小说《飘》在中国的接受现状调查(3)
using the method of synchronism and summarizing the research status of the novel
and raise critical opinions. 2.1 Disparate Attitudes between Common Readers and Critics
(1940-1978)
Gone with the Wind first met the Chinese readers through the medium of film. In the
early summer of the year 1940, the show of the movie Gone with the Wind caused a
sensation among Shanghai citizens. Afterwards, Mr. Fu Donghua translated the novel
into Chinese so that the text form of the novel entered China. China saw a boom
translating the novel into screenplay in 1940s. Gone with the Wind was all the rage in
China, in the form of film, translation, script adaptation, which aroused strong
repercussions among the recipients. In 1940, Shanghai Longmen Joint Bookstore first
issued the translated edition of the novel and reprinted nine times in ten years. All
these showed that Gone with the Wind was so welcomed by public readers. However,
the attitude of the theoretical circle was in opposite directions, claiming that Gone
with the Wind was a reactionary novel. (Zhang Lixia, 2009: 112) This was clear from
the title of the article at that time: Gone with the Wind - An Anti-history Novel to
Promote Bourgeois Ideology, Gone with the Wind Hindered My Progress, Gone with
the Wind Made Me Worship America etc. During this period, comments subjected to
the constraints of anti-US and anti-imperialist ideology in the 1950s, and critics often
evaluated the literature from the political criteria and class position, so Gone with the
Wind therefore became a victim of politics. In the third Season forth period of
Literary, Yuqing’s view represented the value judgments of the critics of Gone with
the Wind in 1950s. She believed that the novel is a fury of anger and hatred to
meaningful things and progress, a worship to the evil slavery and a reactionary
philosophy. (Yu Qing, 1980: 105) In the fourth edition of Brief History of Translation
Literature, which was edited by all the students from grade 57 of Western Languages
Department in Peking University in 1958, there is an article named Comment on Fu
Donghua’s translation of “Gone with the Wind”. Because of view of the extreme
leftist ideology and political movement, Gone with the Wind was highly criticized, as
well as Fu Donghua’s act of translation. The book says that Gone with the Wind is an
advocacy of racial discrimination and it is poisoning Chinese people’s mind, promoting an extremely decadent, bourgeois, reactionary outlook on life. (1958: 166)
In the early 1940s, the book had “pacifism” which did not meet with the social
environment at that time; In the 1950s, the novel was criticized because the scholars
were strongly against the imperialist cultural invasion. In the late 1970s, the book was
concerned as Slavery Evocation work, reversing the verdict for the slave owners. (Li
Huiquan, 1979: 42)
2.2 Mixed Reception Period among Academic Circles (1979 -1990)
In the 1980s, China ended the ten-year Cultural Revolution catastrophe. Chinese
readers’ spiritual life was extremely poor. Chinese contemporary literary creation was
very limited. The publishing industry reprinted a large number of previously
translated foreign literary classics, and began to translate and publish western modern
novel. In September 1979, Zhejiang People’s Publishing House decided to reprint the
book published jointly issued in 1940, Fu DongHua’s translation. The reprinting news
once spread, publishing houses in dozens of provinces wanted to reprint, Gone with
the Wind printing plan from 100000 books took off all the way up to over 600000.
The reprinting measures caused strong reaction from the community. Some