Ye's personal life

Ye and the most beautiful scholar couple in Tang Yuemei.

On the evening of February/65438 1 1, Mr. Ye, a famous Japanese literature and cultural research expert, translator and professor of China Academy of Social Sciences, died of a heart attack after working at home for a day, at the age of 82. The remains were cremated in babaoshan funeral home on June 5438+05. On the same day, the reporter visited Ye's widow, scholar and translator Tang Yuemei and her children.

Ye and Tang Yuemei are a pair of scholars who met in foreign countries when they were young. They are both Vietnamese Chinese. They were classmates when they were in middle school on the levee. They went to People's Republic of China (PRC) via Hong Kong and Britain on 1952, and both of them were admitted to the Department of Oriental Languages and Literature in Peking University to study Japanese. They graduated and got married on 1956. Together, he translated Nobel Prize in Literature winner Yasunari Kawabata's novels Snow Country and Ancient Capital, and co-authored The History of Japanese Literature. The couple translated and co-edited more than 200 books on Japanese literature and culture. People say that "work is beautiful", but we clearly see that "study is beautiful". It seems that we have seen many scholar's houses with boring life and dull expression, and we are quite surprised to face such a beautiful couple of scholars. The life story they have known each other for more than 50 years is as fresh, graceful and beautiful as their translation of Snow Country and Ancient Capital.

How can the "canal" be so clear, because there is the shadow of the source "Mei"

"Oh, I've never seen such bright eyes! I saw a teenager riding a bicycle, just coming from the opposite side. What amazing eyes! There seems to be a strong charm, and I am simply shocked to see that you can attract you immediately. " When 80-year-old Tang Yuemei talked about his first love, his cheeks were slightly red, and his eyes were full of loving happiness-this was the first time that Tang Yuemei and Ye, both children of overseas Chinese, met in the autumn of 1945 at Zhishen Middle School in China City on the Vietnamese banks. At that time, Tang Yuemei, who had achieved excellent results since childhood, had just entered the second grade directly from primary school. Because I respect a teacher very much, I volunteered to study in Class B where he taught, and stayed in school on weekdays. Ye, a day student in Class A, spent little time at school, but they met. "Later, Ye Jun told me that he also immediately thought of me that day. I just came to OCT as big as a levee from a small place, and I'm still wearing white clothes and black pants in the countryside, which is very simple. He thought this little girl was very special, so he asked his classmates before he knew my name was Tang Yuemei. We were too young. I am only 15 years old, and he is only 17 years old. Although they have impressions of each other, they are not familiar with each other. Soon he transferred to other middle schools. " It was not until the second year of high school that Ye Cai transferred back and the two became classmates. "At that time, he was very popular at school. He is the editor of the school wall newspaper. He writes quickly, is good at writing and drawing, and is especially easy-going. He has a pure charm, and many girls like him. A female classmate in my dormitory often invites him out to play and to see a movie. I didn't expect Ye Jun to ask,' You should also invite Tang Yuemei.' This is the beginning of a little budding relationship, but we rarely date alone and never talk about a sweet word. Maybe we are all conservative people. ""I once joked with Ye Jun that I led you openly, but in fact you led me underground. What's going on here? Because of my excellent grades in school, I am the president of the student union. At this time, Ye Jun has been the chairman of the underground student union. This organization aims to publicize the new China, oppose the corrupt leadership of the Kuomintang, and participate in some activities of the Viet Cong. These can only be very secret underground activities, and all members are in single-line contact. Ye Jun development I joined, is my contact. He is peaceful by nature and will not preach revolution with blood boiling. He just guided me slowly. First of all, he introduced some progressive novels to me, such as The Marriage of Little Black Boys, which I thought was good. Later, he brought another Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang. Our party is also very interesting. A few people pretended to play mahjong. Under the mahjong table, we will discuss and study the theory of new democracy. "In the best youth, revolution and love are carried out in their ignorance. In the school's drama troupe, Ye is the protagonist and Tang Yuemei is the heroine, starring in many drama works, such as Tian Han's South Return, and a work called Silent Night impressed the old man-"The story is probably about a rich girl falling in love with a down-and-out novelist. The girl fell in love with him secretly despite the opposition of her family, but the boy was seriously ill. On Christmas Eve, the girl braved the storm to visit, and after the two embraced deeply, the novelist died. This kind of love tragedy has a different feeling, because before the curtain falls, we have to hug, so it's embarrassing and we can only hug from a distance. "Ye Qu Wei lived on the Mekong River in rural Vietnam during his childhood and adolescence. This is an exotic river. Coconut forest, banana forest and palm forest mixed along the river constitute a quiet and beautiful exotic scenery. He has always been attached to this beautiful river, which has also printed a rare romantic memory of Tang Ye's first love. " Yes 195 1 year. We have graduated from high school and made up our minds to go back to New China, go to college and start a new life. In order to raise money, he works in China Bank in Saigon during the day and teaches fellow workers at night. I found a teaching job in a primary school. After work, we walked along the Mekong River, distributed leaflets and posted slogans along the river, and looked at the rolling river in the distance, full of expectations for the new life in the future. Now my family still treasures a photo of us on the Mekong River. I am wearing a cheongsam, and he is wearing the uniform of a bank clerk. Under the guidance of a friend who loves photography, we snuggled together and left a romantic photo. This is also our engagement photo. Although we went to many places later and a large number of old photos were burned during the Cultural Revolution, this small photo was preserved. Maybe it's the Mekong River God. "

It is also very warm to get married by nest. Write a book about the night of rotation.

1June, 952, Mr. and Mrs. Tang Ye officially set foot on their journey back to China. Everything was kept secret, and only people around them were told that they were going to Hongkong. They first flew to Hong Kong and entered from Shenzhen Luohu Bridge. "I didn't expect that when I passed through Hong Kong, I was not only coldly met, but also blackmailed. I was blackmailed for most of the money I didn't have. Walking to the mainland with a feeling of loss is a scene of two worlds of ice and fire. The radio played' Five-Star Red Flag fluttering in the wind ...', and people were greeted by the warm and friendly smiling faces of the People's Liberation Army. I can't help crying. I was crying when I saw him. We were very excited and hugged each other tightly for the first time. "I took the train from Guangzhou and traveled for a week before I came to Beijing. With the help of the overseas Chinese liaison station in Vietnam, the two settled down and prepared to enter the university. At the beginning, Ye's wish was journalism, and Tang Yuemei wanted to study medicine. " However, some people around us suggested that China is short of foreign language talents at this time, and as overseas Chinese, we have certain language advantages, so it is better to change our language major. Finally, both of us were admitted to the Oriental Language and Literature Department of Peking University, majoring in Japanese, and the second language was Hindi. We chose Japan and India because they have a long and ancient culture. ""New China is in full swing, everyone finally has the opportunity to learn, and the enthusiasm for natural learning is high. Every morning, all the students standing by the unnamed lake are morning students. "Four years of complete college life is over." 1956, with the blessing of teachers and classmates, we held a small wedding. The new house is borrowed from a teacher's dormitory, with two stools and a board. The class gave a new towel, which is the most valuable property. Three days later, we went back to the dormitory and then went to Qingdao for our honeymoon. "In this way, two people who met each other 1 1 year were officially married. In the following years, material life has been relatively poor. The first room after marriage is only 6 square meters. "There is only room for a bed in the room, and a stove can be regenerated. When people enter the room, they can only walk sideways. We gave birth to our eldest son here. We were fully prepared for the hardship of living conditions when we returned to China, and we could adapt to it anyway. The most sad thing is that I can't do my favorite job. "During the Cultural Revolution, the couple burned all the Japanese books they had accumulated in tears, but one Japanese-Chinese Dictionary was reluctant to burn, and they secretly took it with them when they sent it to the May 7th cadre school in Henan, and took it out every night to recite words." I really don't want to let me learn Japanese for nothing for so many years. "In the late 1970s, Ye and Tang Yuemei really began to translate and study Japanese literature." As we approach the age of knowing our destiny, there is always a sense of urgency in our hearts. "At this time, the family burden is also the heaviest, with a pair of underage children and a seriously ill mother-in-law." We can only set up a small table in the utility room and take turns working. Lao Ye is used to working late into the night. I got up at four or five in the morning to change shifts with him. When I want to have a rest, I sleep on the canvas bed set up in the corridor. "It is in this embarrassing environment that the two have completed the translation of important works such as Dancer of Izu, Snow Country and Ancient Capital. When talking about the persistence and dedication of the two old people, disciple Xu Jinlong recalled with deep feelings: "I accompanied the two old people to Tianjin for a meeting and just got on a long-distance bus. I saw that they took out a manuscript and began to revise it while checking it. The same is true for the return trip. I asked my husband if he was dizzy, and Mr. Ye replied,' Let's hurry up.' Others will wonder why Mr. Ye and Mr. Tang are so prolific. I want to say that if you spend all your time on the train, waiting for the plane or even taking the bus, you will naturally understand. "Ye and Tang Yuemei have lived together for more than 50 years since 1956 got married." We have been able to support each other for so many years. The most important thing is to take care of each other and understand each other, especially when the other side is not going well. Don't say anything depressing even if you are sad. In contrast, my temper is not as good as his and I am anxious. Sometimes I will blurt out some angry words and then regret it, but I can apologize on my own initiative. Lao ye's philosophy is that if I push him hard, he will be soft. When I apologize, he will joke:' You can't talk, you have to bow again and again.' At work, Lao Ye often forgets to eat and sleep and doesn't know how to take care of himself. When I get old, I will find a reason to sit at my desk for a long time:' Look out the window, what is flying in the sky.' Or,' Let's go downstairs, there are new fish in the pool.' ..... Although he was a little annoyed with me for interrupting him, I still had to find a way to let him walk around for the sake of health. "

"Snow Country" presents the heartfelt words of the translator of Shima Gome.

In the late 1970s, Ye and Tang Yuemei jointly translated a collection of novels, The Ancient Capital of Snow Country, which will be published for the first time by Shandong Publishing House. "But at that time, Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata was still a key figure in the' thought forbidden zone'. Some people even wrote articles accusing and criticizing Kawabata Yasunari as a decadent writer of the New Sensation School, rather than Kobayashi Takiji, a representative writer of proletarian literature (he wrote the novel Born for the Party). He also called the heroine Snow Country, a beautiful, kind and versatile pony, described in his works' a fifth-class prostitute who sold her body', so he decided that Snow Country was a yellow novel. The publishing industry once regarded it as a' disaster'. The author Yasunari Kawabata himself once said:' Emotionally speaking, the sadness of Komako (geisha) is my sadness.' -people who only emphasize that novels appeal to sensory functions, I am afraid I have never thought of it. The translated versions of Snow Country and Ancient Capital have been piled up in the publishing house for many days. Because someone framed the words Snow Country, it was decided to publish Ancient Capital separately. However, Ye and Tang were adamant that either Snow Country and Ancient Capital were published together, or the translations of the two novels were taken back together. Seeing that the two translators were so stubborn and inflexible, the publishing house had to relax its tone. In order to avoid taking "political responsibility" afterwards, it handed over the decision to publish the novel collection to the superior for approval. A lot of things have happened. In the end, the translated version of this collection of novels was not only successfully published, but also the 1 version printed as many as120,000 copies and became a best seller. People spoke highly of this translation, praising it for changing China readers' prejudice against Japanese literature, and at the same time profoundly influencing the writing trend of China's novels in the last 20 years of the 20th century ... In fact, the more controversial the literary works, the more commercialized the market, the more heated the controversy and the more prosperous the sales. The snowball effect of information dissemination produced by Snow Country in the media immediately appeared. There is a view that this novel advocates "nihilistic outlook on life", which is in the same strain as the Japanese classical literature tradition. It can be traced back to the novel Genji Tale written by the female writer Murasaki Tombu in Heian period (794- 1 192) (Ye is the preface to the Chinese version). Another point of view is that the novel tends to be "aestheticism", which is an illusory beauty and surreal beauty, and what it watches is "a spiritual field where particles cannot be seen"; A more superficial point of view is that it shows the hedonistic attitude of Shimamura, a constantly chauffeured lecherous figure, and pays attention to anesthetizing readers with erotic descriptions ... But the Nobel Prize comment (referring to four novels of Izu Dancer, Snow Country, Ancient Capital and Thousand Feathers Crane) is written like this: "His superb narrative works show the Japanese with extraordinary acumen. Nowadays, the sad and melancholy style of Snow Country has conquered countless readers. It has become a compulsory teaching material for Chinese majors in colleges and universities, and it is also the greatest praise for translators. In a lecture on Kawabata Yasunari and the art of fiction in Tsinghua University, Ye Qu Wei analyzed and explained the so-called "obscenity" in Japanese literary works, especially novels: "In China literature," obscenity "is usually regarded as derogatory. In Japanese literature, the word' lewd' has a special meaning, which means beauty and hobbies. " "Even the word" rogue literature "is the same. In addition to the definition of hooliganism, uselessness and helplessness in the general sense, there is also the extreme of love and even the meaning of rebellion. Therefore, whether it is lewd literature or rogue literature, Japanese is incomprehensible to Chinese ... "It seems that cultural differences are often the cause of cultural prejudice, and translation is very important.

Visit Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto to solve the mystery of kumquat number.

The translation from book to book is limited to scale, but the latitude and longitude of human life is vast. Ye, 54, worked as a translator in the editorial office of People's Literature Publishing House for many years, and got an opportunity to become a scholar-he was hired as the Japanese Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to do research on Japanese culture and literature. Appreciating the old director of his institute not only respected his personal interest in Japanese literature research, but also guided him to devote himself to the major topic of Japanese cultural research, broadened his academic horizons and achieved fruitful academic results in the broader field of macro-cultural research in the future. Ye used to be a civil servant in the National Cultural Liaison Committee with Foreign Countries, and also served as the leading secretary of ministries and commissions, drafting manuscripts and writing investigation reports for Chu Tunan and Yang Hansheng ... In the meantime, he did not neglect his professional knowledge of Japanese in college, and whenever he had time, he worked as a translator, translating lyrics for the China Musicians Association, dubbing the Japanese film Sandware, and translating some novels of Kobayashi Takiji and Yoshizo Kazuko that were approved for publication at that time. In the article "My Way to Study", he talked about the experience of changing jobs with emotion: "I didn't expect that I was over 50 years old and had the opportunity to enter the highest academic hall in China-China Academy of Social Sciences. This is really the realization of my dream." In China Academy of Social Sciences, the couple (wife Tang Yuemei is a researcher at the Institute of Foreign Literature of China Academy of Social Sciences and the editor of World Literature magazine) have more time for academic research and more opportunities to visit Japan. In the early 1980s, at the invitation of a Japanese foundation, they came to Japan and visited Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara and Hokkaido. In front of Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto, the husband and wife took a group photo and felt the necessity of "reading thousands of books and walking Wan Li Road" together. They had trouble in translating Shimizu Kazuko's novels: how to understand the sentence "Determined to jump off the stage of Shimizu Temple"? "The determination to jump off the stage of Kiyomizu Temple"-How big is this determination? -I didn't know until I saw it. This Kiyomizu Temple is built on a cliff. Kawabata Yasunari's home is in Changcang Valley, which is a must-see. Since Kawabata Yasunari committed suicide in 1972 (four years after winning the Nobel Prize), his wife Hidoko has been living alone. Before leaving, Mrs. Xiuzi asked the maid to prepare a bag of newly picked golden oranges. The lady personally counted the number of oranges carefully and confirmed that it was odd before sending it to domestic guests. -"This is another vivid example of the cultural differences between the two countries. China advocates even numbers, while the Japanese value odd numbers. The gifts they send must be odd, and even the rope that binds the gifts must be single. " From this, it is concluded that "unlike China people who advocate grand and brilliant beauty, the beauty appreciated by Japanese people is elegant, exquisite, delicate and simple. For example, bamboo fences can be used for the outer walls of palaces. China people like red, but in Japan, red is a fierce color, and they love white, which expresses their ideal of beauty ... "Tang Ye's translation is always based on a thorough and comprehensive understanding and grasp of Japanese culture.