Wise Hit: Episode 4 'THE BULL'
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…”
One of the most famous lines Charles Dickens ever wrote, the opening sentence to A Tale of Two Cities is a testament to the enduring evocativeness of the great wordsmith’s language. After two centuries, the cult of Dickens has proved timeless not just in the country of his birth, but also as far afield as the Orient.
February 7, 2012 marks the 200th anniversary since the birth of a literary giant who ignited the imaginations of nations around the globe – A Tale of Two Cities remains one of the best-selling works of literature ever published. It is over 100 years since Dickens’ introduction to Chinese-speaking audiences.
Oddly enough, the first person to translate a Dickens novel into Chinese spoke absolutely no English. Lin Shu, whose renderings of The Old Curiosity Shop and Nicholas Nickleby appeared in 1907, relied on friends to orally relate the Western prose, which he would then transcribe into classical Chinese. Though not always accurate, Lin’s output was praised by the renowned sinologist Arthur Waley for its readability. He eschewed pedantic, literal translations in favor of more fluent, lucid retellings.
Lin’s work was met with scholarly interest amongst the literati, encouraging other translators to take up the mantle. Descriptions of social problems, the state of the dirty and the destitute, and the failure of governments to help “les miserables,” as Victor Hugo so famously described them, made the English author’s tales incredibly influential, with some Chinese critics recommending he be given to students so that they might better understand universal issues like poverty and social imbalance. By 1949, 41 translations of nine Dickens novels, had appeared, including obscurer works like The Cricket on the Hearth and The Battle of Life.
With the founding of the People’s Republic of China, his rants against the negative effects of materialism ensured that a steady flow of his oeuvre reached the public until 1966, despite perceptions that his overall world view was distinctly bourgeois. The money-obsessed social climbers and avaricious misers common to Dickens’ books provided ideal ammunition for communist condemnation of capitalism.
Dickens was not immune to the prohibitions of the Cultural Revolution, but his works quickly regained favor following 1976. Ninety-six new versions have appeared since 1978, with a grand total of 216 printings of Dickens’ stories. Since 2000 alone, there have been around 50 new translations.
The vitriol with which the British writer savaged social injustice remains an important factor in his undiminished idolization, but perhaps just as important for the younger, aspiring generations of Chinese has been the promise of opportunity. Characters like Oliver Twist and David Copperfield hold out a glimmering hope that even the humblest origins can herald a promising future – and isn’t that what modern China is all about, the belief that, as in Our Mutual Friend, millionaires can come from dust?
