The New Light In China

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 20 June 1931, Page 16

The New Light In China

WRITING in the “London Mercury,” Mr Hsieh Wen Tung- says: “Translation has been the greatest medium by which China has been modernised. In her bewilderment at the sudden awakening into a new world, the literature of the West, its product, has served her as a guide. It his initiated her into the mysteries of the modern spirit and shown her all the psychic problems that have confronted the West and now confront her; finally, it has endowed her with the technique attained through experience in dealing with them Gradually the Chinese mind is adjusting itsell to the new world-view, and is coming to the point where the experience of others leaves oft. letting her shift hereafter for herself. “The number of works translated has reached three figures. It is neither possible nor desirable to list them here, but to mention the countries whose literature has been most favoured, and the author’s whose works have been most translated, may serve’ to indicate in part what foreign influences have been dominating Chinese letters. In the first category Russia ranks first, and in the second, Turgenev and Chekhov. Practically all the works of these two have been translated. Others well represented are Tolstoi, Gorky-, Andreyev, Artzibashev, and Dostoievsky.

Embracing Literature Of The West

‘‘The nation next to Russia is Prance, among whose writers these have appeared most in translation, in this order: Maupassant, Anatole Prance, de (tourmont. Zola, Romain Holland, Moliere and Flaubert. Still next comes England. Scott and Dickens have been introduced quite i'ullv by Lin Chin Nan. It is now the turn of Wilde, Gralsworthy, Shaw, Hardy, Lewis Carroll, lv. Mansfield and Fielding. “On the other hand, English poetry has been most translated. Besides the translations of Shelley’s ‘Selected Poems’ and ‘Love Poems’ and Dowson’s ‘Decorations’ that have come out in single volumes, the better known poems of Byron. Keats, Swinburne, Browning, and Mrs Browning are either scattered among the pages of various magazines or included in the collected verse of different poets. Only the poets of Germany have had the like honour of being represented in book form —Goethe by ‘Faust and Heine by his ‘Book of Songs.’ “In prose, however, Germany’s representatives take fourth place in this grouping: Goethe, Hauptmann, Sturm and Heine. Among the writers of other nationalities Ibsen, Hamsun, Maeterlinck, Sienkiewiez and Upton Sinclair have each had at least three works translated. In the East, we need only say that the important productions of modern Japan have all been done into Chinese.”