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Mo Yan as a post-translation rewriter
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Abstract
This article draws on the Chinese writer Mo Yan. 1983. “Shoumian dadao” 售棉大道 [The cotton-selling avenue]. Xiaoshuo Yuebao 小說月報 [Fiction monthly], 7: 71–78. retellings of Julio Cortázar’s short story “La autopista del sur” and Carson McCullers’s novella “The Ballad of the Sad Café” to shed light on aspects of his early engagement with world literature. I argue that Mo Yan’s borrowing from twentieth-century modernist writers in the Americas occurred in two distinct phases. Initially, his attempts at indigenizing Cortázar and McCullers in McCullers, Carson. 1963. The Ballad of the Sad Café. Penguin Books. resulted in two socialist-realist tales bereft of any magical qualities. But shortly afterward, from 1984 to 1985, the evolving political climate in China, alongside his change in occupation, ultimately enabled him to break with socialist realism by reinventing himself in the style of Márquez and Faulkner. Through a case study, this article also adds nuance to Edwin Gentzler’s theory of post-translation rewriting by proposing a diachronic approach that traces how individual rewriters adjust their aesthetic and ideological stance over time in response to shifting political parameters.
Résumé
Cet article se penche sur la manière dont Mo Yan a réinterprété, en 1983, le conte « La autopista del sur » (L’Autoroute du sud) de Julio Cortázar et la nouvelle « The Ballad of the Sad Café » (La Ballade du café triste) de Carson McCullers, afin d’éclairer certains aspects de sa première rencontre avec la littérature mondiale. Nous avançons que l’emprunt de Mo Yan aux écrivains modernistes du continent américain au vingtième siècle s’est étalé en deux phases. Ses tentatives d’imiter Cortázar et McCullers en 1983 ont donné lieu à deux récits réalistes quelconques dépourvus de la moindre qualité magique. Toutefois, l’évolution du climat politique en Chine, ainsi que le changement de son statut, lui ont ultérieurement permis d’adopter le style de Márquez et de Faulkner, s’écartant ainsi des contraintes du réalisme socialiste de l’ère post-Mao. À travers l’exemple de Mo Yan, nous proposons une mise au point de la théorie de la post-traduction d’Edwin Gentzler en montrant, de façon diachronique, comment les auteurs ajustent leurs choix esthétiques et idéologiques en fonction de paramètres politiques changeants.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Post-translation studies according to Gentzler
- 3.A diachronic approach to post-translation studies
- 4.Mo Yan as a post-translation rewriter
- 5.The literary landscape in post-Mao China
- 6.From “La autopista del sur” to “The Cotton-Selling Avenue”
- 7.From “The Ballad of the Sad Café” to “Folk Music”
- 8.Conclusion
- Notes
- Author queries
References
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