story collections《天堂里的对话》 (1988). Dialogues in Paradise, trans. Ronald R. Janssen and Jian Zhang (Northwestern, 1989).
Purple Perilla, trans. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (ISOLARII, 2021).
Compilations in EnglishOld Floating Cloud: Two Novellas, trans. Ronald R. Janssen and Jian Zhang (Northwestern, 1991). Compiles Yellow Mud Street and Old Floating Cloud.
The Embroidered Shoes, trans. Ronald R. Janssen and Jian Zhang (Henry Holt, 1997).
Blue Light in the Sky and Other Stories, trans. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (New Directions, 2006).
Vertical Motion, trans. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (Open Letter, 2011).
I Live in the Slums, trans. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (Yale, 2020).
Awards and honors[edit]2015 Best Translated Book Award, winner, The Last Lover, translated from the Chinese by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen[16]
2019: International Booker Prize, longlisted, Love in the New Millennium (新世纪爱情故事), translated from the Chinese by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen (Yale University Press)[17]
2021: International Booker Prize, longlisted, I Live in the Slums, translated from Chinese by Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping (Yale University Press)[18]
References[edit]
- ^ Jump up to:a b c Lilly Xiao Hong Lee & Clara Wing-chung Ho (2003). Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women, Volume 2. M.E. Sharpe. pp. 26–28. ISBN 9780765607980.
- ^ Jump up to:a b DeMarco, Amanda (2017-05-03). "Xue Generis: Can Xue and the Dangers of Literary Exceptionalism". BLARB. Archived from the original on 2017-06-02. Retrieved 2021-01-09. "Critics focusing on Can Xue are often scholars or translators of Chinese literature; they assure us that she is "peerless" as a writer of experimental literature in China"
- ^ Rong, Cai (2004). The Subject in Crisis in Contemporary Chinese Literature. University of Hawaii Press. p. 98.
- ^ Can Xue (1989). "A Summer Day in the Beautiful South". Dialogues in Paradise. Northwestern University Press.
- ^ 宋如珊 (2006-10-01). 從傷痕文學到尋根文學: 文革後十年的大陸文學流派 (in Chinese (Taiwan)). 秀威出版. p. 246. ISBN 978-957-30429-3-8.
- ^ Jump up to:a b c d Lu, Tonglin (1993). Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature and Society. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. p. 176. ISBN 978-0791413722.
- ^ Jump up to:a b McCandlish, Laura. "Stubbornly Illuminating 'the Dirty Snow that Refuses to Melt': A Conversation with Can Xue". Retrieved January 17, 2014.
- ^ Tian Ming Li (1994). "A Tormented Soul in a Locked Hut: Can Xue's Short Stories" (Adobe Portable Document Format). University of British Columbia.[permanent dead link]
- ^ McCandlish, Laura (2002). "Stubbornly Illuminating "the Dirty Snow that Refuses to Melt": A Conversation with Can Xue". MCLC Resource Center.
- ^ "Contemporary Chinese Writers: Can Xue". MIT. Retrieved January 17, 2014.
- ^ "Modernist Mystery Street". PRI’S The World. Archived from the original on 2010-02-27.
- ^ "Die Quelle – Münchener Biennale". Archived from the original on 2015-02-15. Retrieved 2015-01-31.
- ^ James, Evan (2017-06-08). "The Mysterious Frontiers of Can Xue". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2021-01-09.
- ^ "Can Xue". Words Without Borders. Retrieved 2023-10-04.
- ^ "Can Xue Chronology". Contemporary Chinese Writers. MIT Foreign Languages and Literatures Section. Retrieved 26 December 2012.
- ^ Chad Post (May 27, 2015). "BTBA 2015 Winners: Can Xue and Rocío Cerón!". Three Percent. Retrieved May 28, 2015.
- ^ "Can Xue | The Booker Prizes". thebookerprizes.com. Retrieved 2022-06-16.
- ^ "Can Xue | The Booker Prizes". thebookerprizes.com. Retrieved 2022-06-16.
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https://www.asymptotejournal.com/interview/an-interview-with-can-xue/
An interview with Can Xue
Dylan Suher and Joan Hua
Photograph by Lu Yong
The Chinese avant-garde writer Can Xue aptly describes her fiction as a performance. Reading her fiction is like watching modern dance: like an unfolding gesture out of Merce Cunningham or Butoh (her favorite), her sentences evolve towards unpredictable, pointed conclusions. Her stories often suggest a hidden, underlying narrative—a logic of movement that dictates the actions of the players on the stage. Her characters, with their constantly shifting motives, are expressly not rounded. They are personae, masks made to articulate whatever philosophical proposition or aspect of the psyche the performance currently demands: the little boy who secretly breeds a brood of snakes in his stomach in "The Child Who Raised Poisonous Snakes" or the wormlike humanoid who lives underground and burrows up, towards the unknown surface, in "Vertical Motion." Chief among all the personae is Can Xue, her nom de plume. Can Xue (whose real name is Deng Xiaohua) frequently refers to herself in the third person (as she does in the interview below) and even writes reviews of her own novels, as if her protean, dreamlike visions originated outside of her.
Can Xue carries on with her individual performance indifferent to those critics and readers who seek to classify and explain her. Her family was labeled "Rightist" and persecuted intensely by the Communist government; her social background barred her from any formal education. She nonetheless emerged during the literary flowering of the 1980s known as the "High Culture Fever" as a member of a pack of fiction writers (including Su Tong, Mo Yan, Yu Hua, to name only a few) whose works challenged the orthodoxies of social realism through formalist experimentation and vivid imagery of the body. But unlike her contemporaries, who sought out an untainted primitive past or aimed to record the traumas of the Cultural Revolution, Can Xue has no interest in Chinese folklore or politics. The bold innovations of her oeuvre—executed in a colloquial yet writerly style that emphasizes the rapid shifts in space and narrative logic—surpass the experimentation of her Chinese contemporaries. In fact, her creations are sometimes even more adventurous than those of the Western modernist writers she so admires: a long list of stated influences that includes Kafka, Borges, and Calvino. The literary journal Conjunctions has frequently featured her work, and she has won the admiration of many Western writers—Robert Coover called her "a world master" and Susan Sontag declared her the one Chinese writer worthy of the Nobel Prize. She continues to stand apart from her fellow Chinese writers. As others identified with the Chinese avant-garde have since shifted towards more accessible forms of realism, Can Xue has stubbornly, movingly continued her individual performance: composing challenging experimental work.
In this sense, Can Xue's writing is nothing less than an existential struggle. The high stakes of her gambits can be found on display in her short story, "Snake Island," in which a man returns to his rural hometown after thirty years, to find that he recognizes nothing and nobody and that his family is nowhere to be found. Near the end, a villager summons him into battle. Snake Island, he explains, is divided in two, between the living and the dead, and the living must fight with the dead for territory. This is Can Xue's neverending struggle as well: to write against the death of the soul, and to fight for an authentic life. The struggle never ends; the performance continues.
The following interview with Can Xue was conducted in Chinese via email and then translated into English.
—Dylan Suher
You've switched English translators over the course of your career: the first three collections of yours translated into English were done by Ronald R. Janssen and Jian Zhang, while the most recent three have been translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping. What is your relationship with your translators like: is there a collaborative process? What skills and qualities are necessary, in your estimation, for someone to be able to translate a Can Xue story?
I'm friends with all my English translators. Altogether, I have five English translators: Ron Janssen and Jian Zhang (who translate collaboratively), Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (who translate collaboratively), and Annelise [Finegan]. Starting in the 1990s, I put my all into studying English and managed to achieve a certain level of skill with the language. Ever since Karen and Chen Zeping took over translating my work, I've insisted on reading their translations (and later, Annelise's translations) and offering the translators my opinions. Can Xue's works are truly exceptional; I feel that the most important skill my translators can have is to read the original intensively, thereby having a thorough grasp of the deep underlying humor and general feel of the language in my works. How precisely they express something in their translations is closely connected with their power to feel and their ability to grasp logic, because these kinds of fictions have already surpassed the profundity of philosophy. It is most difficult to properly convert one language into another. Within Chinese, meaning is buried deep, and the language emphasizes subtleties of feeling. English is more direct and emphasizes clear distinctions. It's really difficult to grasp that "degree" of translation.
You're a remarkably prolific writer, having written over a hundred short stories and dozens of novellas and critical essays. Yet only a fraction of those works have been translated into English. Are there any works of yours that have not been translated that you would like to see translated?
At present, two of my full-length novels have already been translated. And it was recently announced that the latest [translation] of my novella The Last Lover, which is currently still being edited, will be published by Yale University Press in the spring of 2014. Dozens of medium-length and shorter works have been translated into English. I estimate that some 13 million Chinese characters of my works have been translated—is that really a small amount? My output is very consistent, and that's very difficult for a writer to do. My wildest dream is to get all of my works published in the United States.
With regard to your writing process, you've said in interviews that your writing comes from your subconscious, and that a good writer should not know what he or she is writing. What do you think of when you begin a story?
The subconscious by itself is actually not the deciding factor; every individual has a subconscious. The key lies in whether you can unleash it to create. Here there is a complicated mechanism, and I can only explain it from the vantage point of philosophy and art. In five or six years, I plan to write a book, Philosophy of Art. In that book, I'll elaborate my thoughts on these issues based on my experience practicing art and the fruits of my intensive research into Western philosophy. I've already been writing for over thirty years, and the writing method I use is precisely the creative method of modern art: Reason monitors from afar. Emotions are completely unleashed. I turn towards the dark abyss of consciousness and plunge in, and in the tension between those two forces, I build the fantastic, idealist plots of my stories. I think that people who are able to write in the way I write must possess an immense primitive energy and a strongly logical spirit. Only in this way can they maintain total creativity amid a divided consciousness. In China, I have not seen a writer who is capable of sustaining that kind of creativity for many years.
The structure in your work can be so difficult to discern—both in terms of narrative structure and in the way the images connect to one another—that it's hard to imagine just how you shape your stories. How do you edit a Can Xue story?
I never edit my stories. I just grab a pen and write, and every day I write a paragraph. For more than thirty years, it's always been like this. I believe that I am surrounded by a powerful "aura," and that's the secret of my success. Successful artists are all able to manipulate the "balance of forces"—they're that kind of extraordinarily talented people.
When you say above that "every day I write a paragraph," do you mean you write your stories sequentially, from beginning to end? Or that you write the paragraphs and later arrange them together?
All my stories—my novels, my novellas, and my short stories—are written sequentially, from beginning to end. I never arrange them together or put them in a different sequence. My manuscripts are extremely clean—I very, very rarely correct even a single word.
A few questions about images and themes that recur throughout your work. The concept of space is always contested in your writing: your stories depict impossible spaces (the apartment in "A Village in the Big City"), spaces that shift dimension and physical realities over the course of the story (the environs of the hut in "Homecoming"), and nebulous spaces (the darkness in "In the Wilderness" or the underground in "Vertical Motion"). What interests you about the manipulation of space in fiction?
Only a writer that possesses a high degree of rationality can break through conventional space and enter into a primitive and purely fantastic landscape. Dante, for example, is that kind of writer. The landscape of hell is suffused with longing and power. Those mighty awakened souls win their own space through the struggles of life and death. As soon as the struggle ceases, that space immediately disappears. This is the creative mechanism that I spoke of in my response above. A writer exhibits her vitality through unfamiliar space.
Your writing often depicts grotesqueries, bodily disfigurement, and outright violence. This is a quality it seems to share with works by other writers identified with China's avant-garde school of the 1980s. Specifically, the imagery in some ways resembles the early works of Yu Hua, which you have called "the first Chinese works that can truly be said to belong to modernism and to have substance." How does your approach to writing about violence compare with the approach taken by the other avant-garde writers and how do you yourself feel about depicting violence in your work?
Writing violence for the sake of violence is vulgar and tasteless. I am not like some Chinese writers, who get a thrill from the simple depiction of violence. That's called acting out a perversion; there's no substance to it. In a select few of Yu Hua's early works, he writes violence in a very remarkable manner, for example, the works in his collection Mistakes by the Riverside. I even wrote a review of that collection. But he has several stories where he writes violence and there is no substance to it. His self-awareness when creating is not strong. A few of Mo Yan's depictions of violence are really warped, of low character. What does it mean to say something has substance? It is to say: your depictions of violence must have form, must have a sense of metaphysics to them. Just like the images in Dante's hell, they must depict the true struggles deep within the soul. Readers read the terrifying images in Dante, but those images push those readers to yearn for their purest ideals. Your question lumps my writing together with other writers of the eighties, which shows that you haven't entered deeply into Can Xue's works—you need to put more effort into reading!
You expect a real partnership with your readers. You have said that they need to be well-read enough in modernism to understand your writing technique, and willing to make the effort to understand the deep structure of your work. Considering that you expect such a high level of engagement and response on the part of your readers, what is your personal relationship with your readers like? Do you notice a difference between the response of your Chinese readers to your work and the response of foreign readers to your work?
I often interact with my readers in China, and quite a few interviews with me have been published. And I'm also on the Web, communicating with netizens. I also frequently critique my colleagues—I've offended almost all my fellow writers and critics. However, I still must persist in speaking reason and I must maintain my critical position. China has more than a few Can Xue fans, but overall, Can Xue's era still hasn't arrived, because her works are too ahead of the curve, and don't conform to commonplace, habitual aesthetics. So I must continue to do the steady work of bringing my writings into existence. Chinese readers and foreign readers should have about the same reaction to my writing. Because my subject matter is universal human nature—the original face of nature.
What do you mean when you say "subject matter is universal human nature—the original face of nature"? We see nature frequently appearing in your stories as an adversarial force that drives self-discovery (the sea in "The Lure of the Sea") or as the truth of life, hidden just below the surface (the spring in "The Spring"). In your interpretation, what is the connection between the images of nature in your stories and your feelings about nature?
According to my worldview, the relationship between man and nature is that of having the same structures and sharing the same flesh. Nature is the highest form of existence. At some periods, She inevitably gives birth to things that occupy the same rank as mankind, so that through them, She may display her own essence. But I am not a pantheist: I feel that this state of affairs is the result of nature's structural function itself. Mankind shoulders the mission that Mother Nature has endowed to it (that is to say, nature demands that mankind realize and manifest her goals through creativity), and thus, we can conclude that mankind presumably shares the same kind of structural function as nature. They can only exist as the children of nature, with the same body as their mother. Because I believe in nature (as a Chinese person, this is very natural), in my writings, existence and nonexistence, the spiritual and the material, speculative and material thought, this shore and the opposite shore—all are unified together as they repulse each other. The opposing forces are locked in a life and death struggle, yet in the midst of that struggle, they achieve a balance and a harmony. In this aspect, my ideological system is very much opposed to Western culture. Although, of course, my worldview was gradually formed through my own exhaustive study of Western culture.
Next year, Yale University Press is putting out a translation of a critical piece you wrote on Kafka, a writer about whom you've often written, and with whom you have long been fascinated. Your view of Kafka strikes us as unusual; you've said that Kafka's works "signify an incomparable tragedy, but are also suffused with a pleasant freedom. This is like the whole of the experiences of K, the protagonist of his novel The Trial. There is mystery, terror, alienation, and yet his every action originates from a primitive instinct and a sublime will." What experiences or influences have shaped your views of Kafka?
My interpretation of Kafka is indeed unusual. The main reason why my critical work on Kafka is a breath of fresh air to readers, I think, is that I have incorporated Eastern elements into my understanding of Kafka's work. The religiosity of Westerners caused Kafka unending misery and drove him to an untimely death. I must say, to a certain degree, these living conditions diminished his creativity. On the other hand, my worldview, which combines the cultures of the East and West, enables me to regard the mundane world with an open mind and to endure this profound black comedy. Therefore, when I interpret The Castle and Amerika and other such acclaimed works, I emphasize the vitality in them, the primitive, rebellious revelry, and, above all, the vigorous meaning of life contained within. I believe I have in this respect surpassed existentialism and am proposing an artistic philosophy with a Chinese color to it. I can write this kind of criticism because I investigate the artistic philosophy shared by Kafka, Dante, Calvino, and artists like them. I have only achieved my current breakthroughs by applying my thirty-some years of creative experience to writing critical essays. I have not only written books of critical work on Kafka, but I have also analyzed Dante, Borges, Calvino, Goethe, Shakespeare, and other such masters—altogether producing six books of criticism.
Could you speak a bit more about what you term "the religiosity of Westerners"? What do you mean by "religiosity," and how did this religiosity "diminish [Kafka's] creativity"?
Here I am referring mainly to a sense of "original sin." A sense of original sin was in the background of both Kafka's personal life and his literary creativity, so some people believe that one can use existentialism to explain his writings. My critique seeks to pry him apart from existentialism; rather, I analyze and write about Kafka's exuberant creativity, his passion for the mundane world, and about his pagan rebellion against the religiosity that suppressed him. I write about his strong individuality, which led him to bring his primitive creativity (squeezed out by reason) to the fore. But Kafka's performance in real life was far weaker than what he demonstrated in his creations. He was always on the edge of being swallowed up by original sin, and he feared quotidian life, which he always wanted to escape. On this point, actually, he is in line with existentialism. The incessant guilt that came from his religious consciousness finally conquered his primitive life force; the friction within his own soul dissipated all of his vitality. His letters and diaries always show that he was a "germophobe"; a man who could not bear the vulgarities of life; a man who strived every day to be a "good person."
To shift to your influences: You have declared yourself as thoroughly opposed to postmodernism, and prefer to describe yourself as a modernist writer. What does the idea of modernism mean to you?
Postmodernism smashes structure, but establishes nothing. It therefore belongs to a transitional phase of literature and philosophy. Now that phase has already passed, and the things that were being advocated then are no longer relevant to the present. The ultimate mission of mankind only consists of being constructive and creative. As the children of nature, each one of us must exercise our own creativity, so as not to fail to meet the expectations nature holds for mankind. In this respect, modernist literature does a better job than postmodernism, and is therefore more closely aligned with my worldview. Without exception, modernism pursues the ideal, regards creation and invention as the most noble values, and truly loves quotidian, mundane life. These are all essential elements for constructing the future spiritual kingdom.
Are there contemporary artists working in other media whose work you find inspiring or admire? What contemporary artworks most closely parallel your own approach?
All modernist art (including literature) is performance art. These artworks are all demonstrations of artists standing up to survive. I like many forms of art—classical music, modernist painting, and modernist dance can all deeply move me. Pieces of classical music—by Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Bach, and others—are all true demonstrations of modernist performance. The Bible and the Divine Comedy are also brimming with modernist elements, and they are far more powerful than so-called postmodernist literature. With respect to modernist painters and sculptors, my favorites are Van Gogh, Dali, Munch, Miro, Bosch, and Giacometti. My favorite dance is Japan's Butoh (the Ankoku-Butoh movement).
You have famously described your work as a "foreign plant growing in the soil of five thousand years of history." You often talk about the "foreign plant" but only very seldom discuss the "soil of five thousand years of history." What are your Chinese influences? "Tales of the strange?" Perhaps the poetry of Li He or Li Shangyin? How does the "soil of five thousand years of history" nourish your work?
We must first clarify this idea—what is Chinese culture? The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the way we interact with each other, romantic relationships, sense of languages, ways of speaking—do these belong to culture? Are we immersed in 5000 years of culture? As a purely modernist artist, would I have more profound, more deeply felt feelings toward Chinese culture than the ordinary person? I have read some of the pieces of Chinese literature that you mentioned; nevertheless, with the exception of Dream of the Red Chamber and some Tang poetry, the others cannot touch my soul. The essence of Chinese culture that I contemplate is the potential force of ideas like "the unity of heaven and man." In the past 5000 years, our people have not been conscious of this power, because we have been isolated and closed to the world, and we lack a spirit of independence. Yet we are supposed to have this power—an ethnic group that has existed for thousands of years must possess some eternal elements. If you don't develop these elements, however, then they will forever remain in darkness and never see the light of day, which also means they will never be able to truly exist. My method is to use Western culture as a hoe to unearth our ancient culture, so we can realize its proper value. Western culture has been "divided" for thousands of years. I want to now join the two shores—earth and sky, the material and the immaterial—and combine them into one. And for that task, I have some advantages: namely, the nourishment and enlightenment I receive from 5000 years of history.
In the preface to your work Mind Report, you speak of "liberating the soul" of your readers. You've also written that the artist should "give the reader the possibility of unlocking the gates of their personal hell and freeing their long-imprisoned spirits." Many of those ideas remind us of the discussions around literary revolution and literary reform held by the writers and thinkers associated with the New Culture Movement; your "gates of hell" seem closely related to Lu Xun's "iron house." In what ways is the mission of your work aligned with theirs, and in what ways does it depart?
I still take Mr. Lu Xun's attitude toward foreign culture as my model. That sort of mentality—open to the world, but free from self-abasement—is exactly what we Mainland literary figures lack. I have already spoken enough on this issue. I only want to add this: Mainland China's literary climate today is far bleaker than it was in the 1930s and '40s. My mission is precisely to fight against today's literary circles, to carry forward the Lu Xun spirit, and to leave young writers a glimmer of hope. China's present-day literary circle consists of a few self-interested cabals. Young writers who show the slightest hint of gutsiness lose any chance of advancement and are left to fend for themselves.
You grew up in a China that, influenced by Marxism and other radical Western ideas, isolated itself from the outside world. During those decades (the 1960s and '70s), you read a fair amount of foreign literature, Marxist philosophy, and Western history, encouraged by your ostracized "Rightist" parents, who had deep roots in the Chinese Communist movement. How have you negotiated the ironies and discordances of your influences in your writing?
I never base my writing on concepts; I base my writing on feelings. Obviously I have concepts, and I am even willing to call my pattern of cognition "rational intuition." This is because my sensibility eventually congeals into reason. As I said above, what I portray are the contradictions and struggles in the depths of the soul and the landscape of life of an artistically refined human. My starting point is the impulse of life; the impulse for freedom in the depths of the mind. It is just such a mechanism: you have an impulse, then, in the midst of tension, the landscape takes shape. When you stop, then the landscape disappears. I have sufficiently absorbed Western ideology during my many years of reading, yet my creative mechanism is fundamentally a Chinese type of subversive mechanism. Of course this is closely related to my life trajectory. I am a Chinese person in love with Western culture.
At this point, you've had a very long writing career—you've been writing for more than thirty years, a period in which China has changed dramatically, and the market for writing in China has almost completely transformed. And yet, your writing style seems to remain remarkably consistent. How do you yourself feel your writing (or your writing process) has changed over the past thirty years?
The small changes within Chinese literary circles in the past few decades can hold no significance within the several thousand years of literary history; these changes have had absolutely no influence on my writing. My writing shifts gradually. What it obeys are the laws inherent in my creative process—an evolution, a gradual, continuous revealing of new life. I whole-heartedly detest writing to follow the crowd; I have always been incompatible with the Chinese literary world.
You believe that your works can only be properly understood by each reader as he or she struggles to find meaning in the process of reading, and you often encourage readers to look harder and find their own answers to the questions they have about your work. But judging from the volume of interviews you've done alone, you're astoundingly generous with your time, accessible to readers, and willing to receive questions. If interpretation of your work is such an individual process, a process that requires an investment of energy by a patient reader, where do you think the utility of doing interviews lies?
My work belongs to an especially advanced kind of literature, far more ahead of its time than Kafka was to his readers in his day. Furthermore, I myself believe that I am a writer whose sense of reason and originality are equally, extraordinarily strong—I have published many volumes of criticism. After I have finished my novels, following an idle period, I come to grasp their essential structure. Other writers are seldom equipped with this ability. Therefore I not only critique other classic writers, but I also critique my own finished novels. To think that writers cannot critique their own novels is an outdated belief. In the development of contemporary literature, cutting-edge products are drawn into experimentation. They tend to merge with philosophy, and can even achieve an effect that philosophy cannot. As an experimental novelist with a strongly philosophical temperament (my method being "experimenting on myself"), I have the capacity to analyze my own work. I suppose there's no need for controversy there? Everybody can present their own interpretation!
I believe that, in the coming era, all pioneering artists will become interpreters of their own work, and in the wake of that wave, interpretation will become a common practice. Won't that be good news for the wider audience? If the eyes of the readers are open, and their curiosity is piqued, they may become eager to add their own interpretation to the work they are reading, or even to the fiction that they themselves write. In this way, every piece of writing would turn into a site for experimentation, and—through the process of interpretation—people would endeavor to create anew. I call this sort of interpretation the extension of writing. The realist approach to reading—the passive admiration, standing at the outside and uttering a few exclamations at the mystery of literature—is inadequate for dealing with experimental works like Can Xue novels. Every reader must stand up and perform in order to enter the realm of experimental literature.
Read the original in Chinese, Simplified
Read the Chinese, Traditional translation
Read bios
Dylan Suher and Joan Hua interviewed Can Xue.
Dylan Suher is a contributing editor at Asymptote. He was born and raised in Brooklyn. He has published reviews, criticism, and essays in The Millions, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, and The New York Times.
Joan Hua holds a B.A. in Music from University of Puget Sound and currently works with world's traditional music recordings at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Born in the United States, she has lived in Taipei, Taiwan, and later returned to conduct ethnographic research on xiqu traditions. She has also studied French and German and spent a semester in Vienna, Austria.
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An interview with Can Xue
Dylan Suher and Joan Hua
Photograph by Lu Yong
The Chinese avant-garde writer Can Xue aptly describes her fiction as a performance. Reading her fiction is like watching modern dance: like an unfolding gesture out of Merce Cunningham or Butoh (her favorite), her sentences evolve towards unpredictable, pointed conclusions. Her stories often suggest a hidden, underlying narrative—a logic of movement that dictates the actions of the players on the stage. Her characters, with their constantly shifting motives, are expressly not rounded. They are personae, masks made to articulate whatever philosophical proposition or aspect of the psyche the performance currently demands: the little boy who secretly breeds a brood of snakes in his stomach in "The Child Who Raised Poisonous Snakes" or the wormlike humanoid who lives underground and burrows up, towards the unknown surface, in "Vertical Motion." Chief among all the personae is Can Xue, her nom de plume. Can Xue (whose real name is Deng Xiaohua) frequently refers to herself in the third person (as she does in the interview below) and even writes reviews of her own novels, as if her protean, dreamlike visions originated outside of her.
Can Xue carries on with her individual performance indifferent to those critics and readers who seek to classify and explain her. Her family was labeled "Rightist" and persecuted intensely by the Communist government; her social background barred her from any formal education. She nonetheless emerged during the literary flowering of the 1980s known as the "High Culture Fever" as a member of a pack of fiction writers (including Su Tong, Mo Yan, Yu Hua, to name only a few) whose works challenged the orthodoxies of social realism through formalist experimentation and vivid imagery of the body. But unlike her contemporaries, who sought out an untainted primitive past or aimed to record the traumas of the Cultural Revolution, Can Xue has no interest in Chinese folklore or politics. The bold innovations of her oeuvre—executed in a colloquial yet writerly style that emphasizes the rapid shifts in space and narrative logic—surpass the experimentation of her Chinese contemporaries. In fact, her creations are sometimes even more adventurous than those of the Western modernist writers she so admires: a long list of stated influences that includes Kafka, Borges, and Calvino. The literary journal Conjunctions has frequently featured her work, and she has won the admiration of many Western writers—Robert Coover called her "a world master" and Susan Sontag declared her the one Chinese writer worthy of the Nobel Prize. She continues to stand apart from her fellow Chinese writers. As others identified with the Chinese avant-garde have since shifted towards more accessible forms of realism, Can Xue has stubbornly, movingly continued her individual performance: composing challenging experimental work.
In this sense, Can Xue's writing is nothing less than an existential struggle. The high stakes of her gambits can be found on display in her short story, "Snake Island," in which a man returns to his rural hometown after thirty years, to find that he recognizes nothing and nobody and that his family is nowhere to be found. Near the end, a villager summons him into battle. Snake Island, he explains, is divided in two, between the living and the dead, and the living must fight with the dead for territory. This is Can Xue's neverending struggle as well: to write against the death of the soul, and to fight for an authentic life. The struggle never ends; the performance continues.
The following interview with Can Xue was conducted in Chinese via email and then translated into English.
—Dylan Suher
You've switched English translators over the course of your career: the first three collections of yours translated into English were done by Ronald R. Janssen and Jian Zhang, while the most recent three have been translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping. What is your relationship with your translators like: is there a collaborative process? What skills and qualities are necessary, in your estimation, for someone to be able to translate a Can Xue story?
I'm friends with all my English translators. Altogether, I have five English translators: Ron Janssen and Jian Zhang (who translate collaboratively), Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (who translate collaboratively), and Annelise [Finegan]. Starting in the 1990s, I put my all into studying English and managed to achieve a certain level of skill with the language. Ever since Karen and Chen Zeping took over translating my work, I've insisted on reading their translations (and later, Annelise's translations) and offering the translators my opinions. Can Xue's works are truly exceptional; I feel that the most important skill my translators can have is to read the original intensively, thereby having a thorough grasp of the deep underlying humor and general feel of the language in my works. How precisely they express something in their translations is closely connected with their power to feel and their ability to grasp logic, because these kinds of fictions have already surpassed the profundity of philosophy. It is most difficult to properly convert one language into another. Within Chinese, meaning is buried deep, and the language emphasizes subtleties of feeling. English is more direct and emphasizes clear distinctions. It's really difficult to grasp that "degree" of translation.
You're a remarkably prolific writer, having written over a hundred short stories and dozens of novellas and critical essays. Yet only a fraction of those works have been translated into English. Are there any works of yours that have not been translated that you would like to see translated?
At present, two of my full-length novels have already been translated. And it was recently announced that the latest [translation] of my novella The Last Lover, which is currently still being edited, will be published by Yale University Press in the spring of 2014. Dozens of medium-length and shorter works have been translated into English. I estimate that some 13 million Chinese characters of my works have been translated—is that really a small amount? My output is very consistent, and that's very difficult for a writer to do. My wildest dream is to get all of my works published in the United States.
With regard to your writing process, you've said in interviews that your writing comes from your subconscious, and that a good writer should not know what he or she is writing. What do you think of when you begin a story?
The subconscious by itself is actually not the deciding factor; every individual has a subconscious. The key lies in whether you can unleash it to create. Here there is a complicated mechanism, and I can only explain it from the vantage point of philosophy and art. In five or six years, I plan to write a book, Philosophy of Art. In that book, I'll elaborate my thoughts on these issues based on my experience practicing art and the fruits of my intensive research into Western philosophy. I've already been writing for over thirty years, and the writing method I use is precisely the creative method of modern art: Reason monitors from afar. Emotions are completely unleashed. I turn towards the dark abyss of consciousness and plunge in, and in the tension between those two forces, I build the fantastic, idealist plots of my stories. I think that people who are able to write in the way I write must possess an immense primitive energy and a strongly logical spirit. Only in this way can they maintain total creativity amid a divided consciousness. In China, I have not seen a writer who is capable of sustaining that kind of creativity for many years.
The structure in your work can be so difficult to discern—both in terms of narrative structure and in the way the images connect to one another—that it's hard to imagine just how you shape your stories. How do you edit a Can Xue story?
I never edit my stories. I just grab a pen and write, and every day I write a paragraph. For more than thirty years, it's always been like this. I believe that I am surrounded by a powerful "aura," and that's the secret of my success. Successful artists are all able to manipulate the "balance of forces"—they're that kind of extraordinarily talented people.
When you say above that "every day I write a paragraph," do you mean you write your stories sequentially, from beginning to end? Or that you write the paragraphs and later arrange them together?
All my stories—my novels, my novellas, and my short stories—are written sequentially, from beginning to end. I never arrange them together or put them in a different sequence. My manuscripts are extremely clean—I very, very rarely correct even a single word.
A few questions about images and themes that recur throughout your work. The concept of space is always contested in your writing: your stories depict impossible spaces (the apartment in "A Village in the Big City"), spaces that shift dimension and physical realities over the course of the story (the environs of the hut in "Homecoming"), and nebulous spaces (the darkness in "In the Wilderness" or the underground in "Vertical Motion"). What interests you about the manipulation of space in fiction?
Only a writer that possesses a high degree of rationality can break through conventional space and enter into a primitive and purely fantastic landscape. Dante, for example, is that kind of writer. The landscape of hell is suffused with longing and power. Those mighty awakened souls win their own space through the struggles of life and death. As soon as the struggle ceases, that space immediately disappears. This is the creative mechanism that I spoke of in my response above. A writer exhibits her vitality through unfamiliar space.
Your writing often depicts grotesqueries, bodily disfigurement, and outright violence. This is a quality it seems to share with works by other writers identified with China's avant-garde school of the 1980s. Specifically, the imagery in some ways resembles the early works of Yu Hua, which you have called "the first Chinese works that can truly be said to belong to modernism and to have substance." How does your approach to writing about violence compare with the approach taken by the other avant-garde writers and how do you yourself feel about depicting violence in your work?
Writing violence for the sake of violence is vulgar and tasteless. I am not like some Chinese writers, who get a thrill from the simple depiction of violence. That's called acting out a perversion; there's no substance to it. In a select few of Yu Hua's early works, he writes violence in a very remarkable manner, for example, the works in his collection Mistakes by the Riverside. I even wrote a review of that collection. But he has several stories where he writes violence and there is no substance to it. His self-awareness when creating is not strong. A few of Mo Yan's depictions of violence are really warped, of low character. What does it mean to say something has substance? It is to say: your depictions of violence must have form, must have a sense of metaphysics to them. Just like the images in Dante's hell, they must depict the true struggles deep within the soul. Readers read the terrifying images in Dante, but those images push those readers to yearn for their purest ideals. Your question lumps my writing together with other writers of the eighties, which shows that you haven't entered deeply into Can Xue's works—you need to put more effort into reading!
You expect a real partnership with your readers. You have said that they need to be well-read enough in modernism to understand your writing technique, and willing to make the effort to understand the deep structure of your work. Considering that you expect such a high level of engagement and response on the part of your readers, what is your personal relationship with your readers like? Do you notice a difference between the response of your Chinese readers to your work and the response of foreign readers to your work?
I often interact with my readers in China, and quite a few interviews with me have been published. And I'm also on the Web, communicating with netizens. I also frequently critique my colleagues—I've offended almost all my fellow writers and critics. However, I still must persist in speaking reason and I must maintain my critical position. China has more than a few Can Xue fans, but overall, Can Xue's era still hasn't arrived, because her works are too ahead of the curve, and don't conform to commonplace, habitual aesthetics. So I must continue to do the steady work of bringing my writings into existence. Chinese readers and foreign readers should have about the same reaction to my writing. Because my subject matter is universal human nature—the original face of nature.
What do you mean when you say "subject matter is universal human nature—the original face of nature"? We see nature frequently appearing in your stories as an adversarial force that drives self-discovery (the sea in "The Lure of the Sea") or as the truth of life, hidden just below the surface (the spring in "The Spring"). In your interpretation, what is the connection between the images of nature in your stories and your feelings about nature?
According to my worldview, the relationship between man and nature is that of having the same structures and sharing the same flesh. Nature is the highest form of existence. At some periods, She inevitably gives birth to things that occupy the same rank as mankind, so that through them, She may display her own essence. But I am not a pantheist: I feel that this state of affairs is the result of nature's structural function itself. Mankind shoulders the mission that Mother Nature has endowed to it (that is to say, nature demands that mankind realize and manifest her goals through creativity), and thus, we can conclude that mankind presumably shares the same kind of structural function as nature. They can only exist as the children of nature, with the same body as their mother. Because I believe in nature (as a Chinese person, this is very natural), in my writings, existence and nonexistence, the spiritual and the material, speculative and material thought, this shore and the opposite shore—all are unified together as they repulse each other. The opposing forces are locked in a life and death struggle, yet in the midst of that struggle, they achieve a balance and a harmony. In this aspect, my ideological system is very much opposed to Western culture. Although, of course, my worldview was gradually formed through my own exhaustive study of Western culture.
Next year, Yale University Press is putting out a translation of a critical piece you wrote on Kafka, a writer about whom you've often written, and with whom you have long been fascinated. Your view of Kafka strikes us as unusual; you've said that Kafka's works "signify an incomparable tragedy, but are also suffused with a pleasant freedom. This is like the whole of the experiences of K, the protagonist of his novel The Trial. There is mystery, terror, alienation, and yet his every action originates from a primitive instinct and a sublime will." What experiences or influences have shaped your views of Kafka?
My interpretation of Kafka is indeed unusual. The main reason why my critical work on Kafka is a breath of fresh air to readers, I think, is that I have incorporated Eastern elements into my understanding of Kafka's work. The religiosity of Westerners caused Kafka unending misery and drove him to an untimely death. I must say, to a certain degree, these living conditions diminished his creativity. On the other hand, my worldview, which combines the cultures of the East and West, enables me to regard the mundane world with an open mind and to endure this profound black comedy. Therefore, when I interpret The Castle and Amerika and other such acclaimed works, I emphasize the vitality in them, the primitive, rebellious revelry, and, above all, the vigorous meaning of life contained within. I believe I have in this respect surpassed existentialism and am proposing an artistic philosophy with a Chinese color to it. I can write this kind of criticism because I investigate the artistic philosophy shared by Kafka, Dante, Calvino, and artists like them. I have only achieved my current breakthroughs by applying my thirty-some years of creative experience to writing critical essays. I have not only written books of critical work on Kafka, but I have also analyzed Dante, Borges, Calvino, Goethe, Shakespeare, and other such masters—altogether producing six books of criticism.
Could you speak a bit more about what you term "the religiosity of Westerners"? What do you mean by "religiosity," and how did this religiosity "diminish [Kafka's] creativity"?
Here I am referring mainly to a sense of "original sin." A sense of original sin was in the background of both Kafka's personal life and his literary creativity, so some people believe that one can use existentialism to explain his writings. My critique seeks to pry him apart from existentialism; rather, I analyze and write about Kafka's exuberant creativity, his passion for the mundane world, and about his pagan rebellion against the religiosity that suppressed him. I write about his strong individuality, which led him to bring his primitive creativity (squeezed out by reason) to the fore. But Kafka's performance in real life was far weaker than what he demonstrated in his creations. He was always on the edge of being swallowed up by original sin, and he feared quotidian life, which he always wanted to escape. On this point, actually, he is in line with existentialism. The incessant guilt that came from his religious consciousness finally conquered his primitive life force; the friction within his own soul dissipated all of his vitality. His letters and diaries always show that he was a "germophobe"; a man who could not bear the vulgarities of life; a man who strived every day to be a "good person."
To shift to your influences: You have declared yourself as thoroughly opposed to postmodernism, and prefer to describe yourself as a modernist writer. What does the idea of modernism mean to you?
Postmodernism smashes structure, but establishes nothing. It therefore belongs to a transitional phase of literature and philosophy. Now that phase has already passed, and the things that were being advocated then are no longer relevant to the present. The ultimate mission of mankind only consists of being constructive and creative. As the children of nature, each one of us must exercise our own creativity, so as not to fail to meet the expectations nature holds for mankind. In this respect, modernist literature does a better job than postmodernism, and is therefore more closely aligned with my worldview. Without exception, modernism pursues the ideal, regards creation and invention as the most noble values, and truly loves quotidian, mundane life. These are all essential elements for constructing the future spiritual kingdom.
Are there contemporary artists working in other media whose work you find inspiring or admire? What contemporary artworks most closely parallel your own approach?
All modernist art (including literature) is performance art. These artworks are all demonstrations of artists standing up to survive. I like many forms of art—classical music, modernist painting, and modernist dance can all deeply move me. Pieces of classical music—by Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Bach, and others—are all true demonstrations of modernist performance. The Bible and the Divine Comedy are also brimming with modernist elements, and they are far more powerful than so-called postmodernist literature. With respect to modernist painters and sculptors, my favorites are Van Gogh, Dali, Munch, Miro, Bosch, and Giacometti. My favorite dance is Japan's Butoh (the Ankoku-Butoh movement).
You have famously described your work as a "foreign plant growing in the soil of five thousand years of history." You often talk about the "foreign plant" but only very seldom discuss the "soil of five thousand years of history." What are your Chinese influences? "Tales of the strange?" Perhaps the poetry of Li He or Li Shangyin? How does the "soil of five thousand years of history" nourish your work?
We must first clarify this idea—what is Chinese culture? The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the way we interact with each other, romantic relationships, sense of languages, ways of speaking—do these belong to culture? Are we immersed in 5000 years of culture? As a purely modernist artist, would I have more profound, more deeply felt feelings toward Chinese culture than the ordinary person? I have read some of the pieces of Chinese literature that you mentioned; nevertheless, with the exception of Dream of the Red Chamber and some Tang poetry, the others cannot touch my soul. The essence of Chinese culture that I contemplate is the potential force of ideas like "the unity of heaven and man." In the past 5000 years, our people have not been conscious of this power, because we have been isolated and closed to the world, and we lack a spirit of independence. Yet we are supposed to have this power—an ethnic group that has existed for thousands of years must possess some eternal elements. If you don't develop these elements, however, then they will forever remain in darkness and never see the light of day, which also means they will never be able to truly exist. My method is to use Western culture as a hoe to unearth our ancient culture, so we can realize its proper value. Western culture has been "divided" for thousands of years. I want to now join the two shores—earth and sky, the material and the immaterial—and combine them into one. And for that task, I have some advantages: namely, the nourishment and enlightenment I receive from 5000 years of history.
In the preface to your work Mind Report, you speak of "liberating the soul" of your readers. You've also written that the artist should "give the reader the possibility of unlocking the gates of their personal hell and freeing their long-imprisoned spirits." Many of those ideas remind us of the discussions around literary revolution and literary reform held by the writers and thinkers associated with the New Culture Movement; your "gates of hell" seem closely related to Lu Xun's "iron house." In what ways is the mission of your work aligned with theirs, and in what ways does it depart?
I still take Mr. Lu Xun's attitude toward foreign culture as my model. That sort of mentality—open to the world, but free from self-abasement—is exactly what we Mainland literary figures lack. I have already spoken enough on this issue. I only want to add this: Mainland China's literary climate today is far bleaker than it was in the 1930s and '40s. My mission is precisely to fight against today's literary circles, to carry forward the Lu Xun spirit, and to leave young writers a glimmer of hope. China's present-day literary circle consists of a few self-interested cabals. Young writers who show the slightest hint of gutsiness lose any chance of advancement and are left to fend for themselves.
You grew up in a China that, influenced by Marxism and other radical Western ideas, isolated itself from the outside world. During those decades (the 1960s and '70s), you read a fair amount of foreign literature, Marxist philosophy, and Western history, encouraged by your ostracized "Rightist" parents, who had deep roots in the Chinese Communist movement. How have you negotiated the ironies and discordances of your influences in your writing?
I never base my writing on concepts; I base my writing on feelings. Obviously I have concepts, and I am even willing to call my pattern of cognition "rational intuition." This is because my sensibility eventually congeals into reason. As I said above, what I portray are the contradictions and struggles in the depths of the soul and the landscape of life of an artistically refined human. My starting point is the impulse of life; the impulse for freedom in the depths of the mind. It is just such a mechanism: you have an impulse, then, in the midst of tension, the landscape takes shape. When you stop, then the landscape disappears. I have sufficiently absorbed Western ideology during my many years of reading, yet my creative mechanism is fundamentally a Chinese type of subversive mechanism. Of course this is closely related to my life trajectory. I am a Chinese person in love with Western culture.
At this point, you've had a very long writing career—you've been writing for more than thirty years, a period in which China has changed dramatically, and the market for writing in China has almost completely transformed. And yet, your writing style seems to remain remarkably consistent. How do you yourself feel your writing (or your writing process) has changed over the past thirty years?
The small changes within Chinese literary circles in the past few decades can hold no significance within the several thousand years of literary history; these changes have had absolutely no influence on my writing. My writing shifts gradually. What it obeys are the laws inherent in my creative process—an evolution, a gradual, continuous revealing of new life. I whole-heartedly detest writing to follow the crowd; I have always been incompatible with the Chinese literary world.
You believe that your works can only be properly understood by each reader as he or she struggles to find meaning in the process of reading, and you often encourage readers to look harder and find their own answers to the questions they have about your work. But judging from the volume of interviews you've done alone, you're astoundingly generous with your time, accessible to readers, and willing to receive questions. If interpretation of your work is such an individual process, a process that requires an investment of energy by a patient reader, where do you think the utility of doing interviews lies?
My work belongs to an especially advanced kind of literature, far more ahead of its time than Kafka was to his readers in his day. Furthermore, I myself believe that I am a writer whose sense of reason and originality are equally, extraordinarily strong—I have published many volumes of criticism. After I have finished my novels, following an idle period, I come to grasp their essential structure. Other writers are seldom equipped with this ability. Therefore I not only critique other classic writers, but I also critique my own finished novels. To think that writers cannot critique their own novels is an outdated belief. In the development of contemporary literature, cutting-edge products are drawn into experimentation. They tend to merge with philosophy, and can even achieve an effect that philosophy cannot. As an experimental novelist with a strongly philosophical temperament (my method being "experimenting on myself"), I have the capacity to analyze my own work. I suppose there's no need for controversy there? Everybody can present their own interpretation!
I believe that, in the coming era, all pioneering artists will become interpreters of their own work, and in the wake of that wave, interpretation will become a common practice. Won't that be good news for the wider audience? If the eyes of the readers are open, and their curiosity is piqued, they may become eager to add their own interpretation to the work they are reading, or even to the fiction that they themselves write. In this way, every piece of writing would turn into a site for experimentation, and—through the process of interpretation—people would endeavor to create anew. I call this sort of interpretation the extension of writing. The realist approach to reading—the passive admiration, standing at the outside and uttering a few exclamations at the mystery of literature—is inadequate for dealing with experimental works like Can Xue novels. Every reader must stand up and perform in order to enter the realm of experimental literature.
Read the original in Chinese, Simplified
Read the Chinese, Traditional translation
Read bios
Dylan Suher and Joan Hua interviewed Can Xue.
Dylan Suher is a contributing editor at Asymptote. He was born and raised in Brooklyn. He has published reviews, criticism, and essays in The Millions, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, and The New York Times.
Joan Hua holds a B.A. in Music from University of Puget Sound and currently works with world's traditional music recordings at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Born in the United States, she has lived in Taipei, Taiwan, and later returned to conduct ethnographic research on xiqu traditions. She has also studied French and German and spent a semester in Vienna, Austria.
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